My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

Until then, I never realized how near it is to Rome. In the evening
we had dinner at.Alfredo's, a must at that time for every visitor to
Rome. Alfredo's specialty was noodles and maccaroni. The owner
himself prepared them, mixed them, whipped and beat them with
a golden spoon and a golden fork, and only after this imposing
ritual was the waiter allowed to give everyone his portion.
That night we walked back to the hotel, over the Piazza Augustus,
beautiful in the moonlight shining on the tomb of Augustus.
We followed the Corso to the Piazzo del Popolo and back to the
Piazza de Spagna, where we climbed 132 steps to the little church
next to our hotel.
On August 27 it was raining so hard that we could not get out of
the hotel. Part of the wall of the Vatican had tumbled, the lights
and telephone were out of service, the post office was flooded. In
the afternoon, when we could go out, the shops in the streets and
the windows in the houses were all lit by candles, adding to the
somewhat small-town impression we got walking through Rome's
narrow streets.
One day we visited the American Library. At that time Mrs.
Clare Booth Luce was the American ambassador to Italy. Lu was
shocked: not a single book by a libertarian author was on the
shelves.
We stayed in Rome two weeks, and it would have been one of
the happiest and most beautiful trips we ever made, if Lu had been
feeling better. He had stomach trouble all the time, and this frightened
me so much that I could neither eat nor sleep. Only a year
later, on a lecture trip, was I to learn what was wrong with him.
Lu was constantly working, but he never felt disturbed when
Gitta, who at that time was still living in New York, came to see us
with Chris, her little son. Chris and Lu had a very close relationship.
Chris used to march right into Lu's study, and the best toy he
knew was Lu's library ladder, which he climbed up and down
perhaps twenty times in a row, Lu closely observing him, catching
him in his open arms, both enjoying themselves enormously. Later
Lu might take a book with pictures of·foreign cities and explain
them to Chris until I came in to take him out, for I knew Lu needed
his time. Once in a while Lu took time off from his work to go with
Chris to the Metropolitan Museum, where he showed him the
armor and other collections. interesting to a little boy.
A few years later we were visiting London. At the time, Chris
was a boarding student at King's School in Canterbury. The day
before school vacation started parents were invited to attend a
student performance of Macbeth. Don and Gitta decided we would
all drive out to Canterbury so we could see the show and visit the
beautiful cathedral. Chris was overjoyed when we arrived, and we
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