The Judas Cloth (2012)
“A ritual. A morality play. Nicola, unscrolling it in his mind, imagined Father Bassi, to whom Garibaldi had given a horse, riding unarmed in the front line. A man of forty-seven. A poet whose hair curled over his collar. Some of his verse turned up in the dossier. Discovering that he could have made a soldier had banished priestly humility. Intercepted letters from him showed a closed world expanding and the mind’s walls blown down.
Nicola, like a spectator at a play, would have liked to wa...rn him that he was riding for a fall. He couldn’t, of course. It would make trouble for the cardinal. But neither could he quite bring himself to disapprove of Bassi whose excitement was infectious and whose failings brought him close – for instance, he craved praise. Writing to a friend, he exulted in his physical courage – a surprise? – and complained at not being mentioned in dispatches. More selflessly, he pleaded with the military authorities to improve the men’s conditions.MoreLess
Nicola, like a spectator at a play, would have liked to wa...rn him that he was riding for a fall. He couldn’t, of course. It would make trouble for the cardinal. But neither could he quite bring himself to disapprove of Bassi whose excitement was infectious and whose failings brought him close – for instance, he craved praise. Writing to a friend, he exulted in his physical courage – a surprise? – and complained at not being mentioned in dispatches. More selflessly, he pleaded with the military authorities to improve the men’s conditions.MoreLess
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