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?"