Outside the Palazzo Sciarra I met Vera walking with Donna Hilda. “Oh, to think that we were warm at your fireside that night when down there they were freezing!” I began. “I know, I know!” Vera interrupted. “Can you get me some money for my Belgian nuns? I have raised a thousand pounds already, but we shall need more.” I promised I would try; I knew her nuns to be wise as they are good, and that the money would be well spent. It was our first meeting since the dinner. Vera was pale, with disordered hair and hat awry. I think her jacket and skirt did not belong together. It was a shock to see her, with whom dress is a fine art, so unconscious of what she wore, or how she looked. Donna Hilda, a Roman, though white as paper, was perfectly trim and smart in appearance. “You have no one of yours down there?” I asked Donna Hilda. That was the first, the inevitable question that in those days one asked every Italian one met. “Not I, thank God! But my grandmother has some cousins. She does not know if they are alive or dead. If they are gone, it would be best if they are all gone together. I am more sorry for those that are saved than for those that are killed.” I shall always think of the Roman Corso--the gay thoroughfare where in the carnivals of my mother’s time the wild horses used to run their race from the Piazza del Popolo at one end to the Piazza Venezia at the other--as it looked that day. I never saw the _barberi_, but I have seen many carnival processions when the balconies of the Corso were full of pretty women throwing flowers and confetti, and the street of young men tossing flowers to the belles in the carriages and balconies. To-day the street was filled with these stern-faced students in their gay carnival caps. Every cart, carriage or automobile that passed carried a student on each step, asking, begging, _demanding_ alms! They were no respecters of persons. The Japanese Ambassador, with his inscrutable face, and his wife and doll-like child passed in their unbecoming European dress. They alone looked impassive and indifferent in a crowd where every other face was tense and tragic. The students who stood on each step of the Ambassador’s carriage would not be denied; I could not see in the end if their passion or his passivity won the day. It was nearly one o’clock when forage wagon number 24 reached the Piazza Venezia. The cart was piled high. The streets were emptying; people were going home to lunch. The students and the tall man with the bandaged throat held a consultation, to decide whether or no there was any use going on with their work. Meanwhile, the bugler, sitting on his stool at the back of the cart, lighted a cigarette and began to read a newspaper. The sight of his sturdy merry face was somehow calming. If the end of the world was coming, had begun, while his world lasted it was for him to blow his bugle!--to call upon the people to give food, clothes, money, everything, _pro Calabria e Sicilia_.