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anything may become a target on our hill: Galileo's Castello, the Piazza on which stands Michelangelo's David, the old S. Giorgio fortress. As it is everyone is frightened and one the Sfollati's maids rushes about like mad seeking a really safe refuge. The best she has found so far is the palazzo Pitti with some four-metre thick walls and deep underground vaults. But to get to this Palazzo means to run down the hills for fifteen minutes. My peasant goes with all his family into a hole in the ground which leads to a canal running through the podere. The other day the Professor ran there with his two maids; he came back covered with mud and wet weeds and was most eloquent about the size of the spiders and scorpions inhabiting those damp regions. 
Today in the refuge with us was a young Professor, a pupil of our Sfollato, who had just arrived from Rome after travelling ten days. This young Professor bought most cheering news to our Sfollati - the General X. had joined the Badoglio army which was growing stronger and stronger every day. To this he added much political gossip, but there was no impartial summing up, no deductive reasoning to lend interest to his news. Once back again in my room I persisted, as usual, in searching for some ultimate cause to explain this world-wide human massacre. Surely nature is driving humanity to commit mass-suicide, like those small animals that without apparent reasons are driven collectively into a river to swim out until they die of exhaustion.