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mind as effectively as morphine. Besides, I bring no pretty girls up here. The bed may be double but that simply gives me space. In my business, one sometimes needs space, even in slumber. The mattress is firm, for soft foam and springs are another soporific, and the frame does not squeak. There is no – what is the current euphemism? – horizontal jogging done in this bed. A noisy bed-frame is the last sound many a man has heard. I do not intend to join the august company of deceased fools.
    The bathroom, tastefully lined with white tiles upon which are printed, at random around the room, colourful depictions of mountain flowers, is between the bedrooms.
    The second bedroom I shall leave for now.
    At the end of the one-time balcony is another flight of stone steps as well worn as the main staircase. Until the building was subdivided into apartments twenty years or so ago, whoever entered the front door was sure, unless he was a menial or tradesman, to make the pilgrimage to the top. For up these steps is the crowning glory of Italian architecture, an octagonal loggia.
    I have furnished this with a wrought-iron chair and table, painted white. Nothing more. Not so much as a cushion. There is no electric light. A low wooden shelf under the parapet wall holds an oil lamp.
    Signora Prasca expresses occasional dismay that I have no guests to enjoy the loggia and its panoramic view, with whom to share the dawn and the twilight, the balmy summer breezes and the rising of a wintry, coruscating Venus down the valley.
    The loggia is mine, more precious than any guest who could tread it. It is my utterly private place, more so than the remainder of my apartment. Up in the loggia, I survey the panorama of the valley and the mountains and I think of Ruskin and Byron, of Shelley and Walpole, of Keats and Beckford.
    If I sit in the centre of the space, under the dome of the roof, I cannot be seen from below or from the buildings on either side. I can be seen from the roof or the parapet on the façade of the church up the hill, but it is locked at night and the walls are as impregnable as a penitentiary. There is no tower and it would take a most determined man to scale the building.
    The interior of the dome is most curiously painted with a fresco I should guess to be at least three hundred years old. It depicts the horizon of the view, the tops of the mountains and the façade of the church, the outline unaltered by time. Above is painted the sky in royal azure, the stars pricked out in gold. In places, the paint has faded and peeled but, generally, the fresco is still in good condition. I cannot recognize the stars and assume they are either an invention of the artist’s imagination or hold some symbolic meaning I have not attempted to fathom. Time is too short to allow for my delving into history. It is enough to assist in the shaping of it in my own little way.
    I do not often venture out at the height of the day. Noël Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ does not apply to me. I do not claim to be either English or French, German, Swiss, American, Canadian, South African. Nothing, in fact. Signora Prasca and, indeed, all my acquaintances assume I am English, for I speak the language and receive mail in English. I listen – and they must hear it from time to time – to the BBC World Service on my transistor radio. I am also mildly, harmlessly eccentric for I paint butterflies, very rarely receive visitors, am a very private man. I could be nothing but English in their eyes. I do not disabuse them of their assumptions.
    My preference for remaining indoors, which I do when it suits me, is for a variety of reasons.
    Firstly, it is more convenient for me to work during the day. Any noise I make can be camouflaged by the general hum of the town. Any smell which might emanate is lost in the odium of car fumes and cooking food. It is better for me to work by daylight than artificial light. I need to see, very exactly, what I am doing.