“Anyway, Bandoux took the part of Baron Scarpia. Mother played Floria La Tosca. It had always been one of her favorite rôles. The play went through the first act with nothing unusual happening. Mother was nervous and excited but managed to restrain herself. Her loathing of this man Bandoux was almost too much for her. And in the second act the thing happened. The grief he had caused her, the hatred his perfidy had left in her heart, flamed out. And when the murder scene arrived, poor mother went out of her head. She raised the dagger to kill Baron Scarpia as she had so often done in other performances. But this time she screamed and hurled herself at Bandoux. He was almost taken by surprise but managed to defend himself and escaped with a slight wound. Mother fainted. There was pandemonium and the curtain was rung down. “Father came back the next morning and found her still raving. She had been taken to a hospital and was completely out of her mind. She was Floria La Tosca, screaming the idiotic lines of the play and going through the pantomime of the stage murder. For a month she lay completely insane. Her mildest moments were spent in weeping. The rest of the time she lay crying out that she wanted to kill Scarpia, who had betrayed her. Poor father was beside himself with grief. Nothing, of course, could be done with Bandoux. They got rid of him and hushed up the scandal. The theater was closed and father devoted himself to her. He was a wonderful man, the finest man that ever lived.” She paused in her story, her eyes glistening with tears. “An impression I always had,” whispered De Medici, “a man smiling courteously at grief.” “He did his best,” Florence continued. “And gradually the active mania left her. She became what we grew to regard as normal. But she was no longer Florence Ballau. When she got over her violence she had forgotten who she was, she’d forgotten even that she was father’s wife. All memory of the past had been wiped out. She left the bed in the hospital one day, quiet once more and unaware of her name, unaware even that she was my mother.