For me the change had been very sudden. On Sunday I had been out in the country in my civilian clothes, feelrbs ing better than I had felt for a long time, ch looking forward to a monotonous but Age peaceful life at the office of the Stato

Maggiore for many months to come. On Tuesday, I was in hospital, in a long ward, dressed something between a lunatic and a house painter. The sudden contrast in one's surroundings almost took the breath away, and I began to ask myself if I were not perhaps dreaming. Toward evening, one's impressions tended to clarify, the fabulous became natural, the strange calmly objective. I began to take stock of my companions. The authorities had put me, it seemed, in a ward of mixed cases, the larger proportion of which were perhaps nervous maladies. The words neurasthenia and esaurimento nervoso developed gradually into a refrain which I hope it may never be my ill luck to listen to again.

We had shell-shock cases and examples of deafness and muteness caused, or alleged to be caused, by experiences at the front. There were also simple cases of men waiting to be examined for nothing more tragic than an almost complete absence of teeth, while there were others suffering from prostatis. The man in the cot next to mine looked

a ruffian of the first water. He reminded me of the types I had seen at the prison hospital of Sant' Antonio. A brutal lowering expression, malicious eyes, and a jaw like a monkey's were points in his facial equipment. He spoke the pure Roman dialect of Trasteverre, and abounded in the vulgar yet often picturesque oaths of the wine carriers of the Castelli romani. He came into hospital an hour or two later than myself, flung his bundle down on the bed with a grunt, and began to study his surroundings with complete nonchalance. He lit a cigarette, and commenced to talk of himself with something of the air of a sulky murderer. He explained to me that he was in hospital because he had the unpleasant habit of getting up in a kind of somnambulistic trance in the middle of the night and attempting to throttle his neighbor. He did not say how long he had suffered from this infliction, nor explain the reason of its genesis.

'A pleasant companion to find one's self next to,' I thought.

However, I presumed him to be exaggerating and talking in order to make an effect, though during my first night in the Celio I must confess I did not sleep too well, and turned an occasional eye on my friend with the original and distressing malady. A few days' sojourn within the hospital's melancholy walls taught me, however, to accept these remarkable self-offered accounts of their symptoms on the part of the patients with considerable reserve. I discovered that it was almost a point of honor to profess the most terrible symptoms and disorders, to rail at the ignorance and cruelty of the regimental doctors, and to pose as victims of a merciless and brutal system. This led me to find out that there were many malingerers even here who had succeeded in getting past their own doctors at the regiment into the com

parative calm of the Celio. A soldier who was 'in observation,' as they called it at the Celio, had a prima facie right to be considered as being genuinely ill in one way or another. All, however, were not really so, as I was later able to satisfy myself by witnessing one extraordinary scene.

We had to pass no less than three 'visits' or examinations at the hands of three different doctors, so that there was a good chance of weeding out the genuine cases from the spurious, and catching the malingerers and simulators. Apart from the nervous and neurasthenic cases in my ward, there were also several soldiers with wounds that were not healing properly, or had broken out again, or had caused some other complication. The ward contained about sixty men and nearly half of them were neurasthenic cases, some of which were palpably genuine enough, for the condition of the sufferers was often pitiable. It generally happened, however, that these men, practically broken with nervous exhaustion, and unable to make a bold story of their sufferings, received less generous treatment at the doctors' hands than some of the brazen-faced rascals who still retained all their courage and their wits, and were thus in a position to make more impression, perhaps, on the medical men. Though no doubt this fact was taken into consideration by the staff, who in some cases were very hard to convince. There were men in the ward who had been four weeks 'in observation,' and had been subjected to as many as half a dozen medical examinations.

The results of the examinations, which took place in the morning between ten and twelve o'clock, were never known the same day, though, when a man had passed the captain and the major, he might have a pretty good idea of what fate had in store for him.

If his case was open to no suspicions of malingering, he would often receive a hint from the orderly in charge of the day sheets on which were marked the results of the examinations.

But the official notices came through in the afternoon about four o'clock, and this time was always awaited anxiously by a number of the ward's inmates. An orderly would come bustling into the long room where the patients were lying on their beds or playing cards at the tables, and shout out four or five names. The hour of these men had arrived, and they would crowd round the orderly to hear the doctors' verdicts. These were usually couched thus: "Three months' convalescence with liberty'; 'three months' convalescence at a military clinic'; 'a year's convalescence'; 'back to the battalion to-night' a terrible sentence this or very occasionally 'riforma (complete discharge).'

It can be easily imagined with what trepidation these brief military announcements were awaited, what hopes were dashed to the ground, what sudden transports of joy pulsated in some soldiers' breasts. Moments of anguish and rapture truly were these.

The very day I entered the hospital, a tall, rather distinguished and blatantly good-looking man received his notice to go down to the dressing room and prepare to leave the hospital at once. He was fortunate, for the doctors had conceded him a whole year's convalescence with liberty, which meant that he could put on his civilian clothes again, and walk out into the street a free man with no other obligation than that of reporting himself to the military authorities and obtaining their consent every time he wished to move from city to city.

The man had evidently expected good news, for a messenger had brought him a valise filled with civilian clothes

of which was dumped down beside his ve cot. We others, whose fate yet hung in the balance, watched this fellow preheparing to dress himself. I lay on my

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bed and wondered what kind of a buteh terfly would evolve from this strange chrysalis enveloped in the preposterous robes of the hospital. Slowly the process of unfolding developed before our fascinated eyes. It was a little drama à la Japonnaise which I studied with the tensest interest. It all took place in silence. We others gazed upon this 기 man as devout folk might watch the dprogress of a miracle. My companion e on the right of me whispered: 'He's a cinema actor, and he's got a year's convalescence, lucky dog.' And gradually the cinema star evolved from the flapping bundle of linen swathes. The 2 man dressed himself with exaggerated slowness and care. It seemed to me, indeed, that he was taking a theatrical pleasure in robing himself thus gorgeously before us, perhaps also enjoy ing with a certain refined cruelty our abashed and marveling expressions. He dressed himself in a beautiful new suit, adjusted his collar and tie with meticulous care before a mirror which he had in his suit case, and spent nearly five minutes doing his hair. Then, when he was at length fully attired, he shook himself like an animal, as if to relish voluptuously the clean, crisp feeling of new clothes. He put his hat on his head with another stage gesture, picked up his elegant cane from the bed, and turned to us all with the gesture of a grand seigneur.

'Good-bye, boys,' he said, with a pleasant smile, and strode majestically out of the ward. He was gone,

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gorgeous cinema butterfly, leaving behind him a vague air of melancholy

and resentment.

As he left the room, one of the patients, sitting near the door, offered, with true Italian courtesy, to carry his

bag for him down to the hospital gates. The actor accepted with a gesture of grandiloquent unconcern. The eyes of the poor devil next but one to me blazed with inner rage. He had already been nearly five weeks in the ward, because the authorities were waiting for some papers concerning his past medical history from the carabinieri of a distant province in Sicily.

'I should like to know precisely what's the matter with that fellow.' And he made one of those untranslatable southern gestures which express favoritism, influence, and that vague but real institution camorra.

Among the inmates of the ward in which I was placed was a little man from the extreme south of Italy, who had been in London several years and spoke English tolerably well. His wife, so he told me, was an Englishwoman looking after a little café-restaurant in the Borough. The doctors had given. him riforma for an almost complete absence of teeth. He opened his hideous mouth with a kind of pride, much in the way an athlete exhibits the swelling muscles of his arm. He told me in confidence that he possessed a tolerable set of artificial teeth, but that he had deemed it wise to leave them at home before entering the hospital. He was a poor, puny specimen of a man anyway, and could not have been of much use in military service. He was being detained in the Celio till they could get some papers concerning him, and give him his passport to London, where he meant to go as soon as he was free. He was quite a cheerful little man, and a contrast to some of the melancholy creatures who wandered aimlessly up and down the avenues of the hospital grounds, or sat, sometimes for hours at a time, on the benches in the ward, or lay half-dressed upon their beds, gazing fixedly at the ceiling.

The man to my right who had con

fessed to the unpleasant habit of getting up in the middle of the night and throttling his neighbor, was a very rough-looking customer. He had the appearance and the manners of a teppista or Apache, and it was whispered among us that he had more than one conviction for acts of violence to his account. Beyond one or two disgusting personal habits, and a habit of using blasphemous and obscene language, I had nothing to complain of in respect to him. Indeed, once or twice he tried to be friendly with me, and offered me a cigarette occasionally when my own store ran short. But he spoke such a rough and brutal dialect that I only understood him with difficulty; so after one or two unfertile attempts at conversation with me, he gave up the attempt altogether. After this, we only spoke on occasions of dramatic urgency as when, for instance, either of us had heard that the army medical captain or the major was expected to preside over an examination.

Among my comrades in the ward, there was only one man of education. He was a polyglot Jew with a smattering of half a dozen languages. He spoke English moderately well and with the insistence of the Jew sought every opportunity of having a talk with me in order to pass the time and refresh his English. There was also a Greek-speaking Italian who had been at Saloniki whom the Jew used to talk to in Greek, and an Austrian prisoner whom he unearthed in one of the wards with whom he would exchange brief phrases in German. He was a pleasant enough fellow, this Jew, with a superior kind of manner which reminded me of young Oxford or Cambridge undergraduates, and had a pleasant amusing touch of homeliness about it. I told him of this impression which his conversation made on me, and asked him if he had ever been at an English uni

versity. He had not, but he had learned his English in the family of an Oxford don in England, and I suppose this fact accounted for the impression which his conversation made upon me. Since we were the only persons of education in the ward, and on account of the fact that he spoke English, there naturally grew up a bond of sympathy between us, and we would pass many hours together walking or sitting in the shady avenues of the grounds or in inventing all kinds of diversions to pass the time. He even lent me ten francs the day I entered the hospital for, not at all expecting to be detained there, I had come in with very little money in my pocket. And as I soon discovered, money was not without its value even in hospital.

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This friend of mine was also a chess player, and we passed several hours together at the chessboard. We two would often go about in company of another fellow, a citizen of Viterbo who recovered his spirits after a first satisfactory visit to the medical captain, and became quite cheerful company. We would tell each other stories, and make excursions to the little north gate of the hospital, where, under the eye of the sentinel, we would buy fruit from an old woman who kept a stall just outside the gate and was regularly patronized by the soldiers.

The usual game of the majority of the inmates of the wards was the Italian village game of morra, that curious rowdy game where the players put up a number of fingers and the opponents shout their guesses.

We inmates were allowed to do pretty well what we liked all day, as long as we did not make too much noise. We could stroll from pavilion to pavilion and had the free run of all the grounds. We could attend the services in the chapel if we liked, Mass in the morning at eight o'clock, and