124 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
“ Inglese? ’”’ he asked. ‘ Inglese?” and I forcibly
echoed ‘ Inglese, Signore Inglese,” as if that settled
the whole matter.
English people on the Continent have an illusion that
the mere fact of their nationality permits them to do
anything soever. And there is a great deal of truth
in this, after all, because the inhabitants of Europe
have a settled conviction that we are all harmless
lunatics. So we are allowed to act in all sorts of ways
which they would not tolerate for a moment in any
supposedly rational person.
In the present instance, I have little doubt that, if
we had been dressed as ourselves, we should have
been politely conducted to our hotel or put into an
automobile, without any more fuss, perhaps, than a few
perfunctory questions intended to impress the sergeant’s
men with his importance.
But as it was, he shook his head doubtfully.
“ Arme vietate,” he said solemnly, pointing to the
revolvers which were still in our hands.
I tried to explain the affair in broken Italian. Lou
did what was really a much more sensible thing by
taking the affair as a stupendous joke, and going off
into shrieks of hysterical laughter.
But as for me, my blood was up. I wasn’t going to
stand any nonsense from these damned Italians.
Despite the Roman blood that is legitimately the
supreme pride of our oldest families, we always some-
how instinctively think of the Italian as a nigger.
We don’t call them ‘‘ dagos’”’ and “wops,’’ as they do
in the United States, with the invariable epithet of
“ dirty ’’; but we have the same feeling.
_ I began to take the high hand with the sergeant;
and that, of course, was quite sufficient to turn the
balance against us.
We found ourselves pinioned. He said in a very
short tone that we should have to go to the Commissario.
I had two conflicting impulses. One to shoot the
dogs down and get away; the other to wish, like a