We tried to calm her, to tell her that no danger threatened us, and she poured some milk into two deep cups and cut for us two enormous slices of _polenta_, not too large however for our appetites. “Cietta, Cietta,” Giovanni began, “rest assured, do not be afraid. Don’t you see how well we look, and how happy? This is an Italian officer,” and Bottecchia made a mysterious sign of silence by placing his finger before his mouth. “What? An Italian officer?” Everyone gathered round me. “It is safe to talk here, isn’t it? All those here are good Italians?” “Yes, you may talk, but be very careful because now one is not safe even in his own house, and at any moment, when one least expects it, he is likely to be dispatched to the other world before he even has time to recommend his soul to the sacred Madonna.” The sister of Cietta, who expressed in her thin face a suppressed grief, making it all the more pitiful, took me by the hands and said with sobs, “I too, had a son, big and strong like you and they have killed him. One day as he was walking here in front of the house a platoon of Germans arrived for the requisitions, and he, frightened, began to run down the slope. One of the gendarmes called after him to halt, but my poor dear one, believing himself far enough to be out of danger, continued running without obeying. The gendarme at once aimed his rifle and fired. He fell in a pool of blood with a leg and an arm shattered. We lifted him up. He was pale and did not utter a word. For a long time we nursed him here because I preferred to keep him under my care, because he wanted to die near his mother, but at length they took him away from me to the hospital, where his condition grew worse every day, every hour. The wounds would not heal and after two months of indescribable suffering he died on the night when the swallows returned. I always see him before me as he was, strong as you; but taller, yes, taller than you.” As she spoke she clutched my arms as though in pressing my flesh she pressed the flesh of the son she had lost. “Who will bring my boy back to me, who will bring him back? Oh, unjust war, oh, ruthless war, and you German assassins, may you be damned forever! May the stain of the blood of that innocent lad fall upon you and your children so that throughout all eternity you never shall have peace!” Softly I pressed her hand and whispered, “Courage, courage, life is made up of terrible sorrows and we must face them bravely and with resignation, but God is just and your appeal to Him in malediction is worth maybe more than the fire of a thousand guns. The day shall come when they will have to pay, and pay in blood the measure of your sighs and all these your tears.”