Viewing page 27 of 150

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-26-

October 21st. Again we all met in the refuge. As usual the loquatious Sfollata S. profits by these forced reunions to air her news. She tells us that the Germans are making the rounds of the villas and taking away all that they can find. The signora is inquiète; she wants to hide her coffre-fort (rescued from the ruins) in one of the cellar-rooms underneath where we are seated. At once I discouraged any such plan by telling her about my old thief of a gardener, lately sent away, who lives with Communist cronies like himself in one of the jerry-built houses in the valley below (incidentally, these houses now cropping up like mushrooms, are spoiling the valley) and who would certainly profit by a relaxation of military control to come and raid the villa whose every nook and corner he knows only too well, having lived here forty years with a former proprietor. It was undoubtedly he who during the recent political crisis came shouting under my window at night: "Abbasso i Signori!" (Down with the proprietors!) We have no money or valuables of any king in the house, I added, and advised her to hide her coffre-fort in her own room and to keep guard over it night and day. For a moment the lady ceased talking. But it still remains to be seen if in some future chaotic paradise of the people my old thief of a gardener shall not become eventually the happy owner of the Signora Sfollata's coffre-fort!