rnoon hours, between five and six, in watching the game of
pallone? I would not call pallone a good game. Compared with tennis,
it is nothing; compared with lawn tennis, it is poor; compared with
football, it is anaemic; yet in an Italian city, after the galleries
have closed, on a warm afternoon, it will do, and it will more than
do as affording an opportunity of seeing muscular Italian athletes in
the pink of condition. The game is played by six, three each side:
a battitore, who smites the ball, which is served to him very much
as in rounders; the spalla, who plays back; and the terzino, who
plays forward. The court is sixty or more yards long, on one side
being a very high wall and on the other and at each end netting. The
implements are the ball, which is hollow and of leather, about half
the size of a football, and a cylinder studded with spikes, rather
like a huge fir-cone or pine-apple, which is placed over the wrist
and forearm to hit the ball with; and the game is much as in tennis,
only there is no central net: merely a line. Each man's ambition,
however, is less to defeat the returning power of the foe than to
paralyse it by hitting the ball out of reach. It is as though a
batsman were out if he failed to hit three wides.

A good battitore, for instance, can smite the ball right down the
sixty yards into the net, above the head of the opposing spalla who
stands awaiting it at the far end. Such a stroke is to the English
mind a blot, and it is no uncommon thing, after each side has had a
good rally, to see the battitore put every ball into the net in this
way and so win the game without his opponents having one return;
which is the very negation of sport. Each innings lasts until one
side has gained eight points, the points going to whichever player
makes the successful stroke. This means that the betting--and of
course there is betting--is upon individuals and not upon sides.

The pari-mutuel system is that which is adopted at both the pallone
courts in Florence (there is another at the Piazza Beccaria), and the
unit is two lire. Bets are invited on the winner and the second, and
place-money is paid on both. No wonder then that as the game draws to a
close the excitement becomes intense; while during its progress feeling
runs high too. For how can a young Florentine who has his money on,
say, Gabri the battitore, withhold criticism when Gabri's arm fails
and the ball drops comfortably for the terzino Ugo to