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.