This did not change his status with the fascist government and he continued to write self-pitying letters to Mussolini pleading for recognition as an “Aryan” so that he could work freely.
Rome, March 25 XX [1942.]
Duce,
I understand that my little personal troubles are irrelevant to the great historical drama of the moment. But since you, with a word, can resolve my situation… I ask you to consider it: you will see at first sight that my request for recognition of belonging to the Aryan race is legitimate, since I have all the requisites required by the law. Remove me, Duce, from this unjust, degrading and paradoxical situation, in which I am forced to work in secret, to suffer the pettiness of rivals and to continue boring you with my tedious tale…
Pitigrilli
Pitigrilli and Lina Furlan fled to Switzerland at the time of the German occupation and after the war he emigrated to Argentina, that refuge of many fascists and Nazis fleeing possible arrest and punishment. Later in life, he drifted back to Italy, but his reputation had diminished to the point that almost no one noticed. He died in 1975 in near total obscurity.
There was no place for Pitigrilli in a post World War II culture that was dominated by antifascism and by some of the very men and women — the Ginzburgs, Levis, Olivettis and Foas — on whom he had spied. And yet in retrospect, Pitigrilli is a highly emblematic forgotten figure, a poète maudit of Italy of the 1920s; his cynical comic satire describes the disillusioned world that followed World War I and proved fertile for the triumph of fascism.
— Alexander Stille