Presently he tore the letter, first in long strips then into little squares which he arranged in a pattern. Then again he looked at the window panes, and the rods, and the rings and the threads which seemed like soaking marionettes. Towards evening the rain ceased and the two students went out together. The sky had cleared, the city noises reanimated the soft air; a rainbow made a marvellous frame for the picture of the Forum Romanum. Daga was in a mood of thoughtless merriment. Anania walked automatically, noticing nothing, his hands in his pockets, his hat on his eyes, his lips shut. As usual they went down Via Nazionale. Daga stopped before Garroni's to look at the papers, while Anania walked on absently, advancing towards a line of chattering young priests habited in red. The reflection of their scarlet cassocks made a sanguinous reflection on the wet pavement, and all the footpath seemed on fire. They were foreigners, merry, thoughtless boys, frisking like flames and filling the streets with their laughter. Thus they would pass through life, thoughtless and unconscious, no passion involving them in shadows, no flame shining on their path but that of their long scarlet cassocks. Anania felt envious and said to Daga, who rejoined him-- "When I was a child I knew the son of a famous brigand. The boy was on fire with wild little passions, and meant to avenge his father. Now he has become a monk. What do you make of that?" "He's a fool, that's all." "That won't do," said Anania eagerly, "we explain too many psychological mysteries by that word fool!" "Well, anyhow he's a monomaniac. Folly itself is a complicated psychological mystery, a tree of which monomania is the stoutest branch." "Well, he had the monomania of brigandage, an hereditary monomania. He is a primitive sort of person, and by becoming a monk he tried to free himself from his monomania. He went from bad to worse. He'll end by going mad. A normal intelligent man, if he has the ill luck to become the victim of a fixed idea, throws it off by giving way to it. Take love, for instance. That's a fixed idea, if you like! a continual itch to be near some particular person--alone with her. There's no remedy for that state of obsession but to get near--the fixed idea! Wait a moment, I see something I want" (he stopped before a shop window)--"a crocodile card-case." "Perhaps you are right." "Of course I am. I know it's crocodile." "I mean about the fixed idea----" "Just think! that card-case was once living in the Nile." "What an idiot you are! where's the Police Office?" asked Anania, turning on his heel. "How do I know? I've never been taken up." "Seriously, where is it?" "Do you think you're at Nuoro? There are dozens of offices. I've noticed one at San Martino dei Monti." "Will you come with me?" said Anania, turning up Via Depretis. He had grown pale; his hands trembled in his pockets.