TheCodeBreakers
rooms of plaster, and the floors of brick. No fireplace in any of the rooms,
and, as the winter is very intense here from November to February, and
the walls full of holes, nothing but the strongest desire to do service to
history could reconcile
any man to so much hardship." Bergenroth had, moreover, to
overcome some of the oddest phenomena ever to interfere with
cryptanalysis. The plaza beneath his room was crowded with shouting
donkey-drivers and visited frequently by a dulciana, whose "shrill notes,
continually playing an air from Traviata and one Spanish melody, and
nothing else, drive me almost mad." His landlady liked to strum on her
guitar, and "none but drivers of bullock-carts could, for a single night,
stand the music of the Lady della Luna." The kitchen girl "hangs my
linen and that of the whole family over my balcony for drying, and then,
with laudable resolution, sets to ironing it on my writing-table."
More troubles faced him at the Archivio General
annaabi.ee 
