In five minutes not an eye-witness of the fray
remained, such being the fear of the law, not so much in those who break
it as in those who see it broken, and who dread incurring the vengeance
of the culprit, if he is acquitted, or of his family if he is convicted
on their testimony. The quarrel had gone on a full quarter of an hour,
but the concierge of the hotel in front of which it had raged professed
to have known nothing of it, having, he said, been in-doors all the
time. A cabman whom we eliminated from the hysterical company of his
fellows and persuaded to drive us away to see a church attempted to
ignore the whole affair when asked about it. With difficulty he could be
made to recollect it, and then he dismissed it as a trifle. "Oh," he
said, "chiacchiere di donnic-ciuole," which is something like "Clatter
of little old women," a thing not worth noticing. He had, if we could
believe him, not cared to know how it began or ended, and he would not
talk about it.
Later, still interested by the action of the carabiniere in guarding the
public security in his own person, I asked an Italian gentleman, who
owned to have seen the affair, why the officer did not break through the
crowd and arrest the fighters.
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