A few days before the graduating examinations we were given leave to
study wherever we pleased. There were two hundred of us in the second
class, and we dispersed ourselves all over the palace, in groups of
five or six friends, each group in a separate room, and began the long,
desperate grind, cramming away day and night, with only an occasional
interruption to discuss the coming examination and our future prospects.
How cheerily we talked, and how bright our anticipations were! After
two years of imprisonment, home, freedom, and epaulets were suddenly
within our reach. Aside from the common satisfaction of being promoted
to be an officer, each one of us had his own special reasons for
rejoicing. With one of us it was the satisfaction of being able to say
to the family that had pinched and denied itself to pay for his
schooling, "Here I am, good people, nineteen years old and able to
shift for myself;" with another, the fun of swaggering in full uniform,
with clanking heels and rattling sword, into the quiet house where the
old uncle who had been so generous sat waiting to welcome him home;
with a third, the joy of mounting a familiar staircase, brevet in
pocket, and knocking at a certain door, behind which a girlish voice
would be heard exclaiming, "There he is!"--the voice of the little
cousin to whom he had said good-bye, two years before, in her parents'
presence, reassured only by the non-committal phrase: "Well, well, go
to college first and make a man of yourself; then we'll see."
Already we saw ourselves surrounded by children eager to finger our
sabres, by girls who signed to us as we passed, by old men who clapped
us on the shoulder, by mothers crying, "How splendidly he looks!" So
that it was with the greatest difficulty that we shook off this
importunate folk, saying to ourselves: "Presently, presently, all in
good time; but just now, really, you must let us be!"
Then, each following the bent of his disposition, his habits, and his
plans, we confided to one another the regiment, province, and city to
which we hoped to be assigned. Some of us longed for the noise and
merriment of the Milanese carnivals, and dreamed of theatres, balls and
convivial suppers. One sighed for a sweet Tuscan village, perched on a
hilltop, where, in command of his thirty men, he might spend the
peaceful spring days in collecting songs and proverbs among the
country-folk. Another longed to carry on his studies in the unbroken
solitude of a lonely Alpine fortress, hemmed in by ravines and
precipices. One of us craved a life of adventure in the Calabrian
forests; another, the activities of some great seaboard city; a third,
an island of the Tyrrhenian Sea. We divided up Italy among ourselves a
hundred times a day, as though we had been staking off plots in a
garden; and each of us detailed to the others the beauties of his
chosen home, and all agreed that every one of the places selected would
be beautiful and delightful to live in.
And then--war! It was sure to come sooner or later. Hardly was the word
mentioned when our books were hurled into a corner and we were all
talking at once, our faces flushed, our voices loud and excited. War,
to us, was a superhuman vision in which the spirit lost itself as in
some strange intoxication; a far-off, rose-colored horizon, etched with
the black profiles of gigantic mountains; legion after legion, with
flying banners and the sound of music, endlessly ascending the
mountain-side; and high up, on the topmost ridges, surrounded by the
enemy, our own figures far in advance of the others, dashing forward
with brandished swords; while down the farther slope a torrent of foot,
horse, and artillery plunged wildly through darkness to an unknown
abyss.
A medal for gallantry? Which one of us would not have won it? Lose the
battle? But could Italians be defeated? Death--but who feared to die?
And did anybody ever die at nineteen? Who could tell what strange and
marvellous adventures awaited us, what sights we should see! Perhaps
some foreign expedition; a war in the East; was not the Eastern
question still stirring? We wandered in imagination over seas and
mountains, we saw the marshalling of fleets and armies, we glowed with
impatience, we cried out within ourselves, "Only give us time to pass
our examinations, and we'll be there too!"
And then the examinations took place, and on a beautiful July morning
the doors of the ducal palace were thrown open and we were told to go
forth and seek our destiny. And with a great cry we dashed out, and
scattered ourselves like a flight of birds over the length and breadth
of Italy.