Inferiority

In the company of gentlemen:

A gentleman bets a friend of his that he will be able to cow him into turning over his wallet before the evening is out. In an attempt to win his bet, he and another friend, Baron Squatti, enlist the help of their intended victim's manservant, Giovanni.

"Reading Svevo," says Peruvian Julio Ramón Ribeyro in his diary, "I have had the impression of reading my own work, not what I'm writing now, but what I would have written if I had been born in Trieste seventy year...