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On a little bedside table were several sheets of paper with poems Yoshiko had written the night before. They were brief eight-character Chinese couplets which she liked to toss off almost every night, then destroy the next morning. One of the poems read:
I have loved ones but cannot rejoin them,
I have tears but for whom shall I shed them?
Another:
The hero creates the situation,
The situation creates the hero.
At Fort Malmousque, near Marseille, Marguerite Magno, an Italian subject,who was sufficiently attractive to be known as "Pretty Maggy," was executed last week by a French firing squad as a spy for an unnamed foreign power. Pretty Maggy, like Yoshiko, had courage. She refused to be blindfolded.
* "Foolish" is often used as a term of affection; "elder brother" can mean a woman of forceful attributes—i.e., one who could act like a man.