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- I04 -

We were at a loss where to go so we made for the gardener's empty rooms under the kitchen. Antonio received us very gruffly; he was all for blaming us for the terrible night that had passed, (such is the servant-mind) and resented our having left him to stay with our neighbors: this was the only possible solution for Americans whose villa was occupied by the enemy. The bombing had evidently affected his brain, for when I remonstrated, his saintly attributes deserted him entirely, his language revealing poisons never hitherto supported. He was so offensive and menacing that I thought it wiser to shut the kitchen door and hold it shut with my foot, whereupon Antonio thrust his hairy arm though the aperture and tried to clutch at me with x claw-like fingers. Pushing the door with all his might against my foot he nearly broke it. His fat wife now shuffled up to join in the fay, and when we finally fled down to the gardener's room (carefully locking the door after us) this ill-tempered woman, with none to prevent her, pounded with the handle of the broom on the kitchen floor above our heads, to prevent us from resting. The house resounded with invectives hurled by a useless creature whom I had kept in my house solely to please Antonio. And to think that after the war, I had intended giving 'the Saint' a bit of my farm on which to build himself a house!
August 5th The English have not entered the southern part of