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Dr. Bara said. “They’re getting the feel of it. The mob is feeling its muscle. It’s only a matter of time now.”
    All of them were there, Copa and Mazzola, Dr. Bara, Vittorini the mail clerk, their families, their children and even Francucci, his eyes sealed, his teeth broken, his lips split.
    â€œMaybe they won’t come,” Mazzola said. “Maybe they’re cheering something else.”
    â€œThey won’t hurt us, ” the wife of Francucci said. “We’ve already paid the price.”
    â€œWhat, for twenty years of rotten bread?” the doctor said. “You have only paid the first installment.”
    â€œIf we knew who was leading them we might be able to figure out something,” Copa, the mayor, said.
    â€œEvery man has his price,” Mazzola said.
    â€œWhere the hell is Pelo?” Copa asked. “I’ll break that bastard’s neck.”
    They had sent Romano Pelo, the least offensive of men, a shadow of a human being, to go into the town and find out what the noise from the Piazza Mussolini was about. He had not come back. Now they sat in the darkness of the cellar of the Mansion, the government house of Santa Vittoria, behind barricaded doors, and waited and listened.
    â€œIf we can only last into the night,” Mazzola said. “They’ll forget us. The people’s memory is short.”
    Mazzola was always hoping for the best. There was another shout from the piazza, this time loud enough to seem to come right through the stones of the house and it made the baker begin to weep.
    â€œAll I ever did for them was to bake their bread and now they want to come and harm me,” Francucci said. He was becoming obsessed with the idea that the people wanted to put him in his own bread ovens and bake him alive.
    â€œWe must find a way to surrender to them before they can come to us,” Vittorini said. “In that way we can surrender on our own terms.”
    Little by little, as the day wore on, the mail clerk was assuming command in the cellar. He was not a Fascist, but he was a paid employee of the state, a “functionary” as he preferred to call himself, and since Vittorini is above all things a man of form he felt it his duty to be counted with the recognized legal machinery of government.
    If the Communists ever take over Italy or Santa Vittoria, Vittorini will hang a picture of Marx in the post office.
    â€œThe thing we must do now is seize the initiative,” Vittorini said.
    â€œVery beautiful words,” Dr. Bara said. “Well stated.”
    The most impressive fact about Vittorini, more impressive even than his character, is the uniform he is entitled to wear, and which he wears on all state and religious holidays, and which he had the wisdom to put on this morning.
    It is from one of the fine regiments although no one remembers the name of it now or the number. It was made from a white whipcord twill that had been cleaned and bleached so many times that it was impossible to look directly at Vittorini in the sunlight. Across his chest he wore a red-and-white-and-green silken sash, and on the sash was a gold medal that swam in the silk like a sun rising from the sea. There were black patent-leather boots that flared out at the knee and a sword in a golden scabbard that clinked against the cobblestones when he crossed the piazza to enter the church. The green epaulets are trimmed with gold braid, but most of all it is Vittorini’s hat. The hat is made of shiny black patent leather with a little stubby visor and from the top, which is high, cascades a fall of cock’s plumes, a shiny black-and-green shower of them so that when Vittorini walks Vittorini ripples.
    â€œWe must discover the nature of the enemy,” Vittorini told them, “and capitulate to it. They must not come and take; we must give. It is the only way.”
    He shook his head to emphasize his point, and the dark river of feathers