It was six-thirty in the evening. In the Palace of Venice, not the smallest sound of bustle. Two militiamen and an easygoing doorman guarded the entrance. It could be said that to enter the palace where Mussolini works is easier than having access to any Public Administration building ... Mussolini works in a huge suite made of marble and almost without furnishings. There he was, in a corner at the far end, behind his desk. He was far away, alone in the immensity of the room ... I knew him from the familiar posters: nearly always striking a military pose, saluting or haranguing. But "Il Duce" of the Palace of Venice was somebody else: with silver in his hair; with a subtle air of fatigue; with a certain tidy negligence in his civilian clothes. He was not the leader of rallies, but of a marvelous serenity. He spoke pausedly, enunciating every syllable. He had to deliver some instruction over the telephone and he did so in the calmest tone, without the least tinge of authoritarianism ... We chatted for about half an hour. Then he accompanied me to the door across the vast chamber ... Then he returned to his desk, slowly, to start his work afresh in silence. It was seven o'clock in the evening. Rome at the end of a working day spilled over onto the streets in the mild night. "Il Corso" was all bustle and conversation, like our own Alcala Street about the same hours. People walked into cafés or into the cinemas. It could be said that "Il Duce" alone remained at work beside the lamp on his desk in the corner of a large, empty apartment, keeping watch over his people, over Italy—whom he could hear in the distance, pulsating—as if over a small daughter. What apparatus of government, what system of checks and balances, counselors and assemblies, can replace that image of the hero turned father, who stays vigilant beside a small, perennial light on behalf of the laboring and of the leisure of his people?