Last August, on our hurried tour of Tuscany and Umbria with my nearly octogenarian mother and squarely teenage son, we were fortunate to meet Vittorio Gorini, alias Il Gorino, the wise man of Perugia. In his late sixties or early seventies, he evidently spent most of his time scouting around the old town on a decrepit light motorcycle and making sure that his domain was in good order. Sitting on the majestic steps of the Priors’ Palace, we first noticed him when he fired up his motorcycle on one end of Piazza 4 Novembre—the heart of Perugia and one of the most magnificent squares in all of Italy—and scuttled past the fountain over to the other end to tell a boy of about ten something to the effect that it was not very nice chasing pigeons and attempting to kick them in flight. Neither the boy nor his father appeared to appreciate Il Gorino’s gentle intervention. The dispute that ensued attracted the attention of others in the square. Feeling outnumbered, the father and son soon departed with disgruntled expressions on their faces, and the hero of our story started distributing to those gathered around him printed sheets with his maxims on a wide range of subjects. In one corner of the neatly folded sheet there was a photograph of a pensive Il Gorino wearing a beret and two watches—one on each wrist—in front of a large banner bearing an enigmatic question and/or answer: “The just are dead!?” Although a disappointing proportion of his pieces turned out to be of religious character, a fair number of them were fresh and enjoyable to read. He also distributed his personal card, printed in green ink. Besides his address and his lofty but enviable title—libero pensatore—the card had on it a faint photograph of Il Gorino dressed as an American Indian in full parade: baseball hat with feathers on his head, bow and arrow in his hands, leather arrow case over his shoulder. The picture could have been taken at a local carnival, not too many years ago, on a warm day. The image chosen by Il Gorino for his card is glorious, indeed. He is wearing a pair of shorts. He is tanned. His chest and arm muscles are well developed and tense. Although it is clear that he has pulled in his stomach for the public occasion, the old man looks rather good in this outfit, and it is clear that he knows it and enjoys it. He has made his dream come true. He is glorious in his dream. The photograph is abundantly clear about all that. Thinking back about our brief encounter with Il Gorino, I feel something akin to pity for Franz Kafka, who had also wished to be a Red Indian.