26. The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems to
have been the Caucasus.
27. I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the legend
to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed the
ordinary tourists' map of the district.
28. Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions of the
guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of Italy. At
this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing accommodation all
over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, apartments are needed for
10,000 practically homeless persons, and a mathematician may calculate
the number of houses required to contain them. How shall they ever be
built, if all the potential builders are loafing about in uniforms at
the public expense?