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impressed by our friendship with "Il senatore" (the professor is also a Senator), thus facilitating our dealings with the whore peasant tribe.
 The Signora sfollata arrived late this evening along with her indented trunks and battered bags. The Signora had a great bruise of her own. Now this bruise on her arm which she kept sucking from some notion of hygienics was not caused by the bombing, it was the result of one Signora's unrestrained impulses. It appears that on hearing the German military lorries advancing in her street, she rushed out and stood facing the oncoming vans waving her arms and shouting heaven knows what. The Germans made quick and dangerous manoeuvres to avoid running over her and then she was dragged away, none too gently, by a passer-by, hence the bruise. 
 Now this poor sfollata showed irrelevance when she questioned me as to the possibility of her home having been bombed by a Jew. The aeroplane had swooped down so very low, she said, and hers was the only house touched in the street. The Professor had once written something against the Jews ......
 September 29th. This afternoon the wife of a defunct General walked all the way up from Porta Romana to have tea with us. She is Nocoise, a relation of Nicois nephew and very, very old.
 During tea, before we had time to know what happening, she grabbed at the sugar-bowl and plumped eight spoonfuls of sugar into he tea-cup, declaring that doctor had orderd her to eat plenty