is an abyss where lights and shadows mingle in conflict, to the confusion of the psychologists.
But we must not let this impudent Proteus deceive us. We must not forget that he spends more than fifty pages in an onslaught on that Benedetto Croce, whom the young men of forty-five and fifty years regard as their standard and their lighthouse, that Croce whom all revere—from the Giornale d'Italia to the Senate, from Pescasseroli to Texas—as the ultimate intuition and expression of the truth. We must not forget that this Zoilus in the form of Thersites allows himself to attack Gabriele d'Annunzio, our great national poet, novelist, dramatist, and orator, our champion intellectual importer, who, like Ferrero, his only rival in this respect, lives on the results of a most profitable exportation. In this same book he maltreats that Luciano Zuccoli whom all Italian ladies adore; that Sem Benelli whom all Italian second galleries have applauded; that Guido Mazzoni, permanent secretary of the Academy of the Crusca, whose Bunch of Keys has admitted him into the Golden Book of Poetry; that Emilio Cecchi who will long remain the dearest hope of young Italian criticism; that Romain Rolland who has undertaken to write a twenty-volume novel, and will sooner or later be declared an honorary citizen of Switzerland. The devouring hunger of this hyena is so boundless that he has even attacked
