Yes, I fear that the artistic
treatment of life has a good deal to answer for. People do not yet
understand that the mirror of art does not reflect life unrefracted. The
great eternal theme of art is love-making; but even artists have to give
up some time to art-making.
But to wind up anent our murderer. He is still at large. The police have
given up the chase in despair. But he has never left the village, and we
villagers all wink at one another as we discuss his whereabouts; and when
we meet him driving his cart or come across him cutting wood in the
forest and he genially gives us _Buon' giorno_ we salute him with
answering politeness. Only in the village band there is a temporary
trumpeter, for even the police might hear of him if he performed in
public loudly enough. But Italian justice, though it does really savour
of comic opera, is not so farcical as it appears on the surface. It is an
unwritten law that the police shall not _pigliare_ him till the sessions
are nigh. He is on parole, so to speak, to come up when called upon; if
he were really to take flight, he would be declared an outlaw, and the
only reason the police cannot find him is that they know where he is. How
sensible! Why board and lodge him gratis for weeks? He has outraged the
community: shall the community reward him with free meals? Even when he
is caught he will be treated with the same economy.
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