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standing near-by suddenly approached me and asked if I were German. When I replied that I was American, the man's face flushed with pleasure as he eagerly grasped my hand but only for an instant; then, the grasp relaxed, the face fell, and he exclaimed: 'but you are destroying our country, killing our women!' How could I reconcile this love of Americans felt by so many in Florence with the actual facts of war? I made some indefinite reply and walked away ..... I knew that his perplexed eyes were following me.
My thoughts reverted to a very improbable story that was being told about a good-looking American aviatress whose aeroplane crashed somewhere near Florence. Her leg had to be amputated and the surgeon, interested, asked how it was that she became an aviatress. She is supposed to have answered that of all excitements ever experienced she had found none greater than that of swooping down and shooting at people running away.
We found the Countess and D.di D. entirely engrossed in their efforts to become artists. Bombs might fall and houses crash down but these artistic endeavours must be carried out 'quand même.' The Countess's drawings were inoffensive but D.di D.'s paintings of fruit were the awful result of advice given him by a furniture man who happened to be decorating some Louis XV chairs in the flat at the very moment D.di D. was overtaken by a keen desire to learn how