These details proved beyond a doubt that what Maria told me was exact.
“This proof confirmed their suspicions and they are now using violence on them to try to make them confess where the man with the beard is hidden. Giovannino has not said a single word and they are torturing him in many ways. They keep him handcuffed, they will not let him sleep and they try to trick him into confessing in a moment of weakness.”
The situation was really far more serious than I had suspected and as though this were not enough, towards evening they brought me news that Maria Bottecchia, the sister of Giovannino, had also been arrested in Minelle, by a platoon of gendarmes. At last I fully realized the danger which threatened me, and I decided it was absolutely necessary to move from this region that the gendarmes might lose track of me. I still had two pigeons with me. I filled several pages with reports, made an appointment with the “Voisin” for the twenty-sixth and considered the danger which menaced me. As Bottecchia had been arrested and the gendarmes were almost at my heels I decided to leave for Sarone, and try to find lodging in the little isolated house at the top of the hill near which we had rested on the first day after our arrival.
On a recent journey to the field where the aeroplane was supposed to come for us I recognized certain peasants who still had some food hidden and they were truly hospitable. They had fed me and would not accept any recompense. They were ignorant of my mission, that I was an Italian officer, and therefore, without offering them any explanation I would be able to return there and ask them for hospitality.
While a terrible thunder-storm raged through the mountains and the rain fell in torrents I traversed the long stretch of road which separated me from Sarone. That terrible weather was really favorable because no gendarme would venture forth in such weather. When I reached the house on the top of the hill the welcome was not what I had expected. Recently the Austrians had seized all the food the peasants had hidden and a requisitioning commission had taken away the wheat and left them with barely enough to appease their hunger. Under such conditions the peasants could not be as generous as in the past. Furthermore, a gendarme was killed recently in the surrounding woods and the police wandered about continuously seeking traces of the assassin. The mistress of the house made me understand that it would be difficult for them to house me a long time and, for the present, so as not to arouse suspicion she preferred that I live in the wood.
Every day the absence of Bottecchia became more painful and I tormented myself when I thought that I was indirectly the cause of his misfortune because I was the one who had invited him to essay this undertaking. I wished to share his lot with him, to comfort and sustain him in the sorrows and anguishes of prison life. This isolation oppressed me. The absolute lack of any news worried me. Our aeroplanes who undoubtedly came to photograph the signals, did not find any and from this, and my last message which announced I was in danger, they must infer that I had disappeared and who knows when I should be able to resume communications with them! I did not think it likely that the “Voisin” would come to Praterie Forcate on the twenty-sixth without first warning me with a smoke signal.
For almost three days I lived sleeping in the woods and eating the little which the owners of the house could spare. The hot rays of the sun fell obliquely over my head and in certain hours of the day it was impossible to find a patch of shade under the thorny, burnt trees. The heavy atmosphere was really unbearable. The flies buzzed and tormented me continuously and the ants and mosquitoes did not give me a moment’s rest. I felt as if I had been forsaken by everyone, and after so many hardships I began to feel that my strength was diminishing, whereas, I needed all my calm, all my cold, steady nerves to carry me through my present predicament. For the past twenty-four hours I had not been able to eat or drink because the gendarmes were always about in the woods and the women feared to bring me the little food they usually did, lest they arouse the suspicion of the guards. All day long I lay exhausted on the ground, and I believed that if the gendarmes were to come I should not have enough strength even to get up, much less to flee. I felt so changed, and I began to realize that courage is for the most part due to a full stomach. When I moved, my head whirled, and when I tried to walk a few steps to see if the gendarmes were still around, my legs would not support me; I tottered and fell heavily to the ground.
“Oh God, God, do not forsake me. If you have willed these sufferings should fall on me as expiation, may they be welcome, but do not take from me the strength to support them, do not take from me the strength to endure them to the very end with resignation.”