Silvio Berlusconi left a Milan hospital and spent three hours with his dentist yesterday as he made a slow recovery from a savage attack by a mentally ill man at a political rally.
The normally ebullient Italian prime minister waved weakly to photographers with one hand and clutched his heavily bandaged face with the other as he checked out of San Raffaele hospital after four days of treatment.
His motorcade took him to his dentist, who worked on two teeth broken in the attack, and then to his villa in Arcore, on the outskirts of Milan.
The Swiss newspaper Le Matin reported that Berlusconi was due to undergo cosmetic surgery in the coming days at the exclusive Ars Medica clinic in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino.
Aides said the billionaire premier is still mystified about the depth of anti-Berlusconi feeling in Italy, and why an enraged man badly injured him with a miniature replica of Milan’s Duomo cathedral.
“Two things will remain as memories of these days: the hatred of a few and the love of many, so many Italians,” Berlusconi said in a written statement.