The roof of the world is now enacting a rôle that is just as strange and just as surprising as if the roof of a theatre had suddenly begun to take part in a drama.
One looks above as often as one looks below or around one.
Flinging themselves forward with thin whinging cries like millions of mosquitoes on the attack, the shrapnel rushes perpetually overhead, and the high-explosive shells pour down upon the city, deafening, stupefying, until at last, by the very immensity of their noise, they gradually lose their power to affect one, even though they break all round.
Instead of listening to the bombardment I find myself listening crossly to the creaking of our lift, which makes noises exactly like those of the shrapnel outside.
In fact, when I am in my bedroom, and the lift is going up and down, I really don't know which is lift and which is shrapnel.
Seven o'clock on Thursday morning.
The bombardment goes on fiercely, but I forget about it here in the big, bare, smoky café, because I cannot hear the lift.
A waiter brings me some coffee and I stand and drink it and look about me.
The café is surrounded with glass doors, and through these doors I see thousands and thousands of people hurrying for dear life along the roads.