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Updated: May 18, 2025
They were a whole colony of Italians, thirty or more families. They had all come at different times. Giuseppino had been longest in the village. He had come when he was eleven, with his parents, and had attended the Swiss school. So he spoke perfect German. He was a clever man, was married, and had two children.
So I sat on the edge of the stage whilst they rehearsed their parts. The little thin intelligent fellow, Giuseppino, was the leader. The others read their parts in the laborious, disjointed fashion of the peasant, who can only see one word at a time, and has then to put the words together, afterwards, to make sense.
The Italians gathered round them a curious darkness of reserve. And then I must go. They shook hands with me warmly, truthfully, putting a sort of implicit belief in me, as representative of some further knowledge. But there was a fixed, calm resolve over the face of the Giuseppino, a sort of steady faith, even in disappointment. He gave me a copy of a little Anarchist paper published in Geneva.
The Alberto, slow and laborious, yet with a spark of vividness and natural intensity flashing through, replied and gesticulated; the Maddelena laid her head on the bosom of Alfredo, the other men started into action, and the play proceeded intently for half an hour. Quick, vivid, and sharp, the little Giuseppino was always central. But he seemed almost invisible.
But they were very soft stuff, if inflammable. The young woman of the inn, niece of the landlady, came down and called out across the room. 'We will go away from here now, said the Giuseppino to me. 'They close at eleven. But we have another inn in the next parish that is open all night. Come with us and drink some wine. 'But, I said, 'you would rather be alone.
They lived entirely among themselves; none of them could speak German, more than a few words, except the Giuseppino, who was like a native here. It was very strange being among these Italians exiled in Switzerland. Alfredo, the dark one, the unmarried, was in the old tradition.
It was strange to watch them on the stage, the Italians all lambent, soft, warm, sensuous, yet moving subject round Giuseppino, who was always quiet, always ready, always impersonal. There was a look of purpose, almost of devotion on his face, that singled him out and made him seem the one stable, eternal being among them.
But the face of the Giuseppino is like a pale luminousness, a sort of gleam among all the ruddy glow, his body is evanescent, like a shadow. And his being seemed to cast its influence over all the others, except perhaps the woman, who was hard and resistant. The other men seemed all overcast, mitigated, in part transfigured by the will of the little leader.
But under the influence of Giuseppino he was thrown down, as fallow to the new spirit that would come. And then, when the others were all partially tipsy, the Giuseppino began to talk to me.
'Sa signore, said the Giuseppino to me, quiet, almost invisible or inaudible, as it seemed, like a spirit addressing me, 'l'uomo non ha patria a man has no country. What has the Italian Government to do with us. What does a Government mean? It makes us work, it takes part of our wages away from us, it makes us soldiers and what for? What is government for?
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