He was Italian-Swiss; he had
been in a bank in Bern; now he had retired, had bought his paternal
home, and was a free man. He was about fifty years old; he spent all his
time in his garden; his daughter attended to the inn.
He talked to me, as long as I stayed, about Italy and Switzerland and
work and life. He was retired, he was free. But he was only nominally
free. He had only achieved freedom from labour. He knew that the system
he had escaped at last, persisted, and would consume his sons and his
grandchildren. He himself had more or less escaped back to the old form;
but as he came with me on to the hillside, looking down the high-road at
Lugano in the distance, he knew that his old order was collapsing by a
slow process of disintegration.
Why did he talk to me as if I had any hope, as if I represented any
positive truth as against this great negative truth that was advancing
up the hill-side. Again I was afraid. I hastened down the high-road,
past the houses, the grey, raw crystals of corruption.
I saw a girl with handsome bare legs, ankles shining like brass in the
sun. She was working in a field, on the edge of a vineyard.
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