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- I22 -

September 7th  It would seem that the fighting is over in so far as Florence is concerned. The guns have stopped firing, the Germans having now retired beyond their range. For over a month and a half we have been deprived of sleep night and day. I am returning to my upstairs bedroom but N. will still remain on the ground-floor as she fears the clatter of vehicles in the street.

We had a visit from a new overseer who has been negotiating with our former peasants. Now such a visit could provide no possible diversion of any kind had not N. decided to make of this funny little man with his inordinately big nose, a friend for life. Some days before she had had words with him over a certain estimate he had made in favour of the disgraced peasants. 'One must construct bridges of gold for the departing enemy,' he kept repeating in Italian, but as we have no gold and very little else that represents it, we completely disagreed too the handing over of a barrel of oil to Tomalino's family, thereby depriving ourselves as well as the new peasants of a necessity which costs at present some two thousand lire a fiasco. But N., abandoning for the moment the question of oil, was no bent on charming our overseer. She listened patiently to his none too good French, and soon they were discussing literary subjects, and he confiding to her that of all writers the one he most admired was Edmond Rostand. Then and there he recited with much feeling - no doubt because of his own big nose - a whole tirade from Cyrano de Bergerac, affirming