It was sufficiently astonishing to the American onlooker, however,
accustomed to flaming extras and the plethoric discussion in public of the
most intimate affairs, state and personal, to witness the acquiescence of
emotional Italians in this complete obscurity about their fate and that of
their children and their nation, which was being sorted behind the closed
doors of the Consulta. Every one seemed to go about his personal business
with an apparent calm, a shrug of expressive shoulders at the most,
signifying belief in the sureness of war--soon. There was little animation
in the cafes, practically none on the streets. Arragno's, usually buzzing
with political prophecy, had a depressing, provincial calm. Unoccupied
deputies sat in gloomy silence over their thin _consommations_. Even the
1st of May passed without that demonstration by the Socialists against war
so widely expected. To be sure, the Government had prudently packed Rome
and the northern cities with troops: soldiers were lurking in every old
courtyard, up all the narrow alleys, waiting for some hardy Socialist to
"demonstrate." But it was not the plentiful troops, not even a lively
thunderstorm that swept Rome all the afternoon, which discouraged the
Socialists: they too were in doubt and apathy. They were hesitating,
passing resolutions, defining themselves into fine segments of political
opinion--and waiting for Somebody to act! They too awaited the completion
of those endless discussions among the diplomats at the Consulta, at the
Ballplatz in Vienna, and wherever diplomacy is made in Berlin. The first
of May came and went, and the _carabinieri_, the secret police, the
infantry, the cavalry with their fierce hairy helmets filed off to their
barracks in a dripping dusk, dispirited, as if disappointed themselves
that nothing definite, even violence, had yet come out of the business. So
one caught a belated cab and scurried through the deserted streets to an
empty hotel on the Pincian, more than half convinced that the Government
meant really to do nothing except "negotiate" until the spirit of war had
died from the hearts of the people.