Chapter 3

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."

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.