Here I was beset
with an impassioned longing to know whether he was a Russian or
American, since the English always take milk in their tea, but I could
not ask, and when I had suffered my question as long as I could in his
presence I escaped from it, if you can call it escaping, to the more
poignant question of what it would be like to come, Sunday after Sunday,
to the Pincio, in the life-long voluntary exile of some Americans I
knew, who meant to spend the rest of their years under the spell of
Rome. I thought, upon the whole, that it would be a dull, sad fate, for
somehow we seem born in a certain country in order to die in it, and I
went home, to come again other Sundays to the Pincio, but not all the
Sundays I promised myself.
On one of these Sundays I found Roman boys playing an inscrutable game
among the busts of their storied compatriots, a sort of "I spy" or "Hide
and go whoop," counting who should be "It" in an Italian version of
"Oneary, ory, ickory, an," and then scattering in every direction behind
the plinths and bushes.
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