Peace  and  war  were  equally  remote,  as  indifferent  as  life  and
death  in  certain  supine  preagonic  beatitudes  bereft  alike  of  af-
fection or  hope.  However  smooth  the  sky  might  be,  the  mo-
tionlessness  of  the  landscape  seemed  to  betray  muffled  trepida-
tions such  as  tempest  warnings  scatter  amidst  tree  trunks  and


>


72  RUBE

through  the  subsoil.  These  things  Filippo  saw  from  the  in-
terior of  the  wagon  in  which  he  was  huddled,  invisible  to  the
others  and  almost  to  himself.
He  knew  as  usual  the  defaming  formula  of  what  he  had  done
the  night  before.  "With  my  baseness  I  have  redeemed  a  woman
who  allowed  herself  to  be  kissed,  so  that  she  should  not  call
me  vile  and  also  to  spite  the  man  to  whom  she  had  first  been
engaged.  So  that  I've  succeeded  at  last  in  what  I  was  pre-
meditating for  a  long  time,  lurking  around  for  a  moment  of
deceitful  impulse,  like  the  country  robber  who  keeps  watch
over  a  gate  until  a  night  when  the  gardener's  absent-minded-
ness leaves  it  open.  I  wanted  to  tear  from  that  woman  a  secret
equal  to  my  own,  so  as  to  hold  it  against  her  as  a  guarantee
of  my  security.  Now  I  have  it.  I  have  a  kiss  that  was  half
charity  and  half  revenge,  as  cold  as  the  coin  that  is  dropped
from  the  third  story  down  to  the  street  musician."  But  he
pronounced  these  atrocious  insults  with  well-ordered  oratorical
complacency,  as  if  they  referred  to  some  accused  party  or  other,
or  as  if  they  were  insubstantial  imaginings  outside  of  all  truth.
