<P> The story is about a young Hungarian magyar communist revolutionary fleeing the Hungarian White Terror to Italy . There he visits museums, where he sees some Renaissance paintings he likes, while declaring his dislike for the painter Mantegna . </P> <P> "The Revolutionist" has received scant attention from literary critics with only a cursory examination of the art mentioned in the short story . Literary critics have speculated whether Hemingway's intended meaning in his allusion to Mantegna's Dead Christ is meant to highlight the importance of realism as opposed to idealism, or whether it is a reminder of the character's pain and perhaps the pain suffered by an entire generation . </P> <P> In the story a Magyar communist revolutionist travels by train through Italy visiting art galleries . He admires Giotto, Masaccio, and Piero della Francesca, but not Mantegna . He buys reproductions of the pieces he likes, which he wraps and stows carefully . When he reports to a second character, who acts as the story's narrator, the two take a train to Romagna . The narrator then sends the young man on to Milan from where he is to cross to safety across the Alps into Switzerland via Aosta . The narrator provides him with addresses for contacts in Milan and tells him about the Montegnas to be seen there--which the young Communist again explains he dislikes . The story ends with the narrator saying: "The last I heard of him the Swiss had him in a jail near Sion ." </P> <P> The piece was probably written in 1923 or 1924, when Hemingway lived in Paris with his first wife Hadley Richardson . A year earlier all of his manuscripts were lost when Hadley packed them in a suitcase that was stolen . Acting on Ezra Pound's advice that he had lost no more than the time it took to write the pieces, Hemingway either recreated them or wrote new vignettes and stories . </P>

Why was the narrator in milan at the time of the events in the story