Silone’s hero is equally dissatisfied with a religious vocation which withdraws from life. He talks with the beautiful and spiritual Christina, who devoutly waits to enter the convent: Do you not think that this divorce between a spirituality which retires into contemplation and a mass of people dominated by animal instincts is the source of all our ills? Do you not think that every living creature ought to live and struggle among his fellow-creatures rather than shut himself up in an ivory tower? Although _A Handful of Blackberries_ contains more scenes set in Rome than the other two Silone novels discussed here, a better view of the Italian city dweller is given by Taddei and Moravia. Taddei’s _The Pine Tree and the Mole_ is built about citizens of Livorno who are as widely separated by wealth and position as are Silone’s Old Zaccaria and the Tarocchi family. The circle of lawyers and politicians who exchange wives and party labels are a different breed of men from the jailbirds, pimps, and informers at the opposite extreme of Livorno’s social structure. But both groups are equally adrift, both caught in the same wave of post-World War I exhaustion and economic derangement which sent so many Italians in search of the answer that Mussolini seemed to provide. Taddei emphasizes poverty and depression as the main factors which prepared the way for the Fascist regime, but one senses something else, particularly among his representatives of the educated class. They seem to be seeking some sort of order, a stabilizing force in their political life. Taddei says that the Italian Socialist Party seemed to offer the solution. But the Socialists failed because overwhelmed by the favorable-seeming course of events and overlooking the most important phase of the matter, they lacked the time to think of many things and, instead, viewed the period with optimistic eyes; everything appeared to them to depend upon the number of adherents that any particular event brought into their ranks. Political expediency thus became, in a manner of speaking, epidemic, and the deepening crisis in all its amplitude became apparent in the form of a spiritual crisis that was its reflection. Marcello Clerici in _The Conformist_ finds his solution in Fascism. Taddei’s hero turns at last to the same source of strength which Silone singles out--the land and its people. They both feel, rather like Orwell, that the masses are the ultimate source of their country’s salvation. Old Lazzaro, shouting defiance at the Communists, epitomizes these people: “There’ll always be someone that refuses to sell his soul for a handful of beans and a piece of cheese.” In this he is like Conrad’s Giorgio Viola, “the Garibaldino,” an old expatriate whose divinities are Garibaldi and Liberty.