The poor
ones have only poor, scraggy plumes.
There is something very primitive about these men. They remind me really
of Agamemnon's soldiers clustered oil the seashore, men, all men, a
living, vigorous, physical host of men. But there is a pressure on these
Italian soldiers, as if they were men caryatides, with a great weight on
their heads, making their brain hard, asleep, stunned. They all look is
if their real brain were stunned, as if there were another centre of
physical consciousness from which they lived.
Separate from them all is Pietro, the young man who lounges on the wharf
to carry things from the steamer. He starts up from sleep like a
wild-cat as somebody claps him on the shoulder. It is the start of a man
who has many enemies. He is almost an outlaw. Will he ever find himself
in prison? He is the _gamin_ of the village, well detested.
He is twenty-four years old, thin, dark, handsome, with a cat-like
lightness and grace, and a certain repulsive, _gamin_ evil in his face.
Where everybody is so clean and tidy, he is almost ragged. His week's
beard shows very black in his slightly hollow cheeks.
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