including the chauffeur and the orderly, and for the food which we
consumed I think that the innkeeper charged the equivalent of a dollar.
But, as he explained apologetically, the war had raised prices terribly.
We were the first visitors, it seemed, barring Austrians and a few
Italian officers, who had visited his inn in nearly five years. Both of
his sons had been killed in the war, he told us, fighting bravely with
their Jaeger battalion. The widow of one of his sons--I saw her; a
sweet-faced Austrian girl--with her child, had come to live with him, he
said. Yes, he was an old man, both of his boys were dead, his little
business had been wrecked, the old Emperor Franz-Joseph--yes, we could
see his picture over the fireplace within--had gone and the new Emperor
Karl was in exile, in Switzerland, life had heard; even the Empire in
which he had lived, boy and man, for seventy-odd years, had disappeared;
the whole world was, indeed, turned upside down--but, Heaven be praised,
he had a little grandson who would grow up to carry the business on.

[Illustration: A LITTLE MOTHER OF THE TYROL

We gave her some candy: it was the first taste of sugar that she had had
in four years]

[Illustration: THE END OF THE DAY

A Tyrolean peasant woman returning from the fields]

"How do you feel," I asked the old man, "about Italian rule?"

"They are not our own people," he answered slowly. "Their language is
not our language and their ways are not our ways. But they are not an
unkind nor an unjust people and I think that they mean to treat us