194
PARTISAN REVIEW
ing now, at this moment, continually repeating itseU, that continually
those empires and cities were being created and destroyed and created
again as it were before
his
eyes: then again he began to think that,
far more mysterious than any of the questions Volney posed, was the
fact that people still found it necessary to ask them, or answer them
with unsatisfactory explanations. Had Toynbee really said anything
new? Had Volney in his day? With his flashlight, while the cat
impatiently sharpened his claws on a tree, he had recourse to the
forgotten Volney once more. "Individuals will feel that private happi–
ness is allied to the public good." Well, that seemed a point worth
discussing at any rate: but what was the public good? What was
private happiness?
"In Germany, England, red light," Signor Salacci was saying.
"Roman better idea. Cock outside."
Well, St. Malo was wiped out, Naples defaced, but a cock in the
street outside an antique Pompeiian brothel still survived. Well, why
not?
"Aesculapius snakes outside, a doctor. .." the guide went on.
"The chemist and public bathwash. . . .soldiers, students, cheapest
prices. Just before the war, in Mussolini time, they had just like
this. Regular price is 15 lira. For students and soldiers haH price 7: 50
-but cheap is always dangerous....Chemist and public bathwash,"
he pointed down the Vico dei Lupanare. "In Southern Italy is
plenty clap. Seventy per cent of people have-a the clap but now is
American penicillin-whissht, in few days I-so nobody know per–
centage."
Roderick purred....Man, excellent in wit, had discovered how
to cure clap in twenty-four hours. Without resource he meets nothing
that must come! So with his resource therefore he saw, in this mar–
velous discovery, the possibility of catching a different kind of clap
every day for the next seventy-two days, perhaps, on the seventy-third
an absolutely unique kind.
"Wine street, woman street and public bathwash," the guide was
intoning in sombre, almost biblical tones. . . . "In Pompeii you pay
advance. Many men come. Etrangers. Strangers, and sailors, you un–
derstand. No speak-a the Latin. But Romans make it easy. In every
room is painted different position and man pick-a what he want.
Ah, wine woman and song street! Wait," he added, raising an ad-
