‘And you want to know about Italy? Very well,’ he said grimly; ‘I can give you plenty of statistics.’ He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and traced lines in the dirt floor with his whip, speaking in the emotionless tone of one who is quoting a list from a catalogue. ‘The poor people bear three-fourths of the taxes. Every necessity of life is taxed—bread and salt and meat and utensils—but such things as carriages and servants and jewels go comparatively free. When the government has squeezed all it can from the people, the church takes its share, and then the government comes in again with the state lotteries. The Latin races are already sufficiently addicted to gambling without needing any extra encouragement from the state. Part of the revenue thus collected is spent in keeping up the army—in training the young men of the country in idleness and in a great many things they would do better without. Part of it goes to build arcades and fountains and statues of Victor Emmanuel. The most of it stops in official pockets. You may think that politics are as corrupt as they can be in America, but I assure you it is not the case. In Italy the priests won’t let the people vote, and the parliament is run in the interests of a few. The people are ignorant and superstitious; more than half of them can neither read nor write, and the government exploits them as it pleases. The farm labourer earns only from twenty-five to thirty cents a day to support himself and his family. Fortunately, living is cheap or there would soon not be any farm labourers alive. ‘Last year—’ he paused and an angry flush crept under his dark skin—‘last year in Lombardy, Venetia, and the Marches—three of the most fertile provinces in Italy—fifteen thousand people went mad from hunger. The children of these _pellagrosi_ will be idiots and cripples, and ten years from now you will find them on the steps of churches, holding out maimed hands for coppers. At this present moment there are ten thousand people in Naples crowded into damp caves and cellars—practically all of them stricken with consumption and scrofula, and sick with hunger.’ He leaned forward and looked into her face with blazing eyes. ‘Marcia, in this last week I’ve seen—God!’ he burst out, ‘_what_ things I’ve seen!’