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preacher from the back hills? That’s the Lord I grew up with. My father’s a religious man; we had to read a chapter of the Bible every morning at home. Why, Christ wouldn’t even suspect the stuff related to himself and his teachings.” Natalie Jastrow was regarding him with an almost motherly smile. He said brusquely to her, “Okay. You asked me what I had against the Italian Renaissance. I’ve told you.”
    “Well, it’s a point of view,” she said.
    Eyes twinkling behind his glasses, Slote lit his pipe, and said between puffs, “Don’t fold up, Byron, there are others who have taken your position. A good name for it is Protestantism.”
    “Byron’s main point is accurate.” Dr. Jastrow sounded kindly, dancing his little fingers together. “The Italian Renaissance was a great blossoming of art and ideas, Byron, that occurred when paganism and the Hebrew spirit - in its Christian expression - briefly fertilized instead of fighting each other. It was a hybrid growth, true, but some hybrids are stronger than either parent, you know. Witness the mule.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Byron, “and mules are sterile.”
    Amused surprise flashed on Natalie Jastrow’s face, and her enormous dark eyes flickered to Leslie Slote, and back to Byron.
    “Well said. Just so.” Jastrow nodded in a pleased way. “The Renaissance indeed couldn’t reproduce itself, and it died off, while the pagan and Hebrew spirits went their separate immortal ways. But that mule’s bones are now one of mankind’s richest deposits of cultural achievement, Byron, whatever your momentary disgust from overexposure.”
    Byron shrugged. Leslie Slote said, “Is your father a clergyman?”
    “His father’s a naval officer,” said Jastrow.
    “Really? What branch?”
    Byron said, “Well, right now he’s in War Plans.”
    “My goodness! War Plans?” Dr. Jastrow pretended a comic flutter. “I didn’t know that. Is it as ominous as it sounds?”
    “Sir, every country draws up theoretical war plans in peacetime.”
    “Does your father think a war is imminent?”
    “I got my last letter from him in November. He said nothing about a war.”
    The other three exchanged odd glances. Slote said, “Would he, in casual correspondence?”
    “He might have asked me to come home. He didn’t.”
    “Interesting,” said Dr. Jastrow, with a little complacent grin at Slote, rubbing his tiny hands.
    “As a matter of fact, I think there’s going to be a war,” Byron said. This caused a silence of a second or two, and more glances.
    Jastrow said, “Really? Why?”
    “Well, I just toured Germany. You see nothing but uniforms, parades, drills, brass bands. Anywhere you drive, you end up passing army trucks full of troops, and railroad cars loaded with artillery and tanks. Trains sometimes a couple of miles long.”
    “But, Byron, it was with just such displays that Hitler won Austria and the Sudetenland,” said Jastrow, “and he never fired a shot.”
    Natalie said to Byron, “Leslie thinks my uncle should go home. We’ve had a running argument for three days.”
    “I see.”
    Jastrow was peeling a pear with elderly deliberate gestures, using an ivory-handled knife. “Yes, Byron, I’m being mulish.” The use of the word was accidental, for he grinned and added, “Being a hybrid of sorts myself, I guess. This is a comfortable house, it’s the only home I have now, and my work is going well. Moving would cost me half a year. If I tried to sell the house, I couldn’t find an Italian to offer me five cents on the dollar. They’ve been dealing for many centuries with foreigners who’ve had to cut and run. They’d skin me alive. I was aware of all this when I bought the villa. I expect to end my days here.”
    “Not this fall at the hands of the Nazis, I trust,” Slote said.
    “Oh, hell, Slote,” Natalie broke in, slicing a flat hand downward through the air. “Since when does the Foreign Service have such a distinguished record for