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Title: Cuore (Heart): An Italian Schoolboy's Journal

Author: Edmondo De Amicis

Translator: Isabel Florence Hapgood

Release date: May 24, 2009 [eBook #28961]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUORE
(HEART): AN ITALIAN SCHOOLBOY'S JOURNAL ***

CUORE

(HEART)

AN

ITALIAN SCHOOLBOY’S JOURNAL

BY

E D MONDO DE AMI C I S

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRTY-NINTH ITALIAN EDITION
BY
ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1887, 1895 and 1901.
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY

Copyright, 1915.
By ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

Printed in the United States of America

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

This book is specially dedicated to the boys of the elementary schools
between the ages of nine and thirteen years, and might be entitled: “The
Story of a Scholastic Year written by a Pupil of the Third Class of an Italian
Municipal School.” In saying written by a pupil of the third class, I do not
mean to say that it was written by him exactly as it is printed. He noted day
by day in a copy-book, as well as he knew how, what he had seen, felt,
thought in the school and outside the school; his father at the end of the year
wrote these pages on those notes, taking care not to alter the thought, and
preserving, when it was possible, the words of his son. Four years later the
boy, being then in the lyceum, read over the MSS. and added something of
his own, drawing on his memories, still fresh, of persons and of things.

Now read this book, boys; I hope that you will be pleased with it, and
that it may do you good.

Edmondo De Amicis.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
OCTOBER.
The First Day of School 1
Our Master 3
An Accident 5
The Calabrian Boy 6
My Comrades 8
A Generous Deed 10
My Schoolmistress of the Upper First 12
In an Attic 14
The School 16
The Little Patriot of Padua 17
The Chimney-Sweep 20
The Day of the Dead 22

NOVEMBER.
My Friend Garrone 24
The Charcoal-Man and the Gentleman 26
My Brother’s Schoolmistress 28
My Mother 30
My Companion Coretti 31
The Head-Master 35
The Soldiers 38
Nelli’s Protector 40
The Head of the Class 42
The Little Vidette of Lombardy 44

The Poor 50

DECEMBER.
The Trader 52
Vanity 54
The First Snow-Storm 56
The Little Mason 58
A Snowball 61
The Mistresses 62
In the House of the Wounded Man 64
The Little Florentine Scribe 66
Will 75
Gratitude 77

JANUARY.
The Assistant Master 79
Stardi’s Library 81
The Son of the Blacksmith-Ironmonger 83
A Fine Visit 85
The Funeral of Vittorio Emanuele 87
Franti Expelled from School 89
The Sardinian Drummer-Boy 91
The Love of Country 100
Envy 102
Franti’s Mother 104
Hope 105

FEBRUARY.
A Medal Well Bestowed 108
Good Resolutions 110
The Engine 112
Pride 114

The Wounds of Labor 116
The Prisoner 118
Daddy’s Nurse 122
The Workshop 132
The Little Harlequin 135
The Last Day of the Carnival 139
The Blind Boys 142
The Sick Master 149
The Street 151

MARCH.
The Evening Schools 154
The Fight 156
The Boys’ Parents 158
Number 78 160
A Little Dead Boy 163
The Eve of the Fourteenth of March 164
The Distribution of Prizes 166
Strife 172
My Sister 174
Blood of Romagna 176
The Little Mason on His Sick-Bed 184
Count Cavour 187

APRIL.
Spring 189
King Umberto 191
The Infant Asylum 196
Gymnastics 201
My Father’s Teacher 204
Convalescence 215
Friends Among the Workingmen 217

Garrone’s Mother 219
Giuseppe Mazzini 221
Civic Valor 223

MAY.
Children with the Rickets 229
Sacrifice 231
The Fire 233
From the Apennines to the Andes 237
Summer 276
Poetry 278
The Deaf-Mute 280

JUNE.
Garibaldi 290
The Army 291
Italy 293
Thirty-Two Degrees 295
My Father 297
In the Country 298
The Distribution of Prizes to the Workingmen 302
My Dead Schoolmistress 305
Thanks 308
Shipwreck 309

JULY.
The Last Page from my Mother 317
The Examinations 318
The Last Examination 321
Farewell 323

CUORE.
AN ITALIAN SCHOOLBOY’S JOURNAL.

OCTOBER.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

Monday, 17th.

To-day is the first day of school. These three months of vacation in the
country have passed like a dream. This morning my mother conducted me
to the Baretti schoolhouse to have me enter for the third elementary course:
I was thinking of the country and went unwillingly. All the streets were
swarming with boys: the two book-shops were thronged with fathers and
mothers who were purchasing bags, portfolios, and copy-books, and in front
of the school so many people had collected, that the beadle and the
policeman found it difficult to keep the entrance disencumbered. Near the
door, I felt myself touched on the shoulder: it was my master of the second
class, cheerful, as usual, and with his red hair ruffled, and he said to me:—

“So we are separated forever, Enrico?”

I knew it perfectly well, yet these words pained me. We made our way
in with difficulty. Ladies, gentlemen, women of the people, workmen,
officials, nuns, servants, all leading boys with one hand, and holding the
promotion books in the other, filled the anteroom and the stairs, making
such a buzzing, that it seemed as though one were entering a theatre. I
beheld again with pleasure that large room on the ground floor, with the
doors leading to the seven classes, where I had passed nearly every day for
three years. There was a throng; the teachers were going and coming. My
schoolmistress of the first upper class greeted me from the door of the class-
room, and said:—

“Enrico, you are going to the floor above this year. I shall never see you
pass by any more!” and she gazed sadly at me. The director was surrounded
by women in distress because there was no room for their sons, and it struck
me that his beard was a little whiter than it had been last year. I found the
boys had grown taller and stouter. On the ground floor, where the divisions
had already been made, there were little children of the first and lowest
section, who did not want to enter the class-rooms, and who resisted like
donkeys: it was necessary to drag them in by force, and some escaped from
the benches; others, when they saw their parents depart, began to cry, and
the parents had to go back and comfort and reprimand them, and the
teachers were in despair.

My little brother was placed in the class of Mistress Delcati: I was put
with Master Perboni, up stairs on the first floor. At ten o’clock we were all
in our classes: fifty-four of us; only fifteen or sixteen of my companions of
the second class, among them, Derossi, the one who always gets the first
prize. The school seemed to me so small and gloomy when I thought of the
woods and the mountains where I had passed the summer! I thought again,
too, of my master in the second class, who was so good, and who always
smiled at us, and was so small that he seemed to be one of us, and I grieved
that I should no longer see him there, with his tumbled red hair. Our teacher
is tall; he has no beard; his hair is gray and long; and he has a perpendicular
wrinkle on his forehead: he has a big voice, and he looks at us fixedly, one
after the other, as though he were reading our inmost thoughts; and he never
smiles. I said to myself: “This is my first day. There are nine months more.
What toil, what monthly examinations, what fatigue!” I really needed to see
my mother when I came out, and I ran to kiss her hand. She said to me:—

“Courage, Enrico! we will study together.” And I returned home
content. But I no longer have my master, with his kind, merry smile, and
school does not seem pleasant to me as it did before.

OUR MASTER.

Tuesday, 18th.

My new teacher pleases me also, since this morning. While we were
coming in, and when he was already seated at his post, some one of his
scholars of last year every now and then peeped in at the door to salute him;
they would present themselves and greet him:—

“Good morning, Signor Teacher!” “Good morning, Signor Perboni!”
Some entered, touched his hand, and ran away. It was evident that they
liked him, and would have liked to return to him. He responded, “Good
morning,” and shook the hands which were extended to him, but he looked
at no one; at every greeting his smile remained serious, with that
perpendicular wrinkle on his brow, with his face turned towards the
window, and staring at the roof of the house opposite; and instead of being
cheered by these greetings, he seemed to suffer from them. Then he
surveyed us attentively, one after the other. While he was dictating, he
descended and walked among the benches, and, catching sight of a boy
whose face was all red with little pimples, he stopped dictating, took the
lad’s face between his hands and examined it; then he asked him what was
the matter with him, and laid his hand on his forehead, to feel if it was hot.
Meanwhile, a boy behind him got up on the bench, and began to play the
marionette. The teacher turned round suddenly; the boy resumed his seat at
one dash, and remained there, with head hanging, in expectation of being
punished. The master placed one hand on his head and said to him:—

“Don’t do so again.” Nothing more.

Then he returned to his table and finished the dictation. When he had
finished dictating, he looked at us a moment in silence; then he said, very,
very slowly, with his big but kind voice:—

“Listen. We have a year to pass together; let us see that we pass it well.
Study and be good. I have no family; you are my family. Last year I had
still a mother: she is dead. I am left alone. I have no one but you in all the
world; I have no other affection, no other thought than you: you must be my
sons. I wish you well, and you must like me too. I do not wish to be obliged
to punish any one. Show me that you are boys of heart: our school shall be a
family, and you shall be my consolation and my pride. I do not ask you to

give me a promise on your word of honor; I am sure that in your hearts you
have already answered me ‘yes,’ and I thank you.”

At that moment the beadle entered to announce the close of school. We
all left our seats very, very quietly. The boy who had stood up on the bench
approached the master, and said to him, in a trembling voice:—

“Forgive me, Signor Master.”

The master kissed him on the brow, and said, “Go, my son.”

AN ACCIDENT.

Friday, 21st.

The year has begun with an accident. On my way to school this morning
I was repeating to my father these words of our teacher, when we perceived
that the street was full of people, who were pressing close to the door of the
schoolhouse. Suddenly my father said: “An accident! The year is beginning
badly!”

We entered with great difficulty. The big hall was crowded with parents
and children, whom the teachers had not succeeded in drawing off into the
class-rooms, and all were turning towards the director’s room, and we heard
the words, “Poor boy! Poor Robetti!”

Over their heads, at the end of the room, we could see the helmet of a
policeman, and the bald head of the director; then a gentleman with a tall
hat entered, and all said, “That is the doctor.” My father inquired of a
master, “What has happened?”—“A wheel has passed over his foot,”
replied the latter. “His foot has been crushed,” said another. He was a boy
belonging to the second class, who, on his way to school through the Via
Dora Grossa, seeing a little child of the lowest class, who had run away
from its mother, fall down in the middle of the street, a few paces from an
omnibus which was bearing down upon it, had hastened boldly forward,

caught up the child, and placed it in safety; but, as he had not withdrawn his
own foot quickly enough, the wheel of the omnibus had passed over it. He
is the son of a captain of artillery. While we were being told this, a woman
entered the big hall, like a lunatic, and forced her way through the crowd:
she was Robetti’s mother, who had been sent for. Another woman hastened
towards her, and flung her arms about her neck, with sobs: it was the
mother of the baby who had been saved. Both flew into the room, and a
desperate cry made itself heard: “Oh my Giulio! My child!”

At that moment a carriage stopped before the door, and a little later the
director made his appearance, with the boy in his arms; the latter leaned his
head on his shoulder, with pallid face and closed eyes. Every one stood very
still; the sobs of the mother were audible. The director paused a moment,
quite pale, and raised the boy up a little in his arms, in order to show him to
the people. And then the masters, mistresses, parents, and boys all
murmured together: “Bravo, Robetti! Bravo, poor child!” and they threw
kisses to him; the mistresses and boys who were near him kissed his hands
and his arms. He opened his eyes and said, “My portfolio!” The mother of
the little boy whom he had saved showed it to him and said, amid her tears,
“I will carry it for you, my dear little angel; I will carry it for you.” And in
the meantime, the mother of the wounded boy smiled, as she covered her
face with her hands. They went out, placed the lad comfortably in the
carriage, and the carriage drove away. Then we all entered school in silence.

THE CALABRIAN BOY.

Saturday, 22d.

Yesterday afternoon, while the master was telling us the news of poor
Robetti, who will have to go on crutches, the director entered with a new
pupil, a lad with a very brown face, black hair, large black eyes, and thick
eyebrows which met on his forehead: he was dressed entirely in dark
clothes, with a black morocco belt round his waist. The director went away,
after speaking a few words in the master’s ear, leaving beside the latter the

boy, who glanced about with his big black eyes as though frightened. The
master took him by the hand, and said to the class: “You ought to be glad.
To-day there enters our school a little Italian born in Reggio, in Calabria,
more than five hundred miles from here. Love your brother who has come
from so far away. He was born in a glorious land, which has given
illustrious men to Italy, and which now furnishes her with stout laborers and
brave soldiers; in one of the most beautiful lands of our country, where
there are great forests, and great mountains, inhabited by people full of
talent and courage. Treat him well, so that he shall not perceive that he is far
away from the city in which he was born; make him see that an Italian boy,
in whatever Italian school he sets his foot, will find brothers there.” So
saying, he rose and pointed out on the wall map of Italy the spot where lay
Reggio, in Calabria. Then he called loudly:—

“Ernesto Derossi!”—the boy who always has the first prize. Derossi
rose.

“Come here,” said the master. Derossi left his bench and stepped up to
the little table, facing the Calabrian.

“As the head boy in the school,” said the master to him, “bestow the
embrace of welcome on this new companion, in the name of the whole class
—the embrace of the sons of Piedmont to the son of Calabria.”

Derossi embraced the Calabrian, saying in his clear voice, “Welcome!”
and the other kissed him impetuously on the cheeks. All clapped their
hands. “Silence!” cried the master; “don’t clap your hands in school!” But it
was evident that he was pleased. And the Calabrian was pleased also. The
master assigned him a place, and accompanied him to the bench. Then he
said again:—

“Bear well in mind what I have said to you. In order that this case might
occur, that a Calabrian boy should be as though in his own house at Turin,
and that a boy from Turin should be at home in Calabria, our country fought
for fifty years, and thirty thousand Italians died. You must all respect and
love each other; but any one of you who should give offence to this
comrade, because he was not born in our province, would render himself

unworthy of ever again raising his eyes from the earth when he passes the
tricolored flag.”

Hardly was the Calabrian seated in his place, when his neighbors
presented him with pens and a print; and another boy, from the last bench,
sent him a Swiss postage-stamp.

MY COMRADES.

Tuesday, 25th.

The boy who sent the postage-stamp to the Calabrian is the one who
pleases me best of all. His name is Garrone: he is the biggest boy in the
class: he is about fourteen years old; his head is large, his shoulders broad;
he is good, as one can see when he smiles; but it seems as though he always
thought like a man. I already know many of my comrades. Another one
pleases me, too, by the name of Coretti, and he wears chocolate-colored
trousers and a catskin cap: he is always jolly; he is the son of a huckster of
wood, who was a soldier in the war of 1866, in the squadron of Prince
Umberto, and they say that he has three medals. There is little Nelli, a poor
hunchback, a weak boy, with a thin face. There is one who is very well
dressed, who always wears fine Florentine plush, and is named Votini. On
the bench in front of me there is a boy who is called “the little mason”
because his father is a mason: his face is as round as an apple, with a nose
like a small ball; he possesses a special talent: he knows how to make a
hare’s face, and they all get him to make a hare’s face, and then they laugh.
He wears a little ragged cap, which he carries rolled up in his pocket like a
handkerchief. Beside the little mason there sits Garoffi, a long, thin, silly
fellow, with a nose and beak of a screech owl, and very small eyes, who is
always trafficking in little pens and images and match-boxes, and who
writes the lesson on his nails, in order that he may read it on the sly. Then
there is a young gentleman, Carlo Nobis, who seems very haughty; and he
is between two boys who are sympathetic to me,—the son of a blacksmith-
ironmonger, clad in a jacket which reaches to his knees, who is pale, as

though from illness, who always has a frightened air, and who never laughs;
and one with red hair, who has a useless arm, and wears it suspended from
his neck; his father has gone away to America, and his mother goes about
peddling pot-herbs. And there is another curious type,—my neighbor on the
left,—Stardi—small and thickset, with no neck,—a gruff fellow, who
speaks to no one, and seems not to understand much, but stands attending to
the master without winking, his brow corrugated with wrinkles, and his
teeth clenched; and if he is questioned when the master is speaking, he
makes no reply the first and second times, and the third time he gives a
kick: and beside him there is a bold, cunning face, belonging to a boy
named Franti, who has already been expelled from another district. There
are, in addition, two brothers who are dressed exactly alike, who resemble
each other to a hair, and both of whom wear caps of Calabrian cut, with a
peasant’s plume. But handsomer than all the rest, the one who has the most
talent, who will surely be the head this year also, is Derossi; and the master,
who has already perceived this, always questions him. But I like Precossi,
the son of the blacksmith-ironmonger, the one with the long jacket, who
seems sickly. They say that his father beats him; he is very timid, and every
time that he addresses or touches any one, he says, “Excuse me,” and gazes
at them with his kind, sad eyes. But Garrone is the biggest and the nicest.

A GENEROUS DEED.

Wednesday, 26th.

It was this very morning that Garrone let us know what he is like. When
I entered the school a little late, because the mistress of the upper first had
stopped me to inquire at what hour she could find me at home, the master
had not yet arrived, and three or four boys were tormenting poor Crossi, the
one with the red hair, who has a dead arm, and whose mother sells
vegetables. They were poking him with rulers, hitting him in the face with
chestnut shells, and were making him out to be a cripple and a monster, by
mimicking him, with his arm hanging from his neck. And he, alone on the
end of the bench, and quite pale, began to be affected by it, gazing now at

one and now at another with beseeching eyes, that they might leave him in
peace. But the others mocked him worse than ever, and he began to tremble
and to turn crimson with rage. All at once, Franti, the boy with the repulsive
face, sprang upon a bench, and pretending that he was carrying a basket on
each arm, he aped the mother of Crossi, when she used to come to wait for
her son at the door; for she is ill now. Many began to laugh loudly. Then
Crossi lost his head, and seizing an inkstand, he hurled it at the other’s head
with all his strength; but Franti dodged, and the inkstand struck the master,
who entered at the moment, full in the breast.

All flew to their places, and became silent with terror.

The master, quite pale, went to his table, and said in a constrained voice:
—

“Who did it?”

No one replied.

The master cried out once more, raising his voice still louder, “Who is
it?”

Then Garrone, moved to pity for poor Crossi, rose abruptly and said,
resolutely, “It was I.”

The master looked at him, looked at the stupefied scholars; then said in
a tranquil voice, “It was not you.”

And, after a moment: “The culprit shall not be punished. Let him rise!”

Crossi rose and said, weeping, “They were striking me and insulting
me, and I lost my head, and threw it.”

“Sit down,” said the master. “Let those who provoked him rise.”

Four rose, and hung their heads.

“You,” said the master, “have insulted a companion who had given you
no provocation; you have scoffed at an unfortunate lad, you have struck a

weak person who could not defend himself. You have committed one of the
basest, the most shameful acts with which a human creature can stain
himself. Cowards!”

Having said this, he came down among the benches, put his hand under
Garrone’s chin, as the latter stood with drooping head, and having made
him raise it, he looked him straight in the eye, and said to him, “You are a
noble soul.”

Garrone profited by the occasion to murmur some words, I know not
what, in the ear of the master; and he, turning towards the four culprits,
said, abruptly, “I forgive you.”

MY SCHOOLMISTRESS OF THE UPPER FIRST.

Thursday, 27th.

My schoolmistress has kept her promise which she made, and came to-
day just as I was on the point of going out with my mother to carry some
linen to a poor woman recommended by the Gazette. It was a year since I
had seen her in our house. We all made a great deal of her. She is just the
same as ever, a little thing, with a green veil wound about her bonnet,
carelessly dressed, and with untidy hair, because she has not time to keep
herself nice; but with a little less color than last year, with some white hairs,
and a constant cough. My mother said to her:—

“And your health, my dear mistress? You do not take sufficient care of
yourself!”

“It does not matter,” the other replied, with her smile, at once cheerful
and melancholy.

“You speak too loud,” my mother added; “you exert yourself too much
with your boys.”

That is true; her voice is always to be heard; I remember how it was
when I went to school to her; she talked and talked all the time, so that the
boys might not divert their attention, and she did not remain seated a
moment. I felt quite sure that she would come, because she never forgets
her pupils; she remembers their names for years; on the days of the monthly
examination, she runs to ask the director what marks they have won; she
waits for them at the entrance, and makes them show her their
compositions, in order that she may see what progress they have made; and
many still come from the gymnasium to see her, who already wear long
trousers and a watch. To-day she had come back in a great state of
excitement, from the picture-gallery, whither she had taken her boys, just as
she had conducted them all to a museum every Thursday in years gone by,
and explained everything to them. The poor mistress has grown still thinner
than of old. But she is always brisk, and always becomes animated when
she speaks of her school. She wanted to have a peep at the bed on which she
had seen me lying very ill two years ago, and which is now occupied by my
brother; she gazed at it for a while, and could not speak. She was obliged to
go away soon to visit a boy belonging to her class, the son of a saddler, who
is ill with the measles; and she had besides a package of sheets to correct, a
whole evening’s work, and she has still a private lesson in arithmetic to give
to the mistress of a shop before nightfall.

“Well, Enrico,” she said to me as she was going, “are you still fond of
your schoolmistress, now that you solve difficult problems and write long
compositions?” She kissed me, and called up once more from the foot of
the stairs: “You are not to forget me, you know, Enrico!” Oh, my kind
teacher, never, never will I forget thee! Even when I grow up I will
remember thee and will go to seek thee among thy boys; and every time
that I pass near a school and hear the voice of a schoolmistress, I shall think
that I hear thy voice, and I shall recall the two years that I passed in thy
school, where I learned so many things, where I so often saw thee ill and
weary, but always earnest, always indulgent, in despair when any one
acquired a bad trick in the writing-fingers, trembling when the examiners
interrogated us, happy when we made a good appearance, always kind and
loving as a mother. Never, never shall I forget thee, my teacher!

IN AN ATTIC.

Friday, 28th.

Yesterday afternoon I went with my mother and my sister Sylvia, to
carry the linen to the poor woman recommended by the newspaper: I
carried the bundle; Sylvia had the paper with the initials of the name and
the address. We climbed to the very roof of a tall house, to a long corridor
with many doors. My mother knocked at the last; it was opened by a
woman who was still young, blond and thin, and it instantly struck me that I
had seen her many times before, with that very same blue kerchief that she
wore on her head.

“Are you the person of whom the newspaper says so and so?” asked my
mother.

“Yes, signora, I am.”

“Well, we have brought you a little linen.” Then the woman began to
thank us and bless us, and could not make enough of it. Meanwhile I espied
in one corner of the bare, dark room, a boy kneeling in front of a chair, with
his back turned towards us, who appeared to be writing; and he really was
writing, with his paper on the chair and his inkstand on the floor. How did
he manage to write thus in the dark? While I was saying this to myself, I
suddenly recognized the red hair and the coarse jacket of Crossi, the son of
the vegetable-pedler, the boy with the useless arm. I told my mother softly,
while the woman was putting away the things.

“Hush!” replied my mother; “perhaps he will feel ashamed to see you
giving alms to his mother: don’t speak to him.”

But at that moment Crossi turned round; I was embarrassed; he smiled,
and then my mother gave me a push, so that I should run to him and
embrace him. I did embrace him: he rose and took me by the hand.

“Here I am,” his mother was saying in the meantime to my mother,
“alone with this boy, my husband in America these seven years, and I sick
in addition, so that I can no longer make my rounds with my vegetables,

and earn a few cents. We have not even a table left for my poor Luigino to
do his work on. When there was a bench down at the door, he could, at
least, write on the bench; but that has been taken away. He has not even a
little light so that he can study without ruining his eyes. And it is a mercy
that I can send him to school, since the city provides him with books and
copy-books. Poor Luigino, who would be so glad to study! Unhappy
woman, that I am!”

My mother gave her all that she had in her purse, kissed the boy, and
almost wept as we went out. And she had good cause to say to me: “Look at
that poor boy; see how he is forced to work, when you have every comfort,
and yet study seems hard to you! Ah! Enrico, there is more merit in the
work which he does in one day, than in your work for a year. It is to such
that the first prizes should be given!”

THE SCHOOL.

Friday, 28th.

Yes, study comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says: I do
not yet see you set out for school with that resolute mind and that smiling
face which I should like. You are still intractable. But listen; reflect a little!
What a miserable, despicable thing your day would be if you did not go to
school! At the end of a week you would beg with clasped hands that you
might return there, for you would be eaten up with weariness and shame;
disgusted with your sports and with your existence. Everybody, everybody
studies now, my child. Think of the workmen who go to school in the
evening after having toiled all the day; think of the women, of the girls of
the people, who go to school on Sunday, after having worked all the week;
of the soldiers who turn to their books and copy-books when they return
exhausted from their drill! Think of the dumb and of the boys who are
blind, but who study, nevertheless; and last of all, think of the prisoners,
who also learn to read and write. Reflect in the morning, when you set out,
that at that very moment, in your own city, thirty thousand other boys are

going like yourself, to shut themselves up in a room for three hours and
study. Think of the innumerable boys who, at nearly this precise hour, are
going to school in all countries. Behold them with your imagination, going,
going, through the lanes of quiet villages; through the streets of the noisy
towns, along the shores of rivers and lakes; here beneath a burning sun;
there amid fogs, in boats, in countries which are intersected with canals; on
horseback on the far-reaching plains; in sledges over the snow; through
valleys and over hills; across forests and torrents, over the solitary paths of
mountains; alone, in couples, in groups, in long files, all with their books
under their arms, clad in a thousand ways, speaking a thousand tongues,
from the most remote schools in Russia. Almost lost in the ice to the
furthermost schools of Arabia, shaded by palm-trees, millions and millions,
all going to learn the same things, in a hundred varied forms. Imagine this
vast, vast throng of boys of a hundred races, this immense movement of
which you form a part, and think, if this movement were to cease, humanity
would fall back into barbarism; this movement is the progress, the hope, the
glory of the world. Courage, then, little soldier of the immense army. Your
books are your arms, your class is your squadron, the field of battle is the
whole earth, and the victory is human civilization. Be not a cowardly
soldier, my Enrico.

Thy Father.

THE LITTLE PATRIOT OF PADUA.

(The Monthly Story.)

Saturday, 29th.

I will not be a cowardly soldier, no; but I should be much more willing
to go to school if the master would tell us a story every day, like the one he
told us this morning. “Every month,” said he, "I shall tell you one; I shall
give it to you in writing, and it will always be the tale of a fine and noble
deed performed by a boy. This one is called The Little Patriot of Padua.

Here it is. A French steamer set out from Barcelona, a city in Spain, for
Genoa; there were on board Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, and Swiss.
Among the rest was a lad of eleven, poorly clad, and alone, who always
held himself aloof, like a wild animal, and stared at all with gloomy eyes.
He had good reasons for looking at every one with forbidding eyes. Two
years previous to this time his parents, peasants in the neighborhood of
Padua, had sold him to a company of mountebanks, who, after they had
taught him how to perform tricks, by dint of blows and kicks and starving,
had carried him all over France and Spain, beating him continually and
never giving him enough to eat. On his arrival in Barcelona, being no
longer able to endure ill treatment and hunger, and being reduced to a
pitiable condition, he had fled from his slave-master and had betaken
himself for protection to the Italian consul, who, moved with compassion,
had placed him on board of this steamer, and had given him a letter to the
treasurer of Genoa, who was to send the boy back to his parents—to the
parents who had sold him like a beast. The poor lad was lacerated and
weak. He had been assigned to the second-class cabin. Every one stared at
him; some questioned him, but he made no reply, and seemed to hate and
despise every one, to such an extent had privation and affliction saddened
and irritated him. Nevertheless, three travellers, by dint of persisting in their
questions, succeeded in making him unloose his tongue; and in a few rough
words, a mixture of Venetian, French, and Spanish, he related his story.
These three travellers were not Italians, but they understood him; and partly
out of compassion, partly because they were excited with wine, they gave
him soldi, jesting with him and urging him on to tell them other things; and
as several ladies entered the saloon at the moment, they gave him some
more money for the purpose of making a show, and cried: ‘Take this! Take
this, too!’ as they made the money rattle on the table.

“The boy pocketed it all, thanking them in a low voice, with his surly
mien, but with a look that was for the first time smiling and affectionate.
Then he climbed into his berth, drew the curtain, and lay quiet, thinking
over his affairs. With this money he would be able to purchase some good
food on board, after having suffered for lack of bread for two years; he
could buy a jacket as soon as he landed in Genoa, after having gone about
clad in rags for two years; and he could also, by carrying it home, insure for
himself from his father and mother a more humane reception than would

have fallen to his lot if he had arrived with empty pockets. This money was
a little fortune for him; and he was taking comfort out of this thought
behind the curtain of his berth, while the three travellers chatted away, as
they sat round the dining-table in the second-class saloon. They were
drinking and discussing their travels and the countries which they had seen;
and from one topic to another they began to discuss Italy. One of them
began to complain of the inns, another of the railways, and then, growing
warmer, they all began to speak evil of everything. One would have
preferred a trip in Lapland; another declared that he had found nothing but
swindlers and brigands in Italy; the third said that Italian officials do not
know how to read.

“‘It’s an ignorant nation,’ repeated the first. ‘A filthy nation,’ added the
second. ‘Ro—’ exclaimed the third, meaning to say ‘robbers’; but he was
not allowed to finish the word: a tempest of soldi and half-lire descended
upon their heads and shoulders, and leaped upon the table and the floor with
a demoniacal noise. All three sprang up in a rage, looked up, and received
another handful of coppers in their faces.

“‘Take back your soldi!’ said the lad, disdainfully, thrusting his head
between the curtains of his berth; ‘I do not accept alms from those who
insult my country.’”

THE CHIMNEY-SWEEP.

November 1st.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the girls’ school building, near ours, to
give the story of the boy from Padua to Silvia’s teacher, who wished to read
it. There are seven hundred girls there. Just as I arrived, they began to come
out, all greatly rejoiced at the holiday of All Saints and All Souls; and here
is a beautiful thing that I saw: Opposite the door of the school, on the other
side of the street, stood a very small chimney-sweep, his face entirely black,
with his sack and scraper, with one arm resting against the wall, and his

head supported on his arm, weeping copiously and sobbing. Two or three of
the girls of the second grade approached him and said, “What is the matter,
that you weep like this?” But he made no reply, and went on crying.

“Come, tell us what is the matter with you and why you are crying,” the
girls repeated. And then he raised his face from his arm,—a baby face,—
and said through his tears that he had been to several houses to sweep the
chimneys, and had earned thirty soldi, and that he had lost them, that they
had slipped through a hole in his pocket,—and he showed the hole,—and he
did not dare to return home without the money.

“The master will beat me,” he said, sobbing; and again dropped his head
upon his arm, like one in despair. The children stood and stared at him very
seriously. In the meantime, other girls, large and small, poor girls and girls
of the upper classes, with their portfolios under their arms, had come up;
and one large girl, who had a blue feather in her hat, pulled two soldi from
her pocket, and said:—

“I have only two soldi; let us make a collection.”

“I have two soldi, also,” said another girl, dressed in red; “we shall
certainly find thirty soldi among the whole of us”; and then they began to
call out:—

“Amalia! Luigia! Annina!—A soldo. Who has any soldi? Bring your
soldi here!”

Several had soldi to buy flowers or copy-books, and they brought them;
some of the smaller girls gave centesimi; the one with the blue feather
collected all, and counted them in a loud voice:—

“Eight, ten, fifteen!” But more was needed. Then one larger than any of
them, who seemed to be an assistant mistress, made her appearance, and
gave half a lira; and all made much of her. Five soldi were still lacking.

“The girls of the fourth class are coming; they will have it,” said one
girl. The members of the fourth class came, and the soldi showered down.
All hurried forward eagerly; and it was beautiful to see that poor chimney-

sweep in the midst of all those many-colored dresses, of all that whirl of
feathers, ribbons, and curls. The thirty soldi were already obtained, and
more kept pouring in; and the very smallest who had no money made their
way among the big girls, and offered their bunches of flowers, for the sake
of giving something. All at once the portress made her appearance,
screaming:—

“The Signora Directress!” The girls made their escape in all directions,
like a flock of sparrows; and then the little chimney-sweep was visible,
alone, in the middle of the street, wiping his eyes in perfect content, with
his hands full of money, and the button-holes of his jacket, his pockets, his
hat, were full of flowers; and there were even flowers on the ground at his
feet.

THE DAY OF THE DEAD.

(All-Souls-Day.)

November 2d.

This day is consecrated to the commemoration of the dead. Do you
know, Enrico, that all you boys should, on this day, devote a thought to
those who are dead? To those who have died for you,—for boys and little
children. How many have died, and how many are dying continually! Have
you ever reflected how many fathers have worn out their lives in toil? how
many mothers have descended to the grave before their time, exhausted by
the privations to which they have condemned themselves for the sake of
sustaining their children? Do you know how many men have planted a
knife in their hearts in despair at beholding their children in misery? how
many women have drowned themselves or have died of sorrow, or have
gone mad, through having lost a child? Think of all these dead on this day,
Enrico. Think of how many schoolmistresses have died young, have pined
away through the fatigues of the school, through love of the children, from
whom they had not the heart to tear themselves away; think of the doctors

who have perished of contagious diseases, having courageously sacrificed
themselves to cure the children; think of all those who in shipwrecks, in
conflagrations, in famines, in moments of supreme danger, have yielded to
infancy the last morsel of bread, the last place of safety, the last rope of
escape from the flames, to expire content with their sacrifice, since they
preserved the life of a little innocent. Such dead as these are innumerable,
Enrico; every graveyard contains hundreds of these sainted beings, who, if
they could rise for a moment from their graves, would cry the name of a
child to whom they sacrificed the pleasures of youth, the peace of old age,
their affections, their intelligence, their life: wives of twenty, men in the
flower of their strength, octogenarians, youths,—heroic and obscure
martyrs of infancy,—so grand and so noble, that the earth does not produce
as many flowers as should strew their graves. To such a degree are ye loved,
O children! Think to-day on those dead with gratitude, and you will be
kinder and more affectionate to all those who love you, and who toil for
you, my dear, fortunate son, who, on the day of the dead, have, as yet, no
one to grieve for.

Thy Mother.

NOVEMBER.

MY FRIEND GARRONE.

Friday, 4th.

There had been but two days of vacation, yet it seemed to me as though
I had been a long time without seeing Garrone. The more I know him, the
better I like him; and so it is with all the rest, except with the overbearing,
who have nothing to say to him, because he does not permit them to exhibit
their oppression. Every time that a big boy raises his hand against a little
one, the little one shouts, “Garrone!” and the big one stops striking him. His
father is an engine-driver on the railway; he has begun school late, because
he was ill for two years. He is the tallest and the strongest of the class; he
lifts a bench with one hand; he is always eating; and he is good. Whatever
he is asked for,—a pencil, rubber, paper, or penknife,—he lends or gives it;
and he neither talks nor laughs in school: he always sits perfectly
motionless on a bench that is too narrow for him, with his spine curved
forward, and his big head between his shoulders; and when I look at him, he
smiles at me with his eyes half closed, as much as to say, “Well, Enrico, are
we friends?” He makes me laugh, because, tall and broad as he is, he has a
jacket, trousers, and sleeves which are too small for him, and too short; a
cap which will not stay on his head; a threadbare cloak; coarse shoes; and a
necktie which is always twisted into a cord. Dear Garrone! it needs but one
glance in thy face to inspire love for thee. All the little boys would like to be
near his bench. He knows arithmetic well. He carries his books bound
together with a strap of red leather. He has a knife, with a mother-of-pearl
handle, which he found in the field for military manœuvres, last year, and
one day he cut his finger to the bone; but no one in school envies him it,

and no one breathes a word about it at home, for fear of alarming his
parents. He lets us say anything to him in jest, and he never takes it ill; but
woe to any one who says to him, “That is not true,” when he affirms a
thing: then fire flashes from his eyes, and he hammers down blows enough
to split the bench. Saturday morning he gave a soldo to one of the upper
first class, who was crying in the middle of the street, because his own had
been taken from him, and he could not buy his copy-book. For the last three
days he has been working over a letter of eight pages, with pen ornaments
on the margins, for the saint’s day of his mother, who often comes to get
him, and who, like himself, is tall and large and sympathetic. The master is
always glancing at him, and every time that he passes near him he taps him
on the neck with his hand, as though he were a good, peaceable young bull.
I am very fond of him. I am happy when I press his big hand, which seems
to be the hand of a man, in mine. I am almost certain that he would risk his
life to save that of a comrade; that he would allow himself to be killed in his
defence, so clearly can I read his eyes; and although he always seems to be
grumbling with that big voice of his, one feels that it is a voice that comes
from a gentle heart.

THE CHARCOAL-MAN AND THE GENTLEMAN.

Monday, 7th.

Garrone would certainly never have uttered the words which Carlo
Nobis spoke yesterday morning to Betti. Carlo Nobis is proud, because his
father is a great gentleman; a tall gentleman, with a black beard, and very
serious, who accompanies his son to school nearly every day. Yesterday
morning Nobis quarrelled with Betti, one of the smallest boys, and the son
of a charcoal-man, and not knowing what retort to make, because he was in
the wrong, said to him vehemently, “Your father is a tattered beggar!” Betti
reddened up to his very hair, and said nothing, but the tears came to his
eyes; and when he returned home, he repeated the words to his father; so
the charcoal-dealer, a little man, who was black all over, made his
appearance at the afternoon session, leading his boy by the hand, in order to

complain to the master. While he was making his complaint, and every one
was silent, the father of Nobis, who was taking off his son’s coat at the
entrance, as usual, entered on hearing his name pronounced, and demanded
an explanation.

“This workman has come,” said the master, “to complain that your son
Carlo said to his boy, ‘Your father is a tattered beggar.’”

Nobis’s father frowned and reddened slightly. Then he asked his son,
“Did you say that?”

His son, who was standing in the middle of the school, with his head
hanging, in front of little Betti, made no reply.

Then his father grasped him by one arm and pushed him forward, facing
Betti, so that they nearly touched, and said to him, “Beg his pardon.”

The charcoal-man tried to interpose, saying, “No, no!” but the
gentleman paid no heed to him, and repeated to his son, “Beg his pardon.
Repeat my words. ‘I beg your pardon for the insulting, foolish, and ignoble
words which I uttered against your father, whose hand my father would feel
himself honored to press.’”

The charcoal-man made a resolute gesture, as though to say, “I will not
allow it.” The gentleman did not second him, and his son said slowly, in a
very thread of a voice, without raising his eyes from the ground, “I beg your
pardon—for the insulting—foolish—ignoble—words which I uttered
against your father, whose hand my father—would feel himself honored—
to press.”

Then the gentleman offered his hand to the charcoal-man, who shook it
vigorously, and then, with a sudden push, he thrust his son into the arms of
Carlo Nobis.

“Do me the favor to place them next each other,” said the gentleman to
the master. The master put Betti on Nobis’s bench. When they were seated,
the father of Nobis bowed and went away.

The charcoal-man remained standing there in thought for several
moments, gazing at the two boys side by side; then he approached the
bench, and fixed upon Nobis a look expressive of affection and regret, as
though he were desirous of saying something to him, but he did not say
anything; he stretched out his hand to bestow a caress upon him, but he did
not dare, and merely stroked his brow with his large fingers. Then he made
his way to the door, and turning round for one last look, he disappeared.

“Fix what you have just seen firmly in your minds, boys,” said the
master; “this is the finest lesson of the year.”

THE CHARCOAL MAN AND THE
GENTLEMAN.

View larger image.

MY BROTHER’S SCHOOLMISTRESS.

Thursday, 10th.

The son of the charcoal-man had been a pupil of that schoolmistress
Delcati who had come to see my brother when he was ill, and who had
made us laugh by telling us how, two years ago, the mother of this boy had
brought to her house a big apronful of charcoal, out of gratitude for her
having given the medal to her son; and the poor woman had persisted, and
had not been willing to carry the coal home again, and had wept when she
was obliged to go away with her apron quite full. And she told us, also, of
another good woman, who had brought her a very heavy bunch of flowers,
inside of which there was a little hoard of soldi. We had been greatly
diverted in listening to her, and so my brother had swallowed his medicine,
which he had not been willing to do before. How much patience is
necessary with those boys of the lower first, all toothless, like old men, who
cannot pronounce their r’s and s’s; and one coughs, and another has the
nosebleed, and another loses his shoes under the bench, and another bellows
because he has pricked himself with his pen, and another one cries because
he has bought copy-book No. 2 instead of No. 1. Fifty in a class, who know
nothing, with those flabby little hands, and all of them must be taught to
write; they carry in their pockets bits of licorice, buttons, phial corks,
pounded brick,—all sorts of little things, and the teacher has to search them;
but they conceal these objects even in their shoes. And they are not
attentive: a fly enters through the window, and throws them all into
confusion; and in summer they bring grass into school, and horn-bugs,
which fly round in circles or fall into the inkstand, and then streak the copy-
books all over with ink. The schoolmistress has to play mother to all of
them, to help them dress themselves, bandage up their pricked fingers, pick
up their caps when they drop them, watch to see that they do not exchange
coats, and that they do not indulge in cat-calls and shrieks. Poor
schoolmistresses! And then the mothers come to complain: “How comes it,
signorina, that my boy has lost his pen? How does it happen that mine
learns nothing? Why is not my boy mentioned honorably, when he knows
so much? Why don’t you have that nail which tore my Piero’s trousers,
taken out of the bench?”

Sometimes my brother’s teacher gets into a rage with the boys; and
when she can resist no longer, she bites her finger, to keep herself from
dealing a blow; she loses patience, and then she repents, and caresses the
child whom she has scolded; she sends a little rogue out of school, and then
swallows her tears, and flies into a rage with parents who make the little
ones fast by way of punishment. Schoolmistress Delcati is young and tall,
well-dressed, brown of complexion, and restless; she does everything
vivaciously, as though on springs, is affected by a mere trifle, and at such
times speaks with great tenderness.

“But the children become attached to you, surely,” my mother said to
her.

“Many do,” she replied; “but at the end of the year the majority of them
pay no further heed to us. When they are with the masters, they are almost
ashamed of having been with us—with a woman teacher. After two years of
cares, after having loved a child so much, it makes us feel sad to part from
him; but we say to ourselves, ‘Oh, I am sure of that one; he is fond of me.’
But the vacation over, he comes back to school. I run to meet him; ‘Oh, my
child, my child!’ And he turns his head away.” Here the teacher interrupted
herself. “But you will not do so, little one?” she said, raising her humid
eyes, and kissing my brother. “You will not turn aside your head, will you?
You will not deny your poor friend?”

MY MOTHER.

Thursday, November 10th.

In the presence of your brother’s teacher you failed in respect to your
mother! Let this never happen again, my Enrico, never again! Your
irreverent word pierced my heart like a point of steel. I thought of your
mother when, years ago, she bent the whole of one night over your little
bed, measuring your breathing, weeping blood in her anguish, and with her
teeth chattering with terror, because she thought that she had lost you, and I

feared that she would lose her reason; and at this thought I felt a sentiment
of horror at you. You, to offend your mother! your mother, who would give
a year of happiness to spare you one hour of pain, who would beg for you,
who would allow herself to be killed to save your life! Listen, Enrico. Fix
this thought well in your mind. Reflect that you are destined to experience
many terrible days in the course of your life: the most terrible will be that
on which you lose your mother. A thousand times, Enrico, after you are a
man, strong, and inured to all fates, you will invoke her, oppressed with an
intense desire to hear her voice, if but for a moment, and to see once more
her open arms, into which you can throw yourself sobbing, like a poor child
bereft of comfort and protection. How you will then recall every bitterness
that you have caused her, and with what remorse you will pay for all,
unhappy wretch! Hope for no peace in your life, if you have caused your
mother grief. You will repent, you will beg her forgiveness, you will
venerate her memory—in vain; conscience will give you no rest; that sweet
and gentle image will always wear for you an expression of sadness and of
reproach which will put your soul to torture. Oh, Enrico, beware; this is the
most sacred of human affections; unhappy he who tramples it under foot.
The assassin who respects his mother has still something honest and noble
in his heart; the most glorious of men who grieves and offends her is but a
vile creature. Never again let a harsh word issue from your lips, for the
being who gave you life. And if one should ever escape you, let it not be the
fear of your father, but let it be the impulse of your soul, which casts you at
her feet, to beseech her that she will cancel from your brow, with the kiss of
forgiveness, the stain of ingratitude. I love you, my son; you are the dearest
hope of my life; but I would rather see you dead than ungrateful to your
mother. Go away, for a little space; offer me no more of your caresses; I
should not be able to return them from my heart.

Thy Father.

MY COMPANION CORETTI.

Sunday, 13th.

My father forgave me; but I remained rather sad and then my mother
sent me, with the porter’s big son, to take a walk on the Corso. Half-way
down the Corso, as we were passing a cart which was standing in front of a
shop, I heard some one call me by name: I turned round; it was Coretti, my
schoolmate, with chocolate-colored clothes and his catskin cap, all in a
perspiration, but merry, with a big load of wood on his shoulders. A man
who was standing in the cart was handing him an armful of wood at a time,
which he took and carried into his father’s shop, where he piled it up in the
greatest haste.

“What are you doing, Coretti?” I asked him.

“Don’t you see?” he answered, reaching out his arms to receive the
load; “I am reviewing my lesson.”

I laughed; but he seemed to be serious, and, having grasped the armful
of wood, he began to repeat as he ran, “The conjugation of the verb—
consists in its variations according to number—according to number and
person—”

And then, throwing down the wood and piling it, “according to the time
—according to the time to which the action refers.”

And turning to the cart for another armful, “according to the mode in
which the action is enunciated.”

It was our grammar lesson for the following day. “What would you have
me do?” he said. “I am putting my time to use. My father has gone off with
the man on business; my mother is ill. It falls to me to do the unloading. In
the meantime, I am going over my grammar lesson. It is a difficult lesson
to-day; I cannot succeed in getting it into my head.—My father said that he
would be here at seven o’clock to give you your money,” he said to the man
with the cart.

The cart drove off. “Come into the shop a minute,” Coretti said to me. I
went in. It was a large apartment, full of piles of wood and fagots, with a
steelyard on one side.

“This is a busy day, I can assure you,” resumed Coretti; “I have to do
my work by fits and starts. I was writing my phrases, when some customers
came in. I went to writing again, and behold, that cart arrived. I have
already made two trips to the wood market in the Piazza Venezia this
morning. My legs are so tired that I cannot stand, and my hands are all
swollen. I should be in a pretty pickle if I had to draw!” And as he spoke he
set about sweeping up the dry leaves and the straw which covered the brick-
paved floor.

“But where do you do your work, Coretti?” I inquired.

“Not here, certainly,” he replied. “Come and see”; and he led me into a
little room behind the shop, which serves as a kitchen and dining-room,
with a table in one corner, on which there were books and copy-books, and
work which had been begun. “Here it is,” he said; “I left the second answer
unfinished: with which shoes are made, and belts. Now I will add, and
valises.” And, taking his pen, he began to write in his fine hand.

“Is there any one here?” sounded a call from the shop at that moment. It
was a woman who had come to buy some little fagots.

“Here I am!” replied Coretti; and he sprang out, weighed the fagots,
took the money, ran to a corner to enter the sale in a shabby old account-
book, and returned to his work, saying, “Let’s see if I can finish that
sentence.” And he wrote, travelling-bags, and knapsacks for soldiers. “Oh,
my poor coffee is boiling over!” he exclaimed, and ran to the stove to take
the coffee-pot from the fire. “It is coffee for mamma,” he said; “I had to
learn how to make it. Wait a while, and we will carry it to her; you’ll see
what pleasure it will give her. She has been in bed a whole week.—
Conjugation of the verb! I always scald my fingers with this coffee-pot.
What is there that I can add after the soldiers’ knapsacks? Something more
is needed, and I can think of nothing. Come to mamma.”

He opened a door, and we entered another small room: there Coretti’s
mother lay in a big bed, with a white kerchief wound round her head.

“Ah, brave little master!” said the woman to me; “you have come to
visit the sick, have you not?”

Meanwhile, Coretti was arranging the pillows behind his mother’s back,
readjusting the bedclothes, brightening up the fire, and driving the cat off
the chest of drawers.

“Do you want anything else, mamma?” he asked, as he took the cup
from her. “Have you taken the two spoonfuls of syrup? When it is all gone,
I will make a trip to the apothecary’s. The wood is unloaded. At four
o’clock I will put the meat on the stove, as you told me; and when the
butter-woman passes, I will give her those eight soldi. Everything will go
on well; so don’t give it a thought.”

“Thanks, my son!” replied the woman. “Go, my poor boy!—he thinks
of everything.”

She insisted that I should take a lump of sugar; and then Coretti showed
me a little picture,—the photograph portrait of his father dressed as a
soldier, with the medal for bravery which he had won in 1866, in the troop
of Prince Umberto: he had the same face as his son, with the same
vivacious eyes and his merry smile.

We went back to the kitchen. “I have found the thing,” said Coretti; and
he added on his copy-book, horse-trappings are also made of it. “The rest I
will do this evening; I shall sit up later. How happy you are, to have time to
study and to go to walk, too!” And still gay and active, he re-entered the
shop, and began to place pieces of wood on the horse and to saw them,
saying: “This is gymnastics; it is quite different from the throw your arms
forwards. I want my father to find all this wood sawed when he gets home;
how glad he will be! The worst part of it is that after sawing I make T’s and
L’s which look like snakes, so the teacher says. What am I to do? I will tell
him that I have to move my arms about. The important thing is to have
mamma get well quickly. She is better to-day, thank Heaven! I will study
my grammar to-morrow morning at cock-crow. Oh, here’s the cart with
logs! To work!”

A small cart laden with logs halted in front of the shop. Coretti ran out
to speak to the man, then returned: “I cannot keep your company any longer
now,” he said; “farewell until to-morrow. You did right to come and hunt
me up. A pleasant walk to you! happy fellow!”

And pressing my hand, he ran to take the first log, and began once more
to trot back and forth between the cart and the shop, with a face as fresh as
a rose beneath his catskin cap, and so alert that it was a pleasure to see him.

“Happy fellow!” he had said to me. Ah, no, Coretti, no; you are the
happier, because you study and work too; because you are of use to your
father and your mother; because you are better—a hundred times better—
and more courageous than I, my dear schoolmate.

THE HEAD-MASTER.

Friday, 18th.

Coretti was pleased this morning, because his master of the second
class, Coatti, a big man, with a huge head of curly hair, a great black beard,
big dark eyes, and a voice like a cannon, had come to assist in the work of
the monthly examination. He is always threatening the boys that he will
break them in pieces and carry them by the nape of the neck to the quæstor,
and he makes all sorts of frightful faces; but he never punishes any one, but
always smiles the while behind his beard, so that no one can see it. There
are eight masters in all, including Coatti, and a little, beardless assistant,
who looks like a boy. There is one master of the fourth class, who is lame
and always wrapped up in a big woollen scarf, and who is always suffering
from pains which he contracted when he was a teacher in the country, in a
damp school, where the walls were dripping with moisture. Another of the
teachers of the fourth is old and perfectly white-haired, and has been a
teacher of the blind. There is one well-dressed master, with eye-glasses, and
a blond mustache, who is called the little lawyer, because, while he was
teaching, he studied law and took his diploma; and he is also making a book
to teach how to write letters. On the other hand, the one who teaches
gymnastics is of a soldierly type, and was with Garibaldi, and has on his
neck a scar from a sabre wound received at the battle of Milazzo. Then
there is the head-master, who is tall and bald, and wears gold spectacles,
with a gray beard that flows down upon his breast; he dresses entirely in

black, and is always buttoned up to the chin. He is so kind to the boys, that
when they enter the director’s room, all in a tremble, because they have
been summoned to receive a reproof, he does not scold them, but takes
them by the hand, and tells them so many reasons why they ought not to
behave so, and why they should be sorry, and promise to be good, and he
speaks in such a kind manner, and in so gentle a voice, that they all come
out with red eyes, more confused than if they had been punished. Poor
head-master! he is always the first at his post in the morning, waiting for the
scholars and lending an ear to the parents; and when the other masters are
already on their way home, he is still hovering about the school, and
looking out that the boys do not get under the carriage-wheels, or hang
about the streets to stand on their heads, or fill their bags with sand or
stones; and the moment he makes his appearance at a corner, so tall and
black, flocks of boys scamper off in all directions, abandoning their games
of coppers and marbles, and he threatens them from afar with his forefinger,
with his sad and loving air. No one has ever seen him smile, my mother
says, since the death of his son, who was a volunteer in the army: he always
keeps the latter’s portrait before his eyes, on a little table in the head-
master’s room. He wanted to go away after this misfortune; he prepared his
application for retirement to the Municipal Council, and kept it always on
his table, putting off sending it from day to day, because it grieved him to
leave the boys. But the other day he seemed undecided; and my father, who
was in the director’s room with him, was just saying to him, “What a shame
it is that you are going away, Signor Director!” when a man entered for the
purpose of inscribing the name of a boy who was to be transferred from
another schoolhouse to ours, because he had changed his residence. At the
sight of this boy, the head-master made a gesture of astonishment, gazed at
him for a while, gazed at the portrait that he keeps on his little table, and
then stared at the boy again, as he drew him between his knees, and made
him hold up his head. This boy resembled his dead son. The head-master
said, “It is all right,” wrote down his name, dismissed the father and son,
and remained absorbed in thought. “What a pity that you are going away!”
repeated my father. And then the head-master took up his application for
retirement, tore it in two, and said, “I shall remain.”

THE SOLDIERS.

Tuesday, 22d.

His son had been a volunteer in the army when he died: this is the
reason why the head-master always goes to the Corso to see the soldiers
pass, when we come out of school. Yesterday a regiment of infantry was
passing, and fifty boys began to dance around the band, singing and beating
time with their rulers on their bags and portfolios. We were standing in a
group on the sidewalk, watching them: Garrone, squeezed into his clothes,
which were too tight for him, was biting at a large piece of bread; Votini,
the well-dressed boy, who always wears Florence plush; Precossi, the son of
the blacksmith, with his father’s jacket; and the Calabrian; and the “little
mason”; and Crossi, with his red head; and Franti, with his bold face; and
Robetti, too, the son of the artillery captain, the boy who saved the child
from the omnibus, and who now walks on crutches. Franti burst into a
derisive laugh, in the face of a soldier who was limping. But all at once he
felt a man’s hand on his shoulder: he turned round; it was the head-master.
“Take care,” said the master to him; “jeering at a soldier when he is in the
ranks, when he can neither avenge himself nor reply, is like insulting a man
who is bound: it is baseness.”

Franti disappeared. The soldiers were marching by fours, all perspiring
and covered with dust, and their guns were gleaming in the sun. The head-
master said:—

“You ought to feel kindly towards soldiers, boys. They are our
defenders, who would go to be killed for our sakes, if a foreign army were
to menace our country to-morrow. They are boys too; they are not many
years older than you; and they, too, go to school; and there are poor men
and gentlemen among them, just as there are among you, and they come
from every part of Italy. See if you cannot recognize them by their faces;
Sicilians are passing, and Sardinians, and Neapolitans, and Lombards. This
is an old regiment, one of those which fought in 1848. They are not the
same soldiers, but the flag is still the same. How many have already died
for our country around that banner twenty years before you were born!”

“Here it is!” said Garrone. And in fact, not far off, the flag was visible,
advancing, above the heads of the soldiers.

“Do one thing, my sons,” said the head-master; “make your scholar’s
salute, with your hand to your brow, when the tricolor passes.”

The flag, borne by an officer, passed before us, all tattered and faded,
and with the medals attached to the staff. We put our hands to our
foreheads, all together. The officer looked at us with a smile, and returned
our salute with his hand.

“Bravi, boys!” said some one behind us. We turned to look; it was an
old man who wore in his button-hole the blue ribbon of the Crimean
campaign—a pensioned officer. “Bravi!” he said; “you have done a fine
deed.”

In the meantime, the band of the regiment had made a turn at the end of
the Corso, surrounded by a throng of boys, and a hundred merry shouts
accompanied the blasts of the trumpets, like a war-song.

“Bravi!” repeated the old officer, as he gazed upon us; “he who respects
the flag when he is little will know how to defend it when he is grown up.”

NELLI’S PROTECTOR.

Wednesday, 23d.

Nelli, too, poor little hunchback! was looking at the soldiers yesterday,
but with an air as though he were thinking, “I can never be a soldier!” He is
good, and he studies; but he is so puny and wan, and he breathes with
difficulty. He always wears a long apron of shining black cloth. His mother
is a little blond woman who dresses in black, and always comes to get him
at the end of school, so that he may not come out in the confusion with the
others, and she caresses him. At first many of the boys ridiculed him, and
thumped him on the back with their bags, because he is so unfortunate as to

be a hunchback; but he never offered any resistance, and never said
anything to his mother, in order not to give her the pain of knowing that her
son was the laughing-stock of his companions: they derided him, and he
held his peace and wept, with his head laid against the bench.

But one morning Garrone jumped up and said, “The first person who
touches Nelli will get such a box on the ear from me that he will spin round
three times!”

Franti paid no attention to him; the box on the ear was delivered: the
fellow spun round three times, and from that time forth no one ever touched
Nelli again. The master placed Garrone near him, on the same bench. They
have become friends. Nelli has grown very fond of Garrone. As soon as he
enters the schoolroom he looks to see if Garrone is there. He never goes
away without saying, “Good by, Garrone,” and Garrone does the same with
him.

When Nelli drops a pen or a book under the bench, Garrone stoops
quickly, to prevent his stooping and tiring himself, and hands him his book
or his pen, and then he helps him to put his things in his bag and to twist
himself into his coat. For this Nelli loves him, and gazes at him constantly;
and when the master praises Garrone he is pleased, as though he had been
praised himself. Nelli must at last have told his mother all about the ridicule
of the early days, and what they made him suffer; and about the comrade
who defended him, and how he had grown fond of the latter; for this is what
happened this morning. The master had sent me to carry to the director, half
an hour before the close of school, a programme of the lesson, and I entered
the office at the same moment with a small blond woman dressed in black,
the mother of Nelli, who said, “Signor Director, is there in the class with
my son a boy named Garrone?”

“Yes,” replied the head-master.

“Will you have the goodness to let him come here for a moment, as I
have a word to say to him?”

The head-master called the beadle and sent him to the school, and after
a minute Garrone appeared on the threshold, with his big, close-cropped

head, in perfect amazement. No sooner did she catch sight of him than the
woman flew to meet him, threw her arms on his shoulders, and kissed him a
great many times on the head, saying:—

“You are Garrone, the friend of my little son, the protector of my poor
child; it is you, my dear, brave boy; it is you!” Then she searched hastily in
all her pockets, and in her purse, and finding nothing, she detached a chain
from her neck, with a small cross, and put it on Garrone’s neck, underneath
his necktie, and said to him:—

“Take it! wear it in memory of me, my dear boy; in memory of Nelli’s
mother, who thanks and blesses you.”

THE HEAD OF THE CLASS.

Friday, 25th.

Garrone attracts the love of all; Derossi, the admiration. He has taken
the first medal; he will always be the first, and this year also; no one can
compete with him; all recognize his superiority in all points. He is the first
in arithmetic, in grammar, in composition, in drawing; he understands
everything on the instant; he has a marvellous memory; he succeeds in
everything without effort; it seems as though study were play to him. The
teacher said to him yesterday:—

“You have received great gifts from God; all you have to do is not to
squander them.” He is, moreover, tall and handsome, with a great crown of
golden curls; he is so nimble that he can leap over a bench by resting one
hand on it; and he already understands fencing. He is twelve years old, and
the son of a merchant; he is always dressed in blue, with gilt buttons; he is
always lively, merry, gracious to all, and helps all he can in examinations;
and no one has ever dared to do anything disagreeable to him, or to say a
rough word to him. Nobis and Franti alone look askance at him, and Votini
darts envy from his eyes; but he does not even perceive it. All smile at him,
and take his hand or his arm, when he goes about, in his graceful way, to

collect the work. He gives away illustrated papers, drawings, everything
that is given him at home; he has made a little geographical chart of
Calabria for the Calabrian lad; and he gives everything with a smile,
without paying any heed to it, like a grand gentleman, and without
favoritism for any one. It is impossible not to envy him, not to feel smaller
than he in everything. Ah! I, too, envy him, like Votini. And I feel a
bitterness, almost a certain scorn, for him, sometimes, when I am striving to
accomplish my work at home, and think that he has already finished his, at
this same moment, extremely well, and without fatigue. But then, when I
return to school, and behold him so handsome, so smiling and triumphant,
and hear how frankly and confidently he replies to the master’s questions,
and how courteous he is, and how the others all like him, then all bitterness,
all scorn, departs from my heart, and I am ashamed of having experienced
these sentiments. I should like to be always near him at such times; I should
like to be able to do all my school tasks with him: his presence, his voice,
inspire me with courage, with a will to work, with cheerfulness and
pleasure.

The teacher has given him the monthly story, which will be read to-
morrow, to copy,—The Little Vidette of Lombardy. He copied it this
morning, and was so much affected by that heroic deed, that his face was all
aflame, his eyes humid, and his lips trembling; and I gazed at him: how
handsome and noble he was! With what pleasure would I not have said
frankly to his face: “Derossi, you are worth more than I in everything! You
are a man in comparison with me! I respect you and I admire you!”

THE LITTLE VIDETTE OF LOMBARDY.

(Monthly Story.)

Saturday, 26th.

In 1859, during the war for the liberation of Lombardy, a few days after
the battle of Solfarino and San Martino, won by the French and Italians

over the Austrians, on a beautiful morning in the month of June, a little
band of cavalry of Saluzzo was proceeding at a slow pace along a retired
path, in the direction of the enemy, and exploring the country attentively.
The troop was commanded by an officer and a sergeant, and all were gazing
into the distance ahead of them, with eyes fixed, silent, and prepared at any
moment to see the uniforms of the enemy’s advance-posts gleam white
before them through the trees. In this order they arrived at a rustic cabin,
surrounded by ash-trees, in front of which stood a solitary boy, about twelve
years old, who was removing the bark from a small branch with a knife, in
order to make himself a stick of it. From one window of the little house
floated a large tricolored flag; there was no one inside: the peasants had
fled, after hanging out the flag, for fear of the Austrians. As soon as the lad
saw the cavalry, he flung aside his stick and raised his cap. He was a
handsome boy, with a bold face and large blue eyes and long golden hair:
he was in his shirt-sleeves and his breast was bare.

“What are you doing here?” the officer asked him, reining in his horse.
“Why did you not flee with your family?”

“I have no family,” replied the boy. “I am a foundling. I do a little work
for everybody. I remained here to see the war.”

“Have you seen any Austrians pass?”

“No; not for these three days.”

The officer paused a while in thought; then he leaped from his horse,
and leaving his soldiers there, with their faces turned towards the foe, he
entered the house and mounted to the roof. The house was low; from the
roof only a small tract of country was visible. “It will be necessary to climb
the trees,” said the officer, and descended. Just in front of the garden plot
rose a very lofty and slender ash-tree, which was rocking its crest in the
azure. The officer stood a brief space in thought, gazing now at the tree, and
again at the soldiers; then, all of a sudden, he asked the lad:—

“Is your sight good, you monkey?”

“Mine?” replied the boy. “I can spy a young sparrow a mile away.”

“Are you good for a climb to the top of this tree?”

“To the top of this tree? I? I’ll be up there in half a minute.”

“And will you be able to tell me what you see up there—if there are
Austrian soldiers in that direction, clouds of dust, gleaming guns, horses?”

“Certainly I shall.”

“What do you demand for this service?”

“What do I demand?” said the lad, smiling. “Nothing. A fine thing,
indeed! And then—if it were for the Germans, I wouldn’t do it on any
terms; but for our men! I am a Lombard!”

“Good! Then up with you.”

“Wait a moment, until I take off my shoes.”

He pulled off his shoes, tightened the girth of his trousers, flung his cap
on the grass, and clasped the trunk of the ash.

“Take care, now!” exclaimed the officer, making a movement to hold
him back, as though seized with a sudden terror.

The boy turned to look at him, with his handsome blue eyes, as though
interrogating him.

“No matter,” said the officer; “up with you.”

Up went the lad like a cat.

“Keep watch ahead!” shouted the officer to the soldiers.

In a few moments the boy was at the top of the tree, twined around the
trunk, with his legs among the leaves, but his body displayed to view, and
the sun beating down on his blond head, which seemed to be of gold. The
officer could hardly see him, so small did he seem up there.

“Look straight ahead and far away!” shouted the officer.

The lad, in order to see better, removed his right hand from the tree, and
shaded his eyes with it.

“What do you see?” asked the officer.

The boy inclined his head towards him, and making a speaking-trumpet
of his hand, replied, “Two men on horseback, on the white road.”

“At what distance from here?”

“Half a mile.”

“Are they moving?”

“They are standing still.”

“What else do you see?” asked the officer, after a momentary silence.
“Look to the right.” The boy looked to the right.

Then he said: “Near the cemetery, among the trees, there is something
glittering. It seems to be bayonets.”

“Do you see men?”

“No. They must be concealed in the grain.”

At that moment a sharp whiz of a bullet passed high up in the air, and
died away in the distance, behind the house.

“Come down, my lad!” shouted the officer. “They have seen you. I
don’t want anything more. Come down.”

“I’m not afraid,” replied the boy.

“Come down!” repeated the officer. “What else do you see to the left?”

“To the left?”

“Yes, to the left.”

The lad turned his head to the left: at that moment, another whistle,
more acute and lower than the first, cut the air. The boy was thoroughly
aroused. “Deuce take them!” he exclaimed. “They actually are aiming at
me!” The bullet had passed at a short distance from him.

“Down!” shouted the officer, imperious and irritated.

“I’ll come down presently,” replied the boy. “But the tree shelters me.
Don’t fear. You want to know what there is on the left?”

“Yes, on the left,” answered the officer; “but come down.”

“On the left,” shouted the lad, thrusting his body out in that direction,
“yonder, where there is a chapel, I think I see—”

A third fierce whistle passed through the air, and almost instantaneously
the boy was seen to descend, catching for a moment at the trunk and
branches, and then falling headlong with arms outspread.

“Curse it!” exclaimed the officer, running up.

The boy landed on the ground, upon his back, and remained stretched
out there, with arms outspread and supine; a stream of blood flowed from
his breast, on the left. The sergeant and two soldiers leaped from their
horses; the officer bent over and opened his shirt: the ball had entered his
left lung. “He is dead!” exclaimed the officer.

“No, he still lives!” replied the sergeant.—“Ah, poor boy! brave boy!”
cried the officer. “Courage, courage!” But while he was saying “courage,”
he was pressing his handkerchief on the wound. The boy rolled his eyes
wildly and dropped his head back. He was dead. The officer turned pale and
stood for a moment gazing at him; then he laid him down carefully on his
cloak upon the grass; then rose and stood looking at him; the sergeant and
two soldiers also stood motionless, gazing upon him: the rest were facing in
the direction of the enemy.

“Poor boy!” repeated the officer. “Poor, brave boy!”

Then he approached the house, removed the tricolor from the window,
and spread it in guise of a funeral pall over the little dead boy, leaving his
face uncovered. The sergeant collected the dead boy’s shoes, cap, his little
stick, and his knife, and placed them beside him.

They stood for a few moments longer in silence; then the officer turned
to the sergeant and said to him, “We will send the ambulance for him: he
died as a soldier; the soldiers shall bury him.” Having said this, he wafted a
kiss with his hand to the dead boy, and shouted “To horse!” All sprang into
the saddle, the troop drew together and resumed its road.

And a few hours later the little dead boy received the honors of war.

At sunset the whole line of the Italian advance-posts marched forward
towards the foe, and along the same road which had been traversed in the
morning by the detachment of cavalry, there proceeded, in two files, a
heavy battalion of sharpshooters, who, a few days before, had valiantly
watered the hill of San Martino with blood. The news of the boy’s death had
already spread among the soldiers before they left the encampment. The
path, flanked by a rivulet, ran a few paces distant from the house. When the
first officers of the battalion caught sight of the little body stretched at the
foot of the ash-tree and covered with the tricolored banner, they made the
salute to it with their swords, and one of them bent over the bank of the
streamlet, which was covered with flowers at that spot, plucked a couple of
blossoms and threw them on it. Then all the sharpshooters, as they passed,
plucked flowers and threw them on the body. In a few minutes the boy was
covered with flowers, and officers and soldiers all saluted him as they
passed by: “Bravo, little Lombard!” “Farewell, my lad!” “I salute thee, gold
locks!” “Hurrah!” “Glory!” “Farewell!” One officer tossed him his medal
for valor; another went and kissed his brow. And flowers continued to rain
down on his bare feet, on his blood-stained breast, on his golden head. And
there he lay asleep on the grass, enveloped in his flag, with a white and
almost smiling face, poor boy! as though he heard these salutes and was
glad that he had given his life for his Lombardy.

THE POOR.

Tuesday, 29th.

To give one’s life for one’s country as the Lombard boy did, is a great
virtue; but you must not neglect the lesser virtues, my son. This morning as
you walked in front of me, when we were returning from school, you
passed near a poor woman who was holding between her knees a thin, pale
child, and who asked alms of you. You looked at her and gave her nothing,
and yet you had some coppers in your pocket. Listen, my son. Do not
accustom yourself to pass indifferently before misery which stretches out its
hand to you and far less before a mother who asks a copper for her child.
Reflect that the child may be hungry; think of the agony of that poor
woman. Picture to yourself the sob of despair of your mother, if she were
some day forced to say, “Enrico, I cannot give you any bread even to-day!”
When I give a soldo to a beggar, and he says to me, “God preserve your
health, and the health of all belonging to you!” you cannot understand the
sweetness which these words produce in my heart, the gratitude that I feel
for that poor man. It seems to me certain that such a good wish must keep
one in good health for a long time, and I return home content, and think,
“Oh, that poor man has returned to me very much more than I gave him!”
Well, let me sometimes feel that good wish called forth, merited by you;
draw a soldo from your little purse now and then, and let it fall into the
hand of a blind man without means of subsistence, of a mother without
bread, of a child without a mother. The poor love the alms of boys, because
it does not humiliate them, and because boys, who stand in need of
everything, resemble themselves: you see that there are always poor people
around the schoolhouses. The alms of a man is an act of charity; but that of
a child is at one and the same time an act of charity and a caress—do you
understand? It is as though a soldo and a flower fell from your hand
together. Reflect that you lack nothing, and that they lack everything, that
while you aspire to be happy, they are content simply with not dying.
Reflect, that it is a horror, in the midst of so many palaces, along the streets
thronged with carriages, and children clad in velvet, that there should be
women and children who have nothing to eat. To have nothing to eat! O
God! Boys like you, as good as you, as intelligent as you, who, in the midst
of a great city, have nothing to eat, like wild beasts lost in a desert! Oh,

never again, Enrico, pass a mother who is begging, without placing a soldo
in her hand!

Thy Father.

DECEMBER.

THE TRADER.

Thursday, 1st.

My father wishes me to have some one of my companions come to the
house every holiday, or that I should go to see one of them, in order that I
may gradually become friends with all of them. Sunday I shall go to walk
with Votini, the well-dressed boy who is always polishing himself up, and
who is so envious of Derossi. In the meantime, Garoffi came to the house
to-day,—that long, lank boy, with the nose like an owl’s beak, and small,
knavish eyes, which seem to be ferreting everywhere. He is the son of a
grocer; he is an eccentric fellow; he is always counting the soldi that he has
in his pocket; he reckons them on his fingers very, very rapidly, and goes
through some process of multiplication without any tables; and he hoards
his money, and already has a book in the Scholars’ Savings Bank. He never
spends a soldo, I am positive; and if he drops a centesimo under the
benches, he is capable of hunting for it for a week. He does as magpies do,
so Derossi says. Everything that he finds—worn-out pens, postage-stamps
that have been used, pins, candle-ends—he picks up. He has been collecting
postage-stamps for more than two years now; and he already has hundreds
of them from every country, in a large album, which he will sell to a
bookseller later on, when he has got it quite full. Meanwhile, the bookseller
gives him his copy-books gratis, because he takes a great many boys to the
shop. In school, he is always bartering; he effects sales of little articles
every day, and lotteries and exchanges; then he regrets the exchange, and
wants his stuff back; he buys for two and gets rid of it for four; he plays at
pitch-penny, and never loses; he sells old newspapers over again to the

tobacconist; and he keeps a little blank-book, in which he sets down his
transactions, which is completely filled with sums and subtractions. At
school he studies nothing but arithmetic; and if he desires the medal, it is
only that he may have a free entrance into the puppet-show. But he pleases
me; he amuses me. We played at keeping a market, with weights and scales.
He knows the exact price of everything; he understands weighing, and
makes handsome paper horns, like shopkeepers, with great expedition. He
declares that as soon as he has finished school he shall set up in business—
in a new business which he has invented himself. He was very much
pleased when I gave him some foreign postage-stamps; and he informed me
exactly how each one sold for collections. My father pretended to be
reading the newspaper; but he listened to him, and was greatly diverted. His
pockets are bulging, full of his little wares; and he covers them up with a
long black cloak, and always appears thoughtful and preoccupied with
business, like a merchant. But the thing that he has nearest his heart is his
collection of postage-stamps. This is his treasure; and he always speaks of it
as though he were going to get a fortune out of it. His companions accuse
him of miserliness and usury. I do not know: I like him; he teaches me a
great many things; he seems a man to me. Coretti, the son of the wood-
merchant, says that he would not give him his postage-stamps to save his
mother’s life. My father does not believe it.

“Wait a little before you condemn him,” he said to me; “he has this
passion, but he has heart as well.”

VANITY.

Monday, 5th.

Yesterday I went to take a walk along the Rivoli road with Votini and
his father. As we were passing through the Via Dora Grossa we saw Stardi,
the boy who kicks disturbers, standing stiffly in front of the window of a
book-shop, with his eyes fixed on a geographical map; and no one knows
how long he had been there, because he studies even in the street. He barely

returned our salute, the rude fellow! Votini was well dressed—even too
much so. He had on morocco boots embroidered in red, an embroidered
coat, small silken frogs, a white beaver hat, and a watch; and he strutted.
But his vanity was destined to come to a bad end on this occasion. After
having run a tolerably long distance up the Rivoli road, leaving his father,
who was walking slowly, a long way in the rear, we halted at a stone seat,
beside a modestly clad boy, who appeared to be weary, and was meditating,
with drooping head. A man, who must have been his father, was walking to
and fro under the trees, reading the newspaper. We sat down. Votini placed
himself between me and the boy. All at once he recollected that he was well
dressed, and wanted to make his neighbor admire and envy him.

He lifted one foot, and said to me, “Have you seen my officer’s boots?”
He said this in order to make the other boy look at them; but the latter paid
no attention to them.

Then he dropped his foot, and showed me his silk frogs, glancing
askance at the boy the while, and said that these frogs did not please him,
and that he wanted to have them changed to silver buttons; but the boy did
not look at the frogs either.

Then Votini fell to twirling his very handsome white castor hat on the
tip of his forefinger; but the boy—and it seemed as though he did it on
purpose—did not deign even a glance at the hat.

Votini, who began to become irritated, drew out his watch, opened it,
and showed me the wheels; but the boy did not turn his head. “Is it of silver
gilt?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied; “it is gold.”

“But not entirely of gold,” I said; “there must be some silver with it.”

“Why, no!” he retorted; and, in order to compel the boy to look, he held
the watch before his face, and said to him, “Say, look here! isn’t it true that
it is entirely of gold?”

The boy replied curtly, “I don’t know.”

“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Votini, full of wrath, “what pride!”

As he was saying this, his father came up, and heard him; he looked
steadily at the lad for a moment, then said sharply to his son, “Hold your
tongue!” and, bending down to his ear, he added, “he is blind!”

Votini sprang to his feet, with a shudder, and stared the boy in the face:
the latter’s eyeballs were glassy, without expression, without sight.

Votini stood humbled,—speechless,—with his eyes fixed on the ground.
At length he stammered, “I am sorry; I did not know.”

But the blind boy, who had understood it all, said, with a kind and
melancholy smile, “Oh, it’s no matter!”

Well, he is vain; but Votini has not at all a bad heart. He never laughed
again during the whole of the walk.

THE FIRST SNOW-STORM.

Saturday, 10th.

Farewell, walks to Rivoli! Here is the beautiful friend of the boys! Here
is the first snow! Ever since yesterday evening it has been falling in thick
flakes as large as gillyflowers. It was a pleasure this morning at school to
see it beat against the panes and pile up on the window-sills; even the
master watched it, and rubbed his hands; and all were glad, when they
thought of making snowballs, and of the ice which will come later, and of
the hearth at home. Stardi, entirely absorbed in his lessons, and with his
fists pressed to his temples, was the only one who paid no attention to it.
What beauty, what a celebration there was when we left school! All danced
down the streets, shouting and tossing their arms, catching up handfuls of
snow, and dashing about in it, like poodles in water. The umbrellas of the
parents, who were waiting for them outside, were all white; the policeman’s
helmet was white; all our satchels were white in a few moments. Every one

appeared to be beside himself with joy—even Precossi, the son of the
blacksmith, that pale boy who never laughs; and Robetti, the lad who saved
the little child from the omnibus, poor fellow! he jumped about on his
crutches. The Calabrian, who had never touched snow, made himself a little
ball of it, and began to eat it, as though it had been a peach; Crossi, the son
of the vegetable-vendor, filled his satchel with it; and the little mason made
us burst with laughter, when my father invited him to come to our house to-
morrow. He had his mouth full of snow, and, not daring either to spit it out
or to swallow it, he stood there choking and staring at us, and made no
answer. Even the schoolmistress came out of school on a run, laughing; and
my mistress of the first upper class, poor little thing! ran through the
drizzling snow, covering her face with her green veil, and coughing; and
meanwhile, hundreds of girls from the neighboring schoolhouse passed by,
screaming and frolicking on that white carpet; and the masters and the
beadles and the policemen shouted, “Home! home!” swallowing flakes of
snow, and whitening their moustaches and beards. But they, too, laughed at
this wild hilarity of the scholars, as they celebrated the winter.

You hail the arrival of winter; but there are boys who have neither
clothes nor shoes nor fire. There are thousands of them, who descend to
their villages, over a long road, carrying in hands bleeding from chilblains a
bit of wood to warm the schoolroom. There are hundreds of schools almost
buried in the snow, bare and dismal as caves, where the boys suffocate with
smoke or chatter their teeth with cold as they gaze in terror at the white
flakes which descend unceasingly, which pile up without cessation on their
distant cabins threatened by avalanches. You rejoice in the winter, boys.
Think of the thousands of creatures to whom winter brings misery and
death.

Thy Father.

THE LITTLE MASON.

Sunday, 11th.

The little mason came to-day, in a hunting-jacket, entirely dressed in the
cast-off clothes of his father, which were still white with lime and plaster.
My father was even more anxious than I that he should come. How much
pleasure he gives us! No sooner had he entered than he pulled off his ragged
cap, which was all soaked with snow, and thrust it into one of his pockets;
then he advanced with his listless gait, like a weary workman, turning his
face, as smooth as an apple, with its ball-like nose, from side to side; and
when he entered the dining-room, he cast a glance round at the furniture
and fixed his eyes on a small picture of Rigoletto, a hunchbacked jester, and
made a “hare’s face.”

It is impossible to refrain from laughing when one sees him make that
hare’s face. We went to playing with bits of wood: he possesses an
extraordinary skill at making towers and bridges, which seem to stand as
though by a miracle, and he works at it quite seriously, with the patience of
a man. Between one tower and another he told me about his family: they
live in a garret; his father goes to the evening school to learn to read, and
his mother is a washerwoman. And they must love him, of course, for he is
clad like a poor boy, but he is well protected from the cold, with neatly
mended clothes, and with his necktie nicely tied by his mother’s hands. His
father, he told me, is a fine man,—a giant, who has trouble in getting
through doors, but he is kind, and always calls his son “hare’s face”: the
son, on the contrary, is rather small.

At four o’clock we lunched on bread and goat’s-milk cheese, as we sat
on the sofa; and when we rose, I do not know why, but my father did not
wish me to brush off the back, which the little mason had spotted with
white, from his jacket: he restrained my hand, and then rubbed it off himself
on the sly. While we were playing, the little mason lost a button from his
hunting-jacket, and my mother sewed it on, and he grew quite red, and
began to watch her sew, in perfect amazement and confusion, holding his
breath the while. Then we gave him some albums of caricatures to look at,
and he, without being aware of it himself, imitated the grimaces of the faces
there so well, that even my father laughed. He was so much pleased when
he went away that he forgot to put on his tattered cap; and when we reached

the landing, he made a hare’s face at me once more in sign of his gratitude.
His name is Antonio Rabucco, and he is eight years and eight months old.

Do you know, my son, why I did not wish you to wipe off the sofa?
Because to wipe it while your companion was looking on would have been
almost the same as administering a reproof to him for having soiled it. And
this was not well, in the first place, because he did not do it intentionally,
and in the next, because he did it with the clothes of his father, who had
covered them with plaster while at work; and what is contracted while at
work is not dirt; it is dust, lime, varnish, whatever you like, but it is not dirt.
Labor does not engender dirt. Never say of a laborer coming from his work,
“He is filthy.” You should say, “He has on his garments the signs, the traces,
of his toil.” Remember this. And you must love the little mason, first,
because he is your comrade; and next, because he is the son of a
workingman.

Thy Father.

“STOP THAT, YOU LITTLE RASCALS!”

View larger image.

A SNOWBALL.

Friday, 16th.

It is still snow, snow. A shameful thing happened in connection with the
snow this morning when we came out of school. A flock of boys had no
sooner got into the Corso than they began to throw balls of that watery
snow which makes missiles as solid and heavy as stones. Many persons
were passing along the sidewalks. A gentleman called out, “Stop that, you
little rascals!” and just at that moment a sharp cry rose from another part of
the street, and we saw an old man who had lost his hat and was staggering
about, covering his face with his hands, and beside him a boy who was
shouting, “Help! help!”

People instantly ran from all directions. He had been struck in the eye
with a ball. All the boys dispersed, fleeing like arrows. I was standing in
front of the bookseller’s shop, into which my father had gone, and I saw
several of my companions approaching at a run, mingling with others near
me, and pretending to be engaged in staring at the windows: there was
Garrone, with his penny roll in his pocket, as usual; Coretti, the little
mason; and Garoffi, the boy with the postage-stamps. In the meantime a
crowd had formed around the old man, and a policeman and others were
running to and fro, threatening and demanding: “Who was it? Who did it?
Was it you? Tell me who did it!” and they looked at the boys’ hands to see
whether they were wet with snow.

Garoffi was standing beside me. I perceived that he was trembling all
over, and that his face was as white as that of a corpse. “Who was it? Who
did it?” the crowd continued to cry.

Then I overheard Garrone say in a low voice to Garoffi, “Come, go and
present yourself; it would be cowardly to allow any one else to be arrested.”

“But I did not do it on purpose,” replied Garoffi, trembling like a leaf.

“No matter; do your duty,” repeated Garrone.

“But I have not the courage.”

“Take courage, then; I will accompany you.”

And the policeman and the other people were crying more loudly than
ever: “Who was it? Who did it? One of his glasses has been driven into his
eye! He has been blinded! The ruffians!”

I thought that Garoffi would fall to the earth. “Come,” said Garrone,
resolutely, “I will defend you;” and grasping him by the arm, he thrust him
forward, supporting him as though he had been a sick man. The people saw,
and instantly understood, and several persons ran up with their fists raised;
but Garrone thrust himself between, crying:—

“Do ten men of you set on one boy?”

Then they ceased, and a policeman seized Garoffi by the hand and led
him, pushing aside the crowd as he went, to a pastry-cook’s shop, where the
wounded man had been carried. On catching sight of him, I suddenly
recognized him as the old employee who lives on the fourth floor of our
house with his grandnephew. He was stretched out on a chair, with a
handkerchief over his eyes.

“I did not do it intentionally!” sobbed Garoffi, half dead with terror; “I
did not do it intentionally!”

Two or three persons thrust him violently into the shop, crying, “Your
face to the earth! Beg his pardon!” and they threw him to the ground. But
all at once two vigorous arms set him on his feet again, and a resolute voice
said:—

“No, gentlemen!” It was our head-master, who had seen it all. “Since he
has had the courage to present himself,” he added, “no one has the right to
humiliate him.” All stood silent. “Ask his forgiveness,” said the head-
master to Garoffi. Garoffi, bursting into tears, embraced the old man’s
knees, and the latter, having felt for the boy’s head with his hand, caressed
his hair. Then all said:—

“Go away, boy! go, return home.”

And my father drew me out of the crowd, and said to me as we passed
along the street, “Enrico, would you have had the courage, under similar

circumstances, to do your duty,—to go and confess your fault?”

I told him that I should. And he said, “Give me your word, as a lad of
heart and honor, that you would do it.” “I give thee my word, father mine!”

THE MISTRESSES.

Saturday, 17th.

Garoffi was thoroughly terrified to-day, in the expectation of a severe
punishment from the teacher; but the master did not make his appearance;
and as the assistant was also missing, Signora Cromi, the oldest of the
schoolmistresses, came to teach the school; she has two grown-up children,
and she has taught several women to read and write, who now come to
accompany their sons to the Baretti schoolhouse.

She was sad to-day, because one of her sons is ill. No sooner had they
caught sight of her, than they began to make an uproar. But she said, in a
slow and tranquil tone, “Respect my white hair; I am not only a school-
teacher, I am also a mother”; and then no one dared to speak again, in spite
of that brazen face of Franti, who contented himself with jeering at her on
the sly.

Signora Delcati, my brother’s teacher, was sent to take charge of
Signora Cromi’s class, and to Signora Delcati’s was sent the teacher who is
called “the little nun,” because she always dresses in dark colors, with a
black apron, and has a small white face, hair that is always smooth, very
bright eyes, and a delicate voice, that seems to be forever murmuring
prayers. And it is incomprehensible, my mother says; she is so gentle and
timid, with that thread of a voice, which is always even, which is hardly
audible, and she never speaks loud nor flies into a passion; but,
nevertheless, she keeps the boys so quiet that you cannot hear them, and the
most roguish bow their heads when she merely admonishes them with her
finger, and her school seems like a church; and it is for this reason, also,
that she is called “the little nun.”

But there is another one who pleases me,—the young mistress of the
first lower, No. 3, that young girl with the rosy face, who has two pretty
dimples in her cheeks, and who wears a large red feather on her little
bonnet, and a small cross of yellow glass on her neck. She is always
cheerful, and keeps her class cheerful; she is always calling out with that
silvery voice of hers, which makes her seem to be singing, and tapping her
little rod on the table, and clapping her hands to impose silence; then, when
they come out of school, she runs after one and another like a child, to bring
them back into line: she pulls up the cape of one, and buttons the coat of
another, so that they may not take cold; she follows them even into the
street, in order that they may not fall to quarrelling; she beseeches the
parents not to whip them at home; she brings lozenges to those who have
coughs; she lends her muff to those who are cold; and she is continually
tormented by the smallest children, who caress her and demand kisses, and
pull at her veil and her mantle; but she lets them do it, and kisses them all
with a smile, and returns home all rumpled and with her throat all bare,
panting and happy, with her beautiful dimples and her red feather. She is
also the girls’ drawing-teacher, and she supports her mother and a brother
by her own labor.

IN THE HOUSE OF THE WOUNDED MAN.

Sunday, 18th.

The grandnephew of the old employee who was struck in the eye by
Garoffi’s snowball is with the schoolmistress who has the red feather: we
saw him to-day in the house of his uncle, who treats him like a son. I had
finished writing out the monthly story for the coming week,—The Little
Florentine Scribe,—which the master had given to me to copy; and my
father said to me:—

“Let us go up to the fourth floor, and see how that old gentleman’s eye
is.”

We entered a room which was almost dark, where the old man was
sitting up in bed, with a great many pillows behind his shoulders; by the
bedside sat his wife, and in one corner his nephew was amusing himself.
The old man’s eye was bandaged. He was very glad to see my father; he
made us sit down, and said that he was better, that his eye was not only not
ruined, but that he should be quite well again in a few days.

“It was an accident,” he added. “I regret the terror which it must have
caused that poor boy.” Then he talked to us about the doctor, whom he
expected every moment to attend him. Just then the door-bell rang.

“There is the doctor,” said his wife.

The door opened—and whom did I see? Garoffi, in his long cloak,
standing, with bowed head, on the threshold, and without the courage to
enter.

“Who is it?” asked the sick man.

“It is the boy who threw the snowball,” said my father. And then the old
man said:—

“Oh, my poor boy! come here; you have come to inquire after the
wounded man, have you not? But he is better; be at ease; he is better and
almost well. Come here.”

Garoffi, who did not perceive us in his confusion, approached the bed,
forcing himself not to cry; and the old man caressed him, but could not
speak.

“Thanks,” said the old man; “go and tell your father and mother that all
is going well, and that they are not to think any more about it.”

But Garoffi did not move, and seemed to have something to say which
he dared not utter.

“What have you to say to me? What is it that you want?”

“I!—Nothing.”

“Well, good by, until we meet again, my boy; go with your heart in
peace.”

Garoffi went as far as the door; but there he halted, turned to the
nephew, who was following him, and gazed curiously at him. All at once he
pulled some object from beneath his cloak, put it in the boy’s hand, and
whispered hastily to him, “It is for you,” and away he went like a flash.

The boy carried the object to his uncle; we saw that on it was written, I
give you this; we looked inside, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. It
was the famous album, with his collection of postage-stamps, which poor
Garoffi had brought, the collection of which he was always talking, upon
which he had founded so many hopes, and which had cost him so much
trouble; it was his treasure, poor boy! it was the half of his very blood,
which he had presented in exchange for his pardon.

THE LITTLE FLORENTINE SCRIBE.

(Monthly Story.)

He was in the fourth elementary class. He was a graceful Florentine lad
of twelve, with black hair and a white face, the eldest son of an employee
on the railway, who, having a large family and but small pay, lived in
straitened circumstances. His father loved him and was tolerably kind and
indulgent to him—indulgent in everything except in that which referred to
school: on this point he required a great deal, and showed himself severe,
because his son was obliged to attain such a rank as would enable him to
soon obtain a place and help his family; and in order to accomplish
anything quickly, it was necessary that he should work a great deal in a very
short time. And although the lad studied, his father was always exhorting
him to study more.

His father was advanced in years, and too much toil had aged him
before his time. Nevertheless, in order to provide for the necessities of his

family, in addition to the toil which his occupation imposed upon him, he
obtained special work here and there as a copyist, and passed a good part of
the night at his writing-table. Lately, he had undertaken, in behalf of a
house which published journals and books in parts, to write upon the
parcels the names and addresses of their subscribers, and he earned three
lire[1] for every five hundred of these paper wrappers, written in large and
regular characters. But this work wearied him, and he often complained of
it to his family at dinner.

“My eyes are giving out,” he said; “this night work is killing me.” One
day his son said to him, “Let me work instead of you, papa; you know that I
can write like you, and fairly well.” But the father answered:—

“No, my son, you must study; your school is a much more important
thing than my wrappers; I feel remorse at robbing you of a single hour; I
thank you, but I will not have it; do not mention it to me again.”

The son knew that it was useless to insist on such a matter with his
father, and he did not persist; but this is what he did. He knew that exactly
at midnight his father stopped writing, and quitted his workroom to go to
his bedroom; he had heard him several times: as soon as the twelve strokes
of the clock had sounded, he had heard the sound of a chair drawn back,
and the slow step of his father. One night he waited until the latter was in
bed, then dressed himself very, very softly, and felt his way to the little
workroom, lighted the petroleum lamp again, seated himself at the writing-
table, where lay a pile of white wrappers and the list of addresses, and
began to write, imitating exactly his father’s handwriting. And he wrote
with a will, gladly, a little in fear, and the wrappers piled up, and from time
to time he dropped the pen to rub his hands, and then began again with
increased alacrity, listening and smiling. He wrote a hundred and sixty—
one lira! Then he stopped, placed the pen where he had found it,
extinguished the light, and went back to bed on tiptoe.

At noon that day his father sat down to the table in a good humor. He
had perceived nothing. He performed the work mechanically, measuring it
by the hour, and thinking of something else, and only counted the wrappers

he had written on the following day. He seated himself at the table in a fine
humor, and slapping his son on one shoulder, he said to him:—

“Eh, Giulio! Your father is even a better workman than you thought. In
two hours I did a good third more work than usual last night. My hand is
still nimble, and my eyes still do their duty.” And Giulio, silent but content,
said to himself, “Poor daddy, besides the money, I am giving him some
satisfaction in the thought that he has grown young again. Well, courage!”

Encouraged by these good results, when night came and twelve o’clock
struck, he rose once more, and set to work. And this he did for several
nights. And his father noticed nothing; only once, at supper, he uttered this
exclamation, “It is strange how much oil has been used in this house
lately!” This was a shock to Giulio; but the conversation ceased there, and
the nocturnal labor proceeded.

However, by dint of thus breaking his sleep every night, Giulio did not
get sufficient rest: he rose in the morning fatigued, and when he was doing
his school work in the evening, he had difficulty in keeping his eyes open.
One evening, for the first time in his life, he fell asleep over his copy-book.

“Courage! courage!” cried his father, clapping his hands; “to work!”

He shook himself and set to work again. But the next evening, and on
the days following, the same thing occurred, and worse: he dozed over his
books, he rose later than usual, he studied his lessons in a languid way, he
seemed disgusted with study. His father began to observe him, then to
reflect seriously, and at last to reprove him. He should never have done it!

“Giulio,” he said to him one morning, “you put me quite beside myself;
you are no longer as you used to be. I don’t like it. Take care; all the hopes
of your family rest on you. I am dissatisfied; do you understand?”

At this reproof, the first severe one, in truth, which he had ever
received, the boy grew troubled.

“Yes,” he said to himself, “it is true; it cannot go on so; this deceit must
come to an end.”

But at dinner, on the evening of that very same day, his father said with
much cheerfulness, “Do you know that this month I have earned thirty-two
lire more at addressing those wrappers than last month!” and so saying, he
drew from under the table a paper package of sweets which he had bought,
that he might celebrate with his children this extraordinary profit, and they
all hailed it with clapping of hands. Then Giulio took heart again, courage
again, and said in his heart, “No, poor papa, I will not cease to deceive you;
I will make greater efforts to work during the day, but I shall continue to
work at night for you and for the rest.” And his father added, “Thirty-two
lire more! I am satisfied. But that boy there,” pointing at Giulio, “is the one
who displeases me.” And Giulio received the reprimand in silence, forcing
back two tears which tried to flow; but at the same time he felt a great
pleasure in his heart.

And he continued to work by main force; but fatigue added to fatigue
rendered it ever more difficult for him to resist. Thus things went on for two
months. The father continued to reproach his son, and to gaze at him with
eyes which grew constantly more wrathful. One day he went to make
inquiries of the teacher, and the teacher said to him: “Yes, he gets along, he
gets along, because he is intelligent; but he no longer has the good will
which he had at first. He is drowsy, he yawns, his mind is distracted. He
writes short compositions, scribbled down in all haste, in bad chirography.
Oh, he could do a great deal, a great deal more.”

That evening the father took the son aside, and spoke to him words
which were graver than any the latter had ever heard. “Giulio, you see how
I toil, how I am wearing out my life, for the family. You do not second my
efforts. You have no heart for me, nor for your brothers, nor for your
mother!”

“Ah no! don’t say that, father!” cried the son, bursting into tears, and
opening his mouth to confess all. But his father interrupted him, saying:—

“You are aware of the condition of the family; you know that good will
and sacrifices on the part of all are necessary. I myself, as you see, have had
to double my work. I counted on a gift of a hundred lire from the railway
company this month, and this morning I have learned that I shall receive
nothing!”

At this information, Giulio repressed the confession which was on the
point of escaping from his soul, and repeated resolutely to himself: “No,
papa, I shall tell you nothing; I shall guard my secret for the sake of being
able to work for you; I will recompense you in another way for the sorrow
which I occasion you; I will study enough at school to win promotion; the
important point is to help you to earn our living, and to relieve you of the
fatigue which is killing you.”

And so he went on, and two months more passed, of labor by night and
weakness by day, of desperate efforts on the part of the son, and of bitter
reproaches on the part of the father. But the worst of it was, that the latter
grew gradually colder towards the boy, only addressed him rarely, as though
he had been a recreant son, of whom there was nothing any longer to be
expected, and almost avoided meeting his glance. And Giulio perceived this
and suffered from it, and when his father’s back was turned, he threw him a
furtive kiss, stretching forth his face with a sentiment of sad and dutiful
tenderness; and between sorrow and fatigue, he grew thin and pale, and he
was constrained to still further neglect his studies. And he understood well
that there must be an end to it some day, and every evening he said to
himself, “I will not get up to-night”; but when the clock struck twelve, at
the moment when he should have vigorously reaffirmed his resolution, he
felt remorse: it seemed to him, that by remaining in bed he should be failing
in a duty, and robbing his father and the family of a lira. And he rose,
thinking that some night his father would wake up and discover him, or that
he would discover the deception by accident, by counting the wrappers
twice; and then all would come to a natural end, without any act of his will,
which he did not feel the courage to exert. And thus he went on.

But one evening at dinner his father spoke a word which was decisive
so far as he was concerned. His mother looked at him, and as it seemed to
her that he was more ill and weak than usual, she said to him, “Giulio, you
are ill.” And then, turning to his father with anxiety: “Giulio is ill. See how
pale he is Giulio, my dear, how do you feel?”

His father gave a hasty glance, and said: “It is his bad conscience that
produces his bad health. He was not thus when he was a studious scholar
and a loving son.”

“But he is ill!” exclaimed the mother.

“I don’t care anything about him any longer!” replied the father.

This remark was like a stab in the heart to the poor boy. Ah! he cared
nothing any more. His father, who once trembled at the mere sound of a
cough from him! He no longer loved him; there was no longer any doubt;
he was dead in his father’s heart. “Ah, no! my father,” said the boy to
himself, his heart oppressed with anguish, “now all is over indeed; I cannot
live without your affection; I must have it all back. I will tell you all; I will
deceive you no longer. I will study as of old, come what will, if you will
only love me once more, my poor father! Oh, this time I am quite sure of
my resolution!”

Nevertheless he rose that night again, by force of habit more than
anything else; and when he was once up, he wanted to go and salute and see
once more, for the last time, in the quiet of the night, that little chamber
where he toiled so much in secret with his heart full of satisfaction and
tenderness. And when he beheld again that little table with the lamp lighted
and those white wrappers on which he was never more to write those names
of towns and persons, which he had come to know by heart, he was seized
with a great sadness, and with an impetuous movement he grasped the pen
to recommence his accustomed toil. But in reaching out his hand he struck a
book, and the book fell. The blood rushed to his heart. What if his father
had waked! Certainly he would not have discovered him in the commission
of a bad deed: he had himself decided to tell him all, and yet—the sound of
that step approaching in the darkness,—the discovery at that hour, in that
silence,—his mother, who would be awakened and alarmed,—and the
thought, which had occurred to him for the first time, that his father might
feel humiliated in his presence on thus discovering all;—all this terrified
him almost. He bent his ear, with suspended breath. He heard no sound. He
laid his ear to the lock of the door behind him—nothing. The whole house
was asleep. His father had not heard. He recovered his composure, and he
set himself again to his writing, and wrapper was piled on wrapper. He
heard the regular tread of the policeman below in the deserted street; then
the rumble of a carriage which gradually died away; then, after an interval,
the rattle of a file of carts, which passed slowly by; then a profound silence,

broken from time to time by the distant barking of a dog. And he wrote on
and on: and meanwhile his father was behind him. He had risen on hearing
the fall of the book, and had remained waiting for a long time: the rattle of
the carts had drowned the noise of his footsteps and the creaking of the
door-casing; and he was there, with his white head bent over Giulio’s little
black head, and he had seen the pen flying over the wrappers, and in an
instant he had divined all, remembered all, understood all, and a despairing
penitence, but at the same time an immense tenderness, had taken
possession of his mind and had held him nailed to the spot suffocating
behind his child. Suddenly Giulio uttered a piercing shriek: two arms had
pressed his head convulsively.

“Oh, papa, papa! forgive me, forgive me!” he cried, recognizing his
parent by his weeping.

“Do you forgive me!” replied his father, sobbing, and covering his brow
with kisses. “I have understood all, I know all; it is I, it is I who ask your
pardon, my blessed little creature; come, come with me!” and he pushed or
rather carried him to the bedside of his mother, who was awake, and
throwing him into her arms, he said:—

“Kiss this little angel of a son, who has not slept for three months, but
has been toiling for me, while I was saddening his heart, and he was earning
our bread!” The mother pressed him to her breast and held him there,
without the power to speak; at last she said: “Go to sleep at once, my baby,
go to sleep and rest.—Carry him to bed.”

The father took him from her arms, carried him to his room, and laid
him in his bed, still breathing hard and caressing him, and arranged his
pillows and coverlets for him.

“Thanks, papa,” the child kept repeating; “thanks; but go to bed yourself
now; I am content; go to bed, papa.”

But his father wanted to see him fall asleep; so he sat down beside the
bed, took his hand, and said to him, “Sleep, sleep, my little son!” and
Giulio, being weak, fell asleep at last, and slumbered many hours, enjoying,
for the first time in many months, a tranquil sleep, enlivened by pleasant

dreams; and as he opened his eyes, when the sun had already been shining
for a tolerably long time, he first felt, and then saw, close to his breast, and
resting upon the edge of the little bed, the white head of his father, who had
passed the night thus, and who was still asleep, with his brow against his
son’s heart.

FOOTNOTES
[1] Sixty cents.

WILL.

Wednesday, 28th.

There is Stardi in my school, who would have the force to do what the
little Florentine did. This morning two events occurred at the school:
Garoffi, wild with delight, because his album had been returned to him,
with the addition of three postage-stamps of the Republic of Guatemala,
which he had been seeking for three months; and Stardi, who took the
second medal; Stardi the next in the class after Derossi! All were amazed at
it. Who could ever have foretold it, when, in October, his father brought
him to school bundled up in that big green coat, and said to the master, in
presence of every one:—

“You must have a great deal of patience with him, because he is very
hard of understanding!”

Every one credited him with a wooden head from the very beginning.
But he said, “I will burst or I will succeed,” and he set to work doggedly, to
studying day and night, at home, at school, while walking, with set teeth
and clenched fists, patient as an ox, obstinate as a mule; and thus, by dint of
trampling on every one, disregarding mockery, and dealing kicks to

disturbers, this big thick-head passed in advance of the rest. He understood
not the first thing of arithmetic, he filled his compositions with absurdities,
he never succeeded in retaining a phrase in his mind; and now he solves
problems, writes correctly, and sings his lessons like a song. And his iron
will can be divined from the seeing how he is made, so very thickset and
squat, with a square head and no neck, with short, thick hands, and coarse
voice. He studies even on scraps of newspaper, and on theatre bills, and
every time that he has ten soldi, he buys a book; he has already collected a
little library, and in a moment of good humor he allowed the promise to slip
from his mouth that he would take me home and show it to me. He speaks
to no one, he plays with no one, he is always on hand, on his bench, with
his fists pressed to his temples, firm as a rock, listening to the teacher. How
he must have toiled, poor Stardi! The master said to him this morning,
although he was impatient and in a bad humor, when he bestowed the
medals:—

“Bravo, Stardi! he who endures, conquers.” But the latter did not appear
in the least puffed up with pride—he did not smile; and no sooner had he
returned to his seat, with the medal, than he planted his fists on his temples
again, and became more motionless and more attentive than before. But the
finest thing happened when he went out of school; for his father, a blood-
letter, as big and squat as himself, with a huge face and a huge voice, was
there waiting for him. He had not expected this medal, and he was not
willing to believe in it, so that it was necessary for the master to reassure
him, and then he began to laugh heartily, and tapped his son on the back of
the neck, saying energetically, “Bravo! good! my dear pumpkin; you’ll do!”
and he stared at him, astonished and smiling. And all the boys around him
smiled too, except Stardi. He was already ruminating the lesson for to-
morrow morning in that huge head of his.

GRATITUDE.

Saturday, 31st.

Your comrade Stardi never complains of his teacher; I am sure of that.
“The master was in a bad temper, was impatient,”—you say it in a tone of
resentment. Think an instant how often you give way to acts of impatience,
and towards whom? towards your father and your mother, towards whom
your impatience is a crime. Your master has very good cause to be impatient
at times! Reflect that he has been laboring for boys these many years, and
that if he has found many affectionate and noble individuals among them,
he has also found many ungrateful ones, who have abused his kindness and
ignored his toils; and that, between you all, you cause him far more
bitterness than satisfaction. Reflect, that the most holy man on earth, if
placed in his position, would allow himself to be conquered by wrath now
and then. And then, if you only knew how often the teacher goes to give a
lesson to a sick boy, all alone, because he is not ill enough to be excused
from school and is impatient on account of his suffering, and is pained to
see that the rest of you do not notice it, or abuse it! Respect, love, your
master, my son. Love him, also, because your father loves and respects him;
because he consecrates his life to the welfare of so many boys who will
forget him; love him because he opens and enlightens your intelligence and
educates your mind; because one of these days, when you have become a
man, and when neither I nor he shall be in the world, his image will often
present itself to your mind, side by side with mine, and then you will see
certain expressions of sorrow and fatigue in his honest countenance to
which you now pay no heed: you will recall them, and they will pain you,
even after the lapse of thirty years; and you will feel ashamed, you will feel
sad at not having loved him, at having behaved badly to him. Love your
master; for he belongs to that vast family of fifty thousand elementary
instructors, scattered throughout all Italy, who are the intellectual fathers of
the millions of boys who are growing up with you; the laborers, hardly
recognized and poorly recompensed, who are preparing in our country a
people superior to those of the present. I am not content with the affection
which you have for me, if you have it not also for all those who are doing
you good, and among these, your master stands first, after your parents.
Love him as you would love a brother of mine; love him when he caresses
and when he reproves you; when he is just, and when he appears to you to
be unjust; love him when he is amiable and gracious; and love him even
more when you see him sad. Love him always. And always pronounce with

reverence that name of “teacher,” which, after that of your father, is the
noblest, the sweetest name which one man can apply to another man.

Thy Father.

JANUARY.

THE ASSISTANT MASTER.

Wednesday, 4th.

My father was right; the master was in a bad humor because he was not
well; for the last three days, in fact, the assistant has been coming in his
stead,—that little man, without a beard, who seems like a youth. A shameful
thing happened this morning. There had been an uproar on the first and
second days, in the school, because the assistant is very patient and does
nothing but say, “Be quiet, be quiet, I beg of you.”

But this morning they passed all bounds. Such a noise arose, that his
words were no longer audible, and he admonished and besought; but it was
a mere waste of breath. Twice the head-master appeared at the door and
looked in; but the moment he disappeared the murmur increased as in a
market. It was in vain that Derossi and Garrone turned round and made
signs to their comrades to be good, so that it was a shame. No one paid any
heed to them. Stardi alone remained quiet, with his elbows on the bench,
and his fists to his temples, meditating, perhaps, on his famous library; and
Garoffi, that boy with the hooked nose and the postage-stamps, who was
wholly occupied in making a catalogue of the subscribers at two centesimi
each, for a lottery for a pocket inkstand. The rest chattered and laughed,
pounded on the points of pens fixed in the benches, and snapped pellets of
paper at each other with the elastics of their garters.

The assistant grasped now one, now another, by the arm, and shook
him; and he placed one of them against the wall—time wasted. He no

longer knew what to do, and he entreated them. “Why do you behave like
this? Do you wish me to punish you by force?” Then he thumped the little
table with his fist, and shouted in a voice of wrath and lamentation,
“Silence! silence! silence!” It was difficult to hear him. But the uproar
continued to increase. Franti threw a paper dart at him, some uttered cat-
calls, others thumped each other on the head; the hurly-burly was
indescribable; when, all of a sudden, the beadle entered and said:—

“Signor Master, the head-master has sent for you.” The master rose and
went out in haste, with a gesture of despair. Then the tumult began more
vigorously than ever. But suddenly Garrone sprang up, his face all
convulsed, and his fists clenched, and shouted in a voice choked with rage:
—

“Stop this! You are brutes! You take advantage of him because he is
kind. If he were to bruise your bones for you, you would be as abject as
dogs. You are a pack of cowards! The first one of you that jeers at him
again, I shall wait for outside, and I will break his teeth,—I swear it,—even
under the very eyes of his father!”

All became silent. Ah, what a fine thing it was to see Garrone, with his
eyes darting flames! He seemed to be a furious young lion. He stared at the
most daring, one after the other, and all hung their heads. When the
assistant re-entered, with red eyes, not a breath was audible. He stood in
amazement; then, catching sight of Garrone, who was still all fiery and
trembling, he understood it all, and he said to him, with accents of great
affection, as he might have spoken to a brother, “I thank you, Garrone.”

STARDI’S LIBRARY.

I have been home with Stardi, who lives opposite the schoolhouse; and I
really experienced a feeling of envy at the sight of his library. He is not at
all rich, and he cannot buy many books; but he preserves his schoolbooks
with great care, as well as those which his relatives give him; and he lays

aside every soldo that is given to him, and spends it at the bookseller’s. In
this way he has collected a little library; and when his father perceived that
he had this passion, he bought him a handsome bookcase of walnut wood,
with a green curtain, and he has had most of his volumes bound for him in
the colors that he likes. Thus when he draws a little cord, the green curtain
runs aside, and three rows of books of every color become visible, all
ranged in order, and shining, with gilt titles on their backs,—books of tales,
of travels, and of poetry; and some illustrated ones. And he understands
how to combine colors well: he places the white volumes next to the red
ones, the yellow next the black, the blue beside the white, so that, viewed
from a distance, they make a very fine appearance; and he amuses himself
by varying the combinations. He has made himself a catalogue. He is like a
librarian. He is always standing near his books, dusting them, turning over
the leaves, examining the bindings: it is something to see the care with
which he opens them, with his big, stubby hands, and blows between the
pages: then they seem perfectly new again. I have worn out all of mine. It is
a festival for him to polish off every new book that he buys, to put it in its
place, and to pick it up again to take another look at it from all sides, and to
brood over it as a treasure. He showed me nothing else for a whole hour.
His eyes were troubling him, because he had read too much. At a certain
time his father, who is large and thickset like himself, with a big head like
his, entered the room, and gave him two or three taps on the nape of the
neck, saying with that huge voice of his:—

“What do you think of him, eh? of this head of bronze? It is a stout
head, that will succeed in anything, I assure you!”

And Stardi half closed his eyes, under these rough caresses, like a big
hunting-dog. I do not know, I did not dare to jest with him; it did not seem
true to me, that he was only a year older than myself; and when he said to
me, “Farewell until we meet again,” at the door, with that face of his that
always seems wrathful, I came very near replying to him, “I salute you, sir,”
as to a man. I told my father afterwards, at home: “I don’t understand it;
Stardi has no natural talent, he has not fine manners, and his face is almost
ridiculous; yet he suggests ideas to me.” And my father answered, “It is
because he has character.” And I added, “During the hour that I spent with

him he did not utter fifty words, he did not show me a single plaything, he
did not laugh once; yet I liked to go there.”

And my father answered, “That is because you esteem him.”

THE SON OF THE BLACKSMITH-IRONMONGER.

Yes, but I also esteem Precossi; and to say that I esteem him is not
enough,—Precossi, the son of the blacksmith-ironmonger,—that thin little
fellow, who has kind, melancholy eyes and a frightened air; who is so timid
that he says to every one, “Excuse me”; who is always sickly, and who,
nevertheless, studies so much. His father returns home, intoxicated with
brandy, and beats him without the slightest reason in the world, and flings
his books and his copy-books in the air with a backward turn of his hand;
and he comes to school with the black and blue marks on his face, and
sometimes with his face all swollen, and his eyes inflamed with much
weeping. But never, never can he be made to acknowledge that his father
beats him.

“Your father has been beating you,” his companions say to him; and he
instantly exclaims, “That is not true! it is not true!” for the sake of not
dishonoring his father.

“You did not burn this leaf,” the teacher says to him, showing him his
work, half burned.

“Yes,” he replies, in a trembling voice; “I let it fall on the fire.”

But we know very well, nevertheless, that his drunken father overturned
the table and the light with a kick, while the boy was doing his work. He
lives in a garret of our house, on another staircase. The portress tells my
mother everything: my sister Silvia heard him screaming from the terrace
one day, when his father had sent him headlong down stairs, because he had
asked for a few soldi to buy a grammar. His father drinks, but does not
work, and his family suffers from hunger. How often Precossi comes to

school with an empty stomach and nibbles in secret at a roll which Garrone
has given him, or at an apple brought to him by the schoolmistress with the
red feather, who was his teacher in the first lower class. But he never says,
“I am hungry; my father does not give me anything to eat.” His father
sometimes comes for him, when he chances to be passing the schoolhouse,
—pallid, unsteady on his legs, with a fierce face, and his hair over his eyes,
and his cap awry; and the poor boy trembles all over when he catches sight
of him in the street; but he immediately runs to meet him, with a smile; and
his father does not appear to see him, but seems to be thinking of something
else. Poor Precossi! He mends his torn copy-books, borrows books to study
his lessons, fastens the fragments of his shirt together with pins; and it is a
pity to see him performing his gymnastics, with those huge shoes in which
he is fairly lost, in those trousers which drag on the ground, and that jacket
which is too long, and those huge sleeves turned back to the very elbows.
And he studies; he does his best; he would be one of the first, if he were
able to work at home in peace. This morning he came to school with the
marks of finger-nails on one cheek, and they all began to say to him:—

“It is your father, and you cannot deny it this time; it was your father
who did that to you. Tell the head-master about it, and he will have him
called to account for it.”

But he sprang up, all flushed, with a voice trembling with indignation:
—

“It’s not true! it’s not true! My father never beats me!”

But afterwards, during lesson time, his tears fell upon the bench, and
when any one looked at him, he tried to smile, in order that he might not
show it. Poor Precossi! To-morrow Derossi, Coretti, and Nelli are coming to
my house; I want to tell him to come also; and I want to have him take
luncheon with me: I want to treat him to books, and turn the house upside
down to amuse him, and to fill his pockets with fruit, for the sake of seeing
him contented for once, poor Precossi! who is so good and so courageous.

A FINE VISIT.

Thursday, 12th.

This has been one of the finest Thursdays of the year for me. At two
o’clock, precisely, Derossi and Coretti came to the house, with Nelli, the
hunchback: Precossi was not permitted by his father to come. Derossi and
Coretti were still laughing at their encounter with Crossi, the son of the
vegetable-seller, in the street,—the boy with the useless arm and the red
hair,—who was carrying a huge cabbage for sale, and with the soldo which
he was to receive for the cabbage he was to go and buy a pen. He was
perfectly happy because his father had written from America that they
might expect him any day. Oh, the two beautiful hours that we passed
together! Derossi and Coretti are the two jolliest boys in the school; my
father fell in love with them. Coretti had on his chocolate-colored tights and
his catskin cap. He is a lively imp, who wants to be always doing
something, stirring up something, setting something in motion. He had
already carried on his shoulders half a cartload of wood, early that morning;
nevertheless, he galloped all over the house, taking note of everything and
talking incessantly, as sprightly and nimble as a squirrel; and passing into
the kitchen, he asked the cook how much we had to pay a myriagramme for
wood, because his father sells it at forty-five centesimi. He is always talking
of his father, of the time when he was a soldier in the 49th regiment, at the
battle of Custoza, where he served in the squadron of Prince Umberto; and
he is so gentle in his manners! It makes no difference that he was born and
brought up surrounded by wood: he has nobility in his blood, in his heart, as
my father says. And Derossi amused us greatly; he knows geography like a
master: he shut his eyes and said:—

“There, I see the whole of Italy; the Apennines, which extend to the
Ionian Sea, the rivers flowing here and there, the white cities, the gulfs, the
blue bays, the green islands;" and he repeated the names correctly in their
order and very rapidly, as though he were reading them on the map; and at
the sight of him standing thus, with his head held high, with all his golden
curls, with his closed eyes, and all dressed in bright blue with gilt buttons,
as straight and handsome as a statue, we were all filled with admiration. In
one hour he had learned by heart nearly three pages, which he is to recite

the day after to-morrow, for the anniversary of the funeral of King Vittorio.
And even Nelli gazed at him in wonder and affection, as he rubbed the folds
of his apron of black cloth, and smiled with his clear and mournful eyes.
This visit gave me a great deal of pleasure; it left something like sparks in
my mind and my heart. And it pleased me, too, when they went away, to see
poor Nelli between the other two tall, strong fellows, who carried him home
on their arms, and made him laugh as I have never seen him laugh before.
On returning to the dining-room, I perceived that the picture representing
Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester, was no longer there. My father had taken
it away in order that Nelli might not see it.

THE FUNERAL OF VITTORIO EMANUELE.

January, 17th.

To-day, at two o’clock, as soon as we entered the schoolroom, the
master called up Derossi, who went and took his place in front of the little
table facing us, and began to recite, in his vibrating tones, gradually raising
his limpid voice, and growing flushed in the face:—

“Four years ago, on this day, at this hour, there arrived in front of the
Pantheon at Rome, the funeral car which bore the body of Vittorio
Emanuele II., the first king of Italy, dead after a reign of twenty-nine years,
during which the great Italian fatherland, broken up into seven states, and
oppressed by strangers and by tyrants, had been brought back to life in one
single state, free and independent; after a reign of twenty-nine years, which
he had made illustrious and beneficent with his valor, with loyalty, with
boldness amid perils, with wisdom amid triumphs, with constancy amid
misfortunes. The funeral car arrived, laden with wreaths, after having
traversed Rome under a rain of flowers, amid the silence of an immense and
sorrowing multitude, which had assembled from every part of Italy;
preceded by a legion of generals and by a throng of ministers and princes,
followed by a retinue of crippled veterans, by a forest of banners, by the
envoys of three hundred towns, by everything which represents the power

and the glory of a people, it arrived before the august temple where the
tomb awaited it. At that moment twelve cuirassiers removed the coffin from
the car. At that moment Italy bade her last farewell to her dead king, to her
old king whom she had loved so dearly, the last farewell to her soldier, to
her father, to the twenty-nine most fortunate and most blessed years in her
history. It was a grand and solemn moment. The looks, the souls, of all were
quivering at the sight of that coffin and the darkened banners of the eighty
regiments of the army of Italy, borne by eighty officers, drawn up in line on
its passage: for Italy was there in those eighty tokens, which recalled the
thousands of dead, the torrents of blood, our most sacred glories, our most
holy sacrifices, our most tremendous griefs. The coffin, borne by the
cuirassiers, passed, and then the banners bent forward all together in salute,
—the banners of the new regiments, the old, tattered banners of Goito, of
Pastrengo, of Santa Lucia, of Novara, of the Crimea, of Palestro, of San
Martino, of Castelfidardo; eighty black veils fell, a hundred medals clashed
against the staves, and that sonorous and confused uproar, which stirred the
blood of all, was like the sound of a thousand human voices saying all
together, ‘Farewell, good king, gallant king, loyal king! Thou wilt live in
the heart of thy people as long as the sun shall shine over Italy.’

“After this, the banners rose heavenward once more, and King Vittorio
entered into the immortal glory of the tomb.”

FRANTI EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL.

Saturday, 21st.

Only one boy was capable of laughing while Derossi was declaiming
the funeral oration of the king, and Franti laughed. I detest that fellow. He is
wicked. When a father comes to the school to reprove his son, he enjoys it;
when any one cries, he laughs. He trembles before Garrone, and he strikes
the little mason because he is small; he torments Crossi because he has a
helpless arm; he ridicules Precossi, whom every one respects; he even jeers
at Robetti, that boy in the second grade who walks on crutches, through

having saved a child. He provokes those who are weaker than himself, and
when it comes to blows, he grows ferocious and tries to do harm. There is
something beneath that low forehead, in those turbid eyes, which he keeps
nearly concealed under the visor of his small cap of waxed cloth, which
inspires a shudder. He fears no one; he laughs in the master’s face; he steals
when he gets a chance; he denies it with an impenetrable countenance; he is
always engaged in a quarrel with some one; he brings big pins to school, to
prick his neighbors with; he tears the buttons from his own jackets and from
those of others, and plays with them: his paper, books, and copy-books are
all crushed, torn, dirty; his ruler is jagged, his pens gnawed, his nails bitten,
his clothes covered with stains and rents which he has got in his brawls.
They say that his mother has fallen ill from the trouble that he causes her,
and that his father has driven him from the house three times; his mother
comes every now and then to make inquiries, and she always goes away in
tears. He hates school, he hates his companions, he hates the teacher. The
master sometimes pretends not to see his rascalities, and he behaves all the
worse. He tried to get a hold on him by kind treatment, and the boy
ridiculed him for it. He said terrible things to him, and the boy covered his
face with his hands, as though he were crying; but he was laughing. He was
suspended from school for three days, and he returned more perverse and
insolent than before. Derossi said to him one day, “Stop it! don’t you see
how much the teacher suffers?” and the other threatened to stick a nail into
his stomach. But this morning, at last, he got himself driven out like a dog.
While the master was giving to Garrone the rough draft of The Sardinian
Drummer-Boy, the monthly story for January, to copy, he threw a petard on
the floor, which exploded, making the schoolroom resound as from a
discharge of musketry. The whole class was startled by it. The master
sprang to his feet, and cried:—

“Franti, leave the school!”

The latter retorted, “It wasn’t I;” but he laughed. The master repeated:—

“Go!”

“I won’t stir,” he answered.

Then the master lost his temper, and flung himself upon him, seized him
by the arms, and tore him from his seat. He resisted, ground his teeth, and
made him carry him out by main force. The master bore him thus, heavy as
he was, to the head-master, and then returned to the schoolroom alone and
seated himself at his little table, with his head clutched in his hands,
gasping, and with an expression of such weariness and trouble that it was
painful to look at him.

“After teaching school for thirty years!” he exclaimed sadly, shaking his
head. No one breathed. His hands were trembling with fury, and the
perpendicular wrinkle that he has in the middle of his forehead was so deep
that it seemed like a wound. Poor master! All felt sorry for him. Derossi
rose and said, “Signor Master, do not grieve. We love you.” And then he
grew a little more tranquil, and said, “We will go on with the lesson, boys.”

THE SARDINIAN DRUMMER-BOY.

(Monthly Story.)

On the first day of the battle of Custoza, on the 24th of July, 1848, about
sixty soldiers, belonging to an infantry regiment of our army, who had been
sent to an elevation to occupy an isolated house, suddenly found themselves
assaulted by two companies of Austrian soldiers, who, showering them with
bullets from various quarters, hardly gave them time to take refuge in the
house and to barricade the doors, after leaving several dead and wounded
on the field. Having barred the doors, our men ran in haste to the windows
of the ground floor and the first story, and began to fire brisk discharges at
their assailants, who, approaching gradually, ranged in a semicircle, made
vigorous reply. The sixty Italian soldiers were commanded by two non-
commissioned officers and a captain, a tall, dry, austere old man, with white
hair and mustache; and with them there was a Sardinian drummer-boy, a lad
of a little over fourteen, who did not look twelve, small, with an olive-
brown complexion, and two small, deep, sparkling eyes. The captain
directed the defence from a room on the first floor, launching commands

that seemed like pistol-shots, and no sign of emotion was visible on his iron
countenance. The drummer-boy, a little pale, but firm on his legs, had
jumped upon a table, and was holding fast to the wall and stretching out his
neck in order to gaze out of the windows, and athwart the smoke on the
fields he saw the white uniforms of the Austrians, who were slowly
advancing. The house was situated at the summit of a steep declivity, and
on the side of the slope it had but one high window, corresponding to a
chamber in the roof: therefore the Austrians did not threaten the house from
that quarter, and the slope was free; the fire beat only upon the front and the
two ends.

But it was an infernal fire, a hailstorm of leaden bullets, which split the
walls on the outside, ground the tiles to powder, and in the interior cracked
ceilings, furniture, window-frames, and door-frames, sending splinters of
wood flying through the air, and clouds of plaster, and fragments of kitchen
utensils and glass, whizzing, and rebounding, and breaking everything with
a noise like the crushing of a skull. From time to time one of the soldiers
who were firing from the windows fell crashing back to the floor, and was
dragged to one side. Some staggered from room to room, pressing their
hands on their wounds. There was already one dead body in the kitchen,
with its forehead cleft. The semicircle of the enemy was drawing together.

At a certain point the captain, hitherto impassive, was seen to make a
gesture of uneasiness, and to leave the room with huge strides, followed by
a sergeant. Three minutes later the sergeant returned on a run, and
summoned the drummer-boy, making him a sign to follow. The lad
followed him at a quick pace up the wooden staircase, and entered with him
into a bare garret, where he saw the captain writing with a pencil on a sheet
of paper, as he leaned against the little window; and on the floor at his feet
lay the well-rope.

The captain folded the sheet of paper, and said sharply, as he fixed his
cold gray eyes, before which all the soldiers trembled, on the boy:—

“Drummer!”

The drummer-boy put his hand to his visor.

The captain said, “You have courage.”

The boy’s eyes flashed.

“Yes, captain,” he replied.

“Look down there,” said the captain, pushing him to the window; “on
the plain, near the houses of Villafranca, where there is a gleam of bayonets.
There stand our troops, motionless. You are to take this billet, tie yourself to
the rope, descend from the window, get down that slope in an instant, make
your way across the fields, arrive at our men, and give the note to the first
officer you see. Throw off your belt and knapsack.”

The drummer took off his belt and knapsack and thrust the note into his
breast pocket; the sergeant flung the rope out of the window, and held one
end of it clutched fast in his hands; the captain helped the lad to clamber out
of the small window, with his back turned to the landscape.

“Now look out,” he said; “the salvation of this detachment lies in your
courage and in your legs.”

“Trust to me, Signor Captain,” replied the drummer-boy, as he let
himself down.

“Bend over on the slope,” said the captain, grasping the rope, with the
sergeant.

“Never fear.”

“God aid you!”

In a few moments the drummer-boy was on the ground; the sergeant
drew in the rope and disappeared; the captain stepped impetuously in front
of the window and saw the boy flying down the slope.

He was already hoping that he had succeeded in escaping unobserved,
when five or six little puffs of powder, which rose from the earth in front of
and behind the lad, warned him that he had been espied by the Austrians,
who were firing down upon him from the top of the elevation: these little

clouds were thrown into the air by the bullets. But the drummer continued
to run at a headlong speed. All at once he fell to the earth. “He is killed!”
roared the captain, biting his fist. But before he had uttered the word he saw
the drummer spring up again. “Ah, only a fall,” he said to himself, and drew
a long breath. The drummer, in fact, set out again at full speed; but he
limped. “He has turned his ankle,” thought the captain. Again several
cloudlets of powder smoke rose here and there about the lad, but ever more
distant. He was safe. The captain uttered an exclamation of triumph. But he
continued to follow him with his eyes, trembling because it was an affair of
minutes: if he did not arrive yonder in the shortest possible time with that
billet, which called for instant succor, either all his soldiers would be killed
or he should be obliged to surrender himself a prisoner with them.

The boy ran rapidly for a space, then relaxed his pace and limped, then
resumed his course, but grew constantly more fatigued, and every little
while he stumbled and paused.

“Perhaps a bullet has grazed him,” thought the captain, and he noted all
his movements, quivering with excitement; and he encouraged him, he
spoke to him, as though he could hear him; he measured incessantly, with a
flashing eye, the space intervening between the fleeing boy and that gleam
of arms which he could see in the distance on the plain amid the fields of
grain gilded by the sun. And meanwhile he heard the whistle and the crash
of the bullets in the rooms beneath, the imperious and angry shouts of the
sergeants and the officers, the piercing laments of the wounded, the ruin of
furniture, and the fall of rubbish.

“On! courage!” he shouted, following the far-off drummer with his
glance. “Forward! run! He halts, that cursed boy! Ah, he resumes his
course!”

An officer came panting to tell him that the enemy, without slackening
their fire, were flinging out a white flag to hint at a surrender. “Don’t reply
to them!” he cried, without detaching his eyes from the boy, who was
already on the plain, but who was no longer running, and who seemed to be
dragging himself along with difficulty.

“Go! run!” said the captain, clenching his teeth and his fists; “let them
kill you; die, you rascal, but go!” Then he uttered a horrible oath. “Ah, the
infamous poltroon! he has sat down!” In fact, the boy, whose head he had
hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of grain, had disappeared,
as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of a minute, his head came into
sight again; finally, it was lost behind the hedges, and the captain saw it no
more.

Then he descended impetuously; the bullets were coming in a tempest;
the rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom were
whirling round like drunken men, and clutching at the furniture; the walls
and floor were bespattered with blood; corpses lay across the doorways; the
lieutenant had had his arm shattered by a ball; smoke and clouds of dust
enveloped everything.

“Courage!” shouted the captain. “Stand firm at your post! Succor is on
the way! Courage for a little while longer!”

The Austrians had approached still nearer: their contorted faces were
already visible through the smoke, and amid the crash of the firing their
savage and offensive shouts were audible, as they uttered insults, suggested
a surrender, and threatened slaughter. Some soldiers were terrified, and
withdrew from the windows; the sergeants drove them forward again. But
the fire of the defence weakened; discouragement made its appearance on
all faces. It was not possible to protract the resistance longer. At a given
moment the fire of the Austrians slackened, and a thundering voice shouted,
first in German and then in Italian, “Surrender!”

“No!” howled the captain from a window.

And the firing recommenced more fast and furious on both sides. More
soldiers fell. Already more than one window was without defenders. The
fatal moment was near at hand. The captain shouted through his teeth, in a
strangled voice, “They are not coming! they are not coming!” and rushed
wildly about, twisting his sword about in his convulsively clenched hand,
and resolved to die; when a sergeant descending from the garret, uttered a
piercing shout, “They are coming!” “They are coming!” repeated the
captain, with a cry of joy.

At that cry all, well and wounded, sergeants and officers, rushed to the
windows, and the resistance became fierce once more. A few moments later
a sort of uncertainty was noticeable, and a beginning of disorder among the
foe. Suddenly the captain hastily collected a little troop in the room on the
ground floor, in order to make a sortie with fixed bayonets. Then he flew up
stairs. Scarcely had he arrived there when they heard a hasty trampling of
feet, accompanied by a formidable hurrah, and saw from the windows the
two-pointed hats of the Italian carabineers advancing through the smoke, a
squadron rushing forward at great speed, and a lightning flash of blades
whirling in the air, as they fell on heads, on shoulders, and on backs. Then
the troop darted out of the door, with bayonets lowered; the enemy
wavered, were thrown into disorder, and turned their backs; the field was
left unincumbered, the house was free, and a little later two battalions of
Italian infantry and two cannons occupied the eminence.

“THEN THE TROOP DARTED OUT OF THE
DOOR.”

View larger image.

The captain, with the soldiers that remained to him, rejoined his
regiment, went on fighting, and was slightly wounded in the left hand by a
bullet on the rebound, in the final assault with bayonets.

The day ended with the victory on our side.

But on the following day, the conflict having begun again, the Italians
were overpowered by the overwhelming numbers of the Austrians, in spite
of a valorous resistance, and on the morning of the 27th they sadly retreated
towards the Mincio.

The captain, although wounded, made the march on foot with his
soldiers, weary and silent, and, arrived at the close of the day at Goito, on
the Mincio, he immediately sought out his lieutenant, who had been picked
up with his arm shattered, by our ambulance corps, and who must have
arrived before him. He was directed to a church, where the field hospital
had been installed in haste. Thither he betook himself. The church was full
of wounded men, ranged in two lines of beds, and on mattresses spread on
the floor; two doctors and numerous assistants were going and coming,
busily occupied; and suppressed cries and groans were audible.

No sooner had the captain entered than he halted and cast a glance
around, in search of his officer.

At that moment he heard himself called in a weak voice,—“Signor
Captain!” He turned round. It was his drummer-boy. He was lying on a cot
bed, covered to the breast with a coarse window curtain, in red and white
squares, with his arms on the outside, pale and thin, but with eyes which
still sparkled like black gems.

“Are you here?” asked the captain, amazed, but still sharply. “Bravo!
You did your duty.”

“I did all that I could,” replied the drummer-boy.

“Were you wounded?” said the captain, seeking with his eyes for his
officer in the neighboring beds.

“What could one expect?” said the lad, who gained courage by
speaking, expressing the lofty satisfaction of having been wounded for the
first time, without which he would not have dared to open his mouth in the
presence of this captain; “I had a fine run, all bent over, but suddenly they
caught sight of me. I should have arrived twenty minutes earlier if they had
not hit me. Luckily, I soon came across a captain of the staff, to whom I
gave the note. But it was hard work to get down after that caress! I was
dying of thirst. I was afraid that I should not get there at all. I wept with
rage at the thought that at every moment of delay another man was setting
out yonder for the other world. But enough! I did what I could. I am
content. But, with your permission, captain, you should look to yourself:
you are losing blood.”

Several drops of blood had in fact trickled down on the captain’s fingers
from his imperfectly bandaged palm.

“Would you like to have me give the bandage a turn, captain? Hold it
here a minute.”

The captain held out his left hand, and stretched out his right to help the
lad to loosen the knot and to tie it again; but no sooner had the boy raised
himself from his pillow than he turned pale and was obliged to support his
head once more.

“That will do, that will do,” said the captain, looking at him and
withdrawing his bandaged hand, which the other tried to retain. “Attend to
your own affairs, instead of thinking of others, for things that are not severe
may become serious if they are neglected.”

The drummer-boy shook his head.

“But you,” said the captain, observing him attentively, “must have lost a
great deal of blood to be as weak as this.”

“Must have lost a great deal of blood!” replied the boy, with a smile.
“Something else besides blood: look here.” And with one movement he
drew aside the coverlet.

The captain started back a pace in horror.

The lad had but one leg. His left leg had been amputated above the
knee; the stump was swathed in blood-stained cloths.

At that moment a small, plump, military surgeon passed, in his shirt-
sleeves. “Ah, captain,” he said, rapidly, nodding towards the drummer, “this
is an unfortunate case; there is a leg that might have been saved if he had
not exerted himself in such a crazy manner—that cursed inflammation! It
had to be cut off away up here. Oh, but he’s a brave lad. I can assure you!
He never shed a tear, nor uttered a cry! He was proud of being an Italian
boy, while I was performing the operation, upon my word of honor. He
comes of a good race, by Heavens!” And away he went, on a run.

The captain wrinkled his heavy white brows, gazed fixedly at the
drummer-boy, and spread the coverlet over him again, and slowly, then as
though unconsciously, and still gazing intently at him, he raised his hand to
his head, and lifted his cap.

“Signor Captain!” exclaimed the boy in amazement. “What are you
doing, captain? To me!”

And then that rough soldier, who had never said a gentle word to an
inferior, replied in an indescribably sweet and affectionate voice, “I am only
a captain; you are a hero.”

Then he threw himself with wide-spread arms upon the drummer-boy,
and kissed him three times upon the heart.

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.

Tuesday, 24th.

Since the tale of the Drummer-boy has touched your heart, it should be
easy for you this morning to do your composition for examination—Why

you love Italy—well. Why do I love Italy? Do not a hundred answers
present themselves to you on the instant? I love Italy because my mother is
an Italian; because the blood that flows in my veins is Italian; because the
soil in which are buried the dead whom my mother mourns and whom my
father venerates is Italian; because the town in which I was born, the
language that I speak, the books that educate me,—because my brother, my
sister, my comrades, the great people among whom I live, and the beautiful
nature which surrounds me, and all that I see, that I love, that I study, that I
admire, is Italian. Oh, you cannot feel that affection in its entirety! You will
feel it when you become a man; when, returning from a long journey, after a
prolonged absence, you step up in the morning to the bulwarks of the vessel
and see on the distant horizon the lofty blue mountains of your country; you
will feel it then in the impetuous flood of tenderness which will fill your
eyes with tears and will wrest a cry from your heart. You will feel it in some
great and distant city, in that impulse of the soul which will impel you from
the strange throng towards a workingman from whom you have heard in
passing a word in your own tongue. You will feel it in that sad and proud
wrath which will drive the blood to your brow when you hear insults to
your country from the mouth of a stranger. You will feel it in more proud
and vigorous measure on the day when the menace of a hostile race shall
call forth a tempest of fire upon your country, and when you shall behold
arms raging on every side, youths thronging in legions, fathers kissing their
children and saying, “Courage!” mothers bidding adieu to their young sons
and crying, “Conquer!” You will feel it like a joy divine if you have the
good fortune to behold the re-entrance to your town of the regiments,
weary, ragged, with thinned ranks, yet terrible, with the splendor of victory
in their eyes, and their banners torn by bullets, followed by a vast convoy of
brave fellows, bearing their bandaged heads and their stumps of arms
loftily, amid a wild throng, which covers them with flowers, with blessings,
and with kisses. Then you will comprehend the love of country; then you
will feel your country, Enrico. It is a grand and sacred thing. May I one day
see you return in safety from a battle fought for her, safe,—you who are my
flesh and soul; but if I should learn that you have preserved your life
because you were concealed from death, your father, who welcomes you
with a cry of joy when you return from school, will receive you with a sob
of anguish, and I shall never be able to love you again, and I shall die with
that dagger in my heart.

Thy Father.

ENVY.

Wednesday, 25th.

The boy who wrote the best composition of all on our country was
Derossi, as usual. And Votini, who thought himself sure of the first medal—
I like Votini well enough, although he is rather vain and does polish himself
up a trifle too much,—but it makes me scorn him, now that I am his
neighbor on the bench, to see how envious he is of Derossi. He would like
to vie with him; he studies hard, but he cannot do it by any possibility, for
the other is ten times as strong as he is on every point; and Votini rails at
him. Carlo Nobis envies him also; but he has so much pride in his body
that, purely from pride, he does not allow it to be perceived. Votini, on the
other hand, betrays himself: he complains of his difficulties at home, and
says that the master is unjust to him; and when Derossi replies so promptly
and so well to questions, as he always does, his face clouds over, he hangs
his head, pretends not to hear, or tries to laugh, but he laughs awkwardly.
And thus every one knows about it, so that when the master praises Derossi
they all turn to look at Votini, who chews his venom, and the little mason
makes a hare’s face at him. To-day, for instance, he was put to the torture.
The head-master entered the school and announced the result of the
examination,—“Derossi ten tenths and the first medal.”

Votini gave a huge sneeze. The master looked at him: it was not hard to
understand the matter. “Votini,” he said, “do not let the serpent of envy
enter your body; it is a serpent which gnaws at the brain and corrupts the
heart.”

Every one stared at him except Derossi. Votini tried to make some
answer, but could not; he sat there as though turned to stone, and with a
white face. Then, while the master was conducting the lesson, he began to
write in large characters on a sheet of paper, “I am not envious of those who

gain the first medal through favoritism and injustice.” It was a note which
he meant to send to Derossi. But, in the meantime, I perceived that
Derossi’s neighbors were plotting among themselves, and whispering in
each other’s ears, and one cut with penknife from paper a big medal on
which they had drawn a black serpent. But Votini did not notice this. The
master went out for a few moments. All at once Derossi’s neighbors rose
and left their seats, for the purpose of coming and solemnly presenting the
paper medal to Votini. The whole class was prepared for a scene. Votini had
already begun to quiver all over. Derossi exclaimed:—

“Give that to me!”

“So much the better,” they replied; “you are the one who ought to carry
it.”

Derossi took the medal and tore it into bits. At that moment the master
returned, and resumed the lesson. I kept my eye on Votini. He had turned as
red as a coal. He took his sheet of paper very, very quietly, as though in
absence of mind, rolled it into a ball, on the sly, put it into his mouth,
chewed it a little, and then spit it out under the bench. When school broke
up, Votini, who was a little confused, let fall his blotting-paper, as he passed
Derossi. Derossi politely picked it up, put it in his satchel, and helped him
to buckle the straps. Votini dared not raise his eyes.

FRANTI’S MOTHER.

Saturday, 28th.

But Votini is incorrigible. Yesterday morning, during the lesson on
religion, in the presence of the head-master, the teacher asked Derossi if he
knew by heart the two couplets in the reading-book,—

“Where’er I turn my gaze, ’tis Thee, great God, I see.”

Derossi said that he did not, and Votini suddenly exclaimed, “I know
them!” with a smile, as though to pique Derossi. But he was piqued himself,
instead, for he could not recite the poetry, because Franti’s mother suddenly
flew into the schoolroom, breathless, with her gray hair dishevelled and all
wet with snow, and pushing before her her son, who had been suspended
from school for a week. What a sad scene we were doomed to witness! The
poor woman flung herself almost on her knees before the head-master, with
clasped hands, and besought him:—

“Oh, Signor Director, do me the favor to put my boy back in school! He
has been at home for three days. I have kept him hidden; but God have
mercy on him, if his father finds out about this affair: he will murder him!
Have pity! I no longer know what to do! I entreat you with my whole soul!”

The director tried to lead her out, but she resisted, still continuing to
pray and to weep.

“Oh, if you only knew the trouble that this boy has caused me, you
would have compassion! Do me this favor! I hope that he will reform. I
shall not live long, Signor Director; I bear death within me; but I should like
to see him reformed before my death, because”—and she broke into a
passion of weeping—“he is my son—I love him—I shall die in despair!
Take him back once more, Signor Director, that a misfortune may not
happen in the family! Do it out of pity for a poor woman!” And she covered
her face with her hands and sobbed.

Franti stood impassive, and hung his head. The head-master looked at
him, reflected a little, then said, “Franti, go to your place.”

Then the woman removed her hands from her face, quite comforted, and
began to express thanks upon thanks, without giving the director a chance
to speak, and made her way towards the door, wiping her eyes, and saying
hastily: “I beg of you, my son.—May all have patience.—Thanks, Signor
Director; you have performed a deed of mercy.—Be a good boy.—Good
day, boys.—Thanks, Signor Teacher; good by, and forgive a poor mother.”
And after bestowing another supplicating glance at her son from the door,
she went away, pulling up the shawl which was trailing after her, pale, bent,
with a head which still trembled, and we heard her coughing all the way

down the stairs. The head-master gazed intently at Franti, amid the silence
of the class, and said to him in accents of a kind to make him tremble:—

“Franti, you are killing your mother!”

We all turned to look at Franti; and that infamous boy smiled.

HOPE.

Sunday, 29th.

Very beautiful, Enrico, was the impetuosity with which you flung
yourself on your mother’s heart on your return from your lesson of religion.
Yes, your master said grand and consoling things to you. God threw you in
each other’s arms; he will never part you. When I die, when your father
dies, we shall not speak to each other these despairing words, “Mamma,
papa, Enrico, I shall never see you again!” We shall see each other again in
another life, where he who has suffered much in this life will receive
compensation; where he who has loved much on earth will find again the
souls whom he has loved, in a world without sin, without sorrow, and
without death. But we must all render ourselves worthy of that other life.
Reflect, my son. Every good action of yours, every impulse of affection for
those who love you, every courteous act towards your companions, every
noble thought of yours, is like a leap towards that other world. And every
misfortune, also, serves to raise you towards that world; every sorrow, for
every sorrow is the expiation of a sin, every tear blots out a stain. Make it
your rule to become better and more loving every day than the day before.
Say every morning, “To-day I will do something for which my conscience
will praise me, and with which my father will be satisfied; something which
will render me beloved by such or such a comrade, by my teacher, by my
brother, or by others.” And beseech God to give you the strength to put your
resolution into practice. “Lord, I wish to be good, noble, courageous, gentle,
sincere; help me; grant that every night, when my mother gives me her last
kiss, I may be able to say to her, ‘You kiss this night a nobler and more

worthy boy than you kissed last night.’” Keep always in your thoughts that
other superhuman and blessed Enrico which you may be after this life. And
pray. You cannot imagine the sweetness that you experience,—how much
better a mother feels when she sees her child with hands clasped in prayer.
When I behold you praying, it seems impossible to me that there should not
be some one there gazing at you and listening to you. Then I believe more
firmly that there is a supreme goodness and an infinite pity; I love you
more, I work with more ardor, I endure with more force, I forgive with all
my heart, and I think of death with serenity. O great and good God! To hear
once more, after death, the voice of my mother, to meet my children again,
to see my Enrico once more, my Enrico, blessed and immortal, and to clasp
him in an embrace which shall nevermore be loosed, nevermore, nevermore
to all eternity! Oh, pray! let us pray, let us love each other, let us be good,
let us bear this celestial hope in our hearts and souls, my adored child!

Thy Mother.

FEBRUARY.

A MEDAL WELL BESTOWED.

Saturday, 4th.

This morning the superintendent of the schools, a gentleman with a
white beard, and dressed in black, came to bestow the medals. He entered
with the head-master a little before the close and seated himself beside the
teacher. He questioned a few, then gave the first medal to Derossi, and
before giving the second, he stood for a few moments listening to the
teacher and the head-master, who were talking to him in a low voice. All
were asking themselves, “To whom will he give the second?” The
superintendent said aloud:—

“Pupil Pietro Precossi has merited the second medal this week,—
merited it by his work at home, by his lessons, by his handwriting, by his
conduct in every way.” All turned to look at Precossi, and it was evident
that all took pleasure in it. Precossi rose in such confusion that he did not
know where he stood.

“Come here,” said the superintendent. Precossi sprang up from his seat
and stepped up to the master’s table. The superintendent looked attentively
at that little waxen face, at that puny body enveloped in turned and ill-
fitting garments, at those kind, sad eyes, which avoided his, but which
hinted at a story of suffering; then he said to him, in a voice full of
affection, as he fastened the medal on his shoulder:—

“I give you the medal, Precossi. No one is more worthy to wear it than
you. I bestow it not only on your intelligence and your good will; I bestow
it on your heart, I give it to your courage, to your character of a brave and
good son. Is it not true,” he added, turning to the class, “that he deserves it
also on that score?”

“Yes, yes!” all answered, with one voice. Precossi made a movement of
the throat as though he were swallowing something, and cast upon the
benches a very sweet look, which was expressive of immense gratitude.

“Go, my dear boy,” said the superintendent; “and may God protect
you!”

It was the hour for dismissing the school. Our class got out before the
others. As soon as we were outside the door, whom should we espy there, in
the large hall, just at the entrance? The father of Precossi, the blacksmith,
pallid as was his wont, with fierce face, hair hanging over his eyes, his cap
awry, and unsteady on his legs. The teacher caught sight of him instantly,
and whispered to the superintendent. The latter sought out Precossi in haste,
and taking him by the hand, he led him to his father. The boy was
trembling. The boy and the superintendent approached; many boys
collected around them.

“Is it true that you are the father of this lad?” demanded the
superintendent of the blacksmith, with a cheerful air, as though they were
friends. And, without awaiting a reply:—

“I rejoice with you. Look: he has won the second medal over fifty-four
of his comrades. He has deserved it by his composition, his arithmetic,
everything. He is a boy of great intelligence and good will, who will
accomplish great things; a fine boy, who possesses the affection and esteem
of all. You may feel proud of him, I assure you.”

The blacksmith, who had stood there with open mouth listening to him,
stared at the superintendent and the head-master, and then at his son, who
was standing before him with downcast eyes and trembling; and as though
he had remembered and comprehended then, for the first time, all that he
had made the little fellow suffer, and all the goodness, the heroic constancy,

with which the latter had borne it, he displayed in his countenance a certain
stupid wonder, then a sullen remorse, and finally a sorrowful and impetuous
tenderness, and with a rapid gesture he caught the boy round the head and
strained him to his breast. We all passed before them. I invited him to come
to the house on Thursday, with Garrone and Crossi; others saluted him; one
bestowed a caress on him, another touched his medal, all said something to
him; and his father stared at us in amazement, as he still held his son’s head
pressed to his breast, while the boy sobbed.

GOOD RESOLUTIONS.

Sunday, 5th.

That medal given to Precossi has awakened a remorse in me. I have
never earned one yet! For some time past I have not been studying, and I
am discontented with myself, and the teacher, my father and mother are
discontented with me. I no longer experience the pleasure in amusing
myself that I did formerly, when I worked with a will, and then sprang up
from the table and ran to my games full of mirth, as though I had not played
for a month. Neither do I sit down to the table with my family with the
same contentment as of old. I have always a shadow in my soul, an inward
voice, that says to me continually, “It won’t do; it won’t do.”

In the evening I see a great many boys pass through the square on their
return from work, in the midst of a group of workingmen, weary but merry.
They step briskly along, impatient to reach their homes and suppers, and
they talk loudly, laughing and slapping each other on the shoulder with
hands blackened with coal, or whitened with plaster; and I reflect that they
have been working since daybreak up to this hour. And with them are also
many others, who are still smaller, who have been standing all day on the
summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and
underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost
ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble
four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I

see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but
he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, who works so hard! all is
yours, all that I see around me in the house, all that I touch, all that I wear
and eat, all that affords me instruction and diversion,—all is the fruit of
your toil, and I do not work; all has cost you thought, privations, trouble,
effort; and I make no effort. Ah, no; this is too unjust, and causes me too
much pain. I will begin this very day; I will apply myself to my studies, like
Stardi, with clenched fists and set teeth. I will set about it with all the
strength of my will and my heart. I will conquer my drowsiness in the
evening, I will come down promptly in the morning, I will cudgel my brains
without ceasing, I will chastise my laziness without mercy. I will toil,
suffer, even to the extent of making myself ill; but I will put a stop, once for
all, to this languishing and tiresome life, which is degrading me and causing
sorrow to others. Courage! to work! To work with all my soul, and all my
nerves! To work, which will restore to me sweet repose, pleasing games,
cheerful meals! To work, which will give me back again the kindly smile of
my teacher, the blessed kiss of my father!

THE ENGINE.

Friday, 10th.

Precossi came to our house to-day with Garrone. I do not think that two
sons of princes would have been received with greater delight. This is the
first time that Garrone has been here, because he is rather shy, and then he
is ashamed to show himself because he is so large, and is still in the third
grade. We all went to open the door when they rang. Crossi did not come,
because his father has at last arrived from America, after an absence of
seven years. My mother kissed Precossi at once. My father introduced
Garrone to her, saying:—

“Here he is. This lad is not only a good boy; he is a man of honor and a
gentleman.”

And the boy dropped his big, shaggy head, with a sly smile at me.
Precossi had on his medal, and he was happy, because his father has gone to
work again, and has not drunk anything for the last five days, wants him to
be always in the workshop to keep him company, and seems quite another
man.

We began to play, and I brought out all my things. Precossi was
enchanted with my train of cars, with the engine that goes of itself on being
wound up. He had never seen anything of the kind. He devoured the little
red and yellow cars with his eyes. I gave him the key to play with, and he
knelt down to his amusement, and did not raise his head again. I have never
seen him so pleased. He kept saying, “Excuse me, excuse me,” to
everything, and motioning to us with his hands, that we should not stop the
engine; and then he picked it up and replaced the cars with a thousand
precautions, as though they had been made of glass. He was afraid of
tarnishing them with his breath, and he polished them up again, examining
them top and bottom, and smiling to himself. We all stood around him and
gazed at him. We looked at that slender neck, those poor little ears, which I
had seen bleeding one day, that jacket with the sleeves turned up, from
which projected two sickly little arms, which had been upraised to ward off
blows from his face. Oh! at that moment I could have cast all my playthings
and all my books at his feet, I could have torn the last morsel of bread from
my lips to give to him, I could have divested myself of my clothing to
clothe him, I could have flung myself on my knees to kiss his hand. “I will
at least give you the train,” I thought; but—was necessary to ask permission
of my father. At that moment I felt a bit of paper thrust into my hand. I
looked; it was written in pencil by my father; it said:

“Your train pleases Precossi. He has no playthings. Does your heart
suggest nothing to you?”

Instantly I seized the engine and the cars in both hands, and placed the
whole in his arms, saying:—

“Take this; it is yours.”

He looked at me, and did not understand. “It is yours,” I said; “I give it
to you.”

Then he looked at my father and mother, in still greater astonishment,
and asked me:—

“But why?”

My father said to him:—

“Enrico gives it to you because he is your friend, because he loves you
—to celebrate your medal.”

Precossi asked timidly:—

“I may carry it away—home?”

“Of course!” we all responded. He was already at the door, but he dared
not go out. He was happy! He begged our pardon with a mouth that smiled
and quivered. Garrone helped him to wrap up the train in a handkerchief,
and as he bent over, he made the things with which his pockets were filled
rattle.

“Some day,” said Precossi to me, “you shall come to the shop to see my
father at work. I will give you some nails.”

My mother put a little bunch of flowers into Garrone’s buttonhole, for
him to carry to his mother in her name. Garrone said, “Thanks,” in his big
voice, without raising his chin from his breast. But all his kind and noble
soul shone in his eyes.

PRIDE.

Saturday, 11th.

The idea of Carlo Nobis rubbing off his sleeve affectedly, when Precossi
touches him in passing! That fellow is pride incarnate because his father is a
rich man. But Derossi’s father is rich too. He would like to have a bench to

himself; he is afraid that the rest will soil it; he looks down on everybody
and always has a scornful smile on his lips: woe to him who stumbles over
his foot, when we go out in files two by two! For a mere trifle he flings an
insulting word in your face, or a threat to get his father to come to the
school. It is true that his father did give him a good lesson when he called
the little son of the charcoal-man a ragamuffin. I have never seen so
disagreeable a schoolboy! No one speaks to him, no one says good by to
him when he goes out; there is not even a dog who would give him a
suggestion when he does not know his lesson. And he cannot endure any
one, and he pretends to despise Derossi more than all, because he is the
head boy; and Garrone, because he is beloved by all. But Derossi pays no
attention to him when he is by; and when the boys tell Garrone that Nobis
has been speaking ill of him, he says:—

“His pride is so senseless that it does not deserve even my passing
notice.”

But Coretti said to him one day, when he was smiling disdainfully at his
catskin cap:—

“Go to Derossi for a while, and learn how to play the gentleman!”

Yesterday he complained to the master, because the Calabrian touched
his leg with his foot. The master asked the Calabrian:—

“Did you do it intentionally?”—“No, sir,” he replied, frankly.—“You
are too petulant, Nobis.”

And Nobis retorted, in his airy way, “I shall tell my father about it.”
Then the teacher got angry.

“Your father will tell you that you are in the wrong, as he has on other
occasions. And besides that, it is the teacher alone who has the right to
judge and punish in school.” Then he added pleasantly:—

“Come, Nobis, change your ways; be kind and courteous to your
comrades. You see, we have here sons of workingmen and of gentlemen, of
the rich and the poor, and all love each other and treat each other like

brothers, as they are. Why do not you do like the rest? It would not cost you
much to make every one like you, and you would be so much happier
yourself, too!—Well, have you no reply to make me?”

Nobis, who had listened to him with his customary scornful smile,
answered coldly:—

“No, sir.”

“Sit down,” said the master to him. “I am sorry for you. You are a
heartless boy.”

This seemed to be the end of it all; but the little mason, who sits on the
front bench, turned his round face towards Nobis, who sits on the back
bench, and made such a fine and ridiculous hare’s face at him, that the
whole class burst into a shout of laughter. The master reproved him; but he
was obliged to put his hand over his own mouth to conceal a smile. And
even Nobis laughed, but not in a pleasant way.

THE WOUNDS OF LABOR.

Monday, 15th.

Nobis can be paired off with Franti: neither of them was affected this
morning in the presence of the terrible sight which passed before their eyes.
On coming out of school, I was standing with my father and looking at
some big rogues of the second grade, who had thrown themselves on their
knees and were wiping off the ice with their cloaks and caps, in order to
make slides more quickly, when we saw a crowd of people appear at the
end of the street, walking hurriedly, all serious and seemingly terrified, and
conversing in low tones. In the midst of them were three policemen, and
behind the policemen two men carrying a litter. Boys hastened up from all
quarters. The crowd advanced towards us. On the litter was stretched a man,
pale as a corpse, with his head resting on one shoulder, and his hair tumbled
and stained with blood, for he had been losing blood through the mouth and

ears; and beside the litter walked a woman with a baby in her arms, who
seemed crazy, and who shrieked from time to time, “He is dead! He is dead!
He is dead!”

Behind the woman came a boy who had a portfolio under his arm and
who was sobbing.

“What has happened?” asked my father. A neighbor replied, that the
man was a mason who had fallen from the fourth story while at work. The
bearers of the litter halted for a moment. Many turned away their faces in
horror. I saw the schoolmistress of the red feather supporting my mistress of
the upper first, who was almost in a swoon. At the same moment I felt a
touch on the elbow; it was the little mason, who was ghastly white and
trembling from head to foot. He was certainly thinking of his father. I was
thinking of him, too. I, at least, am at peace in my mind while I am in
school: I know that my father is at home, seated at his table, far removed
from all danger; but how many of my companions think that their fathers
are at work on a very high bridge or close to the wheels of a machine, and
that a movement, a single false step, may cost them their lives! They are
like so many sons of soldiers who have fathers in the battle. The little
mason gazed and gazed, and trembled more and more, and my father
noticed it and said:—

“Go home, my boy; go at once to your father, and you will find him safe
and tranquil; go!”

The little mason went off, turning round at every step. And in the
meanwhile the crowd had begun to move again, and the woman to shriek in
a way that rent the heart, “He is dead! He is dead! He is dead!”

“No, no; he is not dead,” people on all sides said to her. But she paid no
heed to them, and tore her hair. Then I heard an indignant voice say, “You
are laughing!” and at the same moment I saw a bearded man staring in
Franti’s face. Then the man knocked his cap to the ground with his stick,
saying:—

“Uncover your head, you wicked boy, when a man wounded by labor is
passing by!”

The crowd had already passed, and a long streak of blood was visible in
the middle of the street.

THE PRISONER.

Friday, 17th.

Ah, this is certainly the strangest event of the whole year! Yesterday
morning my father took me to the suburbs of Moncalieri, to look at a villa
which he thought of hiring for the coming summer, because we shall not go
to Chieri again this year, and it turned out that the person who had the keys
was a teacher who acts as secretary to the owner. He showed us the house,
and then he took us to his own room, where he gave us something to drink.
On his table, among the glasses, there was a wooden inkstand, of a conical
form, carved in a singular manner. Perceiving that my father was looking at
it, the teacher said:—

“That inkstand is very precious to me: if you only knew, sir, the history
of that inkstand!” And he told it.

Years ago he was a teacher at Turin, and all one winter he went to give
lessons to the prisoners in the judicial prison. He gave the lessons in the
chapel of the prison, which is a circular building, and all around it, on the
high, bare walls, are a great many little square windows, covered with two
cross-bars of iron, each one of which corresponds to a very small cell
inside. He gave his lessons as he paced about the dark, cold chapel, and his
scholars stood at the holes, with their copy-books resting against the
gratings, showing nothing in the shadow but wan, frowning faces, gray and
ragged beards, staring eyes of murderers and thieves. Among the rest there
was one, No. 78, who was more attentive than all the others, and who
studied a great deal, and gazed at his teacher with eyes full of respect and
gratitude. He was a young man, with a black beard, more unfortunate than
wicked, a cabinet-maker who, in a fit of rage, had flung a plane at his
master, who had been persecuting him for some time, and had inflicted a

mortal wound on his head: for this he had been condemned to several years
of seclusion. In three months he had learned to read and write, and he read
constantly, and the more he learned, the better he seemed to become, and
the more remorseful for his crime. One day, at the conclusion of the lesson,
he made a sign to the teacher that he should come near to his little window,
and he announced to him that he was to leave Turin on the following day, to
go and expiate his crime in the prison at Venice; and as he bade him
farewell, he begged in a humble and much moved voice, that he might be
allowed to touch the master’s hand. The master offered him his hand, and
he kissed it; then he said:—

“Thanks! thanks!” and disappeared. The master drew back his hand; it
was bathed with tears. After that he did not see the man again.

Six years passed. “I was thinking of anything except that unfortunate
man,” said the teacher, "when, the other morning, I saw a stranger come to
the house, a man with a large black beard already sprinkled with gray, and
badly dressed, who said to me: ‘Are you the teacher So-and-So, sir?’ ‘Who
are you?’ I asked him. ‘I am prisoner No. 78,’ he replied; ‘you taught me to
read and write six years ago; if you recollect, you gave me your hand at the
last lesson; I have now expiated my crime, and I have come hither—to beg
you to do me the favor to accept a memento of me, a poor little thing which
I made in prison. Will you accept it in memory of me, Signor Master?’

“I stood there speechless. He thought that I did not wish to take it, and
he looked at me as much as to say, ‘So six years of suffering are not
sufficient to cleanse my hands!’ but with so poignant an expression of pain
did he gaze at me, that I instantly extended my hand and took the little
object. This is it.”

We looked attentively at the inkstand: it seemed to have been carved
with the point of a nail, and with, great patience; on its top was carved a pen
lying across a copy-book, and around it was written: “To my teacher. A
memento of No. 78. Six years!” And below, in small letters, “Study and
hope.”

The master said nothing more; we went away. But all the way from
Moncalieri to Turin I could not get that prisoner, standing at his little

window, that farewell to his master, that poor inkstand made in prison,
which told so much, out of my head; and I dreamed of them all night, and
was still thinking of them this morning—far enough from imagining the
surprise which awaited me at school! No sooner had I taken my new seat,
beside Derossi, and written my problem in arithmetic for the monthly
examination, than I told my companion the story of the prisoner and the
inkstand, and how the inkstand was made, with the pen across the copy-
book, and the inscription around it, “Six years!” Derossi sprang up at these
words, and began to look first at me and then at Crossi, the son of the
vegetable-vender, who sat on the bench in front, with his back turned to us,
wholly absorbed on his problem.

“Hush!” he said; then, in a low voice, catching me by the arm, “don’t
you know that Crossi spoke to me day before yesterday of having caught a
glimpse; of an inkstand in the hands of his father, who has returned from
America; a conical inkstand, made by hand, with a copy-book and a pen,—
that is the one; six years! He said that his father was in America; instead of
that he was in prison: Crossi was a little boy at the time of the crime; he
does not remember it; his mother has deceived him; he knows nothing; let
not a syllable of this escape!”

I remained speechless, with my eyes fixed on Crossi. Then Derossi
solved his problem, and passed it under the bench to Crossi; he gave him a
sheet of paper; he took out of his hands the monthly story, Daddy’s Nurse,
which the teacher had given him to copy out, in order that he might copy it
in his stead; he gave him pens, and stroked his shoulder, and made me
promise on my honor that I would say nothing to any one; and when we left
school, he said hastily to me:—

“His father came to get him yesterday; he will be here again this
morning: do as I do.”

We emerged into the street; Crossi’s father was there, a little to one side:
a man with a black beard sprinkled with gray, badly dressed, with a
colorless and thoughtful face. Derossi shook Crossi’s hand, in a way to
attract attention, and said to him in a loud tone, “Farewell until we meet
again, Crossi,”—and passed his hand under his chin. I did the same. But as
he did so, Derossi turned crimson, and so did I; and Crossi’s father gazed

attentively at us, with a kindly glance; but through it shone an expression of
uneasiness and suspicion which made our hearts grow cold.

DADDY’S NURSE.

(Monthly Story.)

One morning, on a rainy day in March, a lad dressed like a country boy,
all muddy and saturated with water, with a bundle of clothes under his arm,
presented himself to the porter of the great hospital at Naples, and,
presenting a letter, asked for his father. He had a fine oval face, of a pale
brown hue, thoughtful eyes, and two thick lips, always half open, which
displayed extremely white teeth. He came from a village in the
neighborhood of Naples. His father, who had left home a year previously to
seek work in France, had returned to Italy, and had landed a few days before
at Naples, where, having fallen suddenly ill, he had hardly time to write a
line to announce his arrival to his family, and to say that he was going to the
hospital. His wife, in despair at this news, and unable to leave home
because she had a sick child, and a baby at the breast, had sent her eldest
son to Naples, with a few soldi, to help his father—his daddy, as they called
him: the boy had walked ten miles.

“THE BOY HAD WALKED TEN MILES.”

View larger image.

The porter, after glancing at the letter, called a nurse and told him to
conduct the lad to his father.

“What father?” inquired the nurse.

The boy, trembling with terror, lest he should hear bad news, gave the
name.

The nurse did not recall such a name.

“An old laborer, arrived from abroad?” he asked.

“Yes, a laborer,” replied the lad, still more uneasy; “not so very old. Yes,
arrived from abroad.”

“When did he enter the hospital?” asked the nurse.

The lad glanced at his letter; “Five days ago, I think.”

The nurse stood a while in thought; then, as though suddenly recalling
him; “Ah!” he said, “the furthest bed in the fourth ward.”

“Is he very ill? How is he?” inquired the boy, anxiously.

The nurse looked at him, without replying. Then he said, “Come with
me.”

They ascended two flights of stairs, walked to the end of a long corridor,
and found themselves facing the open door of a large hall, wherein two
rows of beds were arranged. “Come,” repeated the nurse, entering. The boy
plucked up his courage, and followed him, casting terrified glances to right
and left, on the pale, emaciated faces of the sick people, some of whom had
their eyes closed, and seemed to be dead, while others were staring into the
air, with their eyes wide open and fixed, as though frightened. Some were
moaning like children. The big room was dark, the air was impregnated
with an acute odor of medicines. Two sisters of charity were going about
with phials in their hands.

Arrived at the extremity of the great room, the nurse halted at the head
of a bed, drew aside the curtains, and said, “Here is your father.”

The boy burst into tears, and letting fall his bundle, he dropped his head
on the sick man’s shoulder, clasping with one hand the arm which was lying
motionless on the coverlet. The sick man did not move.

The boy rose to his feet, and looked at his father, and broke into a fresh
fit of weeping. Then the sick man gave a long look at him, and seemed to
recognize him; but his lips did not move. Poor daddy, how he was changed!
The son would never have recognized him. His hair had turned white, his
beard had grown, his face was swollen, of a dull red hue, with the skin
tightly drawn and shining; his eyes were diminished in size, his lips very
thick, his whole countenance altered. There was no longer anything natural
about him but his forehead and the arch of his eyebrows. He breathed with
difficulty.

“Daddy! daddy!” said the boy, “it is I; don’t you know me? I am Cicillo,
your own Cicillo, who has come from the country: mamma has sent me.
Take a good look at me; don’t you know me? Say one word to me.”

But the sick man, after having looked attentively at him, closed his eyes.

“Daddy! daddy! What is the matter with you? I am your little son—your
own Cicillo.”

The sick man made no movement, and continued to breathe painfully.

Then the lad, still weeping, took a chair, seated himself and waited,
without taking his eyes from his father’s face. “A doctor will surely come to
pay him a visit,” he thought; “he will tell me something.” And he became
immersed in sad thoughts, recalling many things about his kind father, the
day of parting, when he said the last good by to him on board the ship, the
hopes which his family had founded on his journey, the desolation of his
mother on the arrival of the letter; and he thought of death: he beheld his
father dead, his mother dressed in black, the family in misery. And he
remained a long time thus. A light hand touched him on the shoulder, and he
started up: it was a nun.

“What is the matter with my father?” he asked her quickly.

“Is he your father?” said the sister gently.

“Yes, he is my father; I have come. What ails him?”

“Courage, my boy,” replied the sister; “the doctor will be here soon
now.” And she went away without saying anything more.

Half an hour later he heard the sound of a bell, and he saw the doctor
enter at the further end of the hall, accompanied by an assistant; the sister
and a nurse followed him. They began the visit, pausing at every bed. This
time of waiting seemed an eternity to the lad, and his anxiety increased at
every step of the doctor. At length they arrived at the next bed. The doctor
was an old man, tall and stooping, with a grave face. Before he left the next
bed the boy rose to his feet, and when he approached he began to cry.

The doctor looked at him.

“He is the sick man’s son,” said the sister; “he arrived this morning
from the country.”

The doctor placed one hand on his shoulder; then bent over the sick
man, felt his pulse, touched his forehead, and asked a few questions of the
sister, who replied, “There is nothing new.” Then he thought for a while and
said, “Continue the present treatment.”

Then the boy plucked up courage, and asked in a tearful voice, “What is
the matter with my father?”

“Take courage, my boy,” replied the doctor, laying his hand on his
shoulder once more; “he has erysipelas in his face. It is a serious case, but
there is still hope. Help him. Your presence may do him a great deal of
good.”

“But he does not know me!” exclaimed the boy in a tone of affliction.

“He will recognize you—to-morrow perhaps. Let us hope for the best
and keep up our courage.”

The boy would have liked to ask some more questions, but he did not
dare. The doctor passed on. And then he began his life of nurse. As he could
do nothing else, he arranged the coverlets of the sick man, touched his hand
every now and then, drove away the flies, bent over him at every groan, and
when the sister brought him something to drink, he took the glass or the
spoon from her hand, and administered it in her stead. The sick man looked
at him occasionally, but he gave no sign of recognition. However, his glance
rested longer on the lad each time, especially when the latter put his
handkerchief to his eyes.

Thus passed the first day. At night the boy slept on two chairs, in a
corner of the ward, and in the morning he resumed his work of mercy. That
day it seemed as though the eyes of the sick man revealed a dawning of
consciousness. At the sound of the boy’s caressing voice a vague expression
of gratitude seemed to gleam for an instant in his pupils, and once he moved
his lips a little, as though he wanted to say something. After each brief nap
he seemed, on opening his eyes, to seek his little nurse. The doctor, who
had passed twice, thought he noted a slight improvement. Towards evening,
on putting the cup to his lips, the lad fancied that he perceived a very faint
smile glide across the swollen lips. Then he began to take comfort and to
hope; and with the hope of being understood, confusedly at least, he talked
to him—talked to him at great length—of his mother, of his little sisters, of
his own return home, and he exhorted him to courage with warm and loving
words. And although he often doubted whether he was heard, he still talked;
for it seemed to him that even if he did not understand him, the sick man
listened with a certain pleasure to his voice,—to that unaccustomed
intonation of affection and sorrow. And in this manner passed the second
day, and the third, and the fourth, with vicissitudes of slight improvements
and unexpected changes for the worse; and the boy was so absorbed in all
his cares, that he hardly nibbled a bit of bread and cheese twice a day, when
the sister brought it to him, and hardly saw what was going on around him,
—the dying patients, the sudden running up of the sisters at night, the
moans and despairing gestures of visitors,—all those doleful and lugubrious
scenes of hospital life, which on any other occasion would have
disconcerted and alarmed him. Hours, days, passed, and still he was there
with his daddy; watchful, wistful, trembling at every sigh and at every look,

agitated incessantly between a hope which relieved his mind and a
discouragement which froze his heart.

On the fifth day the sick man suddenly grew worse. The doctor, on
being interrogated, shook his head, as much as to say that all was over, and
the boy flung himself on a chair and burst out sobbing. But one thing
comforted him. In spite of the fact that he was worse, the sick man seemed
to be slowly regaining a little intelligence. He stared at the lad with
increasing intentness, and, with an expression which grew in sweetness,
would take his drink and medicine from no one but him, and made
strenuous efforts with his lips with greater frequency, as though he were
trying to pronounce some word; and he did it so plainly sometimes that his
son grasped his arm violently, inspired by a sudden hope, and said to him in
a tone which was almost that of joy, “Courage, courage, daddy; you will get
well, we will go away from here, we will return home with mamma;
courage, for a little while longer!”

It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and just when the boy had
abandoned himself to one of these outbursts of tenderness and hope, when a
sound of footsteps became audible outside the nearest door in the ward, and
then a strong voice uttering two words only,—“Farewell, sister!”—which
made him spring to his feet, with a cry repressed in his throat.

At that moment there entered the ward a man with a thick bandage on
his hand, followed by a sister.

The boy uttered a sharp cry, and stood rooted to the spot.

The man turned round, looked at him for a moment, and uttered a cry in
his turn,—“Cicillo!”—and darted towards him.

The boy fell into his father’s arms, choking with emotion.

The sister, the nurse, and the assistant ran up, and stood there in
amazement.

The boy could not recover his voice.

“Oh, my Cicillo!” exclaimed the father, after bestowing an attentive
look on the sick man, as he kissed the boy repeatedly. “Cicillo, my son, how
is this? They took you to the bedside of another man. And there was I, in
despair at not seeing you after mamma had written, ‘I have sent him.’ Poor
Cicillo! How many days have you been here? How did this mistake occur? I
have come out of it easily! I have a good constitution, you know! And how
is mamma? And Concettella? And the little baby—how are they all? I am
leaving the hospital now. Come, then. Oh, Lord God! Who would have
thought it!”

The boy tried to interpolate a few words, to tell the news of the family.
“Oh how happy I am!” he stammered. “How happy I am! What terrible
days I have passed!” And he could not finish kissing his father.

But he did not stir.

“Come,” said his father; “we can get home this evening.” And he drew
the lad towards him. The boy turned to look at his patient.

“Well, are you coming or not?” his father demanded, in amazement.

The boy cast yet another glance at the sick man, who opened his eyes at
that moment and gazed intently at him.

Then a flood of words poured from his very soul. “No, daddy; wait—
here—I can’t. Here is this old man. I have been here for five days. He gazes
at me incessantly. I thought he was you. I love him dearly. He looks at me; I
give him his drink; he wants me always beside him; he is very ill now. Have
patience; I have not the courage—I don’t know—it pains me too much; I
will return home to-morrow; let me stay here a little longer; I don’t at all
like to leave him. See how he looks at me! I don’t know who he is, but he
wants me; he will die alone: let me stay here, dear daddy!”

“Bravo, little fellow!” exclaimed the attendant.

The father stood in perplexity, staring at the boy; then he looked at the
sick man. “Who is he?” he inquired.

“A countryman, like yourself,” replied the attendant, “just arrived from
abroad, and who entered the hospital on the very day that you entered it. He
was out of his senses when they brought him here, and could not speak.
Perhaps he has a family far away, and sons. He probably thinks that your
son is one of his.”

The sick man was still looking at the boy.

The father said to Cicillo, “Stay.”

“He will not have to stay much longer,” murmured the attendant.

“Stay,” repeated his father: “you have heart. I will go home
immediately, to relieve mamma’s distress. Here is a scudo for your
expenses. Good by, my brave little son, until we meet!”

He embraced him, looked at him intently, kissed him again on the brow,
and went away.

The boy returned to his post at the bedside, and the sick man appeared
consoled. And Cicillo began again to play the nurse, no longer weeping, but
with the same eagerness, the same patience, as before; he again began to
give the man his drink, to arrange his bedclothes, to caress his hand, to
speak softly to him, to exhort him to courage. He attended him all that day,
all that night; he remained beside him all the following day. But the sick
man continued to grow constantly worse; his face turned a purple color, his
breathing grew heavier, his agitation increased, inarticulate cries escaped
his lips, the inflammation became excessive. On his evening visit, the
doctor said that he would not live through the night. And then Cicillo
redoubled his cares, and never took his eyes from him for a minute. The
sick man gazed and gazed at him, and kept moving his lips from time to
time, with great effort, as though he wanted to say something, and an
expression of extraordinary tenderness passed over his eyes now and then,
as they continued to grow smaller and more dim. And that night the boy
watched with him until he saw the first rays of dawn gleam white through
the windows, and the sister appeared. The sister approached the bed, cast a
glance at the patient, and then went away with rapid steps. A few moments

later she reappeared with the assistant doctor, and with a nurse, who carried
a lantern.

“He is at his last gasp,” said the doctor.

The boy clasped the sick man’s hand. The latter opened his eyes, gazed
at him, and closed them once more.

At that moment the lad fancied that he felt his hand pressed. “He
pressed my hand!” he exclaimed.

The doctor bent over the patient for an instant, then straightened himself
up.

The sister detached a crucifix from the wall.

“He is dead!” cried the boy.

“Go, my son,” said the doctor: “your work of mercy is finished. Go, and
may fortune attend you! for you deserve it. God will protect you. Farewell!”

The sister, who had stepped aside for a moment, returned with a little
bunch of violets which she had taken from a glass on the window-sill, and
handed them to the boy, saying:—

“I have nothing else to give you. Take these in memory of the hospital.”

“Thanks,” returned the boy, taking the bunch of flowers with one hand
and drying his eyes with the other; “but I have such a long distance to go on
foot—I shall spoil them.” And separating the violets, he scattered them over
the bed, saying: “I leave them as a memento for my poor dead man. Thanks,
sister! thanks, doctor!” Then, turning to the dead man, “Farewell—” And
while he sought a name to give him, the sweet name which he had applied
to him for five days recurred to his lips,—“Farewell, poor daddy!”

So saying, he took his little bundle of clothes under his arm, and,
exhausted with fatigue, he walked slowly away. The day was dawning.

THE WORKSHOP.

Saturday, 18th.

Precossi came last night to remind me that I was to go and see his
workshop, which is down the street, and this morning when I went out with
my father, I got him to take me there for a moment. As we approached the
shop, Garoffi issued from it on a run, with a package in his hand, and
making his big cloak, with which he covers up his merchandise, flutter. Ah!
now I know where he goes to pilfer iron filings, which he sells for old
papers, that barterer of a Garoffi! When we arrived in front of the door, we
saw Precossi seated on a little pile of bricks, engaged in studying his lesson,
with his book resting on his knees. He rose quickly and invited us to enter.
It was a large apartment, full of coal-dust, bristling with hammers, pincers,
bars, and old iron of every description; and in one corner burned a fire in a
small furnace, where puffed a pair of bellows worked by a boy. Precossi,
the father, was standing near the anvil, and a young man was holding a bar
of iron in the fire.

“Ah! here he is,” said the smith, as soon as he caught sight of us, and he
lifted his cap, “the nice boy who gives away railway trains! He has come to
see me work a little, has he not? I shall be at your service in a moment.”
And as he said it, he smiled; and he no longer had the ferocious face, the
malevolent eyes of former days. The young man handed him a long bar of
iron heated red-hot on one end, and the smith placed it on the anvil. He was
making one of those curved bars for the rail of terrace balustrades. He
raised a large hammer and began to beat it, pushing the heated part now
here, now there, between one point of the anvil and the middle, and turning
it about in various ways; and it was a marvel to see how the iron curved
beneath the rapid and accurate blows of the hammer, and twisted, and
gradually assumed the graceful form of a leaf torn from a flower, like a pipe
of dough which he had modelled with his hands. And meanwhile his son
watched us with a certain air of pride, as much as to say, “See how my
father works!”

“Do you see how it is done, little master?” the blacksmith asked me,
when he had finished, holding out the bar, which looked like a bishop’s

crosier. Then he laid it aside, and thrust another into the fire.

“That was very well made, indeed,” my father said to him. And he
added, “So you are working—eh! You have returned to good habits?”

“Yes, I have returned,” replied the workman, wiping away the
perspiration, and reddening a little. “And do you know who has made me
return to them?” My father pretended not to understand. “This brave boy,”
said the blacksmith, indicating his son with his finger; “that brave boy
there, who studied and did honor to his father, while his father rioted, and
treated him like a dog. When I saw that medal—Ah! thou little lad of mine,
no bigger than a soldo[1] of cheese, come hither, that I may take a good look
at thy phiz!”

The boy ran to him instantly; the smith took him and set him directly on
the anvil, holding him under the arms, and said to him:—

“Polish off the frontispiece of this big beast of a daddy of yours a little!”

And then Precossi covered his father’s black face with kisses, until he
was all black himself.

“That’s as it should be,” said the smith, and he set him on the ground
again.

“That really is as it should be, Precossi!” exclaimed my father,
delighted. And bidding the smith and his son good day, he led me away. As
I was going out, little Precossi said to me, “Excuse me,” and thrust a little
packet of nails into my pocket. I invited him to come and view the Carnival
from my house.

“You gave him your railway train,” my father said to me in the street;
“but if it had been made of gold and filled with pearls, it would still have
been but a petty gift to that sainted son, who has reformed his father’s
heart.”

FOOTNOTES:
[1] The twentieth part of a cubit; Florentine measure.

THE LITTLE HARLEQUIN.

Monday, 20th.

The whole city is in a tumult over the Carnival, which is nearing its
close. In every square rise booths of mountebanks and jesters; and we have
under our windows a circus-tent, in which a little Venetian company, with
five horses, is giving a show. The circus is in the centre of the square; and in
one corner there are three very large vans in which the mountebanks sleep
and dress themselves,—three small houses on wheels, with their tiny
windows, and a chimney in each of them, which smokes continually; and
between window and window the baby’s swaddling-bands are stretched.
There is one woman who is nursing a child, who prepares the food, and
dances on the tight-rope. Poor people! The word mountebank is spoken as
though it were an insult; but they earn their living honestly, nevertheless, by
amusing all the world—and how they work! All day long they run back and
forth between the circus-tent and the vans, in tights, in all this cold; they
snatch a mouthful or two in haste, standing, between two performances; and
sometimes, when they get their tent full, a wind arises, wrenches away the
ropes and extinguishes the lights, and then good by to the show! They are
obliged to return the money, and to work the entire night at repairing their
booth. There are two lads who work; and my father recognized the smallest
one as he was traversing the square; and he is the son of the proprietor, the
same one whom we saw perform tricks on horseback last year in a circus on
the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. And he has grown; he must be eight years
old: he is a handsome boy, with a round and roguish face, with so many
black curls that they escape from his pointed cap. He is dressed up like a
harlequin, decked out in a sort of sack, with sleeves of white, embroidered

with black, and his slippers are of cloth. He is a merry little imp. He charms
every one. He does everything. We see him early in the morning, wrapped
in a shawl, carrying milk to his wooden house; then he goes to get the
horses at the boarding-stable on the Via Bertola. He holds the tiny baby in
his arms; he transports hoops, trestles, rails, ropes; he cleans the vans, lights
the fire, and in his leisure moments he always hangs about his mother. My
father is always watching him from the window, and does nothing but talk
about him and his family, who have the air of nice people, and of being
fond of their children.

One evening we went to the circus: it was cold; there was hardly any
one there; but the little harlequin exerted himself greatly to cheer those few
people: he executed precarious leaps; he caught hold of the horses’ tails; he
walked with his legs in the air, all alone; he sang, always with a smile
constantly on his handsome little brown face. And his father, who had on a
red vest and white trousers, with tall boots, and a whip in his hand, watched
him: but it was melancholy. My father took pity on him, and spoke of him
on the following day to Delis the painter, who came to see us. These poor
people were killing themselves with hard work, and their affairs were going
so badly! The little boy pleased him so much! What could be done for
them? The painter had an idea.

“Write a fine article for the Gazette,” he said: “you know how to write
well: relate the miraculous things which the little harlequin does, and I will
take his portrait for you. Everybody reads the Gazette, and people will flock
thither for once.”

And thus they did. My father wrote a fine article, full of jests, which
told all that we had observed from the window, and inspired a desire to see
and caress the little artist; and the painter sketched a little portrait which
was graceful and a good likeness, and which was published on Saturday
evening. And behold! at the Sunday performance a great crowd rushed to
the circus. The announcement was made: Performance for the Benefit of the
Little Harlequin, as he was styled in the Gazette. The circus was crammed;
many of the spectators held the Gazette in their hands, and showed it to the
little harlequin, who laughed and ran from one to another, perfectly
delighted. The proprietor was delighted also. Just fancy! Not a single

newspaper had ever done him such an honor, and the money-box was filled.
My father sat beside me. Among the spectators we found persons of our
acquaintance. Near the entrance for the horses stood the teacher of
gymnastics—the one who has been with Garibaldi; and opposite us, in the
second row, was the little mason, with his little round face, seated beside his
gigantic father; and no sooner did he catch sight of me than he made a
hare’s face at me. A little further on I espied Garoffi, who was counting the
spectators, and calculated on his fingers how much money the company had
taken in. On one of the chairs in the first row, not far from us, there was
also poor Robetti, the boy who saved the child from the omnibus, with his
crutches between his knees, pressed close to the side of his father, the
artillery captain, who kept one hand on his shoulder. The performance
began. The little harlequin accomplished wonders on his horse, on the
trapeze, on the tight-rope; and every time that he jumped down, every one
clapped their hands, and many pulled his curls. Then several others, rope-
dancers, jugglers, and riders, clad in tights, and sparkling with silver, went
through their exercises; but when the boy was not performing, the audience
seemed to grow weary. At a certain point I saw the teacher of gymnastics,
who held his post at the entrance for the horses, whisper in the ear of the
proprietor of the circus, and the latter instantly glanced around, as though in
search of some one. His glance rested on us. My father perceived it, and
understood that the teacher had revealed that he was the author of the
article, and in order to escape being thanked, he hastily retreated, saying to
me:—

“Remain, Enrico; I will wait for you outside.”

After exchanging a few words with his father, the little harlequin went
through still another trick: erect upon a galloping horse, he appeared in four
characters—as a pilgrim, a sailor, a soldier, and an acrobat; and every time
that he passed near me, he looked at me. And when he dismounted, he
began to make the tour of the circus, with his harlequin’s cap in his hand,
and everybody threw soldi or sugar-plums into it. I had two soldi ready; but
when he got in front of me, instead of offering his cap, he drew it back,
gave me a look and passed on. I was mortified. Why had he offered me that
affront?

The performance came to an end; the proprietor thanked the audience;
and all the people rose also, and thronged to the doors. I was confused by
the crowd, and was on the point of going out, when I felt a touch on my
hand. I turned round: it was the little harlequin, with his tiny brown face
and his black curls, who was smiling at me; he had his hands full of sugar-
plums. Then I understood.

“Will you accept these sugar-plums from the little harlequin?” said he to
me, in his dialect.

I nodded, and took three or four.

“Then,” he added, “please accept a kiss also.”

“Give me two,” I answered; and held up my face to him. He rubbed off
his floury face with his hand, put his arm round my neck, and planted two
kisses on my cheek, saying:—

“There! take one of them to your father.”

THE LAST DAY OF THE CARNIVAL.

Tuesday, 21st.

What a sad scene was that which we witnessed to-day at the procession
of the masks! It ended well; but it might have resulted in a great misfortune.
In the San Carlo Square, all decorated with red, white, and yellow festoons,
a vast multitude had assembled; masks of every hue were flitting about;
cars, gilded and adorned, in the shape of pavilions; little theatres, barks
filled with harlequins and warriors, cooks, sailors, and shepherdesses; there
was such a confusion that one knew not where to look; a tremendous clash
of trumpets, horns, and cymbals lacerated the ears; and the masks on the
chariots drank and sang, as they apostrophized the people in the streets and
at the windows, who retorted at the top of their lungs, and hurled oranges
and sugar-plums at each other vigorously; and above the chariots and the

throng, as far as the eye could reach, one could see banners fluttering,
helmets gleaming, plumes waving, gigantic pasteboard heads moving, huge
head-dresses, enormous trumpets, fantastic arms, little drums, castanets, red
caps, and bottles;—all the world seemed to have gone mad. When our
carriage entered the square, a magnificent chariot was driving in front of us,
drawn by four horses covered with trappings embroidered in gold, and all
wreathed in artificial roses, upon which there were fourteen or fifteen
gentlemen masquerading as gentlemen at the court of France, all glittering
with silk, with huge white wigs, a plumed hat, under the arm a small-sword,
and a tuft of ribbons and laces on the breast. They were very gorgeous.
They were singing a French canzonette in concert and throwing sweetmeats
to the people, and the people clapped their hands and shouted. Suddenly, on
our left, we saw a man lift a child of five or six above the heads of the
crowd,—a poor little creature, who wept piteously, and flung her arms
about as though in a fit of convulsions. The man made his way to the
gentlemen’s chariot; one of the latter bent down, and the other said aloud:—

“Take this child; she has lost her mother in the crowd; hold her in your
arms; the mother may not be far off, and she will catch sight of her: there is
no other way.”

The gentleman took the child in his arms: all the rest stopped singing;
the child screamed and struggled; the gentleman removed his mask; the
chariot continued to move slowly onwards. Meanwhile, as we were
afterwards informed, at the opposite extremity of the square a poor woman,
half crazed with despair, was forcing her way through the crowd, by dint of
shoves and elbowing, and shrieking:—

“Maria! Maria! Maria! I have lost my little daughter! She has been
stolen from me! They have suffocated my child!” And for a quarter of an
hour she raved and expressed her despair in this manner, straying now a
little way in this direction, and then a little way in that, crushed by the
throng through which she strove to force her way.

The gentleman on the car was meanwhile holding the child pressed
against the ribbons and laces on his breast, casting glances over the square,
and trying to calm the poor creature, who covered her face with her hands,
not knowing where she was, and sobbed as though she would break her

heart. The gentleman was touched: it was evident that these screams went to
his soul. All the others offered the child oranges and sugar-plums; but she
repulsed them all, and grew constantly more convulsed and frightened.

“Find her mother!” shouted the gentleman to the crowd; “seek her
mother!” And every one turned to the right and the left; but the mother was
not to be found. Finally, a few paces from the place where the Via Roma
enters the square, a woman was seen to rush towards the chariot. Ah, I shall
never forget that! She no longer seemed a human creature: her hair was
streaming, her face distorted, her garments torn; she hurled herself forward
with a rattle in her throat,—one knew not whether to attribute it to either
joy, anguish, or rage,—and darted out her hands like two claws to snatch
her child. The chariot halted.

“Here she is,” said the gentleman, reaching out the child after kissing it;
and he placed her in her mother’s arms, who pressed her to her breast like a
fury. But one of the tiny hands rested a second longer in the hands of the
gentleman; and the latter, pulling off of his right hand a gold ring set with a
large diamond, and slipping it with a rapid movement upon the finger of the
little girl, said:—

“Take this; it shall be your marriage dowry.”

The mother stood rooted to the spot, as though enchanted; the crowd
broke into applause; the gentleman put on his mask again, his companions
resumed their song, and the chariot started on again slowly, amid a tempest
of hand-clapping and hurrahs.

THE BLIND BOYS.

Thursday, 24th.

The master is very ill, and they have sent in his stead the master of the
fourth grade, who has been a teacher in the Institute for the Blind. He is the
oldest of all the instructors, with hair so white that it looks like a wig made

of cotton, and he speaks in a peculiar manner, as though he were chanting a
melancholy song; but he does it well, and he knows a great deal. No sooner
had he entered the schoolroom than, catching sight of a boy with a bandage
on his eye, he approached the bench, and asked him what was the matter.

“Take care of your eyes, my boy,” he said to him. And then Derossi
asked him:—

“Is it true, sir, that you have been a teacher of the blind?”

“Yes, for several years,” he replied. And Derossi said, in a low tone,
“Tell us something about it.”

The master went and seated himself at his table.

Coretti said aloud, “The Institute for the Blind is in the Via Nizza.”

“You say blind—blind," said the master, “as you would say poor or ill,
or I know not what. But do you thoroughly comprehend the significance of
that word? Reflect a little. Blind! Never to see anything! Not to be able to
distinguish the day from night; to see neither the sky, nor sun, nor your
parents, nor anything of what is around you, and which you touch; to be
immersed in a perpetual obscurity, and as though buried in the bowels of
the earth! Make a little effort to close your eyes, and to think of being
obliged to remain forever thus; you will suddenly be overwhelmed by a
mental agony, by terror; it will seem to you impossible to resist, that you
must burst into a scream, that you must go mad or die. But, poor boys!
when you enter the Institute of the Blind for the first time, during their
recreation hour, and hear them playing on violins and flutes in all
directions, and talking loudly and laughing, ascending and descending the
stairs at a rapid pace, and wandering freely through the corridors and
dormitories, you would never pronounce these unfortunates to be the
unfortunates that they are. It is necessary to observe them closely. There are
lads of sixteen or eighteen, robust and cheerful, who bear their blindness
with a certain ease, almost with hardihood; but you understand from a
certain proud, resentful expression of countenance that they must have
suffered tremendously before they became resigned to this misfortune.

“There are others, with sweet and pallid faces, on which a profound
resignation is visible; but they are sad, and one understands that they must
still weep at times in secret. Ah, my sons! reflect that some of them have
lost their sight in a few days, some after years of martyrdom and many
terrible chirurgical operations, and that many were born so,—born into a
night that has no dawn for them, that they entered into the world as into an
immense tomb, and that they do not know what the human countenance is
like. Picture to yourself how they must have suffered, and how they must
still suffer, when they think thus confusedly of the tremendous difference
between themselves and those who see, and ask themselves, ‘Why this
difference, if we are not to blame?’

“I who have spent many years among them, when I recall that class, all
those eyes forever sealed, all those pupils without sight and without life,
and then look at the rest of you, it seems impossible to me that you should
not all be happy. Think of it! there are about twenty-six thousand blind
persons in Italy! Twenty-six thousand persons who do not see the light—do
you understand? An army which would employ four hours in marching past
our windows.”

The master paused. Not a breath was audible in all the school. Derossi
asked if it were true that the blind have a finer sense of feeling than the rest
of us.

The master said: “It is true. All the other senses are finer in them,
because, since they must replace, among them, that of sight, they are more
and better exercised than they are in the case of those who see. In the
morning, in the dormitory, one asks another, ‘Is the sun shining?’ and the
one who is the most alert in dressing runs instantly into the yard, and
flourishes his hands in the air, to find out whether there is any warmth of
the sun perceptible, and then he runs to communicate the good news, ‘The
sun is shining!’ From the voice of a person they obtain an idea of his height.
We judge of a man’s soul by his eyes; they, by his voice. They remember
intonations and accents for years. They perceive if there is more than one
person in a room, even if only one speaks, and the rest remain motionless.
They know by their touch whether a spoon is more or less polished. Little
girls distinguish dyed wools from that which is of the natural color. As they

walk two and two along the streets, they recognize nearly all the shops by
their odors, even those in which we perceive no odor. They spin top, and by
listening to its humming they go straight to it and pick it up without any
mistake. They trundle hoop, play at ninepins, jump the rope, build little
houses of stones, pick violets as though they saw them, make mats and
baskets, weaving together straw of various colors rapidly and well—to such
a degree is their sense of touch skilled. The sense of touch is their sight.
One of their greatest pleasures is to handle, to grasp, to guess the forms of
things by feeling them. It is affecting to see them when they are taken to the
Industrial Museum, where they are allowed to handle whatever they please,
and to observe with what eagerness they fling themselves on geometrical
bodies, on little models of houses, on instruments; with what joy they feel
over and rub and turn everything about in their hands, in order to see how it
is made. They call this seeing!”

Garoffi interrupted the teacher to inquire if it was true that blind boys
learn to reckon better than others.

The master replied: “It is true. They learn to reckon and to write. They
have books made on purpose for them, with raised characters; they pass
their fingers over these, recognize the letters and pronounce the words.
They read rapidly; and you should see them blush, poor little things, when
they make a mistake. And they write, too, without ink. They write on a thick
and hard sort of paper with a metal bodkin, which makes a great many little
hollows, grouped according to a special alphabet; these little punctures
stand out in relief on the other side of the paper, so that by turning the paper
over and drawing their fingers across these projections, they can read what
they have written, and also the writing of others; and thus they write
compositions: and they write letters to each other. They write numbers in
the same way, and they make calculations; and they calculate mentally with
an incredible facility, since their minds are not diverted by the sight of
surrounding objects, as ours are. And if you could see how passionately
fond they are of reading, how attentive they are, how well they remember
everything, how they discuss among themselves, even the little ones, of
things connected with history and language, as they sit four or five on the
same bench, without turning to each other, and converse, the first with the

third, the second with the fourth, in a loud voice and all together, without
losing a single word, so acute and prompt is their hearing.

“And they attach more importance to the examinations than you do, I
assure you, and they are fonder of their teachers. They recognize their
teacher by his step and his odor; they perceive whether he is in a good or
bad humor, whether he is well or ill, simply by the sound of a single word
of his. They want the teacher to touch them when he encourages and praises
them, and they feel of his hand and his arms in order to express their
gratitude. And they love each other and are good comrades to each other. In
play time they are always together, according to their wont. In the girls’
school, for instance, they form into groups according to the instrument on
which they play,—violinists, pianists, and flute-players,—and they never
separate. When they have become attached to any one, it is difficult for
them to break it off. They take much comfort in friendship. They judge
correctly among themselves. They have a clear and profound idea of good
and evil. No one grows so enthusiastic as they over the narration of a
generous action, of a grand deed.”

Votini inquired if they played well.

“They are ardently fond of music," replied the master. “It is their
delight: music is their life. Little blind children, when they first enter the
Institute, are capable of standing three hours perfectly motionless, to listen
to playing. They learn easily; they play with fire. When the teacher tells one
of them that he has not a talent for music, he feels very sorrowful, but he
sets to studying desperately. Ah! if you could hear the music there, if you
could see them when they are playing, with their heads thrown back a smile
on their lips, their faces aflame, trembling with emotion, in ecstasies at
listening to that harmony which replies to them in the obscurity which
envelops them, you would feel what a divine consolation is music! And
they shout for joy, they beam with happiness when a teacher says to them,
“You will become an artist.” The one who is first in music, who succeeds
the best on the violin or piano, is like a king to them; they love, they
venerate him. If a quarrel arises between two of them, they go to him; if two
friends fall out, it is he who reconciles them. The smallest pupils, whom he
teaches to play, regard him as a father. Then all go to bid him good night

before retiring to bed. And they talk constantly of music. They are already
in bed, late at night, wearied by study and work, and half asleep, and still
they are discussing, in a low tone, operas, masters, instruments, and
orchestras. It is so great a punishment for them to be deprived of the
reading, or lesson in music, it causes them such sorrow that one hardly ever
has the courage to punish them in that way. That which the light is to our
eyes, music is to their hearts.”

Derossi asked whether we could not go to see them.

“Yes,” replied the teacher; “but you boys must not go there now. You
shall go there later on, when you are in a condition to appreciate the whole
extent of this misfortune, and to feel all the compassion which it merits. It is
a sad sight, my boys. You will sometimes see there boys seated in front of
an open window, enjoying the fresh air, with immovable countenances,
which seem to be gazing at the wide green expanse and the beautiful blue
mountains which you can see; and when you remember that they see
nothing—that they will never see anything—of that vast loveliness, your
soul is oppressed, as though you had yourselves become blind at that
moment. And then there are those who were born blind, who, as they have
never seen the world, do not complain because they do not possess the
image of anything, and who, therefore, arouse less compassion. But there
are lads who have been blind but a few months, who still recall everything,
who thoroughly understand all that they have lost; and these have, in
addition, the grief of feeling their minds obscured, the dearest images grow
a little more dim in their minds day by day, of feeling the persons whom
they have loved the most die out of their memories. One of these boys said
to me one day, with inexpressible sadness, ‘I should like to have my sight
again, only for a moment, in order to see mamma’s face once more, for I no
longer remember it!’ And when their mothers come to see them, the boys
place their hands on her face; they feel her over thoroughly from brow to
chin, and her ears, to see how they are made, and they can hardly persuade
themselves that they cannot see her, and they call her by name many times,
to beseech her that she will allow them, that she will make them see her just
once. How many, even hard-hearted men, go away in tears! And when you
do go out, your case seems to you to be the exception, and the power to see
people, houses, and the sky a hardly deserved privilege. Oh! there is not one

of you, I am sure, who, on emerging thence, would not feel disposed to
deprive himself of a portion of his own sight, in order to bestow a gleam at
least upon all those poor children, for whom the sun has no light, for whom
a mother has no face!”

THE SICK MASTER.

Saturday, 25th.

Yesterday afternoon, on coming out of school, I went to pay a visit to
my sick master. He made himself ill by overworking. Five hours of teaching
a day, then an hour of gymnastics, then two hours more of evening school,
which is equivalent to saying but little sleep, getting his food by snatches,
and working breathlessly from morning till night. He has ruined his health.
That is what my mother says. My mother was waiting for me at the big
door; I came out alone, and on the stairs I met the teacher with the black
beard—Coatti,—the one who frightens every one and punishes no one. He
stared at me with wide-open eyes, and made his voice like that of a lion, in
jest, but without laughing. I was still laughing when I pulled the bell on the
fourth floor; but I ceased very suddenly when the servant let me into a
wretched, half-lighted room, where my teacher was in bed. He was lying in
a little iron bed. His beard was long. He put one hand to his brow in order to
see better, and exclaimed in his affectionate voice:—

“Oh, Enrico!”

I approached the bed; he laid one hand on my shoulder and said:—

“Good, my boy. You have done well to come and see your poor teacher.
I am reduced to a sad state, as you see, my dear Enrico. And how fares the
school? How are your comrades getting along? All well, eh? Even without
me? You do very well without your old master, do you not?”

I was on the point of saying “no”; he interrupted me.

“Come, come, I know that you do not hate me!” and he heaved a sigh.

I glanced at some photographs fastened to the wall.

“Do you see?” he said to me. “All of them are of boys who gave me
their photographs more than twenty years ago. They were good boys. These
are my souvenirs. When I die, my last glance will be at them; at those
roguish urchins among whom my life has been passed. You will give me
your portrait, also, will you not, when you have finished the elementary
course?” Then he took an orange from his nightstand, and put it in my hand.

“I have nothing else to give you,” he said; “it is the gift of a sick man.”

I looked at it, and my heart was sad; I know not why.

“Attend to me,” he began again. “I hope to get over this; but if I should
not recover, see that you strengthen yourself in arithmetic, which is your
weak point; make an effort. It is merely a question of a first effort: because
sometimes there is no lack of aptitude; there is merely an absence of a fixed
purpose—of stability, as it is called.”

But in the meantime he was breathing hard; and it was evident that he
was suffering.

“I am feverish,” he sighed; “I am half gone; I beseech you, therefore,
apply yourself to arithmetic, to problems. If you don’t succeed at first, rest a
little and begin afresh. And press forward, but quietly without fagging
yourself, without straining your mind. Go! My respects to your mamma.
And do not mount these stairs again. We shall see each other again in
school. And if we do not, you must now and then call to mind your master
of the third grade, who was fond of you.”

I felt inclined to cry at these words.

“Bend down your head,” he said to me.

I bent my head to his pillow; he kissed my hair. Then he said to me,
“Go!” and turned his face towards the wall. And I flew down the stairs; for I

longed to embrace my mother.

THE STREET.

Saturday, 25th.

I was watching you from the window this afternoon, when you were on
your way home from the master’s; you came in collision with a woman.
Take more heed to your manner of walking in the street. There are duties to
be fulfilled even there. If you keep your steps and gestures within bounds in
a private house, why should you not do the same in the street, which is
everybody’s house. Remember this, Enrico. Every time that you meet a
feeble old man, a poor person, a woman with a child in her arms, a cripple
with his crutches, a man bending beneath a burden, a family dressed in
mourning, make way for them respectfully. We must respect age, misery,
maternal love, infirmity, labor, death. Whenever you see a person on the
point of being run down by a vehicle, drag him away, if it is a child; warn
him, if he is a man; always ask what ails the child who is crying all alone;
pick up the aged man’s cane, when he lets it fall. If two boys are fighting,
separate them; if it is two men, go away: do not look on a scene of brutal
violence, which offends and hardens the heart. And when a man passes,
bound, and walking between a couple of policemen, do not add your
curiosity to the cruel curiosity of the crowd; he may be innocent. Cease to
talk with your companion, and to smile, when you meet a hospital litter,
which is, perhaps, bearing a dying person, or a funeral procession; for one
may issue from your own home on the morrow. Look with reverence upon
all boys from the asylums, who walk two and two,—the blind, the dumb,
those afflicted with the rickets, orphans, abandoned children; reflect that it
is misfortune and human charity which is passing by. Always pretend not to
notice any one who has a repulsive or laughter-provoking deformity.
Always extinguish every match that you find in your path; for it may cost
some one his life. Always answer a passer-by who asks you the way, with
politeness. Do not look at any one and laugh; do not run without necessity;
do not shout. Respect the street. The education of a people is judged first of

all by their behavior on the street. Where you find offences in the streets,
there you will find offences in the houses. And study the streets; study the
city in which you live. If you were to be hurled far away from it to-morrow,
you would be glad to have it clearly present in your memory, to be able to
traverse it all again in memory. Your own city, and your little country—that
which has been for so many years your world; where you took your first
steps at your mother’s side; where you experienced your first emotions,
opened your mind to its first ideas; found your first friends. It has been a
mother to you: it has taught you, loved you, protected you. Study it in its
streets and in its people, and love it; and when you hear it insulted, defend
it.

Thy Father.

MARCH

THE EVENING SCHOOLS.

Thursday, 2d.

Last night my father took me to see the evening schools in our Baretti
schoolhouse, which were all lighted up already, and where the workingmen
were already beginning to enter. On our arrival we found the head-master
and the other masters in a great rage, because a little while before the glass
in one window had been broken by a stone. The beadle had darted forth and
seized a boy by the hair, who was passing; but thereupon, Stardi, who lives
in the house opposite, had presented himself, and said:—

“This is not the right one; I saw it with my own eyes; it was Franti who
threw it; and he said to me, ‘Woe to you if you tell of me!’ but I am not
afraid.”

Then the head-master declared that Franti should be expelled for good.
In the meantime I was watching the workingmen enter by twos and threes;
and more than two hundred had already entered. I have never seen anything
so fine as the evening school. There were boys of twelve and upwards;
bearded men who were on their way from their work, carrying their books
and copy-books; there were carpenters, engineers with black faces, masons
with hands white with plaster, bakers’ boys with their hair full of flour; and
there was perceptible the odor of varnish, hides, fish, oil,—odors of all the
various trades. There also entered a squad of artillery workmen, dressed like
soldiers and headed by a corporal. They all filed briskly to their benches,

removed the board underneath, on which we put our feet, and immediately
bent their heads over their work.

Some stepped up to the teachers to ask explanations, with their open
copy-books in their hands. I caught sight of that young and well-dressed
master “the little lawyer,” who had three or four workingmen clustered
round his table, and was making corrections with his pen; and also the lame
one, who was laughing with a dyer who had brought him a copy-book all
adorned with red and blue dyes. My master, who had recovered, and who
will return to school to-morrow, was there also. The doors of the
schoolroom were open. I was amazed, when the lessons began, to see how
attentive they all were, and how they kept their eyes fixed on their work.
Yet the greater part of them, so the head-master said, for fear of being late,
had not even been home to eat a mouthful of supper, and they were hungry.

But the younger ones, after half an hour of school, were falling off the
benches with sleep; one even went fast asleep with his head on the bench,
and the master waked him up by poking his ear with a pen. But the grown-
up men did nothing of the sort; they kept awake, and listened, with their
mouths wide open, to the lesson, without even winking; and it made a deep
impression on me to see all those bearded men on our benches. We also
ascended to the story floor above, and I ran to the door of my schoolroom
and saw in my seat a man with a big mustache and a bandaged hand, who
might have injured himself while at work about some machine; but he was
trying to write, though very, very slowly.

But what pleased me most was to behold in the seat of the little mason,
on the very same bench and in the very same corner, his father, the mason,
as huge as a giant, who sat there all coiled up into a narrow space, with his
chin on his fists and his eyes on his book, so absorbed that he hardly
breathed. And there was no chance about it, for it was he himself who said
to the head-master the first evening he came to the school:—

“Signor Director, do me the favor to place me in the seat of 'my hare’s
face.’” For he always calls his son so.

My father kept me there until the end, and in the street we saw many
women with children in their arms, waiting for their husbands; and at the

entrance a change was effected: the husbands took the children in their
arms, and the women made them surrender their books and copy-books;
and in this wise they proceeded to their homes. For several minutes the
street was filled with people and with noise. Then all grew silent, and all we
could see was the tall and weary form of the head-master disappearing in
the distance.

THE FIGHT.

Sunday, 5th.

It was what might have been expected. Franti, on being expelled by the
head-master, wanted to revenge himself on Stardi, and he waited for Stardi
at a corner, when he came out of school, and when the latter was passing
with his sister, whom he escorts every day from an institution in the Via
Dora Grossa. My sister Silvia, on emerging from her schoolhouse,
witnessed the whole affair, and came home thoroughly terrified. This is
what took place. Franti, with his cap of waxed cloth canted over one ear, ran
up on tiptoe behind Stardi, and in order to provoke him, gave a tug at his
sister’s braid of hair,—a tug so violent that it almost threw the girl flat on
her back on the ground. The little girl uttered a cry; her brother whirled
round; Franti, who is much taller and stronger than Stardi, thought:—

“He’ll not utter a word, or I’ll break his skin for him!”

But Stardi never paused to reflect, and small and ill-made as he is, he
flung himself with one bound on that big fellow, and began to belabor him
with his fists. He could not hold his own, however, and he got more than he
gave. There was no one in the street but girls, so there was no one who
could separate them. Franti flung him on the ground; but the other instantly
got up, and then down he went on his back again, and Franti pounded away
as though upon a door: in an instant he had torn away half an ear, and
bruised one eye, and drawn blood from the other’s nose. But Stardi was
tenacious; he roared:—

“You may kill me, but I’ll make you pay for it!” And down went Franti,
kicking and cuffing, and Stardi under him, butting and lungeing out with his
heels. A woman shrieked from a window, “Good for the little one!” Others
said, “It is a boy defending his sister; courage! give it to him well!” And
they screamed at Franti, “You overbearing brute! you coward!” But Franti
had grown ferocious; he held out his leg; Stardi tripped and fell, and Franti
on top of him.

“Surrender!”—“No!”—“Surrender!”—“No!” and in a flash Stardi
recovered his feet, clasped Franti by the body, and, with one furious effort,
hurled him on the pavement, and fell upon him with one knee on his breast.

“Ah, the infamous fellow! he has a knife!” shouted a man, rushing up to
disarm Franti.

But Stardi, beside himself with rage, had already grasped Franti’s arm
with both hands, and bestowed on the fist such a bite that the knife fell from
it, and the hand began to bleed. More people had run up in the meantime,
who separated them and set them on their feet. Franti took to his heels in a
sorry plight, and Stardi stood still, with his face all scratched, and a black
eye,—but triumphant,—beside his weeping sister, while some of the girls
collected the books and copy-books which were strewn over the street.

“Bravo, little fellow!” said the bystanders; “he defended his sister!”

But Stardi, who was thinking more of his satchel than of his victory,
instantly set to examining the books and copy-books, one by one, to see
whether anything was missing or injured. He rubbed them off with his
sleeve, scrutinized his pen, put everything back in its place, and then,
tranquil and serious as usual, he said to his sister, “Let us go home quickly,
for I have a problem to solve.”

THE BOYS’ PARENTS.

Monday, 6th.

This morning big Stardi, the father, came to wait for his son, fearing lest
he should again encounter Franti. But they say that Franti will not be seen
again, because he will be put in the penitentiary.

There were a great many parents there this morning. Among the rest
there was the retail wood-dealer, the father of Coretti, the perfect image of
his son, slender, brisk, with his mustache brought to a point, and a ribbon of
two colors in the button-hole of his jacket. I know nearly all the parents of
the boys, through constantly seeing them there. There is one crooked
grandmother, with her white cap, who comes four times a day, whether it
rains or snows or storms, to accompany and to get her little grandson, of the
upper primary; and she takes off his little cloak and puts it on for him,
adjusts his necktie, brushes off the dust, polishes him up, and takes care of
the copy-books. It is evident that she has no other thought, that she sees
nothing in the world more beautiful. The captain of artillery also comes
frequently, the father of Robetti, the lad with the crutches, who saved a
child from the omnibus, and as all his son’s companions bestow a caress on
him in passing, he returns a caress or a salute to every one, and he never
forgets any one; he bends over all, and the poorer and more badly dressed
they are, the more pleased he seems to be, and he thanks them.

At times, however, sad sights are to be seen. A gentleman who had not
come for a month because one of his sons had died, and who had sent a
maidservant for the other, on returning yesterday and beholding the class,
the comrades of his little dead boy, retired into a corner and burst into sobs,
with both hands before his face, and the head-master took him by the arm
and led him to his office.

There are fathers and mothers who know all their sons’ companions by
name. There are girls from the neighboring schoolhouse, and scholars in the
gymnasium, who come to wait for their brothers. There is one old
gentleman who was a colonel formerly, and who, when a boy drops a copy-
book or a pen, picks it up for him. There are also to be seen well-dressed
men, who discuss school matters with others, who have kerchiefs on their
heads, and baskets on their arm, and who say:—

“Oh! the problem has been a difficult one this time.”—“That grammar
lesson will never come to an end this morning!”

And when there is a sick boy in the class, they all know it; when a sick
boy is convalescent, they all rejoice. And this morning there were eight or
ten gentlemen and workingmen standing around Crossi’s mother, the
vegetable-vender, making inquiries about a poor baby in my brother’s class,
who lives in her court, and who is in danger of his life. The school seems to
make them all equals and friends.

NUMBER 78.

Wednesday, 8th.

I witnessed a touching scene yesterday afternoon. For several days,
every time that the vegetable-vender has passed Derossi she has gazed and
gazed at him with an expression of great affection; for Derossi, since he
made the discovery about that inkstand and prisoner Number 78, has
acquired a love for her son, Crossi, the red-haired boy with the useless arm;
and he helps him to do his work in school, suggests answers to him, gives
him paper, pens, and pencils; in short, he behaves to him like a brother, as
though to compensate him for his father’s misfortune, which has affected
him, although he does not know it.

The vegetable-vender had been gazing at Derossi for several days, and
she seemed loath to take her eyes from him, for she is a good woman who
lives only for her son; and Derossi, who assists him and makes him appear
well, Derossi, who is a gentleman and the head of the school, seems to her a
king, a saint. She continued to stare at him, and seemed desirous of saying
something to him, yet ashamed to do it. But at last, yesterday morning, she
took courage, stopped him in front of a gate, and said to him:—

“I beg a thousand pardons, little master! Will you, who are so kind to
my son, and so fond of him, do me the favor to accept this little memento
from a poor mother?” and she pulled out of her vegetable-basket a little
pasteboard box of white and gold.

Derossi flushed up all over, and refused, saying with decision:—

“Give it to your son; I will accept nothing.”

The woman was mortified, and stammered an excuse:—

“I had no idea of offending you. It is only caramels.”

But Derossi said “no,” again, and shook his head. Then she timidly
lifted from her basket a bunch of radishes, and said:—

“Accept these at least,—they are fresh,—and carry them to your
mamma.”

Derossi smiled, and said:—

“No, thanks: I don’t want anything; I shall always do all that I can for
Crossi, but I cannot accept anything. I thank you all the same.”

“But you are not at all offended?” asked the woman, anxiously.

Derossi said “No, no!” smiled, and went off, while she exclaimed, in
great delight:—

“Oh, what a good boy! I have never seen so fine and handsome a boy as
he!”

And that appeared to be the end of it. But in the afternoon, at four
o’clock, instead of Crossi’s mother, his father approached, with that gaunt
and melancholy face of his. He stopped Derossi, and from the way in which
he looked at the latter I instantly understood that he suspected Derossi of
knowing his secret. He looked at him intently, and said in his sorrowful,
affectionate voice:—

“You are fond of my son. Why do you like him so much?”

Derossi’s face turned the color of fire. He would have liked to say: “I
am fond of him because he has been unfortunate; because you, his father,
have been more unfortunate than guilty, and have nobly expiated your
crime, and are a man of heart.” But he had not the courage to say it, for at
bottom he still felt fear and almost loathing in the presence of this man who

had shed another’s blood, and had been six years in prison. But the latter
divined it all, and lowering his voice, he said in Derossi’s ear, almost
trembling the while:—

“You love the son; but you do not hate, do not wholly despise the father,
do you?”

“Ah, no, no! Quite the reverse!” exclaimed Derossi, with a soulful
impulse. And then the man made an impetuous movement, as though to
throw one arm round his neck; but he dared not, and instead he took one of
the lad’s golden curls between two of his fingers, smoothed it out, and
released it; then he placed his hand on his mouth and kissed his palm,
gazing at Derossi with moist eyes, as though to say that this kiss was for
him. Then he took his son by the hand, and went away at a rapid pace.

A LITTLE DEAD BOY.

Monday, 13th.

The little boy who lived in the vegetable-vender’s court, the one who
belonged to the upper primary, and was the companion of my brother, is
dead. Schoolmistress Delcati came in great affliction, on Saturday
afternoon, to inform the master of it; and instantly Garrone and Coretti
volunteered to carry the coffin. He was a fine little lad. He had won the
medal last week. He was fond of my brother, and he had presented him with
a broken money-box. My mother always caressed him when she met him.
He wore a cap with two stripes of red cloth. His father is a porter on the
railway. Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, at half-past four o’clock, we went to
his house, to accompany him to the church.

They live on the ground floor. Many boys of the upper primary, with
their mothers, all holding candles, and five or six teachers and several
neighbors were already collected in the courtyard. The mistress with the red
feather and Signora Delcati had gone inside, and through an open window
we beheld them weeping. We could hear the mother of the child sobbing

loudly. Two ladies, mothers of two school companions of the dead child,
had brought two garlands of flowers.

Exactly at five o’clock we set out. In front went a boy carrying a cross,
then a priest, then the coffin,—a very, very small coffin, poor child!—
covered with a black cloth, and round it were wound the garlands of flowers
brought by the two ladies. On the black cloth, on one side, were fastened
the medal and honorable mentions which the little boy had won in the
course of the year. Garrone, Coretti, and two boys from the courtyard bore
the coffin. Behind the coffin, first came Signora Delcati, who wept as
though the little dead boy were her own; behind her the other
schoolmistresses; and behind the mistresses, the boys, among whom were
some very little ones, who carried bunches of violets in one hand, and who
stared in amazement at the bier, while their other hand was held by their
mothers, who carried candles. I heard one of them say, “And shall I not see
him at school again?”

When the coffin emerged from the court, a despairing cry was heard
from the window. It was the child’s mother; but they made her draw back
into the room immediately. On arriving in the street, we met the boys from
a college, who were passing in double file, and on catching sight of the
coffin with the medal and the schoolmistresses, they all pulled off their hats.

Poor little boy! he went to sleep forever with his medal. We shall never
see his red cap again. He was in perfect health; in four days he was dead.
On the last day he made an effort to rise and do his little task in
nomenclature, and he insisted on keeping his medal on his bed for fear it
would be taken from him. No one will ever take it from you again, poor
boy! Farewell, farewell! We shall always remember thee at the Baretti
School! Sleep in peace, dear little boy!

THE EVE OF THE FOURTEENTH OF MARCH.

To-day has been more cheerful than yesterday. The thirteenth of March!
The eve of the distribution of prizes at the Theatre Vittorio Emanuele, the
greatest and most beautiful festival of the whole year! But this time the
boys who are to go upon the stage and present the certificates of the prizes
to the gentlemen who are to bestow them are not to be taken at haphazard.
The head-master came in this morning, at the close of school, and said:—

“Good news, boys!” Then he called, “Coraci!” the Calabrian. The
Calabrian rose. “Would you like to be one of those to carry the certificates
of the prizes to the authorities in the theatre to-morrow?” The Calabrian
answered that he should.

“That is well," said the head-master; “then there will also be a
representative of Calabria there; and that will be a fine thing. The municipal
authorities are desirous that this year the ten or twelve lads who hand the
prizes should be from all parts of Italy, and selected from all the public
school buildings. We have twenty buildings, with five annexes—seven
thousand pupils. Among such a multitude there has been no difficulty in
finding one boy for each region of Italy. Two representatives of the Islands
were found in the Torquato Tasso schoolhouse, a Sardinian, and a Sicilian;
the Boncompagni School furnished a little Florentine, the son of a wood-
carver; there is a Roman, a native of Rome, in the Tommaseo building;
several Venetians, Lombards, and natives of Romagna have been found; the
Monviso School gives us a Neapolitan, the son of an officer; we furnish a
Genoese and a Calabrian,—you, Coraci,—with the Piemontese: that will
make twelve. Does not this strike you as nice? It will be your brothers from
all quarters of Italy who will give you your prizes. Look out! the whole
twelve will appear on the stage together. Receive them with hearty
applause. They are only boys, but they represent the country just as though
they were men. A small tricolored flag is the symbol of Italy as much as a
huge banner, is it not?

“Applaud them warmly, then. Let it be seen that your little hearts are all
aglow, that your souls of ten years grow enthusiastic in the presence of the
sacred image of your fatherland.”

Having spoken thus, he went away, and the master said, with a smile,
“So, Coraci, you are to be the deputy from Calabria.”

And then all clapped their hands and laughed; and when we got into the
street, we surrounded Coraci, seized him by the legs, lifted him on high, and
set out to carry him in triumph, shouting, “Hurrah for the Deputy of
Calabria!” by way of making a noise, of course; and not in jest, but quite
the contrary, for the sake of making a celebration for him, and with a good
will, for he is a boy who pleases every one; and he smiled. And thus we
bore him as far as the corner, where we ran into a gentleman with a black
beard, who began to laugh. The Calabrian said, “That is my father.” And
then the boys placed his son in his arms and ran away in all directions.

“HURRAH FOR THE DEPUTY OF CALABRIA!”

View larger image.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES.

March 14th.

Towards two o’clock the vast theatre was crowded,—pit, gallery, boxes,
stage, all were thronged; thousands of faces,—boys, gentlemen, teachers,
workingmen, women of the people, babies. There was a moving of heads
and hands, a flutter of feathers, ribbons, and curls, and loud and merry
murmur which inspired cheerfulness. The theatre was all decorated with
festoons of white, red, and green cloth. In the pit two little stairways had
been erected: one on the right, which the winners of prizes were to ascend
in order to reach the stage; the other, on the left, which they were to descend
after receiving their prizes. On the front of the platform there was a row of
red chairs; and from the back of the one in the centre hung two laurel
crowns. At the back of the stage was a trophy of flags; on one side stood a
small green table, and upon it lay all the certificates of premiums, tied with
tricolored ribbons. The band of music was stationed in the pit, under the
stage; the schoolmasters and mistresses filled all one side of the first
balcony, which had been reserved for them; the benches and passages of the
pit were crammed with hundreds of boys, who were to sing, and who had
written music in their hands. At the back and all about, masters and
mistresses could be seen going to and fro, arranging the prize scholars in
lines; and it was full of parents who were giving a last touch to their hair
and the last pull to their neckties.

No sooner had I entered my box with my family than I perceived in the
opposite box the young mistress with the red feather, who was smiling and
showing all the pretty dimples in her cheeks, and with her my brother’s
teacher and “the little nun,” dressed wholly in black, and my kind mistress
of the upper first; but she was so pale, poor thing! and coughed so hard, that
she could be heard all over the theatre. In the pit I instantly espied
Garrone’s dear, big face and the little blond head of Nelli, who was clinging
close to the other’s shoulder. A little further on I saw Garoffi, with his
owl’s-beak nose, who was making great efforts to collect the printed
catalogues of the prize-winners; and he already had a large bundle of them
which he could put to some use in his bartering—we shall find out what it is
to-morrow. Near the door was the wood-seller with his wife,—both dressed

in festive attire,—together with their boy, who has a third prize in the
second grade. I was amazed at no longer beholding the catskin cap and the
chocolate-colored tights: on this occasion he was dressed like a little
gentleman. In one balcony I caught a momentary glimpse of Votini, with a
large lace collar; then he disappeared. In a proscenium box, filled with
people, was the artillery captain, the father of Robetti, the boy with the
crutches who saved the child from the omnibus.

On the stroke of two the band struck up, and at the same moment the
mayor, the prefect, the judge, the provveditore, and many other gentlemen,
all dressed in black, mounted the stairs on the right, and seated themselves
on the red chairs at the front of the platform. The band ceased playing. The
director of singing in the schools advanced with a baton in his hand. At a
signal from him all the boys in the pit rose to their feet; at another sign they
began to sing. There were seven hundred singing a very beautiful song,—
seven hundred boys’ voices singing together; how beautiful! All listened
motionless: it was a slow, sweet, limpid song which seemed like a church
chant. When they ceased, every one applauded; then they all became very
still. The distribution of the prizes was about to begin. My little master of
the second grade, with his red head and his quick eyes, who was to read the
names of the prize-winners, had already advanced to the front of the stage.
The entrance of the twelve boys who were to present the certificates was
what they were waiting for. The newspapers had already stated that there
would be boys from all the provinces of Italy. Every one knew it, and was
watching for them and gazing curiously towards the spot where they were
to enter, and the mayor and the other gentlemen gazed also, and the whole
theatre was silent.

All at once the whole twelve arrived on the stage at a run, and remained
standing there in line, with a smile. The whole theatre, three thousand
persons, sprang up simultaneously, breaking into applause which sounded
like a clap of thunder. The boys stood for a moment as though disconcerted.
“Behold Italy!” said a voice on the stage. All at once I recognized Coraci,
the Calabrian, dressed in black as usual. A gentleman belonging to the
municipal government, who was with us and who knew them all, pointed
them out to my mother. “That little blond is the representative of Venice.
The Roman is that tall, curly-haired lad, yonder.” Two or three of them were

dressed like gentlemen; the others were sons of workingmen, but all were
neatly clad and clean. The Florentine, who was the smallest, had a blue
scarf round his body. They all passed in front of the mayor, who kissed
them, one after the other, on the brow, while a gentleman seated next to him
smilingly told him the names of their cities: “Florence, Naples, Bologna,
Palermo.” And as each passed by, the whole theatre clapped. Then they all
ran to the green table, to take the certificates. The master began to read the
list, mentioning the schoolhouses, the classes, the names; and the prize-
winners began to mount the stage and to file past.

The foremost ones had hardly reached the stage, when behind the
scenes there became audible a very, very faint music of violins, which did
not cease during the whole time that they were filing past—a soft and
always even air, like the murmur of many subdued voices, the voices of all
the mothers, and all the masters and mistresses, giving counsel in concert,
and beseeching and administering loving reproofs. And meanwhile, the
prize-winners passed one by one in front of the seated gentlemen, who
handed them their certificates, and said a word or bestowed a caress on
each.

The boys in the pit and the balconies applauded loudly every time that
there passed a very small lad, or one who seemed, from his garments, to be
poor; and also for those who had abundant curly hair, or who were clad in
red or white. Some of those who filed past belonged to the upper primary,
and once arrived there, they became confused and did not know where to
turn, and the whole theatre laughed. One passed, three spans high, with a
big knot of pink ribbon on his back, so that he could hardly walk, and he
got entangled in the carpet and tumbled down; and the prefect set him on
his feet again, and all laughed and clapped. Another rolled headlong down
the stairs, when descending again to the pit: cries arose, but he had not hurt
himself. Boys of all sorts passed,—boys with roguish faces, with frightened
faces, with faces as red as cherries; comical little fellows, who laughed in
every one’s face: and no sooner had they got back into the pit, than they
were seized upon by their fathers and mothers, who carried them away.

When our schoolhouse’s turn came, how amused I was! Many whom I
knew passed. Coretti filed by, dressed in new clothes from head to foot,

with his fine, merry smile, which displayed all his white teeth; but who
knows how many myriagrammes of wood he had already carried that
morning! The mayor, on presenting him with his certificate, inquired the
meaning of a red mark on his forehead, and as he did so, laid one hand on
his shoulder. I looked in the pit for his father and mother, and saw them
laughing, while they covered their mouths with one hand. Then Derossi
passed, all dressed in bright blue, with shining buttons, with all those
golden curls, slender, easy, with his head held high, so handsome, so
sympathetic, that I could have blown him a kiss; and all the gentlemen
wanted to speak to him and to shake his hand.

Then the master cried, “Giulio Robetti!” and we saw the captain’s son
come forward on his crutches. Hundreds of boys knew the occurrence; a
rumor ran round in an instant; a salvo of applause broke forth, and of
shouts, which made the theatre tremble: men sprang to their feet, the ladies
began to wave their handkerchiefs, and the poor boy halted in the middle of
the stage, amazed and trembling. The mayor drew him to him, gave him his
prize and a kiss, and removing the two laurel crowns which were hanging
from the back of the chair, he strung them on the cross-bars of his crutches.
Then he accompanied him to the proscenium box, where his father, the
captain, was seated; and the latter lifted him bodily and set him down
inside, amid an indescribable tumult of bravos and hurrahs.

Meanwhile, the soft and gentle music of the violins continued, and the
boys continued to file by,—those from the Schoolhouse della Consolata,
nearly all the sons of petty merchants; those from the Vanchiglia School, the
sons of workingmen; those from the Boncompagni School, many of whom
were the sons of peasants; those of the Rayneri, which was the last. As soon
as it was over, the seven hundred boys in the pit sang another very beautiful
song; then the mayor spoke, and after him the judge, who terminated his
discourse by saying to the boys:—

“But do not leave this place without sending a salute to those who toil
so hard for you; who have consecrated to you all the strength of their
intelligence and of their hearts; who live and die for you. There they are;
behold them!” And he pointed to the balcony of teachers. Then, from the
balconies, from the pit, from the boxes, the boys rose, and extended their

arms towards the masters and mistresses, with a shout, and the latter
responded by waving their hands, their hats, and handkerchiefs, as they all
stood up, in their emotion. After this, the band played once more, and the
audience sent a last noisy salute to the twelve lads of all the provinces of
Italy, who presented themselves at the front of the stage, all drawn up in
line, with their hands interlaced, beneath a shower of flowers.

STRIFE.

Monday, 26th.

However, it is not out of envy, because he got the prize and I did not,
that I quarrelled with Coretti this morning. It was not out of envy. But I was
in the wrong. The teacher had placed him beside me, and I was writing in
my copy-book for calligraphy; he jogged my elbow and made me blot and
soil the monthly story, Blood of Romagna, which I was to copy for the little
mason, who is ill. I got angry, and said a rude word to him. He replied, with
a smile, “I did not do it intentionally.” I should have believed him, because I
know him; but it displeased me that he should smile, and I thought:—

“Oh! now that he has had a prize, he has grown saucy!” and a little
while afterwards, to revenge myself, I gave him a jog which made him spoil
his page. Then, all crimson with wrath, “You did that on purpose,” he said
to me, and raised his hand: the teacher saw it; he drew it back. But he
added:—

“I shall wait for you outside!” I felt ill at ease; my wrath had simmered
away; I repented. No; Coretti could not have done it intentionally. He is
good, I thought. I recalled how I had seen him in his own home; how he had
worked and helped his sick mother; and then how heartily he had been
welcomed in my house; and how he had pleased my father. What would I
not have given not to have said that word to him; not to have insulted him
thus! And I thought of the advice that my father had given to me: “Have
you done wrong?”—“Yes.”—“Then beg his pardon.” But this I did not dare

to do; I was ashamed to humiliate myself. I looked at him out of the corner
of my eye, and I saw his coat ripped on the shoulder,—perhaps because he
had carried too much wood,—and I felt that I loved him; and I said to
myself, “Courage!” But the words, “excuse me,” stuck in my throat. He
looked at me askance from time to time, and he seemed to me to be more
grieved than angry. But at such times I looked malevolently at him, to show
him that I was not afraid.

He repeated, “We shall meet outside!” And I said, “We shall meet
outside!” But I was thinking of what my father had once said to me, “If you
are wronged, defend yourself, but do not fight.”

And I said to myself, “I will defend myself, but I will not fight.” But I
was discontented, and I no longer listened to the master. At last the moment
of dismissal arrived. When I was alone in the street I perceived that he was
following me. I stopped and waited for him, ruler in hand. He approached; I
raised my ruler.

“No, Enrico,” he said, with his kindly smile, waving the ruler aside with
his hand; “let us be friends again, as before.”

I stood still in amazement, and then I felt what seemed to be a hand
dealing a push on my shoulders, and I found myself in his arms. He kissed
me, and said:—

“We’ll have no more altercations between us, will we?”

“Never again! never again!” I replied. And we parted content. But when
I returned home, and told my father all about it, thinking to give him
pleasure, his face clouded over, and he said:—

“You should have been the first to offer your hand, since you were in
the wrong.” Then he added, “You should not raise your ruler at a comrade
who is better than you are—at the son of a soldier!” and snatching the ruler
from my hand, he broke it in two, and hurled it against the wall.

MY SISTER.

Friday, 24th.

Why, Enrico, after our father has already reproved you for having
behaved badly to Coretti, were you so unkind to me? You cannot imagine
the pain that you caused me. Do you not know that when you were a baby, I
stood for hours and hours beside your cradle, instead of playing with my
companions, and that when you were ill, I got out of bed every night to feel
whether your forehead was burning? Do you not know, you who grieve
your sister, that if a tremendous misfortune should overtake us, I should be
a mother to you and love you like my son? Do you not know that when our
father and mother are no longer here, I shall be your best friend, the only
person with whom you can talk about our dead and your infancy, and that,
should it be necessary, I shall work for you, Enrico, to earn your bread and
to pay for your studies, and that I shall always love you when you are
grown up, that I shall follow you in thought when you go far away, always
because we grew up together and have the same blood? O Enrico, be sure of
this when you are a man, that if misfortune happens to you, if you are alone,
be very sure that you will seek me, that you will come to me and say:
“Silvia, sister, let me stay with you; let us talk of the days when we were
happy—do you remember? Let us talk of our mother, of our home, of those
beautiful days that are so far away.” O Enrico, you will always find your
sister with her arms wide open. Yes, dear Enrico; and you must forgive me
for the reproof that I am administering to you now. I shall never recall any
wrong of yours; and if you should give me other sorrows, what matters it?
You will always be my brother, the same brother; I shall never recall you
otherwise than as having held you in my arms when a baby, of having loved
our father and mother with you, of having watched you grow up, of having
been for years your most faithful companion. But do you write me a kind
word in this same copy-book, and I will come for it and read it before the
evening. In the meanwhile, to show you that I am not angry with you, and
perceiving that you are weary, I have copied for you the monthly story,
Blood of Romagna, which you were to have copied for the little sick mason.
Look in the left drawer of your table; I have been writing all night, while
you were asleep. Write me a kind word, Enrico, I beseech you.

Thy Sister Silvia.

I am not worthy to kiss your hands.—Enrico.

BLOOD OF ROMAGNA.

(Monthly Story.)

That evening the house of Ferruccio was more silent than was its wont.
The father, who kept a little haberdasher’s shop, had gone to Forli to make
some purchases, and his wife had accompanied him, with Luigina, a baby,
whom she was taking to a doctor, that he might operate on a diseased eye;
and they were not to return until the following morning. It was almost
midnight. The woman who came to do the work by day had gone away at
nightfall. In the house there was only the grandmother with the paralyzed
legs, and Ferruccio, a lad of thirteen. It was a small house of but one story,
situated on the highway, at a gunshot’s distance from a village not far from
Forli, a town of Romagna; and there was near it only an uninhabited house,
ruined two months previously by fire, on which the sign of an inn was still
to be seen. Behind the tiny house was a small garden surrounded by a
hedge, upon which a rustic gate opened; the door of the shop, which also
served as the house door, opened on the highway. All around spread the
solitary campagna, vast cultivated fields, planted with mulberry-trees.

It was nearly midnight; it was raining and blowing. Ferruccio and his
grandmother, who was still up, were in the dining-room, between which and
the garden there was a small, closet-like room, encumbered with old
furniture. Ferruccio had only returned home at eleven o’clock, after an
absence of many hours, and his grandmother had watched for him with eyes
wide open, filled with anxiety, nailed to the large arm-chair, upon which she
was accustomed to pass the entire day, and often the whole night as well,
since a difficulty of breathing did not allow her to lie down in bed.

It was raining, and the wind beat the rain against the window-panes: the
night was very dark. Ferruccio had returned weary, muddy, with his jacket
torn, and the livid mark of a stone on his forehead. He had engaged in a
stone fight with his comrades; they had come to blows, as usual; and in
addition he had gambled, and lost all his soldi, and left his cap in a ditch.

Although the kitchen was illuminated only by a small oil lamp, placed
on the corner of the table, near the arm-chair, his poor grandmother had
instantly perceived the wretched condition of her grandson, and had partly
divined, partly brought him to confess, his misdeeds.

She loved this boy with all her soul. When she had learned all, she
began to cry.

“Ah, no!” she said, after a long silence, “you have no heart for your
poor grandmother. You have no feeling, to take advantage in this manner of
the absence of your father and mother, to cause me sorrow. You have left
me alone the whole day long. You had not the slightest compassion. Take
care, Ferruccio! You are entering on an evil path which will lead you to a
sad end. I have seen others begin like you, and come to a bad end. If you
begin by running away from home, by getting into brawls with the other
boys, by losing soldi, then, gradually, from stone fights you will come to
knives, from gambling to other vices, and from other vices to—theft.”

Ferruccio stood listening three paces away, leaning against a cupboard,
with his chin on his breast and his brows knit, being still hot with wrath
from the brawl. A lock of fine chestnut hair fell across his forehead, and his
blue eyes were motionless.

“From gambling to theft!” repeated his grandmother, continuing to
weep. “Think of it, Ferruccio! Think of that scourge of the country about
here, of that Vito Mozzoni, who is now playing the vagabond in the town;
who, at the age of twenty-four, has been twice in prison, and has made that
poor woman, his mother, die of a broken heart—I knew her; and his father
has fled to Switzerland in despair. Think of that bad fellow, whose salute
your father is ashamed to return: he is always roaming with miscreants
worse than himself, and some day he will go to the galleys. Well, I knew

him as a boy, and he began as you are doing. Reflect that you will reduce
your father and mother to the same end as his.”

Ferruccio held his peace. He was not at all remorseful at heart; quite the
reverse: his misdemeanors arose rather from superabundance of life and
audacity than from an evil mind; and his father had managed him badly in
precisely this particular, that, holding him capable, at bottom, of the finest
sentiments, and also, when put to the proof, of a vigorous and generous
action, he left the bridle loose upon his neck, and waited for him to acquire
judgment for himself. The lad was good rather than perverse, but stubborn;
and it was hard for him, even when his heart was oppressed with
repentance, to allow those good words which win pardon to escape his lips,
“If I have done wrong, I will do so no more; I promise it; forgive me.” His
soul was full of tenderness at times; but pride would not permit it to
manifest itself.

“Ah, Ferruccio,” continued his grandmother, perceiving that he was thus
dumb, “not a word of penitence do you utter to me! You see to what a
condition I am reduced, so that I am as good as actually buried. You ought
not to have the heart to make me suffer so, to make the mother of your
mother, who is so old and so near her last day, weep; the poor grandmother
who has always loved you so, who rocked you all night long, night after
night, when you were a baby a few months old, and who did not eat for
amusing you,—you do not know that! I always said, ‘This boy will be my
consolation!’ And now you are killing me! I would willingly give the little
life that remains to me if I could see you become a good boy, and an
obedient one, as you were in those days when I used to lead you to the
sanctuary—do you remember, Ferruccio? You used to fill my pockets with
pebbles and weeds, and I carried you home in my arms, fast asleep. You
used to love your poor grandma then. And now I am a paralytic, and in need
of your affection as of the air to breathe, since I have no one else in the
world, poor, half-dead woman that I am: my God!”

Ferruccio was on the point of throwing himself on his grandmother,
overcome with emotion, when he fancied that he heard a slight noise, a
creaking in the small adjoining room, the one which opened on the garden.

But he could not make out whether it was the window-shutters rattling in
the wind, or something else.

He bent his head and listened.

The rain beat down noisily.

The sound was repeated. His grandmother heard it also.

“What is it?” asked the grandmother, in perturbation, after a momentary
pause.

“The rain,” murmured the boy.

“Then, Ferruccio,” said the old woman, drying her eyes, “you promise
me that you will be good, that you will not make your poor grandmother
weep again—”

Another faint sound interrupted her.

“But it seems to me that it is not the rain!” she exclaimed, turning pale.
“Go and see!”

But she instantly added, “No; remain here!” and seized Ferruccio by the
hand.

Both remained as they were, and held their breath. All they heard was
the sound of the water.

Then both were seized with a shivering fit.

It seemed to both that they heard footsteps in the next room.

“Who’s there?” demanded the lad, recovering his breath with an effort.

No one replied.

“Who is it?” asked Ferruccio again, chilled with terror.

But hardly had he pronounced these words when both uttered a shriek
of terror. Two men sprang into the room. One of them grasped the boy and
placed one hand over his mouth; the other clutched the old woman by the
throat. The first said:—

“Silence, unless you want to die!”

The second:—

“Be quiet!” and raised aloft a knife.

Both had dark cloths over their faces, with two holes for the eyes.

For a moment nothing was audible but the gasping breath of all four, the
patter of the rain; the old woman emitted frequent rattles from her throat,
and her eyes were starting from her head.

The man who held the boy said in his ear, “Where does your father keep
his money?”

The lad replied in a thread of a voice, with chattering teeth, “Yonder—
in the cupboard.”

“Come with me,” said the man.

And he dragged him into the closet room, holding him securely by the
throat. There was a dark lantern standing on the floor.

“Where is the cupboard?” he demanded.

The suffocating boy pointed to the cupboard.

Then, in order to make sure of the boy, the man flung him on his knees
in front of the cupboard, and, pressing his neck closely between his own
legs, in such a way that he could throttle him if he shouted, and holding his
knife in his teeth and his lantern in one hand, with the other he pulled from
his pocket a pointed iron, drove it into the lock, fumbled about, broke it,
threw the doors wide open, tumbled everything over in a perfect fury of
haste, filled his pockets, shut the cupboard again, opened it again, made

another search; then he seized the boy by the windpipe again, and pushed
him to where the other man was still grasping the old woman, who was
convulsed, with her head thrown back and her mouth open.

The latter asked in a low voice, “Did you find it?”

His companion replied, “I found it.”

And he added, “See to the door.”

The one that was holding the old woman ran to the door of the garden to
see if there were any one there, and called in from the little room, in a voice
that resembled a hiss, “Come!”

The one who remained behind, and who was still holding Ferruccio fast,
showed his knife to the boy and the old woman, who had opened her eyes
again, and said, “Not a sound, or I’ll come back and cut your throat.”

And he glared at the two for a moment.

At this juncture, a song sung by many voices became audible far off on
the highway.

The robber turned his head hastily toward the door, and the violence of
the movement caused the cloth to fall from his face.

The old woman gave vent to a shriek; “Mozzoni!”

“Accursed woman,” roared the robber, on finding himself recognized,
“you shall die!”

And he hurled himself, with his knife raised, against the old woman,
who swooned on the spot.

The assassin dealt the blow.

But Ferruccio, with an exceedingly rapid movement, and uttering a cry
of desperation, had rushed to his grandmother, and covered her body with

his own. The assassin fled, stumbling against the table and overturning the
light, which was extinguished.

The boy slipped slowly from above his grandmother, fell on his knees,
and remained in that attitude, with his arms around her body and his head
upon her breast.

Several moments passed; it was very dark; the song of the peasants
gradually died away in the campagna. The old woman recovered her senses.

“Ferruccio!” she cried, in a voice that was barely intelligible, with
chattering teeth.

“Grandmamma!” replied the lad.

The old woman made an effort to speak; but terror had paralyzed her
tongue.

She remained silent for a while, trembling violently.

Then she succeeded in asking:—

“They are not here now?”

“No.”

“They did not kill me,” murmured the old woman in a stifled voice.

“No; you are safe,” said Ferruccio, in a weak voice. “You are safe, dear
grandmother. They carried off the money. But daddy had taken nearly all of
it with him.”

His grandmother drew a deep breath.

“Grandmother,” said Ferruccio, still kneeling, and pressing her close to
him, “dear grandmother, you love me, don’t you?”

“O Ferruccio! my poor little son!” she replied, placing her hands on his
head; “what a fright you must have had!—O Lord God of mercy!—Light

the lamp. No; let us still remain in the dark! I am still afraid.”

“Grandmother,” resumed the boy, “I have always caused you grief.”

“No, Ferruccio, you must not say such things; I shall never think of that
again; I have forgotten everything, I love you so dearly!”

“I have always caused you grief,” pursued Ferruccio, with difficulty,
and his voice quivered; “but I have always loved you. Do you forgive me?
—Forgive me, grandmother.”

“Yes, my son, I forgive you with all my heart. Think, how could I help
forgiving you! Rise from your knees, my child. I will never scold you again.
You are so good, so good! Let us light the lamp. Let us take courage a little.
Rise, Ferruccio.”

“Thanks, grandmother,” said the boy, and his voice was still weaker.
“Now—I am content. You will remember me, grandmother—will you not?
You will always remember me—your Ferruccio?”

“My Ferruccio!” exclaimed his grandmother, amazed and alarmed, as
she laid her hands on his shoulders and bent her head, as though to look him
in his face.

“Remember me,” murmured the boy once more, in a voice that seemed
like a breath. “Give a kiss to my mother—to my father—to Luigina.—Good
by, grandmother.”

“In the name of Heaven, what is the matter with you?” shrieked the old
woman, feeling the boy’s head anxiously, as it lay upon her knees; and then
with all the power of voice of which her throat was capable, and in
desperation: “Ferruccio! Ferruccio! Ferruccio! My child! My love! Angels
of Paradise, come to my aid!”

But Ferruccio made no reply. The little hero, the saviour of the mother
of his mother, stabbed by a blow from a knife in the back, had rendered up
his beautiful and daring soul to God.

THE LITTLE MASON ON HIS SICK-BED.

Tuesday, 18th.

The poor little mason is seriously ill; the master told us to go and see
him; and Garrone, Derossi, and I agreed to go together. Stardi would have
come also, but as the teacher had assigned us the description of The
Monument to Cavour, he told us that he must go and see the monument, in
order that his description might be more exact. So, by way of experiment,
we invited that puffed-up fellow, Nobis, who replied “No,” and nothing
more. Votini also excused himself, perhaps because he was afraid of soiling
his clothes with plaster.

We went there when we came out of school at four o’clock. It was
raining in torrents. On the street Garrone halted, and said, with his mouth
full of bread:—

“What shall I buy?” and he rattled a couple of soldi in his pocket. We
each contributed two soldi, and purchased three huge oranges. We ascended
to the garret. At the door Derossi removed his medal and put it in his
pocket. I asked him why.

“I don’t know,” he answered; “in order not to have the air: it strikes me
as more delicate to go in without my medal.” We knocked; the father, that
big man who looks like a giant, opened to us; his face was distorted so that
he appeared terrified.

“Who are you?” he demanded. Garrone replied:—

“We are Antonio’s schoolmates, and we have brought him three
oranges.”

“Ah, poor Tonino!” exclaimed the mason, shaking his head, “I fear that
he will never eat your oranges!” and he wiped his eyes with the back of his
hand. He made us come in. We entered an attic room, where we saw “the
little mason” asleep in a little iron bed; his mother hung dejectedly over the

bed, with her face in her hands, and she hardly turned to look at us; on one
side hung brushes, a trowel, and a plaster-sieve; over the feet of the sick boy
was spread the mason’s jacket, white with lime. The poor boy was
emaciated; very, very white; his nose was pointed, and his breath was short.
O dear Tonino, my little comrade! you who were so kind and merry, how it
pains me! what would I not give to see you make the hare’s face once more,
poor little mason! Garrone laid an orange on his pillow, close to his face;
the odor waked him; he grasped it instantly; then let go of it, and gazed
intently at Garrone.

“It is I,” said the latter; “Garrone: do you know me?” He smiled almost
imperceptibly, lifted his stubby hand with difficulty from the bed and held it
out to Garrone, who took it between his, and laid it against his cheek,
saying:—

“Courage, courage, little mason; you are going to get well soon and
come back to school, and the master will put you next to me; will that
please you?”

But the little mason made no reply. His mother burst into sobs: “Oh, my
poor Tonino! My poor Tonino! He is so brave and good, and God is going
to take him from us!”

“Silence!” cried the mason; “silence, for the love of God, or I shall lose
my reason!”

Then he said to us, with anxiety: “Go, go, boys, thanks; go! what do you
want to do here? Thanks; go home!” The boy had closed his eyes again, and
appeared to be dead.

“Do you need any assistance?” asked Garrone.

“No, my good boy, thanks,” the mason answered. And so saying, he
pushed us out on the landing, and shut the door. But we were not half-way
down the stairs, when we heard him calling, “Garrone! Garrone!”

We all three mounted the stairs once more in haste.

“Garrone!” shouted the mason, with a changed countenance, “he has
called you by name; it is two days since he spoke; he has called you twice;
he wants you; come quickly! Ah, holy God, if this is only a good sign!”

“Farewell for the present,” said Garrone to us; “I shall remain,” and he
ran in with the father. Derossi’s eyes were full of tears. I said to him:—

“Are you crying for the little mason? He has spoken; he will recover.”

“I believe it,” replied Derossi; “but I was not thinking of him. I was
thinking how good Garrone is, and what a beautiful soul he has.”

COUNT CAVOUR.

Wednesday, 29th.

You are to make a description of the monument to Count Cavour. You
can do it. But who was Count Cavour? You cannot understand at present.
For the present this is all you know: he was for many years the prime
minister of Piemont. It was he who sent the Piemontese army to the Crimea
to raise once more, with the victory of the Cernaia, our military glory,
which had fallen with the defeat at Novara; it was he who made one
hundred and fifty thousand Frenchmen descend from the Alps to chase the
Austrians from Lombardy; it was he who governed Italy in the most solemn
period of our revolution; who gave, during those years, the most potent
impulse to the holy enterprise of the unification of our country,—he with
his luminous mind, with his invincible perseverance, with his more than
human industry. Many generals have passed terrible hours on the field of
battle; but he passed more terrible ones in his cabinet, when his enormous
work might suffer destruction at any moment, like a fragile edifice at the
tremor of an earthquake. Hours, nights of struggle and anguish did he pass,
sufficient to make him issue from it with reason distorted and death in his
heart. And it was this gigantic and stormy work which shortened his life by
twenty years. Nevertheless, devoured by the fever which was to cast him
into his grave, he yet contended desperately with the malady in order to

accomplish something for his country. “It is strange,” he said sadly on his
death-bed, “I no longer know how to read; I can no longer read.”

While they were bleeding him, and the fever was increasing, he was
thinking of his country, and he said imperiously: “Cure me; my mind is
clouding over; I have need of all my faculties to manage important affairs.”
When he was already reduced to extremities, and the whole city was in a
tumult, and the king stood at his bedside, he said anxiously, “I have many
things to say to you, Sire, many things to show you; but I am ill; I cannot, I
cannot;” and he was in despair.

And his feverish thoughts hovered ever round the State, round the new
Italian provinces which had been united with us, round the many things
which still remained to be done. When delirium seized him, “Educate the
children!” he exclaimed, between his gasps for breath,—“educate the
children and the young people—govern with liberty!”

His delirium increased; death hovered over him, and with burning
words he invoked General Garibaldi, with whom he had had disagreements,
and Venice and Rome, which were not yet free: he had vast visions of the
future of Italy and of Europe; he dreamed of a foreign invasion; he inquired
where the corps of the army were, and the generals; he still trembled for us,
for his people. His great sorrow was not, you understand, that he felt that
his life was going, but to see himself fleeing his country, which still had
need of him, and for which he had, in a few years, worn out the measureless
forces of his miraculous organism. He died with the battle-cry in his throat,
and his death was as great as his life. Now reflect a little, Enrico, what sort
of a thing is our labor, which nevertheless so weighs us down; what are our
griefs, our death itself, in the face of the toils, the terrible anxieties, the
tremendous agonies of these men upon whose hearts rests a world! Think of
this, my son, when you pass before that marble image, and say to it,
“Glory!” in your heart.

Thy Father.

APRIL.

SPRING.

Saturday, 1st.

The first of April! Only three months more! This has been one of the
most beautiful mornings of the year. I was happy in school because Coretti
told me to come day after to-morrow to see the king make his entrance with
his father, who knows him, and because my mother had promised to take me
the same day to visit the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco. I was
pleased, too, because the little mason is better, and because the teacher said
to my father yesterday evening as he was passing, “He is doing well; he is
doing well.”

And then it was a beautiful spring morning. From the school windows
we could see the blue sky, the trees of the garden all covered with buds, and
the wide-open windows of the houses, with their boxes and vases already
growing green. The master did not laugh, because he never laughs; but he
was in a good humor, so that that perpendicular wrinkle hardly ever
appeared on his brow; and he explained a problem on the blackboard, and
jested. And it was plain that he felt a pleasure in breathing the air of the
gardens which entered through the open window, redolent with the fresh
odor of earth and leaves, which suggested thoughts of country rambles.

While he was explaining, we could hear in a neighboring street a
blacksmith hammering on his anvil, and in the house opposite, a woman
singing to lull her baby to sleep; far away, in the Cernaia barracks, the
trumpets were sounding. Every one appeared pleased, even Stardi. At a

certain moment the blacksmith began to hammer more vigorously, the
woman to sing more loudly. The master paused and lent an ear. Then he
said, slowly, as he gazed out of the window:—

“The smiling sky, a singing mother, an honest man at work, boys at
study,—these are beautiful things.”

When we emerged from the school, we saw that every one else was
cheerful also. All walked in a line, stamping loudly with their feet, and
humming, as though on the eve of a four days’ vacation; the
schoolmistresses were playful; the one with the red feather tripped along
behind the children like a schoolgirl; the parents of the boys were chatting
together and smiling, and Crossi’s mother, the vegetable-vender, had so
many bunches of violets in her basket, that they filled the whole large hall
with perfume.

I have never felt such happiness as this morning on catching sight of my
mother, who was waiting for me in the street. And I said to her as I ran to
meet her:—

“Oh, I am happy! what is it that makes me so happy this morning?” And
my mother answered me with a smile that it was the beautiful season and a
good conscience.

KING UMBERTO.

Monday, 3d.

At ten o’clock precisely my father saw from the window Coretti, the
wood-seller, and his son waiting for me in the square, and said to me:—

“There they are, Enrico; go and see your king.”

I went like a flash. Both father and son were even more alert than usual,
and they never seemed to me to resemble each other so strongly as this

morning. The father wore on his jacket the medal for valor between two
commemorative medals, and his mustaches were curled and as pointed as
two pins.

We at once set out for the railway station, where the king was to arrive
at half-past ten. Coretti, the father, smoked his pipe and rubbed his hands.
“Do you know,” said he, “I have not seen him since the war of ’sixty-six? A
trifle of fifteen years and six months. First, three years in France, and then
at Mondovì, and here, where I might have seen him, I have never had the
good luck of being in the city when he came. Such a combination of
circumstances!”

He called the King “Umberto,” like a comrade. Umberto commanded
the 16th division; Umberto was twenty-two years and so many days old;
Umberto mounted a horse thus and so.

“Fifteen years!” he said vehemently, accelerating his pace. “I really
have a great desire to see him again. I left him a prince; I see him once
more, a king. And I, too, have changed. From a soldier I have become a
hawker of wood.” And he laughed.

His son asked him, “If he were to see you, would he remember you?”

He began to laugh.

“You are crazy!” he answered. “That’s quite another thing. He,
Umberto, was one single man; we were as numerous as flies. And then, he
never looked at us one by one.”

We turned into the Corso Vittorio Emanuele; there were many people on
their way to the station. A company of Alpine soldiers passed with their
trumpets. Two armed policemen passed by on horseback at a gallop. The
day was serene and brilliant.

“Yes!” exclaimed the elder Coretti, growing animated, “it is a real
pleasure to me to see him once more, the general of my division. Ah, how
quickly I have grown old! It seems as though it were only the other day that
I had my knapsack on my shoulders and my gun in my hands, at that affair

of the 24th of June, when we were on the point of coming to blows.
Umberto was going to and fro with his officers, while the cannon were
thundering in the distance; and every one was gazing at him and saying,
‘May there not be a bullet for him also!’ I was a thousand miles from
thinking that I should soon find myself so near him, in front of the lances of
the Austrian uhlans; actually, only four paces from each other, boys. That
was a fine day; the sky was like a mirror; but so hot! Let us see if we can
get in.”

We had arrived at the station; there was a great crowd,—carriages,
policemen, carabineers, societies with banners. A regimental band was
playing. The elder Coretti attempted to enter the portico, but he was
stopped. Then it occurred to him to force his way into the front row of the
crowd which formed an opening at the entrance; and making way with his
elbow, he succeeded in thrusting us forward also. But the undulating throng
flung us hither and thither a little. The wood-seller got his eye upon the first
pillar of the portico, where the police did not allow any one to stand; “Come
with me,” he said suddenly, dragging us by the hand; and he crossed the
empty space in two bounds, and went and planted himself there, with his
back against the wall.

A police brigadier instantly hurried up and said to him, “You can’t stand
here.”

“I belong to the fourth battalion of forty-nine,” replied Coretti, touching
his medal.

The brigadier glanced at it, and said, “Remain.”

“Didn’t I say so!” exclaimed Coretti triumphantly; “it’s a magic word,
that fourth of the forty-ninth! Haven’t I the right to see my general with
some little comfort,—I, who was in that squadron? I saw him close at hand
then; it seems right that I should see him close at hand now. And I say
general! He was my battalion commander for a good half-hour; for at such
moments he commanded the battalion himself, while it was in the heart of
things, and not Major Ubrich, by Heavens!”

In the meantime, in the reception-room and outside, a great mixture of
gentlemen and officers was visible, and in front of the door, the carriages,
with the lackeys dressed in red, were drawn up in a line.

Coretti asked his father whether Prince Umberto had his sword in his
hand when he was with the regiment.

“He would certainly have had his sword in his hand,” the latter replied,
“to ward off a blow from a lance, which might strike him as well as another.
Ah! those unchained demons! They came down on us like the wrath of
God; they descended on us. They swept between the groups, the squadrons,
the cannon, as though tossed by a hurricane, crushing down everything.
There was a whirl of light cavalry of Alessandria, of lancers of Foggia, of
infantry, of sharpshooters, a pandemonium in which nothing could any
longer be understood. I heard the shout, ‘Your Highness! your Highness!’ I
saw the lowered lances approaching; we discharged our guns; a cloud of
smoke hid everything. Then the smoke cleared away. The ground was
covered with horses and uhlans, wounded and dead. I turned round, and
beheld in our midst Umberto, on horseback, gazing tranquilly about, with
the air of demanding, ‘Have any of my lads received a scratch?’ And we
shouted to him, ‘Hurrah!’ right in his face, like madmen. Heavens, what a
moment that was! Here’s the train coming!”

The band struck up; the officers hastened forward; the crowd elevated
themselves on tiptoe.

“Eh, he won’t come out in a hurry,” said a policeman; “they are
presenting him with an address now.”

The elder Coretti was beside himself with impatience.

“Ah! when I think of it,” he said, “I always see him there. Of course,
there is cholera and there are earthquakes; and in them, too, he bears
himself bravely; but I always have him before my mind as I saw him then,
among us, with that tranquil face. I am sure that he too recalls the fourth of
the forty-ninth, even now that he is King; and that it would give him
pleasure to have for once, at a table together, all those whom he saw about
him at such moments. Now, he has generals, and great gentlemen, and

courtiers; then, there was no one but us poor soldiers. If we could only
exchange a few words alone! Our general of twenty-two; our prince, who
was intrusted to our bayonets! I have not seen him for fifteen years. Our
Umberto! that’s what he is! Ah! that music stirs my blood, on my word of
honor.”

An outburst of shouts interrupted him; thousands of hats rose in the air;
four gentlemen dressed in black got into the first carriage.

“’Tis he!” cried Coretti, and stood as though enchanted.

Then he said softly, “Madonna mia, how gray he has grown!”

We all three uncovered our heads; the carriage advanced slowly through
the crowd, who shouted and waved their hats. I looked at the elder Coretti.
He seemed to me another man; he seemed to have become taller, graver,
rather pale, and fastened bolt upright against the pillar.

The carriage arrived in front of us, a pace distant from the pillar.
“Hurrah!” shouted many voices.

“Hurrah!” shouted Coretti, after the others.

The King glanced at his face, and his eye dwelt for a moment on his
three medals.

Then Coretti lost his head, and roared, “The fourth battalion of the
forty-ninth!”

The King, who had turned away, turned towards us again, and looking
Coretti straight in the eye, reached his hand out of the carriage.

Coretti gave one leap forwards and clasped it. The carriage passed on;
the crowd broke in and separated us; we lost sight of the elder Coretti. But
it was only for a moment. We found him again directly, panting, with wet
eyes, calling for his son by name, and holding his hand on high. His son
flew towards him, and he said, “Here, little one, while my hand is still

warm!” and he passed his hand over the boy’s face, saying, “This is a caress
from the King.”

And there he stood, as though in a dream, with his eyes fixed on the
distant carriage, smiling, with his pipe in his hand, in the centre of a group
of curious people, who were staring at him. “He’s one of the fourth
battalion of the forty-ninth!” they said. “He is a soldier that knows the
King.” “And the King recognized him.” “And he offered him his hand.”
“He gave the King a petition,” said one, more loudly.

“No,” replied Coretti, whirling round abruptly; “I did not give him any
petition. There is something else that I would give him, if he were to ask it
of me.”

They all stared at him.

And he said simply, “My blood.”

THE INFANT ASYLUM.

Tuesday, 4th.

After breakfast yesterday my mother took me, as she had promised, to
the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco, in order to recommend to the
directress a little sister of Precossi. I had never seen an asylum. How much
amused I was! There were two hundred of them, boy-babies and girl-babies,
and so small that the children in our lower primary schools are men in
comparison.

We arrived just as they were entering the refectory in two files, where
there were two very long tables, with a great many round holes, and in each
hole a black bowl filled with rice and beans, and a tin spoon beside it. On
entering, some grew confused and remained on the floor until the mistresses
ran and picked them up. Many halted in front of a bowl, thinking it was
their proper place, and had already swallowed a spoonful, when a mistress

arrived and said, “Go on!” and then they advanced three or four paces and
got down another spoonful, and then advanced again, until they reached
their own places, after having fraudulently disposed of half a portion. At
last, by dint of pushing and crying, “Make haste! make haste!” they were all
got into order, and the prayer was begun. But all those on the inner line,
who had to turn their backs on the bowls for the prayer, twisted their heads
round so that they could keep an eye on them, lest some one might meddle;
and then they said their prayer thus, with hands clasped and their eyes on
the ceiling, but with their hearts on their food. Then they set to eating. Ah,
what a charming sight it was! One ate with two spoons, another with his
hands; many picked up the beans one by one, and thrust them into their
pockets; others wrapped them tightly in their little aprons, and pounded
them to reduce them to a paste. There were even some who did not eat,
because they were watching the flies flying, and others coughed and
sprinkled a shower of rice all around them. It resembled a poultry-yard. But
it was charming. The two rows of babies formed a pretty sight, with their
hair all tied on the tops of their heads with red, green, and blue ribbons. One
teacher asked a row of eight children, “Where does rice grow?” The whole
eight opened their mouths wide, filled as they were with the pottage, and
replied in concert, in a sing-song, “It grows in the water.” Then the teacher
gave the order, “Hands up!” and it was pretty to see all those little arms fly
up, which a few months ago were all in swaddling-clothes, and all those
little hands flourishing, which looked like so many white and pink
butterflies.

Then they all went to recreation; but first they all took their little
baskets, which were hanging on the wall with their lunches in them. They
went out into the garden and scattered, drawing forth their provisions as
they did so,—bread, stewed plums, a tiny bit of cheese, a hard-boiled egg,
little apples, a handful of boiled vetches, or a wing of chicken. In an instant
the whole garden was strewn with crumbs, as though they had been
scattered from their feed by a flock of birds. They ate in all the queerest
ways,—like rabbits, like rats, like cats, nibbling, licking, sucking. There
was one child who held a bit of rye bread hugged closely to his breast, and
was rubbing it with a medlar, as though he were polishing a sword. Some of
the little ones crushed in their fists small cheeses, which trickled between
their fingers like milk, and ran down inside their sleeves, and they were

utterly unconscious of it. They ran and chased each other with apples and
rolls in their teeth, like dogs. I saw three of them excavating a hard-boiled
egg with a straw, thinking to discover treasures, and they spilled half of it
on the ground, and then picked the crumbs up again one by one with great
patience, as though they had been pearls. And those who had anything
extraordinary were surrounded by eight or ten, who stood staring at the
baskets with bent heads, as though they were looking at the moon in a well.
There were twenty congregated round a mite of a fellow who had a paper
horn of sugar, and they were going through all sorts of ceremonies with him
for the privilege of dipping their bread in it, and he accorded it to some,
while to others, after many prayers, he only granted his finger to suck.

In the meantime, my mother had come into the garden and was
caressing now one and now another. Many hung about her, and even on her
back, begging for a kiss, with faces upturned as though to a third story, and
with mouths that opened and shut as though asking for the breast. One
offered her the quarter of an orange which had been bitten, another a small
crust of bread; one little girl gave her a leaf; another showed her, with all
seriousness, the tip of her forefinger, a minute examination of which
revealed a microscopic swelling, which had been caused by touching the
flame of a candle on the preceding day. They placed before her eyes, as
great marvels, very tiny insects, which I cannot understand their being able
to see and catch, the halfs of corks, shirt-buttons, and flowerets pulled from
the vases. One child, with a bandaged head, who was determined to be
heard at any cost, stammered out to her some story about a head-over-heels
tumble, not one word of which was intelligible; another insisted that my
mother should bend down, and then whispered in her ear, “My father makes
brushes.”

And in the meantime a thousand accidents were happening here and
there which caused the teachers to hasten up. Children wept because they
could not untie a knot in their handkerchiefs; others disputed, with scratches
and shrieks, the halves of an apple; one child, who had fallen face
downward over a little bench which had been overturned, wept amid the
ruins, and could not rise.

Before her departure my mother took three or four of them in her arms,
and they ran up from all quarters to be taken also, their faces smeared with
yolk of egg and orange juice; and one caught her hands; another her finger,
to look at her ring; another tugged at her watch chain; another tried to seize
her by the hair.

“Take care,” the teacher said to her; “they will tear your clothes all to
pieces.”

But my mother cared nothing for her dress, and she continued to kiss
them, and they pressed closer and closer to her: those who were nearest,
with their arms extended as though they were desirous of climbing; the
more distant endeavoring to make their way through the crowd, and all
screaming:—

“Good by! good by! good by!”

At last she succeeded in escaping from the garden. And they all ran and
thrust their faces through the railings to see her pass, and to thrust their
arms through to greet her, offering her once more bits of bread, bites of
apple, cheese-rinds, and all screaming in concert:—

“Good by! good by! good by! Come back to-morrow! Come again!”

As my mother made her escape, she passed her hand once more over
those hundreds of tiny outstretched hands as over a garland of living roses,
and finally arrived safely in the street, covered with crumbs and spots,
rumpled and dishevelled, with one hand full of flowers and her eyes
swelling with tears, and happy as though she had come from a festival. And
inside there was still audible a sound like the twittering of birds, saying:—

“Good by! good by! Come again, madama!”

GYMNASTICS.

Tuesday, 5th.

As the weather continues extremely fine, they have made us pass from
chamber gymnastics to gymnastics with apparatus in the garden.

Garrone was in the head-master’s office yesterday when Nelli’s mother,
that blond woman dressed in black, came in to get her son excused from the
new exercises. Every word cost her an effort; and as she spoke, she held one
hand on her son’s head.

“He is not able to do it,” she said to the head-master. But Nelli showed
much grief at this exclusion from the apparatus, at having this added
humiliation imposed upon him.

“You will see, mamma,” he said, “that I shall do like the rest.”

His mother gazed at him in silence, with an air of pity and affection.
Then she remarked, in a hesitating way, “I fear lest his companions—”

What she meant to say was, “lest they should make sport of him.” But
Nelli replied:—

“They will not do anything to me—and then, there is Garrone. It is
sufficient for him to be present, to prevent their laughing.”

And then he was allowed to come. The teacher with the wound on his
neck, who was with Garibaldi, led us at once to the vertical bars, which are
very high, and we had to climb to the very top, and stand upright on the
transverse plank. Derossi and Coretti went up like monkeys; even little
Precossi mounted briskly, in spite of the fact that he was embarrassed with
that jacket which extends to his knees; and in order to make him laugh
while he was climbing, all the boys repeated to him his constant expression,
“Excuse me! excuse me!” Stardi puffed, turned as red as a turkey-cock, and
set his teeth until he looked like a mad dog; but he would have reached the
top at the expense of bursting, and he actually did get there; and so did
Nobis, who, when he reached the summit, assumed the attitude of an
emperor; but Votini slipped back twice, notwithstanding his fine new suit
with azure stripes, which had been made expressly for gymnastics.

In order to climb the more easily, all the boys had daubed their hands
with resin, which they call colophony, and as a matter of course it is that
trader of a Garoffi who provides every one with it, in a powdered form,
selling it at a soldo the paper hornful, and turning a pretty penny.

“THE BOYS HAD DAUBED THEIR HANDS WITH
RESIN.”

View larger image.

Then it was Garrone’s turn, and up he went, chewing away at his bread
as though it were nothing out of the common; and I believe that he would
have been capable of carrying one of us up on his shoulders, for he is as
muscular and strong as a young bull.

After Garrone came Nelli. No sooner did the boys see him grasp the
bars with those long, thin hands of his, than many of them began to laugh
and to sing; but Garrone crossed his big arms on his breast, and darted
round a glance which was so expressive, which so clearly said that he did
not mind dealing out half a dozen punches, even in the master’s presence,
that they all ceased laughing on the instant. Nelli began to climb. He tried
hard, poor little fellow; his face grew purple, he breathed with difficulty,
and the perspiration poured from his brow. The master said, “Come down!”
But he would not. He strove and persisted. I expected every moment to see
him fall headlong, half dead. Poor Nelli! I thought, what if I had been like
him, and my mother had seen me! How she would have suffered, poor
mother! And as I thought of that I felt so tenderly towards Nelli that I could
have given, I know not what, to be able, for the sake of having him climb
those bars, to give him a push from below without being seen.

Meanwhile Garrone, Derossi, and Coretti were saying: “Up with you,
Nelli, up with you!” “Try—one effort more—courage!” And Nelli made
one more violent effort, uttering a groan as he did so, and found himself
within two spans of the plank.

“Bravo!” shouted the others. “Courage—one dash more!” and behold
Nelli clinging to the plank.

All clapped their hands. “Bravo!” said the master. “But that will do now.
Come down.”

But Nelli wished to ascend to the top like the rest, and after a little
exertion he succeeded in getting his elbows on the plank, then his knees,

then his feet; at last he stood upright, panting and smiling, and gazed at us.

We began to clap again, and then he looked into the street. I turned in
that direction, and through the plants which cover the iron railing of the
garden I caught sight of his mother, passing along the sidewalk without
daring to look. Nelli descended, and we all made much of him. He was
excited and rosy, his eyes sparkled, and he no longer seemed like the same
boy.

Then, at the close of school, when his mother came to meet him, and
inquired with some anxiety, as she embraced him, “Well, my poor son, how
did it go? how did it go?” all his comrades replied, in concert, “He did well
—he climbed like the rest of us—he’s strong, you know—he’s active—he
does exactly like the others.”

And then the joy of that woman was a sight to see. She tried to thank us,
and could not; she shook hands with three or four, bestowed a caress on
Garrone, and carried off her son; and we watched them for a while, walking
in haste, and talking and gesticulating, both perfectly happy, as though no
one were looking at them.

MY FATHER’S TEACHER.

Tuesday, 11th.

What a beautiful excursion I took yesterday with my father! This is the
way it came about.

Day before yesterday, at dinner, as my father was reading the
newspaper, he suddenly uttered an exclamation of astonishment. Then he
said:—

“And I thought him dead twenty years ago! Do you know that my old
first elementary teacher, Vincenzo Crosetti, is eighty-four years old? I see
here that the minister has conferred on him the medal of merit for sixty

years of teaching. Six-ty ye-ars, you understand! And it is only two years
since he stopped teaching school. Poor Crosetti! He lives an hour’s journey
from here by rail, at Condove, in the country of our old gardener’s wife, of
the town of Chieri.” And he added, “Enrico, we will go and see him.”

And the whole evening he talked of nothing but him. The name of his
primary teacher recalled to his mind a thousand things which had happened
when he was a boy, his early companions, his dead mother. “Crosetti!” he
exclaimed. “He was forty when I was with him. I seem to see him now. He
was a small man, somewhat bent even then, with bright eyes, and always
cleanly shaved. Severe, but in a good way; for he loved us like a father, and
forgave us more than one offence. He had risen from the condition of a
peasant by dint of study and privations. He was a fine man. My mother was
attached to him, and my father treated him like a friend. How comes it that
he has gone to end his days at Condove, near Turin? He certainly will not
recognize me. Never mind; I shall recognize him. Forty-four years have
elapsed,—forty-four years, Enrico! and we will go to see him to-morrow.”

And yesterday morning, at nine o’clock, we were at the Susa railway
station. I should have liked to have Garrone come too; but he could not,
because his mother is ill.

It was a beautiful spring day. The train ran through green fields and
hedgerows in blossom, and the air we breathed was perfumed. My father
was delighted, and every little while he would put his arm round my neck
and talk to me like a friend, as he gazed out over the country.

“Poor Crosetti!” he said; “he was the first man, after my father, to love
me and do me good. I have never forgotten certain of his good counsels,
and also certain sharp reprimands which caused me to return home with a
lump in my throat. His hands were large and stubby. I can see him now, as
he used to enter the schoolroom, place his cane in a corner and hang his
coat on the peg, always with the same gesture. And every day he was in the
same humor,—always conscientious, full of good will, and attentive, as
though each day he were teaching school for the first time. I remember him
as well as though I heard him now when he called to me: ‘Bottini! eh,
Bottini! The fore and middle fingers on that pen!’ He must have changed
greatly in these four and forty years.”

As soon as we reached Condove, we went in search of our old
gardener’s wife of Chieri, who keeps a stall in an alley. We found her with
her boys: she made much of us and gave us news of her husband, who is
soon to return from Greece, where he has been working these three years;
and of her eldest daughter, who is in the Deaf-mute Institute in Turin. Then
she pointed out to us the street which led to the teacher’s house,—for every
one knows him.

We left the town, and turned into a steep lane flanked by blossoming
hedges.

My father no longer talked, but appeared entirely absorbed in his
reminiscences; and every now and then he smiled, and then shook his head.

Suddenly he halted and said: “Here he is. I will wager that this is he.”
Down the lane towards us a little old man with a white beard and a large hat
was descending, leaning on a cane. He dragged his feet along, and his hands
trembled.

“It is he!” repeated my father, hastening his steps.

When we were close to him, we stopped. The old man stopped also and
looked at my father. His face was still fresh colored, and his eyes were clear
and vivacious.

“Are you,” asked my father, raising his hat, “Vincenzo Crosetti, the
schoolmaster?”

The old man raised his hat also, and replied: “I am,” in a voice that was
somewhat tremulous, but full.

“Well, then,” said my father, taking one of his hands, “permit one of
your old scholars to shake your hand and to inquire how you are. I have
come from Turin to see you.”

The old man stared at him in amazement. Then he said: “You do me too
much honor. I do not know—When were you my scholar? Excuse me; your
name, if you please.”

My father mentioned his name, Alberto Bottini, and the year in which
he had attended school, and where, and he added: “It is natural that you
should not remember me. But I recollect you so perfectly!”

The master bent his head and gazed at the ground in thought, and
muttered my father’s name three or four times; the latter, meanwhile,
observed him with intent and smiling eyes.

All at once the old man raised his face, with his eyes opened widely,
and said slowly: “Alberto Bottini? the son of Bottini, the engineer? the one
who lived in the Piazza della Consolata?”

“The same,” replied my father, extending his hands.

“Then,” said the old man, “permit me, my dear sir, permit me”; and
advancing, he embraced my father: his white head hardly reached the
latter’s shoulder. My father pressed his cheek to the other’s brow.

“Have the goodness to come with me,” said the teacher. And without
speaking further he turned about and took the road to his dwelling.

In a few minutes we arrived at a garden plot in front of a tiny house
with two doors, round one of which there was a fragment of whitewashed
wall.

The teacher opened the second and ushered us into a room. There were
four white walls: in one corner a cot bed with a blue and white checked
coverlet; in another, a small table with a little library; four chairs, and one
ancient geographical map nailed to the wall. A pleasant odor of apples was
perceptible.

We seated ourselves, all three. My father and his teacher remained silent
for several minutes.

“Bottini!” exclaimed the master at length, fixing his eyes on the brick
floor where the sunlight formed a checker-board. “Oh! I remember well!
Your mother was such a good woman! For a while, during your first year,
you sat on a bench to the left near the window. Let us see whether I do not

recall it. I can still see your curly head.” Then he thought for a while longer.
“You were a lively lad, eh? Very. The second year you had an attack of
croup. I remember when they brought you back to school, emaciated and
wrapped up in a shawl. Forty years have elapsed since then, have they not?
You are very kind to remember your poor teacher. And do you know, others
of my old pupils have come hither in years gone by to seek me out: there
was a colonel, and there were some priests, and several gentlemen.” He
asked my father what his profession was. Then he said, “I am glad, heartily
glad. I thank you. It is quite a while now since I have seen any one. I very
much fear that you will be the last, my dear sir.”

“Don’t say that,” exclaimed my father. “You are well and still vigorous.
You must not say that.”

“Eh, no!” replied the master; “do you see this trembling?” and he
showed us his hands. “This is a bad sign. It seized on me three years ago,
while I was still teaching school. At first I paid no attention to it; I thought it
would pass off. But instead of that, it stayed and kept on increasing. A day
came when I could no longer write. Ah! that day on which I, for the first
time, made a blot on the copy-book of one of my scholars was a stab in the
heart for me, my dear sir. I did drag on for a while longer; but I was at the
end of my strength. After sixty years of teaching I was forced to bid
farewell to my school, to my scholars, to work. And it was hard, you
understand, hard. The last time that I gave a lesson, all the scholars
accompanied me home, and made much of me; but I was sad; I understood
that my life was finished. I had lost my wife the year before, and my only
son. I had only two peasant grandchildren left. Now I am living on a
pension of a few hundred lire. I no longer do anything; it seems to me as
though the days would never come to an end. My only occupation, you see,
is to turn over my old schoolbooks, my scholastic journals, and a few
volumes that have been given to me. There they are,” he said, indicating his
little library; “there are my reminiscences, my whole past; I have nothing
else remaining to me in the world.”

Then in a tone that was suddenly joyous, “I want to give you a surprise,
my dear Signor Bottini.”

He rose, and approaching his desk, he opened a long casket which
contained numerous little parcels, all tied up with a slender cord, and on
each was written a date in four figures.

After a little search, he opened one, turned over several papers, drew
forth a yellowed sheet, and handed it to my father. It was some of his school
work of forty years before.

At the top was written, Alberto Bottini, Dictation, April 3, 1838. My
father instantly recognized his own large, schoolboy hand, and began to
read it with a smile. But all at once his eyes grew moist. I rose and inquired
the cause.

He threw one arm around my body, and pressing me to his side, he said:
“Look at this sheet of paper. Do you see? These are the corrections made by
my poor mother. She always strengthened my l’s and my t’s. And the last
lines are entirely hers. She had learned to imitate my characters; and when I
was tired and sleepy, she finished my work for me. My sainted mother!”

And he kissed the page.

“See here,” said the teacher, showing him the other packages; “these are
my reminiscences. Each year I laid aside one piece of work of each of my
pupils; and they are all here, dated and arranged in order. Every time that I
open them thus, and read a line here and there, a thousand things recur to
my mind, and I seem to be living once more in the days that are past. How
many of them have passed, my dear sir! I close my eyes, and I see behind
me face after face, class after class, hundreds and hundreds of boys, and
who knows how many of them are already dead! Many of them I remember
well. I recall distinctly the best and the worst: those who gave me the
greatest pleasure, and those who caused me to pass sorrowful moments; for
I have had serpents, too, among that vast number! But now, you understand,
it is as though I were already in the other world, and I love them all
equally.”

He sat down again, and took one of my hands in his.

“And tell me,” my father said, with a smile, “do you not recall any
roguish tricks?”

“Of yours, sir?” replied the old man, also with a smile. “No; not just at
this moment. But that does not in the least mean that you never played any.
However, you had good judgment; you were serious for your age. I
remember the great affection of your mother for you. But it is very kind and
polite of you to have come to seek me out. How could you leave your
occupations, to come and see a poor old schoolmaster?”

“Listen, Signor Crosetti,” responded my father with vivacity. “I
recollect the first time that my poor mother accompanied me to school. It
was to be her first parting from me for two hours; of letting me out of the
house alone, in other hands than my father’s; in the hands of a stranger, in
short. To this good creature my entrance into school was like my entrance
into the world, the first of a long series of necessary and painful
separations; it was society which was tearing her son from her for the first
time, never again to return him to her intact. She was much affected; so was
I. I bade her farewell with a trembling voice, and then, as she went away, I
saluted her once more through the glass in the door, with my eyes full of
tears. And just at that point you made a gesture with one hand, laying the
other on your breast, as though to say, ‘Trust me, signora.’ Well, the gesture,
the glance, from which I perceived that you had comprehended all the
sentiments, all the thoughts of my mother; that look which seemed to say,
‘Courage!’ that gesture which was an honest promise of protection, of
affection, of indulgence, I have never forgotten; it has remained forever
engraved on my heart; and it is that memory which induced me to set out
from Turin. And here I am, after the lapse of four and forty years, for the
purpose of saying to you, ‘Thanks, dear teacher.’”

The master did not reply; he stroked my hair with his hand, and his hand
trembled, and glided from my hair to my forehead, from my forehead to my
shoulder.

In the meanwhile, my father was surveying those bare walls, that
wretched bed, the morsel of bread and the little phial of oil which lay on the
window-sill, and he seemed desirous of saying, “Poor master! after sixty
years of teaching, is this all thy recompense?”

But the good old man was content, and began once more to talk with
vivacity of our family, of the other teachers of that day, and of my father’s
schoolmates; some of them he remembered, and some of them he did not;
and each told the other news of this one or of that one. When my father
interrupted the conversation, to beg the old man to come down into the
town and lunch with us, he replied effusively, “I thank you, I thank you,”
but he seemed undecided. My father took him by both hands, and besought
him afresh. “But how shall I manage to eat,” said the master, “with these
poor hands which shake in this way? It is a penance for others also.”

“We will help you, master,” said my father. And then he accepted, as he
shook his head and smiled.

“This is a beautiful day,” he said, as he closed the outer door, “a
beautiful day, dear Signor Bottini! I assure you that I shall remember it as
long as I live.”

My father gave one arm to the master, and the latter took me by the
hand, and we descended the lane. We met two little barefooted girls leading
some cows, and a boy who passed us on a run, with a huge load of straw on
his shoulders. The master told us that they were scholars of the second
grade; that in the morning they led the cattle to pasture, and worked in the
fields barefoot; and in the afternoon they put on their shoes and went to
school. It was nearly mid-day. We encountered no one else. In a few
minutes we reached the inn, seated ourselves at a large table, with the
master between us, and began our breakfast at once. The inn was as silent as
a convent. The master was very merry, and his excitement augmented his
palsy: he could hardly eat. But my father cut up his meat, broke his bread,
and put salt on his plate. In order to drink, he was obliged to hold the glass
with both hands, and even then he struck his teeth. But he talked constantly,
and with ardor, of the reading-books of his young days; of the notaries of
the present day; of the commendations bestowed on him by his superiors; of
the regulations of late years: and all with that serene countenance, a trifle
redder than at first, and with that gay voice of his, and that laugh which was
almost the laugh of a young man. And my father gazed and gazed at him,
with that same expression with which I sometimes catch him gazing at me,

at home, when he is thinking and smiling to himself, with his face turned
aside.

The teacher allowed some wine to trickle down on his breast; my father
rose, and wiped it off with his napkin. “No, sir; I cannot permit this,” the
old man said, and smiled. He said some words in Latin. And, finally, he
raised his glass, which wavered about in his hand, and said very gravely,
“To your health, my dear engineer, to that of your children, to the memory
of your good mother!”

“To yours, my good master!” replied my father, pressing his hand. And
at the end of the room stood the innkeeper and several others, watching us,
and smiling as though they were pleased at this attention which was being
shown to the teacher from their parts.

At a little after two o’clock we came out, and the master wanted to
escort us to the station. My father gave him his arm once more, and he
again took me by the hand: I carried his cane for him. The people paused to
look on, for they all knew him: some saluted him. At one point in the street
we heard, through an open window, many boys’ voices, reading together,
and spelling. The old man halted, and seemed to be saddened by it.

“This, my dear Signor Bottini,” he said, “is what pains me. To hear the
voices of boys in school, and not be there any more; to think that another
man is there. I have heard that music for sixty years, and I have grown to
love it. Now I am deprived of my family. I have no sons.”

“No, master,” my father said to him, starting on again; “you still have
many sons, scattered about the world, who remember you, as I have always
remembered you.”

“No, no,” replied the master sadly; “I have no longer a school; I have no
longer any sons. And without sons, I shall not live much longer. My hour
will soon strike.”

“Do not say that, master; do not think it,” said my father. “You have
done so much good in every way! You have put your life to such a noble
use!”

The aged master inclined his hoary head for an instant on my father’s
shoulder, and pressed my hand.

We entered the station. The train was on the point of starting.

“Farewell, master!” said my father, kissing him on both cheeks.

“Farewell! thanks! farewell!” replied the master, taking one of my
father’s hands in his two trembling hands, and pressing it to his heart.

Then I kissed him and felt that his face was bathed in tears. My father
pushed me into the railway carriage, and at the moment of starting he
quickly removed the coarse cane from the schoolmaster’s hand, and in its
place he put his own handsome one, with a silver handle and his initials,
saying, “Keep it in memory of me.”

The old man tried to return it and to recover his own; but my father was
already inside and had closed the door.

“Farewell, my kind master!”

“Farewell, my son!” responded the master as the train moved off; “and
may God bless you for the consolation which you have afforded to a poor
old man!”

“Until we meet again!” cried my father, in a voice full of emotion.

But the master shook his head, as much as to say, “We shall never see
each other more.”

“Yes, yes,” repeated my father, “until we meet again!”

And the other replied by raising his trembling hand to heaven, “Up
there!”

And thus he disappeared from our sight, with his hand on high.

CONVALESCENCE.

Thursday, 20th.

Who could have told me, when I returned from that delightful excursion
with my father, that for ten days I should not see the country or the sky
again? I have been very ill—in danger of my life. I have heard my mother
sobbing—I have seen my father very, very pale, gazing intently at me; and
my sister Silvia and my brother talking in a low voice; and the doctor, with
his spectacles, who was there every moment, and who said things to me that
I did not understand. In truth, I have been on the verge of saying a final
farewell to every one. Ah, my poor mother! I passed three or four days at
least, of which I recollect almost nothing, as though I had been in a dark
and perplexing dream. I thought I beheld at my bedside my kind
schoolmistress of the upper primary, who was trying to stifle her cough in
her handkerchief in order not to disturb me. In the same manner I
confusedly recall my master, who bent over to kiss me, and who pricked my
face a little with his beard; and I saw, as in a mist, the red head of Crossi,
the golden curls of Derossi, the Calabrian clad in black, all pass by, and
Garrone, who brought me a mandarin orange with its leaves, and ran away
in haste because his mother is ill.

Then I awoke as from a very long dream, and understood that I was
better from seeing my father and mother smiling, and hearing Silvia singing
softly. Oh, what a sad dream it was! Then I began to improve every day.
The little mason came and made me laugh once more for the first time, with
his hare’s face; and how well he does it, now that his face is somewhat
elongated through illness, poor fellow! And Coretti came; and Garoffi came
to present me with two tickets in his new lottery of “a penknife with five
surprises,” which he purchased of a second-hand dealer in the Via Bertola.
Then, yesterday, while I was asleep, Precossi came and laid his cheek on
my hand without waking me; and as he came from his father’s workshop,
with his face covered with coal dust, he left a black print on my sleeve, the
sight of which caused me great pleasure when I awoke.

How green the trees have become in these few days! And how I envy
the boys whom I see running to school with their books when my father

carries me to the window! But I shall go back there soon myself. I am so
impatient to see all the boys once more, and my seat, the garden, the streets;
to know all that has taken place during the interval; to apply myself to my
books again, and to my copy-books, which I seem not to have seen for a
year! How pale and thin my poor mother has grown! Poor father! how
weary he looks! And my kind companions who came to see me and walked
on tiptoe and kissed my brow! It makes me sad, even now, to think that one
day we must part. Perhaps I shall continue my studies with Derossi and
with some others; but how about all the rest? When the fourth grade is once
finished, then good by! we shall never see each other again: I shall never
see them again at my bedside when I am ill,—Garrone, Precossi, Coretti,
who are such fine boys and kind and dear comrades,—never more!

FRIENDS AMONG THE WORKINGMEN.

Thursday, 20th.

Why “never more,” Enrico? That will depend on yourself. When you
have finished the fourth grade, you will go to the Gymnasium, and they will
become workingmen; but you will remain in the same city for many years,
perhaps. Why, then, will you never meet again? When you are in the
University or the Lyceum, you will seek them out in their shops or their
workrooms, and it will be a great pleasure for you to meet the companions
of your youth once more, as men at work.

I should like to see you neglecting to look up Coretti or Precossi,
wherever they may be! And you will go to them, and you will pass hours in
their company, and you will see, when you come to study life and the
world, how many things you can learn from them, which no one else is
capable of teaching you, both about their arts and their society and your
own country. And have a care; for if you do not preserve these friendships,
it will be extremely difficult for you to acquire other similar ones in the
future,—friendships, I mean to say, outside of the class to which you
belong; and thus you will live in one class only; and the man who associates
with but one social class is like the student who reads but one book.

Let it be your firm resolve, then, from this day forth, that you will keep
these good friends even after you shall be separated, and from this time
forth, cultivate precisely these by preference because they are the sons of
workingmen. You see, men of the upper classes are the officers, and men of
the lower classes are the soldiers of toil; and thus in society as in the army,
not only is the soldier no less noble than the officer, since nobility consists
in work and not in wages, in valor and not in rank; but if there is also a
superiority of merit, it is on the side of the soldier, of the workmen, who
draw the lesser profit from the work. Therefore love and respect above all
others, among your companions, the sons of the soldiers of labor; honor in
them the toil and the sacrifices of their parents; disregard the differences of
fortune and of class, upon which the base alone regulate their sentiments
and courtesy; reflect that from the veins of laborers in the shops and in the
country issued nearly all that blessed blood which has redeemed your
country; love Garrone, love Coretti, love Precossi, love your little mason,
who, in their little workingmen’s breasts, possess the hearts of princes; and
take an oath to yourself that no change of fortune shall ever eradicate these
friendships of childhood from your soul. Swear to yourself that forty years

hence, if, while passing through a railway station, you recognize your old
Garrone in the garments of an engineer, with a black face,—ah! I cannot
think what to tell you to swear. I am sure that you will jump upon the
engine and fling your arms round his neck, though you were even a senator
of the kingdom.

Thy Father.

GARRONE’S MOTHER.

Saturday, 29th.

On my return to school, the first thing I heard was some bad news.
Garrone had not been there for several days because his mother was
seriously ill. She died on Saturday. Yesterday morning, as soon as we came
into school, the teacher said to us:—

“The greatest misfortune that can happen to a boy has happened to poor
Garrone: his mother is dead. He will return to school to-morrow. I beseech
you now, boys, respect the terrible sorrow that is now rending his soul.
When he enters, greet him with affection, and gravely; let no one jest, let no
one laugh at him, I beg of you.”

And this morning poor Garrone came in, a little later than the rest; I felt
a blow at my heart at the sight of him. His face was haggard, his eyes were
red, and he was unsteady on his feet; it seemed as though he had been ill for
a month. I hardly recognized him; he was dressed all in black; he aroused
our pity. No one even breathed; all gazed at him. No sooner had he entered
than at the first sight of that schoolroom whither his mother had come to get
him nearly every day, of that bench over which she had bent on so many
examination days to give him a last bit of advice, and where he had so
many times thought of her, in his impatience to run out and meet her, he
burst into a desperate fit of weeping. The teacher drew him aside to his own
place, and pressed him to his breast, and said to him:—

“Weep, weep, my poor boy; but take courage. Your mother is no longer
here; but she sees you, she still loves you, she still lives by your side, and
one day you will behold her once again, for you have a good and upright
soul like her own. Take courage!”

Having said this, he accompanied him to the bench near me. I dared not
look at him. He drew out his copy-books and his books, which he had not
opened for many days, and as he opened the reading-book at a place where
there was a cut representing a mother leading her son by the hand, he burst
out crying again, and laid his head on his arm. The master made us a sign to
leave him thus, and began the lesson. I should have liked to say something
to him, but I did not know what. I laid one hand on his arm, and whispered
in his ear:—

“Don’t cry, Garrone.”

He made no reply, and without raising his head from the bench he laid
his hand on mine and kept it there a while. At the close of school, no one
addressed him; all the boys hovered round him respectfully, and in silence. I
saw my mother waiting for me, and ran to embrace her; but she repulsed
me, and gazed at Garrone. For the moment I could not understand why; but
then I perceived that Garrone was standing apart by himself and gazing at
me; and he was gazing at me with a look of indescribable sadness, which
seemed to say: “You are embracing your mother, and I shall never embrace
mine again! You have still a mother, and mine is dead!” And then I
understood why my mother had thrust me back, and I went out without
taking her hand.

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

Saturday, 29th.

This morning, also, Garrone came to school with a pale face and his
eyes swollen with weeping, and he hardly cast a glance at the little gifts
which we had placed on his desk to console him. But the teacher had

brought a page from a book to read to him in order to encourage him. He
first informed us that we are to go to-morrow at one o’clock to the town-
hall to witness the award of the medal for civic valor to a boy who has
saved a little child from the Po, and that on Monday he will dictate the
description of the festival to us instead of the monthly story. Then turning to
Garrone, who was standing with drooping head, he said to him:—

“Make an effort, Garrone, and write down what I dictate to you as well
as the rest.”

We all took our pens, and the teacher dictated.

“Giuseppe Mazzini, born in Genoa in 1805, died in Pisa in 1872, a
grand, patriotic soul, the mind of a great writer, the first inspirer and apostle
of the Italian Revolution; who, out of love for his country, lived for forty
years poor, exiled, persecuted, a fugitive heroically steadfast in his
principles and in his resolutions. Giuseppe Mazzini, who adored his mother,
and who derived from her all that there was noblest and purest in her strong
and gentle soul, wrote as follows to a faithful friend of his, to console him
in the greatest of misfortunes. These are almost his exact words:—

“‘My friend, thou wilt never more behold thy mother on this earth. That
is the terrible truth. I do not attempt to see thee, because thine is one of
those solemn and sacred sorrows which each must suffer and conquer for
himself. Dost thou understand what I mean to convey by these words, It is
necessary to conquer sorrow—to conquer the least sacred, the least
purifying part of sorrow, that which, instead of rendering the soul better,
weakens and debases it? But the other part of sorrow, the noble part—that
which enlarges and elevates the soul—that must remain with thee and never
leave thee more. Nothing here below can take the place of a good mother.
In the griefs, in the consolations which life may still bring to thee, thou wilt
never forget her. But thou must recall her, love her, mourn her death, in a
manner which is worthy of her. O my friend, hearken to me! Death exists
not; it is nothing. It cannot even be understood. Life is life, and it follows
the law of life—progress. Yesterday thou hadst a mother on earth; to-day
thou hast an angel elsewhere. All that is good will survive the life of earth
with increased power. Hence, also, the love of thy mother. She loves thee
now more than ever. And thou art responsible for thy actions to her more,

even, than before. It depends upon thee, upon thy actions, to meet her once
more, to see her in another existence. Thou must, therefore, out of love and
reverence for thy mother, grow better and cause her joy for thee. Henceforth
thou must say to thyself at every act of thine, “Would my mother approve
this?” Her transformation has placed a guardian angel in the world for thee,
to whom thou must refer in all thy affairs, in everything that pertains to
thee. Be strong and brave; fight against desperate and vulgar grief; have the
tranquillity of great suffering in great souls; and that it is what she would
have.’”

“Garrone,” added the teacher, “be strong and tranquil, for that is what
she would have. Do you understand?”

Garrone nodded assent, while great and fast-flowing tears streamed over
his hands, his copy-book, and his desk.

CIVIC VALOR.

(Monthly Story.)

At one o’clock we went with our schoolmaster to the front of the town-
hall, to see the medal for civic valor bestowed on the lad who saved one of
his comrades from the Po.

On the front terrace waved a huge tricolored flag.

We entered the courtyard of the palace.

It was already full of people. At the further end of it there was visible a
table with a red cover, and papers on it, and behind it a row of gilded chairs
for the mayor and the council; the ushers of the municipality were there,
with their under-waistcoats of sky-blue and their white stockings. To the
right of the courtyard a detachment of policemen, who had a great many
medals, was drawn up in line; and beside them a detachment of custom-

house officers; on the other side were the firemen in festive array; and
numerous soldiers not in line, who had come to look on,—cavalrymen,
sharpshooters, artillery-men. Then all around were gentlemen, country
people, and some officers and women and boys who had assembled. We
crowded into a corner where many scholars from other buildings were
already collected with their teachers; and near us was a group of boys
belonging to the common people, between ten and eighteen years of age,
who were talking and laughing loudly; and we made out that they were all
from Borgo Po, comrades or acquaintances of the boy who was to receive
the medal. Above, all the windows were thronged with the employees of the
city government; the balcony of the library was also filled with people, who
pressed against the balustrade; and in the one on the opposite side, which is
over the entrance gate, stood a crowd of girls from the public schools, and
many Daughters of military men, with their pretty blue veils. It looked like
a theatre. All were talking merrily, glancing every now and then at the red
table, to see whether any one had made his appearance. A band of music
was playing softly at the extremity of the portico. The sun beat down on the
lofty walls. It was beautiful.

All at once every one began to clap their hands, from the courtyard,
from the balconies, from the windows.

I raised myself on tiptoe to look.

The crowd which stood behind the red table had parted, and a man and
woman had come forward. The man was leading a boy by the hand.

This was the lad who had saved his comrade.

The man was his father, a mason, dressed in his best. The woman, his
mother, small and blond, had on a black gown. The boy, also small and
blond, had on a gray jacket.

At the sight of all those people, and at the sound of that thunder of
applause, all three stood still, not daring to look nor to move. A municipal
usher pushed them along to the side of the table on the right.

All remained quiet for a moment, and then once more the applause
broke out on all sides. The boy glanced up at the windows, and then at the
balcony with the Daughters of military men; he held his cap in his hand,
and did not seem to understand very thoroughly where he was. It struck me
that he looked a little like Coretti, in the face; but he was redder. His father
and mother kept their eyes fixed on the table.

In the meantime, all the boys from Borgo Po who were near us were
making motions to their comrade, to attract his attention, and hailing him in
a low tone: Pin! Pin! Pinot! By dint of calling they made themselves heard.
The boy glanced at them, and hid his smile behind his cap.

At a certain moment the guards put themselves in the attitude of
attention.

The mayor entered, accompanied by numerous gentlemen.

The mayor, all white, with a big tricolored scarf, placed himself beside
the table, standing; all the others took their places behind and beside him.

The band ceased playing; the mayor made a sign, and every one kept
quiet.

He began to speak. I did not understand the first words perfectly; but I
gathered that he was telling the story of the boy’s feat. Then he raised his
voice, and it rang out so clear and sonorous through the whole court, that I
did not lose another word: “When he saw, from the shore, his comrade
struggling in the river, already overcome with the fear of death, he tore the
clothes from his back, and hastened to his assistance, without hesitating an
instant. They shouted to him, ‘You will be drowned!’—he made no reply;
they caught hold of him—he freed himself; they called him by name—he
was already in the water. The river was swollen; the risk terrible, even for a
man. But he flung himself to meet death with all the strength of his little
body and of his great heart; he reached the unfortunate fellow and seized
him just in time, when he was already under water, and dragged him to the
surface; he fought furiously with the waves, which strove to overwhelm
him, with his companion who tried to cling to him; and several times he
disappeared beneath the water, and rose again with a desperate effort;

obstinate, invincible in his purpose, not like a boy who was trying to save
another boy, but like a man, like a father who is struggling to save his son,
who is his hope and his life. In short, God did not permit so generous a
prowess to be displayed in vain. The child swimmer tore the victim from
the gigantic river, and brought him to land, and with the assistance of
others, rendered him his first succor; after which he returned home quietly
and alone, and ingenuously narrated his deed.

“Gentlemen, beautiful, and worthy of veneration is heroism in a man!
But in a child, in whom there can be no prompting of ambition or of profit
whatever; in a child, who must have all the more ardor in proportion as he
has less strength; in a child, from whom we require nothing, who is bound
to nothing, who already appears to us so noble and lovable, not when he
acts, but when he merely understands, and is grateful for the sacrifices of
others;—in a child, heroism is divine! I will say nothing more, gentlemen. I
do not care to deck, with superfluous praises, such simple grandeur. Here
before you stands the noble and valorous rescuer. Soldier, greet him as a
brother; mothers, bless him like a son; children, remember his name,
engrave on your minds his visage, that it may nevermore be erased from
your memories and from your hearts. Approach, my boy. In the name of the
king of Italy, I give you the medal for civic valor.”

An extremely loud hurrah, uttered at the same moment by many voices,
made the palace ring.

The mayor took the medal from the table, and fastened it on the boy’s
breast. Then he embraced and kissed him. The mother placed one hand over
her eyes; the father held his chin on his breast.

The mayor shook hands with both; and taking the decree of decoration,
which was bound with a ribbon, he handed it to the woman.

Then he turned to the boy again, and said: “May the memory of this
day, which is such a glorious one for you, such a happy one for your father
and mother, keep you all your life in the path of virtue and honor!
Farewell!”

The mayor withdrew, the band struck up, and everything seemed to be
at an end, when the detachment of firemen opened, and a lad of eight or
nine years, pushed forwards by a woman who instantly concealed herself,
rushed towards the boy with the decoration, and flung himself in his arms.

Another outburst of hurrahs and applause made the courtyard echo;
every one had instantly understood that this was the boy who had been
saved from the Po, and who had come to thank his rescuer. After kissing
him, he clung to one arm, in order to accompany him out. These two, with
the father and mother following behind, took their way towards the door,
making a path with difficulty among the people who formed in line to let
them pass,—policemen, boys, soldiers, women, all mingled together in
confusion. All pressed forwards and raised on tiptoe to see the boy. Those
who stood near him as he passed, touched his hand. When he passed before
the schoolboys, they all waved their caps in the air. Those from Borgo Po
made a great uproar, pulling him by the arms and by his jacket and
shouting. “Pin! hurrah for Pin! bravo, Pinot!” I saw him pass very close to
me. His face was all aflame and happy; his medal had a red, white, and
green ribbon. His mother was crying and smiling; his father was twirling his
mustache with one hand, which trembled violently, as though he had a
fever. And from the windows and the balconies the people continued to lean
out and applaud. All at once, when they were on the point of entering the
portico, there descended from the balcony of the Daughters of military men
a veritable shower of pansies, of bunches of violets and daisies, which fell
upon the head of the boy, and of his father and mother, and scattered over
the ground. Many people stooped to pick them up and hand them to the
mother. And the band at the further end of the courtyard played, very, very
softly, a most entrancing air, which seemed like a song by a great many
silver voices fading slowly into the distance on the banks of a river.

MAY.

CHILDREN WITH THE RICKETS.

Friday, 5th.

To-day I took a vacation, because I was not well, and my mother took
me to the Institution for Children with the Rickets, whither she went to
recommend a child belonging to our porter; but she did not allow me to go
into the school.

You did not understand, Enrico, why I did not permit you to enter? In
order not to place before the eyes of those unfortunates, there in the midst
of the school, as though on exhibition, a healthy, robust boy: they have
already but too many opportunities for making melancholy comparisons.
What a sad thing! Tears rushed from my heart when I entered. There were
sixty of them, boys and girls. Poor tortured bones! Poor hands, poor little
shrivelled and distorted feet! Poor little deformed bodies! I instantly
perceived many charming faces, with eyes full of intelligence and affection.
There was one little child’s face with a pointed nose and a sharp chin, which
seemed to belong to an old woman; but it wore a smile of celestial
sweetness. Some, viewed from the front, are handsome, and appear to be
without defects: but when they turn round—they cast a weight upon your
soul. The doctor was there, visiting them. He set them upright on their
benches and pulled up their little garments, to feel their little swollen
stomachs and enlarged joints; but they felt not the least shame, poor
creatures! it was evident that they were children who were used to being
undressed, examined, turned round on all sides. And to think that they are
now in the best stage of their malady, when they hardly suffer at all any

more! But who can say what they suffered during the first stage, while their
bodies were undergoing the process of deformation, when with the increase
of their infirmity, they saw affection decrease around them, poor children!
saw themselves left alone for hour after hour in a corner of the room or the
courtyard, badly nourished, and at times scoffed at, or tormented for months
by bandages and by useless orthopedic apparatus! Now, however, thanks to
care and good food and gymnastic exercises, many are improving. Their
schoolmistress makes them practise gymnastics. It was a pitiful sight to see
them, at a certain command, extend all those bandaged legs under the
benches, squeezed as they were between splints, knotty and deformed; legs
which should have been covered with kisses! Some could not rise from the
bench, and remained there, with their heads resting on their arms, caressing
their crutches with their hands; others, on making the thrust with their arms,
felt their breath fail them, and fell back on their seats, all pale; but they
smiled to conceal their panting. Ah, Enrico! you other children do not prize
your good health, and it seems to you so small a thing to be well! I thought
of the strong and thriving lads, whom their mothers carry about in triumph,
proud of their beauty; and I could have clasped all those poor little heads, I
could have pressed them to my heart, in despair; I could have said, had I
been alone, “I will never stir from here again; I wish to consecrate my life
to you, to serve you, to be a mother to you all, to my last day.” And in the
meantime, they sang; sang in peculiar, thin, sweet, sad voices, which
penetrated the soul; and when their teacher praised them, they looked
happy; and as she passed among the benches, they kissed her hands and
wrists; for they are very grateful for what is done for them, and very
affectionate. And these little angels have good minds, and study well, the
teacher told me. The teacher is young and gentle, with a face full of
kindness, a certain expression of sadness, like a reflection of the
misfortunes which she caresses and comforts. The dear girl! Among all the
human creatures who earn their livelihood by toil, there is not one who
earns it more holily than thou, my daughter!

Thy Mother.

SACRIFICE.

Tuesday, 9th.

My mother is good, and my sister Silvia is like her, and has a large and
noble heart. Yesterday evening I was copying a part of the monthly story,
From the Apennines to the Andes,—which the teacher has distributed
among us all in small portions to copy, because it is so long,—when Silvia
entered on tiptoe, and said to me hastily, and in a low voice: “Come to
mamma with me. I heard them talking together this morning: some affair
has gone wrong with papa, and he was sad; mamma was encouraging him:
we are in difficulties—do you understand? We have no more money. Papa
said that it would be necessary to make some sacrifices in order to recover
himself. Now we must make sacrifices, too, must we not? Are you ready to
do it? Well, I will speak to mamma, and do you nod assent, and promise her
on your honor that you will do everything that I shall say.”

Having said this, she took me by the hand and led me to our mother,
who was sewing, absorbed in thought. I sat down on one end of the sofa,
Silvia on the other, and she immediately said:—

“Listen, mamma, I have something to say to you. Both of us have
something to say to you.” Mamma stared at us in surprise, and Silvia began:
—

“Papa has no money, has he?”

“What are you saying?” replied mamma, turning crimson. “Has he not
indeed! What do you know about it? Who has told you?”

“I know it,” said Silvia, resolutely. “Well, then, listen, mamma; we must
make some sacrifices, too. You promised me a fan at the end of May, and
Enrico expected his box of paints; we don’t want anything now; we don’t
want to waste a soldo; we shall be just as well pleased—you understand?”

Mamma tried to speak; but Silvia said: “No; it must be thus. We have
decided. And until papa has money again, we don’t want any fruit or
anything else; broth will be enough for us, and we will eat bread in the

morning for breakfast: thus we shall spend less on the table, for we already
spend too much; and we promise you that you will always find us perfectly
contented. Is it not so, Enrico?”

I replied that it was. “Always perfectly contented,” repeated Silvia,
closing mamma’s mouth with one hand. “And if there are any other
sacrifices to be made, either in the matter of clothing or anything else, we
will make them gladly; and we will even sell our presents; I will give up all
my things, I will serve you as your maid, we will not have anything done
out of the house any more, I will work all day long with you, I will do
everything you wish, I am ready for anything! For anything!” she
exclaimed, throwing her arms around my mother’s neck, “if papa and
mamma can only be saved further troubles, if I can only behold you both
once more at ease, and in good spirits, as in former days, between your
Silvia and your Enrico, who love you so dearly, who would give their lives
for you!”

Ah! I have never seen my mother so happy as she was on hearing these
words; she never before kissed us on the brow in that way, weeping and
laughing, and incapable of speech. And then she assured Silvia that she had
not understood rightly; that we were not in the least reduced in
circumstances, as she imagined; and she thanked us a hundred times, and
was cheerful all the evening, until my father came in, when she told him all
about it. He did not open his mouth, poor father! But this morning, as we
sat at the table, I felt at once both a great pleasure and a great sadness:
under my napkin I found my box of colors, and under hers, Silvia found her
fan.

THE FIRE.

Thursday, 11th.

This morning I had finished copying my share of the story, From the
Apennines to the Andes, and was seeking for a theme for the independent

composition which the teacher had assigned us to write, when I heard an
unusual talking on the stairs, and shortly after two firemen entered the
house, and asked permission of my father to inspect the stoves and
chimneys, because a smoke-pipe was on fire on the roof, and they could not
tell to whom it belonged.

My father said, “Pray do so.” And although we had no fire burning
anywhere, they began to make the round of our apartments, and to lay their
ears to the walls, to hear if the fire was roaring in the flues which run up to
the other floors of the house.

And while they were going through the rooms, my father said to me,
“Here is a theme for your composition, Enrico,—the firemen. Try to write
down what I am about to tell you.

“I saw them at work two years ago, one evening, when I was coming
out of the Balbo Theatre late at night. On entering the Via Roma, I saw an
unusual light, and a crowd of people collecting. A house was on fire.
Tongues of flame and clouds of smoke were bursting from the windows and
the roof; men and women appeared at the windows and then disappeared,
uttering shrieks of despair. There was a dense throng in front of the door:
the crowd was shouting: ‘They will be burned alive! Help! The firemen!’ At
that moment a carriage arrived, four firemen sprang out of it—the first who
had reached the town-hall—and rushed into the house. They had hardly
gone in when a horrible thing happened: a woman ran to a window of the
third story, with a yell, clutched the balcony, climbed down it, and remained
suspended, thus clinging, almost suspended in space, with her back
outwards, bending beneath the flames, which flashed out from the room and
almost licked her head. The crowd uttered a cry of horror. The firemen, who
had been stopped on the second floor by mistake by the terrified lodgers,
had already broken through a wall and precipitated themselves into a room,
when a hundred shouts gave them warning:—

“‘On the third floor! On the third floor!’

“They flew to the third floor. There there was an infernal uproar,—
beams from the roof crashing in, corridors filled with a suffocating smoke.
In order to reach the rooms where the lodgers were imprisoned, there was

no other way left but to pass over the roof. They instantly sprang upon it,
and a moment later something which resembled a black phantom appeared
on the tiles, in the midst of the smoke. It was the corporal, who had been the
first to arrive. But in order to get from the roof to the small set of rooms cut
off by the fire, he was forced to pass over an extremely narrow space
comprised between a dormer window and the eavestrough: all the rest was
in flames, and that tiny space was covered with snow and ice, and there was
no place to hold on to.

“‘It is impossible for him to pass!’ shouted the crowd below.

“The corporal advanced along the edge of the roof. All shuddered, and
began to observe him with bated breath. He passed. A tremendous hurrah
rose towards heaven. The corporal resumed his way, and on arriving at the
point which was threatened, he began to break away, with furious blows of
his axe, beams, tiles, and rafters, in order to open a hole through which he
might descend within.

“In the meanwhile, the woman was still suspended outside the window.
The fire raged with increased violence over her head; another moment, and
she would have fallen into the street.

“The hole was opened. We saw the corporal pull off his shoulder-belt
and lower himself inside: the other firemen, who had arrived, followed.

“At that instant a very lofty Porta ladder, which had just arrived, was
placed against the entablature of the house, in front of the windows whence
issued flames, and howls, as of maniacs. But it seemed as though they were
too late.

“‘No one can be saved now!’ they shouted. ‘The firemen are burning!
The end has come! They are dead!’

“All at once the black form of the corporal made its appearance at the
window with the balcony, lighted up by the flames overhead. The woman
clasped him round the neck; he caught her round the body with both arms,
drew her up, and laid her down inside the room.

“The crowd set up a shout a thousand voices strong, which rose above
the roar of the conflagration.

“But the others? And how were they to get down? The ladder which
leaned against the roof on the front of another window was at a good
distance from them. How could they get hold of it?

“While the people were saying this to themselves, one of the firemen
stepped out of the window, set his right foot on the window-sill and his left
on the ladder, and standing thus upright in the air, he grasped the lodgers,
one after the other, as the other men handed them to him from within,
passed them on to a comrade, who had climbed up from the street, and who,
after securing a firm grasp for them on the rungs, sent them down, one after
the other, with the assistance of more firemen.

“First came the woman of the balcony, then a baby, then another
woman, then an old man. All were saved. After the old man, the fireman
who had remained inside descended. The last to come down was the
corporal who had been the first to hasten up. The crowd received them all
with a burst of applause; but when the last made his appearance, the
vanguard of the rescuers, the one who had faced the abyss in advance of the
rest, the one who would have perished had it been fated that one should
perish, the crowd saluted him like a conqueror, shouting and stretching out
their arms, with an affectionate impulse of admiration and of gratitude, and
in a few minutes his obscure name—Giuseppe Robbino—rang from a
thousand throats.

“Have you understood? That is courage—the courage of the heart,
which does not reason, which does not waver, which dashes blindly on, like
a lightning flash, wherever it hears the cry of a dying man. One of these
days I will take you to the exercises of the firemen, and I will point out to
you Corporal Robbino; for you would be very glad to know him, would you
not?”

I replied that I should.

“Here he is,” said my father.

I turned round with a start. The two firemen, having completed their
inspection, were traversing the room in order to reach the door.

My father pointed to the smaller of the men, who had straps of gold
braid, and said, “Shake hands with Corporal Robbino.”

The corporal halted, and offered me his hand; I pressed it; he made a
salute and withdrew.

“And bear this well in mind,” said my father; “for out of the thousands
of hands which you will shake in the course of your life there will probably
not be ten which possess the worth of his.”

FROM THE APENNINES TO THE ANDES.

(Monthly Story.)

Many years ago a Genoese lad of thirteen, the son of a workingman,
went from Genoa to America all alone to seek his mother.

His mother had gone two years before to Buenos Ayres, a city, the
capital of the Argentine Republic, to take service in a wealthy family, and to
thus earn in a short time enough to place her family once more in easy
circumstances, they having fallen, through various misfortunes, into poverty
and debt. There are courageous women—not a few—who take this long
voyage with this object in view, and who, thanks to the large wages which
people in service receive there, return home at the end of a few years with
several thousand lire. The poor mother had wept tears of blood at parting
from her children,—the one aged eighteen, the other, eleven; but she had set
out courageously and filled with hope.

The voyage was prosperous: she had no sooner arrived at Buenos Ayres
than she found, through a Genoese shopkeeper, a cousin of her husband,
who had been established there for a very long time, a good Argentine

family, which gave high wages and treated her well. And for a short time
she kept up a regular correspondence with her family. As it had been settled
between them, her husband addressed his letters to his cousin, who
transmitted them to the woman, and the latter handed her replies to him, and
he despatched them to Genoa, adding a few lines of his own. As she was
earning eighty lire a month and spending nothing for herself, she sent home
a handsome sum every three months, with which her husband, who was a
man of honor, gradually paid off their most urgent debts, and thus regained
his good reputation. And in the meantime, he worked away and was
satisfied with the state of his affairs, since he also cherished the hope that
his wife would shortly return; for the house seemed empty without her, and
the younger son in particular, who was extremely attached to his mother,
was very much depressed, and could not resign himself to having her so far
away.

But a year had elapsed since they had parted; after a brief letter, in
which she said that her health was not very good, they heard nothing more.
They wrote twice to the cousin; the cousin did not reply. They wrote to the
Argentine family where the woman was at service; but it is possible that the
letter never reached them, for they had distorted the name in addressing it:
they received no answer. Fearing a misfortune, they wrote to the Italian
Consulate at Buenos Ayres to have inquiries made, and after a lapse of three
months they received a response from the consul, that in spite of
advertisements in the newspapers no one had presented herself nor sent any
word. And it could not have happened otherwise, for this reason if for no
other: that with the idea of sparing the good name of her family, which she
fancied she was discrediting by becoming a servant, the good woman had
not given her real name to the Argentine family.

Several months more passed by; no news. The father and sons were in
consternation; the youngest was oppressed by a melancholy which he could
not conquer. What was to be done? To whom should they have recourse?
The father’s first thought had been to set out, to go to America in search of
his wife. But his work? Who would support his sons? And neither could the
eldest son go, for he had just then begun to earn something, and he was
necessary to the family. And in this anxiety they lived, repeating each day
the same sad speeches, or gazing at each other in silence; when, one

evening, Marco, the youngest, declared with decision, “I am going to
America to look for my mother.”

His father shook his head sadly and made no reply. It was an
affectionate thought, but an impossible thing. To make a journey to
America, which required a month, alone, at the age of thirteen! But the boy
patiently insisted. He persisted that day, the day after, every day, with great
calmness, reasoning with the good sense of a man. “Others have gone
thither,” he said; “and smaller boys than I, too. Once on board the ship, I
shall get there like anybody else. Once arrived there, I only have to hunt up
our cousin’s shop. There are plenty of Italians there who will show me the
street. After finding our cousin, my mother is found; and if I do not find
him, I will go to the consul: I will search out that Argentine family.
Whatever happens, there is work for all there; I shall find work also;
sufficient, at least, to earn enough to get home.” And thus little by little he
almost succeeded in persuading his father. His father esteemed him; he
knew that he had good judgment and courage; that he was inured to
privations and to sacrifices; and that all these good qualities had acquired
double force in his heart in consequence of the sacred project of finding his
mother, whom he adored. In addition to this, the captain of a steamer, the
friend of an acquaintance of his, having heard the plan mentioned,
undertook to procure a free third-class passage for the Argentine Republic.

And then, after a little hesitation, the father gave his consent. The
voyage was decided on. They filled a sack with clothes for him, put a few
crowns in his pocket, and gave him the address of the cousin; and one fine
evening in April they saw him on board.

“Marco, my son,” his father said to him, as he gave him his last kiss,
with tears in his eyes, on the steps of the steamer, which was on the point of
starting, “take courage. Thou hast set out on a holy undertaking, and God
will aid thee.”

Poor Marco! His heart was strong and prepared for the hardest trials of
this voyage; but when he beheld his beautiful Genoa disappear on the
horizon, and found himself on the open sea on that huge steamer thronged
with emigrating peasants, alone, unacquainted with any one, with that little
bag which held his entire fortune, a sudden discouragement assailed him.

For two days he remained crouching like a dog on the bows, hardly eating,
and oppressed with a great desire to weep. Every description of sad
thoughts passed through his mind, and the saddest, the most terrible, was
the one which was the most persistent in its return,—the thought that his
mother was dead. In his broken and painful slumbers he constantly beheld a
strange face, which surveyed him with an air of compassion, and whispered
in his ear, “Your mother is dead!” And then he awoke, stifling a shriek.

Nevertheless, after passing the Straits of Gibraltar, at the first sight of
the Atlantic Ocean he recovered his spirits a little, and his hope. But it was
only a brief respite. That vast but always smooth sea, the increasing heat,
the misery of all those poor people who surrounded him, the consciousness
of his own solitude, overwhelmed him once more. The empty and
monotonous days which succeeded each other became confounded in his
memory, as is the case with sick people. It seemed to him that he had been
at sea a year. And every morning, on waking, he felt surprised afresh at
finding himself there alone on that vast watery expanse, on his way to
America. The beautiful flying fish which fell on deck every now and then,
the marvellous sunsets of the tropics, with their enormous clouds colored
like flame and blood, and those nocturnal phosphorescences which make
the ocean seem all on fire like a sea of lava, did not produce on him the
effect of real things, but of marvels beheld in a dream. There were days of
bad weather, during which he remained constantly in the dormitory, where
everything was rolling and crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of
lamentations and imprecations, and he thought that his last hour had come.
There were other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of
insupportable heat, of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched
hours, during which the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the
planks, seemed all dead. And the voyage was endless: sea and sky, sky and
sea; to-day the same as yesterday, to-morrow like to-day, and so on, always,
eternally.

And for long hours he stood leaning on the bulwarks, gazing at that
interminable sea in amazement, thinking vaguely of his mother, until his
eyes closed and his head was drooping with sleep; and then again he beheld
that unknown face which gazed upon him with an air of compassion, and
repeated in his ear, “Your mother is dead!” and at the sound of that voice he

awoke with a start, to resume his dreaming with wide-open eyes, and to
gaze at the unchanging horizon.

The voyage lasted twenty-seven days. But the last days were the best.
The weather was fine, and the air cool. He had made the acquaintance of a
good old man, a Lombard, who was going to America to find his son, an
agriculturist in the vicinity of the town of Rosario; he had told him his
whole story, and the old man kept repeating every little while, as he tapped
him on the nape of the neck with his hand, “Courage, my lad; you will find
your mother well and happy.”

This companionship comforted him; his sad presentiments were turned
into joyous ones. Seated on the bow, beside the aged peasant, who was
smoking his pipe, beneath the beautiful starry heaven, in the midst of a
group of singing peasants, he imagined to himself in his own mind a
hundred times his arrival at Buenos Ayres; he saw himself in a certain
street; he found the shop, he flew to his cousin. “How is my mother? Come,
let us go at once! Let us go at once!” They hurried on together; they
ascended a staircase; a door opened. And here his mute soliloquy came to
an end; his imagination was swallowed up in a feeling of inexpressible
tenderness, which made him secretly pull forth a little medal that he wore
on his neck, and murmur his prayers as he kissed it.

On the twenty-seventh day after their departure they arrived. It was a
beautiful, rosy May morning, when the steamer cast anchor in the immense
river of the Plata, near the shore along which stretches the vast city of
Buenos Ayres, the capital of the Argentine Republic. This splendid weather
seemed to him to be a good augury. He was beside himself with joy and
impatience. His mother was only a few miles from him! In a few hours
more he would have seen her! He was in America, in the new world, and he
had had the daring to come alone! The whole of that extremely long voyage
now seemed to him to have passed in an instant. It seemed to him that he
had flown hither in a dream, and that he had that moment waked. And he
was so happy, that he hardly experienced any surprise or distress when he
felt in his pockets and found only one of the two little heaps into which he
had divided his little treasure, in order to be the more sure of not losing the
whole of it. He had been robbed; he had only a few lire left; but what

mattered that to him, when he was near his mother? With his bag in his
hand, he descended, in company with many other Italians, to the tug-boat
which carried him within a short distance of the shore; clambered down
from the tug into a boat which bore the name of Andrea Doria; was landed
on the wharf; saluted his old Lombard friend, and directed his course, in
long strides, towards the city.

On arriving at the entrance of the first street, he stopped a man who was
passing by, and begged him to show him in what direction he should go in
order to reach the street of los Artes. He chanced to have stopped an Italian
workingman. The latter surveyed him with curiosity, and inquired if he
knew how to read. The lad nodded, “Yes.”

“Well, then,” said the laborer, pointing to the street from which he had
just emerged, “keep straight on through there, reading the names of all the
streets on the corners; you will end by finding the one you want.”

The boy thanked him, and turned into the street which opened before
him.

It was a straight and endless but narrow street, bordered by low white
houses, which looked like so many little villas, filled with people, with
carriages, with carts which made a deafening noise; here and there floated
enormous banners of various hues, with announcements as to the departure
of steamers for strange cities inscribed upon them in large letters. At every
little distance along the street, on the right and left, he perceived two other
streets which ran straight away as far as he could see, also bordered by low
white houses, filled with people and vehicles, and bounded at their
extremity by the level line of the measureless plains of America, like the
horizon at sea. The city seemed infinite to him; it seemed to him that he
might wander for days or weeks, seeing other streets like these, on one hand
and on the other, and that all America must be covered with them. He
looked attentively at the names of the streets: strange names which cost him
an effort to read. At every fresh street, he felt his heart beat, at the thought
that it was the one he was in search of. He stared at all the women, with the
thought that he might meet his mother. He caught sight of one in front of
him who made his blood leap; he overtook her: she was a negro. And
accelerating his pace, he walked on and on. On arriving at the cross-street,

he read, and stood as though rooted to the sidewalk. It was the street del los
Artes. He turned into it, and saw the number 117; his cousin’s shop was No.
175. He quickened his pace still more, and almost ran; at No. 171 he had to
pause to regain his breath. And he said to himself, “O my mother! my
mother! It is really true that I shall see you in another moment!” He ran on;
he arrived at a little haberdasher’s shop. This was it. He stepped up close to
it. He saw a woman with gray hair and spectacles.

“What do you want, boy?” she asked him in Spanish.

“Is not this,” said the boy, making an effort to utter a sound, “the shop
of Francesco Merelli?”

“Francesco Merelli is dead,” replied the woman in Italian.

The boy felt as though he had received a blow on his breast.

“When did he die?”

“Eh? quite a while ago,” replied the woman. “Months ago. His affairs
were in a bad state, and he ran away. They say he went to Bahia Blanca,
very far from here. And he died just after he reached there. The shop is
mine.”

The boy turned pale.

Then he said quickly, “Merelli knew my mother; my mother who was at
service with Signor Mequinez. He alone could tell me where she is. I have
come to America to find my mother. Merelli sent her our letters. I must find
my mother.”

“Poor boy!” said the woman; “I don’t know. I can ask the boy in the
courtyard. He knew the young man who did Merelli’s errands. He may be
able to tell us something.”

She went to the end of the shop and called the lad, who came instantly.
“Tell me,” asked the shopwoman, “do you remember whether Merelli’s

young man went occasionally to carry letters to a woman in service, in the
house of the son of the country?”

“To Signor Mequinez,” replied the lad; “yes, signora, sometimes he did.
At the end of the street del los Artes.”

“Ah! thanks, signora!” cried Marco. “Tell me the number; don’t you
know it? Send some one with me; come with me instantly, my boy; I have
still a few soldi.”

And he said this with so much warmth, that without waiting for the
woman to request him, the boy replied, “Come,” and at once set out at a
rapid pace.

They proceeded almost at a run, without uttering a word, to the end of
the extremely long street, made their way into the entrance of a little white
house, and halted in front of a handsome iron gate, through which they
could see a small yard, filled with vases of flowers. Marco gave a tug at the
bell.

A young lady made her appearance.

“The Mequinez family lives here, does it not?” demanded the lad
anxiously.

“They did live here,” replied the young lady, pronouncing her Italian in
Spanish fashion. “Now we, the Zeballos, live here.”

“And where have the Mequinez gone?” asked Marco, his heart
palpitating.

“They have gone to Cordova.”

“Cordova!” exclaimed Marco. “Where is Cordova? And the person
whom they had in their service? The woman, my mother! Their servant was
my mother! Have they taken my mother away, too?”

The young lady looked at him and said: “I do not know. Perhaps my
father may know, for he knew them when they went away. Wait a moment.”

She ran away, and soon returned with her father, a tall gentleman, with a
gray beard. He looked intently for a minute at this sympathetic type of a
little Genoese sailor, with his golden hair and his aquiline nose, and asked
him in broken Italian, “Is your mother a Genoese?”

Marco replied that she was.

“Well then, the Genoese maid went with them; that I know for certain.”

“And where have they gone?”

“To Cordova, a city.”

The boy gave vent to a sigh; then he said with resignation, “Then I will
go to Cordova.”

“Ah, poor child!” exclaimed the gentleman in Spanish; “poor boy!
Cordova is hundreds of miles from here.”

Marco turned as white as a corpse, and clung with one hand to the
railings.

“Let us see, let us see,” said the gentleman, moved to pity, and opening
the door; “come inside a moment; let us see if anything can be done.” He
sat down, gave the boy a seat, and made him tell his story, listened to it very
attentively, meditated a little, then said resolutely, “You have no money,
have you?”

“I still have some, a little,” answered Marco.

The gentleman reflected for five minutes more; then seated himself at a
desk, wrote a letter, sealed it, and handing it to the boy, he said to him:—

“Listen to me, little Italian. Take this letter to Boca. That is a little city
which is half Genoese, and lies two hours’ journey from here. Any one will
be able to show you the road. Go there and find the gentleman to whom this
letter is addressed, and whom every one knows. Carry the letter to him. He
will send you off to the town of Rosario to-morrow, and will recommend
you to some one there, who will think out a way of enabling you to pursue

your journey to Cordova, where you will find the Mequinez family and
your mother. In the meanwhile, take this.” And he placed in his hand a few
lire. “Go, and keep up your courage; you will find fellow-countrymen of
yours in every direction, and you will not be deserted. Adios!”

The boy said, “Thanks,” without finding any other words to express
himself, went out with his bag, and having taken leave of his little guide, he
set out slowly in the direction of Boca, filled with sorrow and amazement,
across that great and noisy town.

Everything that happened to him from that moment until the evening of
that day ever afterwards lingered in his memory in a confused and uncertain
form, like the wild vagaries of a person in a fever, so weary was he, so
troubled, so despondent. And at nightfall on the following day, after having
slept over night in a poor little chamber in a house in Boca, beside a harbor
porter, after having passed nearly the whole of that day seated on a pile of
beams, and, as in delirium, in sight of thousands of ships and boats and
tugs, he found himself on the poop of a large sailing vessel, loaded with
fruit, which was setting out for the town of Rosario, managed by three
robust Genoese, who were bronzed by the sun; and their voices and the
dialect which they spoke put a little comfort into his heart once more.

They set out, and the voyage lasted three days and four nights, and it
was a continual amazement to the little traveller. Three days and four nights
on that wonderful river Paranà, in comparison with which our great Po is
but a rivulet; and the length of Italy quadrupled does not equal that of its
course. The barge advanced slowly against this immeasurable mass of
water. It threaded its way among long islands, once the haunts of serpents
and tigers, covered with orange-trees and willows, like floating coppices;
now they passed through narrow canals, from which it seemed as though
they could never issue forth; now they sailed out on vast expanses of water,
having the aspect of great tranquil lakes; then among islands again, through
the intricate channels of an archipelago, amid enormous masses of
vegetation. A profound silence reigned. For long stretches the shores and
very vast and solitary waters produced the impression of an unknown
stream, upon which this poor little sail was the first in all the world to
venture itself. The further they advanced, the more this monstrous river

dismayed him. He imagined that his mother was at its source, and that their
navigation must last for years. Twice a day he ate a little bread and salted
meat with the boatmen, who, perceiving that he was sad, never addressed a
word to him. At night he slept on deck and woke every little while with a
start, astounded by the limpid light of the moon, which silvered the
immense expanse of water and the distant shores; and then his heart sank
within him. “Cordova!” He repeated that name, “Cordova!” like the name
of one of those mysterious cities of which he had heard in fables. But then
he thought, “My mother passed this spot; she saw these islands, these
shores;” and then these places upon which the glance of his mother had
fallen no longer seemed strange and solitary to him. At night one of the
boatmen sang. That voice reminded him of his mother’s songs, when she
had lulled him to sleep as a little child. On the last night, when he heard that
song, he sobbed. The boatman interrupted his song. Then he cried,
“Courage, courage, my son! What the deuce! A Genoese crying because he
is far from home! The Genoese make the circuit of the world, glorious and
triumphant!”

And at these words he shook himself, he heard the voice of the Genoese
blood, and he raised his head aloft with pride, dashing his fist down on the
rudder. “Well, yes,” he said to himself; “and if I am also obliged to travel
for years and years to come, all over the world, and to traverse hundreds of
miles on foot, I will go on until I find my mother, were I to arrive in a dying
condition, and fall dead at her feet! If only I can see her once again!
Courage!” And with this frame of mind he arrived at daybreak, on a cool
and rosy morning, in front of the city of Rosario, situated on the high bank
of the Paranà, where the beflagged yards of a hundred vessels of every land
were mirrored in the waves.

Shortly after landing, he went to the town, bag in hand, to seek an
Argentine gentleman for whom his protector in Boca had intrusted him with
a visiting-card, with a few words of recommendation. On entering Rosario,
it seemed to him that he was coming into a city with which he was already
familiar. There were the straight, interminable streets, bordered with low
white houses, traversed in all directions above the roofs by great bundles of
telegraph and telephone wires, which looked like enormous spiders’ webs;
and a great confusion of people, of horses, and of vehicles. His head grew

confused; he almost thought that he had got back to Buenos Ayres, and must
hunt up his cousin once more. He wandered about for nearly an hour,
making one turn after another, and seeming always to come back to the
same street; and by dint of inquiring, he found the house of his new
protector. He pulled the bell. There came to the door a big, light-haired,
gruff man, who had the air of a steward, and who demanded awkwardly,
with a foreign accent:—

“What do you want?”

The boy mentioned the name of his patron.

“The master has gone away,” replied the steward; “he set out yesterday
afternoon for Buenos Ayres, with his whole family.”

The boy was left speechless. Then he stammered, “But I—I have no one
here! I am alone!” and he offered the card.

The steward took it, read it, and said surlily: “I don’t know what to do
for you. I’ll give it to him when he returns a month hence.”

“But I, I am alone; I am in need!” exclaimed the lad, in a supplicating
voice.

“Eh? come now,” said the other; “just as though there were not a plenty
of your sort from your country in Rosario! Be off, and do your begging in
Italy!” And he slammed the door in his face.

The boy stood there as though he had been turned to stone.

Then he picked up his bag again slowly, and went out, his heart torn
with anguish, with his mind in a whirl, assailed all at once by a thousand
anxious thoughts. What was to be done? Where was he to go? From Rosario
to Cordova was a day’s journey, by rail. He had only a few lire left. After
deducting what he should be obliged to spend that day, he would have next
to nothing left. Where was he to find the money to pay his fare? He could
work—but how? To whom should he apply for work? Ask alms? Ah, no! To
be repulsed, insulted, humiliated, as he had been a little while ago? No;

never, never more—rather would he die! And at this idea, and at the sight of
the very long street which was lost in the distance of the boundless plain, he
felt his courage desert him once more, flung his bag on the sidewalk, sat
down with his back against the wall, and bent his head between his hands,
in an attitude of despair.

People jostled him with their feet as they passed; the vehicles filled the
road with noise; several boys stopped to look at him. He remained thus for a
while. Then he was startled by a voice saying to him in a mixture of Italian
and Lombard dialect, “What is the matter, little boy?”

He raised his face at these words, and instantly sprang to his feet,
uttering an exclamation of wonder: “You here!”

It was the old Lombard peasant with whom he had struck up a
friendship during the voyage.

The amazement of the peasant was no less than his own; but the boy did
not leave him time to question him, and he rapidly recounted the state of his
affairs.

“Now I am without a soldo. I must go to work. Find me work, that I
may get together a few lire. I will do anything; I will carry rubbish, I will
sweep the streets; I can run on errands, or even work in the country; I am
content to live on black bread; but only let it be so that I may set out
quickly, that I may find my mother once more. Do me this charity, and find
me work, find me work, for the love of God, for I can do no more!”

“The deuce! the deuce!” said the peasant, looking about him, and
scratching his chin. “What a story is this! To work, to work!—that is soon
said. Let us look about a little. Is there no way of finding thirty lire among
so many fellow-countrymen?”

The boy looked at him, consoled by a ray of hope.

“Come with me,” said the peasant.

“Where?” asked the lad, gathering up his bag again.

“Come with me.”

The peasant started on; Marco followed him. They traversed a long
stretch of street together without speaking. The peasant halted at the door of
an inn which had for its sign a star, and an inscription beneath, The Star of
Italy. He thrust his face in, and turning to the boy, he said cheerfully, “We
have arrived at just the right moment.”

They entered a large room, where there were numerous tables, and
many men seated, drinking and talking loudly. The old Lombard
approached the first table, and from the manner in which he saluted the six
guests who were gathered around it, it was evident that he had been in their
company until a short time previously. They were red in the face, and were
clinking their glasses, and vociferating and laughing.

“Comrades,” said the Lombard, without any preface, remaining on his
feet, and presenting Marco, “here is a poor lad, our fellow-countryman, who
has come alone from Genoa to Buenos Ayres to seek his mother. At Buenos
Ayres they told him, ‘She is not here; she is in Cordova.’ He came in a bark
to Rosario, three days and three nights on the way, with a couple of lines of
recommendation. He presents the card; they make an ugly face at him: he
hasn’t a centesimo to bless himself with. He is here alone and in despair. He
is a lad full of heart. Let us see a bit. Can’t we find enough to pay for his
ticket to go to Cordova in search of his mother? Are we to leave him here
like a dog?”

“Never in the world, by Heavens! That shall never be said!” they all
shouted at once, hammering on the table with their fists. “A fellow-
countryman of ours! Come hither, little fellow! We are emigrants! See what
a handsome young rogue! Out with your coppers, comrades! Bravo! Come
alone! He has daring! Drink a sup, patriotta! We’ll send you to your
mother; never fear!” And one pinched his cheek, another slapped him on the
shoulder, a third relieved him of his bag; other emigrants rose from the
neighboring tables, and gathered about; the boy’s story made the round of
the inn; three Argentine guests hurried in from the adjoining room; and in
less than ten minutes the Lombard peasant, who was passing round the hat,
had collected forty-two lire.