to let, fitting it with electric eleva-tors and the means of conditioning the air; and there lands he leases to plant with flowers, investing in them sums exceeding what he paid to obtain them!

Nor was it strange, after we won our independence, for one of us to attend a "fireworks display" of "Papa Noël's" making and arrang-ing, and be dazzled by what he beheld of his arts — as he would be appalled by what the papers wrote the next day about the taxpayers' money the state had spent on that display.

Until those "displays," and the extravagance lavished on them, became part of the general national traditions — to say nothing of private weddings and all the other celebrations.

The fates had not yet favored me with making the acquaintance of that "Half-God," who I supposed had swelled with his abundant wealth till he filled the air with almightiness and become a god complete! — though I tried repeat-edly to meet him, as I bought toys from his stores on private holidays and public ones. Each time I failed, I would console myself by saying that the fates have their wisdom, hidden from simple folk like me, so that we imagine them striking about at random like a beast in the dark, or walking without direction like a blind woman! Until this summer came. The war in Indochina was intensifying to the point of danger, threatening the outbreak of a third world war. And though many fancied that this war, like its predecessor the Korean War, must end in an agreement among the parties, I am more than certain that our Middle East will become the arena of that struggle the day it has exhausted its purposes there! For the poverty

in whose shadow the crushing majority of mankind lives, and the material and spiritual diseases that follow from it, are enough to set fire to every place!

So I proceeded to buy a country house, which I preferred to have far from the main lines of commu-nication, so that if events forced us to flee the capital we should find the best of refuges in our house in the mountains. And so I took to shuttling between the capital and that "hermitage-house" every day, now by car, now on foot. Then, on the advice of one of my children, I went and bought a bicycle, its price to be paid in monthly installments equal to half of what smokers spend on their deadly cigarettes.

Thus I was able to range the countryside surrounding the capital and my "hermitage" perched on the shoulder of the middle mountain, many times over during the last three months, and to discover — with my children, who accompany me one after another, each in his turn, on those exploratory outings — many things I had not known: things which, taken together, every citizen is bound to know, so that he may love his homeland with a love founded on knowledge and on good.

And the greatest of my discoveries was that spacious playground built at the entrance of the town neighboring the bare mountain... by a man whose name reminded me of the sergeant... Half-Our-Lord — as it reminded my boy of Papa Noël... whose toys had deserted us years ago, for economy's sake. And so my recollections and those of my boy, perched behind my back on the bicycle, met only in picturing the hundreds of thousands of liras that people squander at holidays and occasions on such luxuries, while most of them take no

part in any humane work, nor contribute to the success of any charitable project.

We came up to the playground, and behold, in its center a beautiful garden adorned by a "basin" glory-ing in its lights, glittering through transparent cords of water. These descend from fountains that fling the water out in threads spreading in every direction. Then the water falls as a spray that caresses the faces — and in colors that would put to shame the colors of the gowns at a party of the Women's Union!

Around the playground, on its four sides, runs a row of comfortable benches, which the workmen seemed to have finished making only hours before: they are clean, not yet eaten away by the knives of those strollers who are bent, like madmen, on carving their names wherever they may be. And behind the benches stand cypresses and pines, transplanted from the neighboring forests to lend the grim rocky place the tenderness of the woods, so that its naked rocks grow dewy with meek green!

Only moments had passed while I stood with my boy at the western end of the wide playground, con-templating the sight of the sunset in its eternal splendor, when a man came toward us... graced with the tan of the diligent workman, won in the blaze of the sun and the heat of summer.

He presented himself to us, greet-ing us with the words: — Youssef Salim... owner of the playground. Whereupon my boy cried out without thinking: — Papa Noël.... And I muttered in my turn, like one dazed: — Half-Our-Lord...?

At that Youssef Salim broke into laughter, then put his hands in his trouser pockets and said: — Half-Our-Lord... is my brother! As