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The bomb burst outside in the street and the whole house fell in. Fortunately an iron rod formed a protection over his head and from amid the fumes of gas and thick yellow dust he was extricated unhurt. The Signora was in the garden and also unhurt and at once she began picking up things from the ruins. "The electric pulse of the ice-chest was still beating as though nothing had happened" she told us.

So these two very dissimilar people are now to be our guests. The Professor, a pale and helpless erudite spoiled and reduced to the status of a domestic pet by his wife and two maids, she a writer, distantly related to one of France's modern poets, is endowed with that kind of physical and mental activity which, like a jumping bean, owes its impulsions to some maggot prisoner within.

October 1st. Signora S. spent the day searching for possessions in the ruins of her house. She speaks a great deal about these possessions, about the coffre-fort fixed into the walls of her bath-room, most dangerous to approach but finally rescued by an ex-soldier friend of her maid (there are many of these ex-soldiers about who because of political confusion are without food or lodgings). She also gave a lively description of a small bibelot entrusted to her care for safe-keeping by a friend; a reproduction of the "Rape of the Sabines", carved in ivory and found intact in the ruins, save for the broken finger of one of the Sabines. "Quelle joie, to be able to return this fine ivory piece to its owner!" exclaimed Signora S. Now Signora S. has lived some twenty years in Florence and