After the German invasion on September 8, 1943, Fano found refuge in Rocca di Mezzo in Abruzzo, where he remained for almost a year. His quiet serenity, courage and heedlessness of danger never failed him, although constantly faced with the risks of being discovered by the Germans (he and his wife had falsified their identity cards) and of the Allied bombing raids. Indeed, during the long winter of 1943-44, the Germans often relied on him as an interpreter. Since his house was right on the main road, the kitchen was often full of soldiers who needed something. There, in that poorly-heated kitchen, indifferent to the fearsome risks, he worked perhaps more diligently than ever before and completed an important work: "The Philosophy of Croce. Essay of Criticism and Early Features of a Dialectical System of the Spirit", which was published in 1946. We recount here an episode that succinctly epitomizes both the importance that he attached to his work and his temerity and courage, one might almost call it his unconsciousness: