I shall go out. I shall ask everybody, anybody, to help me....
I have been to the Italian Church, to the Italian Consul, to the Italian Embassy. They will see. They will do what they can. There are many pitiable cases. Are we a "pitiable case"? How strange! They would not give me any money to send a telegram. They said they would telegraph themselves, after they had come to see us, and made inquiries....
I stopped a woman in the street, and said, "I beg your pardon. Will you——" and then my courage failed and I asked where West 28th Street was. She directed me, and I turned back and walked in the direction I had come from.
I came to Fifth Avenue, and walked up it in my shabby clothes. I passed rows of large houses. One of them had the windows open, and someone inside was playing "Der Musikant" of Hugo Wolff. And a woman's voice was singing:
"Wenn wir zwei zusammen wären
Würd' das Singen mir vergeh'n."
I stopped. I turned back, and walked up the wide stone steps. I rang the visitors' bell, and a manservant in ornate livery opened at once.
"I wish to speak to the lady who is singing," I said.
"Oh," said the man. I knew he thought me a beggar, and was going to send me away.
"Tell her—tell her quickly," I said, "that—that Hugo Wolff told me I might come."