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introduction to the Decameron, with reference to the terrible plague which swept Florence in 1348. But the Allied soldiers, especially the Americans, faced with the pitiable spectacle of the plague of Naples, did not only feel compassion for the unhappy people of that city: they felt compassion for themselves as well. The reason was that for some time past the suspicion had been growing in their ingenuous and honest minds that the source of the terrible contagion was in their frank, timid smiles, in their eyes, so full of human sympathy, in their affectionate caresses. The source of the plague was in their compassion, in their very desire to help these unfortunate people, to alleviate their miseries, to succour them in the tremendous disaster that had overtaken them. The source of the disease was in the very hand which they stretched out in brotherhood to this conquered people.
    Perhaps it was written that the freedom of Europe must be born not of liberation, but of the plague. Perhaps it was written that, just as liberation had been born of the sufferings of war and slavery, so freedom must be born of the new and terrible sufferings caused by the plague which liberation had brought with it. The price of freedom is high—far higher than that of slavery. And it is not paid in gold, nor in blood, nor in the most noble sacrifices, but in cowardice, in prostitution, in treachery, and in everything that is rotten in the human soul.
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    On that day too we crossed the threshold of the Foyer de soldat, and Jack, going up to the French sergeant, asked him timidly, almost in confidence, "si on avait vu par la le lieutenant Lyautey."
    "Oui, mon colonel, je l'ai vu tout a l'heure," replied the sergeant with a smile. "Attendez un instant, mon colonel, je vais voir s'il est toujours là."
    "Voilà un sergent bien aimable," said Jack to me, flushing with pleasure. "Les sergents francais sont les plus aimables sergents du monde."
    "Je regrette, mon colonel," said the sergeant, coming back after a few moments, "le lieutenant Lyautey vient justement de partir."
    "Merci, vous etes bien aimable," said Jack. "Au revoir, mon ami."
    "Au revoir, mon colonel," replied the sergeant.
    "Ah, qu'il fait bon d'entendre parler francais," said Jack as we went out of the Caffè Caftisch. His face had lit up with childish joy, and at such moments I felt that I really liked him. I was glad to like a better man than myself. I had always despised or felt bitter towards better men than myself, and this was the first time I had ever been glad to like such a man.
    "Let's go and look at the sea, Malaparte."
    Crossing the Piazza Reale, we descended the Scesa del Gigante and leaned on the parapet at the bottom. "C'est un des plus ancien parapets de l'Europe," said Jack who knew the whole of Rimbaud by heart.
    The sun was setting, and little by little the sea was turning the colour of wine, which is the colour of the sea in Homer. But in the distance, between Sorrento and Capri, the water and the high rugged cliffs, the mountains and their shadows were slowly taking on a flame-bright coral hue, as if the coral-reefs which cover the bottom of the gulf were slowly emerging from the depths of the sea, tinging the sky blood-red with their reflected glory, as of old. Far away the barrier of Sorrento, thick with orchards, rose from the sea like a hard slab of green marble, which the sun, as it sank below the farther horizon, smote with its weary, oblique rays, bringing out the warm, golden glory of the oranges and the cold, bluish glitter of the lemons.
    Like an ancient bone, thin and worn smooth by wind and rain, Vesuvius rose, solitary and naked, into the vast cloudless sky. Little by little it began to glow with a pink, furtive light, as if the fires within its womb were showing through its hard, pallid lava crust, which shone like ivory: until the moon, like an egg-shell, crossed the edge of the crater, and rose clear and