e notices pinned on
them. Some were open, and seemed half-stocked with half-elegant things.
Men were carrying newspapers. In the cafes a few men were seated
drinking vermouth. In the doorway of the restaurants waiters stood
inert, looking out on the streets. The curious heart-eating _ennui_ of
the big town on a holiday came over our hero. He felt he must get out,
whatever happened. He could not bear it.

So he went back to his hotel and up to his room. It was still only five
o'clock. And he did not know what to do with himself. He lay down on
the bed, and looked at the painting on his bedroom ceiling. It was a
terrible business in reckitt's blue and browny gold, with awful heraldic
beasts, rather worm-wriggly, displayed in a blue field.

As he lay thinking of nothing and feeling nothing except a certain
weariness, or dreariness, or tension, or God-knows-what, he heard a loud
hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening. Rising,
he went on to his little balcony. It was a sort of procession, or march
of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man's fist. There
had been a big meeting, and this was the issue. The procession was
irregular, but powerful, men four abreast. They emerged irregularly from
the small piazza to the street, calling and vociferating. They stopped
before a shop and clotted into a crowd, shouting, becoming vicious. Over
the shop-door hung a tricolour, a national flag. The shop was closed,
but the men began to knock at the door. They were all workmen, some
in railway men's caps, mostly in black felt hats. Some wore red cotton
neck-ties. They lifted their faces to the national flag, and as they
shouted and gesticulated Aaron could see their strong teeth in their
jaws. There was something frightening in their lean, strong Italian
jaws, something inhuman and possessed-looking in their foreign,
southern-shaped faces, so much more formed and demon-looking than
northern faces. They had a demon-like set purpose, and the noise of
their voices was like a jarring of steel weapons. Aaron wondered what
they wanted. There were no women--all men--a strange male, slashing
sound. Vicious it was--the head of the procession swirling like a little
pool, the thick wedge of the procession beyond, flecked with red flags.

A window opened above the shop, and a frowsty-looking man, yellow-pale,
was quickly and nervously hauling in the national flag. There were
shouts of derision and mockery--a grea