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."