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Growing Muslim presence in stagnating job markets within recessionary economies inevitably generated a backlash, often cloaked in terms of Samuel Huntington's 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs, "Clash of Civilizations". Even tolerant Italy was affected. Last year, the Bologna archbishop, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, cast Islam as incompatible with Italian culture.

Biffi of Milan describes the case of a lunatic who died in consequence of gangrene of the tongue from a bite in a paroxysm of mania. At the necropsy a needle, six cm. in length, was found transfixing the heart, with which the relatives of the deceased said he had stabbed himself twenty-two months prior to his death.

They tell about the ovations accorded them by foreign audiences. They exhibit the diamonds on their fingers and in their neckties. They hint at affairs with great ladies who offered to leave home and husband to follow them to Milan. They exaggerate the salaries they received on their trip, and frown haughtily when some unfortunate "colleague" solicits a drink at the nearby Biffi.

Within the four arms of the Gallery, a continuous bustle of people, an incessant going and coming of merging, dissolving crowds: a quadruple avalanche flowing toward the grand square at the center of the cross, where the Café Biffi, known to actors and singers the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables!