at the end of October he again met Mr. [vS]ojat, just as he was
going up to that interview in the Governor's Palace. "Jesam li ja onda
imao pravo, jesi li sada zadovoljan?" he said. ("Was I not right that
time? Are you satisfied now?") Joyfully he pressed Mr. [vS]ojat's hand
and greeted the two other persons who were with him. And Mr. [vS]ojat
was pleased to think that Vio would now be a good Croat, as of old. But
on the following day he was an Italian.

HIS FERVOUR

When I went up to see this variegated gentleman--whose personal
appearance is that of a bright yellow cat--he purred awhile upon the
sofa and then started striding up and down the room. As he sketched the
history of the town, which, he said, had always been Italian and would
insist on being so, he spoke with horror of the days when Jella[vc]i['c]
was in control, and then, remembering another trouble, he raised both
his hands above his head and brought them down with such a crash upon
the desk where I was writing his remarks that--but nobody burst in; the
municipal officials were accustomed to his conversation. He was reviling
at that moment certain Allied officers who had not seen fit to visit
him. "I care not!" he yelled. "We are Italian! I tell you we are
Italianissimi!" (He was glad enough, however, when his brother Hamlet,
who had remained a Yugoslav and was on friendly terms with the chief of
the carabinieri, managed to obtain for the mayor a passport to Italy,
concerning which the carabinieri had said that they must first of all
apply to Rome.) The doctor was sure that Yugoslavia would not live, for
it had two religions; and another notable defect of the Croats--"I speak
their language quite well," he said--was that in the whole of Rieka not
one ancient document was in Croatian. I was going to mention that
everywhere in Croatia until 1848 they were in Latin--but he saw what I
was on the point of saying and--"Look here! look here!" he cried, "now
look at this!" It was a type-written sheet in English, whereon was
recounted how the mayor had offered to four Admirals, who came to Rieka
on behalf of their four nations, how he had, in order to meet them in
every way--"They asked me," he said, with blankness and indignation and
forgiveness all joined in his expression--it was beautifully done--"they
asked me, the Italian mayor of this Italian town, whether it was truly
an Italian town!"--well, he had offered to take a real plebiscite, on
the basis of the