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I resumed reading. "... 'I guess the lesson is,' said the colonel. 'Don't ever build yourself a country house, or a church, or hire Giott to paint you any frescoes, if you've got a church eight hundred yards from any bridge.' 'I knew there must be a lesson in it, sir. said the driver.' Don't wage wars. Don't wage wars anymore: that should be the lesson, I thought.

"... The driver did, and the man moved to the side of the road without looking up or touching the handlebars..." Exactly: that's how we used to ride a bicycle in San Michele.

I kept browsing. Nanuck, despite the strange Spanish name, is immediately recognizable. "The Baron killed forty-two. You probably didn't hear the shots because we were upwind." Yeah, they didn't; but I did. I was in the barrel and I had heard all his 42 shots and also the shells in the head!

I go back: "Cheerful blue eyes and long slouching body*..." This is Carlo Robilant, dear Carlo. "One meter and ninety five." Right.

"...Then she came into the room, shining in her youth and tall striding beauty, and the carelessness the wind had made of her hair. She had pale, almost olive colored skin, a profile that could break your, or any one else’s heart, and her dark hair, of an alive texture, hung down over her shoulders."

Yes, maybe I was still young, even if on my last birthday they had had to console me a lot, I was so depressed at the idea of ​​leaving the teens forever to enter maturity. Exactly the hair in disorder: but more due to the quality of the hair than the wind. The olive skin is also correct: sometimes I had tried to remedy it by covering it with powder and lipstick, but I had always transformed myself into a Pierrot and had to wash everything off immediately.

"'How is your mother?' he asked fondly." Was it true that he had affection for mom, as he also wrote it in his letters. He loves her because he has understood her, yet it is not easy to understand mom, who is so reserved, often mysterious.

* Adriana seems to be conflating or paraphrasing the passage(s) here. The actual text reads: "merry blue eyes, and the long, loose-coupled body of a buffalo wolf..."