Viewing page 130 of 150

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-I27-

with her insides; the gardener's wife who is afflicted with pains in her back, so she says. The only one left is the gardener himself who might well think N. crazy to expect him to d window-washing when he must go on all the errands, bicycle down to look for food, bicycle up to fetch a bit of [[strikethrough]] s [[/strikethrough]] milk, tend to the flowers, tend to the vegetable garden, to mention only a few of his duties. Besides the villa has endless windows all of them old and rickety. I have never seen so many windows and I know something about it too since it is I who open most of them during bombing raids. I advised N. in her dilemma to follow the example of that rich old Italian Marchesa who was seen bringing up an armful of wood from the cellar. 'As it is no one's work in my household to bring up the wood, I suppose it must be mine,' said the old lady. 

But window-washing is only one of the hundred things to be put right and all day long they keep cropping up. My artist's soul revolts. It was mainly due to N.'s activity that the robber peasants were ejected from the farm and very pleased I was at the time, but now new problems connected with this summary ejection assails us. The angry peasants keep prowling about our street, doubtless with evil intent. Were they not detected robbing the hay from the ricks and the grapes from the vines? They must exiled from Florence, declares N. influenced by tales of other exiles in other times. The overseer smiles and says it is not feasible, and the banking concern that still