First Sentence

"Up until then, the evil-since some name must be given to this amazing conjunction of circumstances, unexpected only in appearance-had infiltrated gradually, in silence, by seemingly harmless stages, perhaps with the deliberate intention of not alarming the local residents, already sensitive, because of the heteroclite makeup of their neighborhood, to the loss of its original family atmosphere, its almost intimate ambience, what with the gradual penetration, the disastrous, disintegrating action of motley, foreign elements, whose colorful and finally overwhelming presence had been little by little transforming itself, there could not be the slightest doubt of it, into an unmistakable invasion."