Sciascia Leonardo — The Day of the Owl [128]

Captain Bellodi, on the contrary, an Emilian from Parma, was by family tradition and personal conviction a republican, a soldier who followed what used to be called ‘the career of arms’ in a police force, with the dedication of a man who has played his part in a revolution and has seen law created by it. This law, the law of the Republic, which safeguarded liberty and justice, he served and enforced. If he still wore a uniform which he had first put on by chance, if he had not left the service to become a lawyer, the career to which he had been destined, it was because the task of serving and enforcing the law of the Republic was becoming more arduous every day. — Sciascia Leonardo, The Day of the Owl, 128

Note

Bellodi’s constitutional faith stated against the backdrop of the informer’s view of law as a whim of whoever administers it. The two men’s contradicting models of lawness are set in adjacent paragraphs — the reader can hold them side by side.