Tuesday, 27th.
While we were at the Theatre Vittorio Emanuele, my poor schoolmistress
died. She died at two o'clock, a week after she had come to see my
mother. The head-master came to the school yesterday morning to announce
it to us; and he said:--
"Those of you who were her pupils know how good she was, how she loved
her boys: she was a mother to them. Now, she is no more. For a long time
a terrible malady has been sapping her life. If she had not been obliged
to work to earn her bread, she could have taken care of herself, and
perhaps recovered. At all events, she could have prolonged her life for
several months, if she had procured a leave of absence. But she wished
to remain among her boys to the very last day. On the evening of
Saturday, the seventeenth, she took leave of them, with the certainty
that she should never see them again. She gave them good advice, kissed
them all, and went away sobbing. No one will ever behold her again.
Remember her, my boys!"
Little Precossi, who had been one of her pupils in the upper primary,
dropped his head on his desk and began to cry.
Yesterday afternoon, after school, we all went together to the house of
the dead woman, to accompany her to church. There was a hearse in the
street, with two horses, and many people were waiting, and conversing in
a low voice. There was the head-master, all the masters and mistresses
from our school, and from the other schoolhouses where she had taught in
bygone years. There were nearly all the little children in her classes,
led by the hand by their mothers, who carried tapers; and there were a
very great many from the other classes, and fifty scholars from the
Baretti School, some with wreaths in their hands, some with bunches of
roses. A great many bouquets of flowers had already been placed on the
hearse, upon which was fastened a large wreath of acacia, with an
inscription in black letters: _The old pupils of the fourth grade to
their mistress_. And under the large wreath a little one was suspended,
which the babies had brought. Among the crowd were visible many
servant-women, who had been sent by their mistresses with candles; and
there were also two serving-men in livery, with lighted torches; and a
wealthy gentleman, the father of one of the mistress's scholars, had
sent his carriage, lined with blue satin. All were crowded together near
the door. Several girls were wiping away their tears.
We waited for a while in silence. At length the casket was brought out.
Some of the little ones began to cry loudly when they saw the coffin
slid into the hearse, and one began to shriek, as though he had only
then comprehended that his mistress was dead, and he was seized with
such a convulsive fit of sobbing, that they were obliged to carry him
away.
The procession got slowly into line and set out. First came the
daughters of the Ritiro della Concezione, dressed in green; then the
daughters of Maria, all in white, with a blue ribbon; then the priests;
and behind the hearse, the masters and mistresses, the tiny scholars of
the upper primary, and all the others; and, at the end of all, the
crowd. People came to the windows and to the doors, and on seeing all
those boys, and the wreath, they said, "It is a schoolmistress." Even
some of the ladies who accompanied the smallest children wept.
When the church was reached, the casket was removed from the hearse, and
carried to the middle of the nave, in front of the great altar: the
mistresses laid their wreaths on it, the children covered it with
flowers, and the people all about, with lighted candles in their hands,
began to chant the prayers in the vast and gloomy church. Then, all of a
sudden, when the priest had said the last _amen_, the candles were
extinguished, and all went away in haste, and the mistress was left
alone. Poor mistress, who was so kind to me, who had so much patience,
who had toiled for so many years! She has left her little books to her
scholars, and everything which she possessed,--to one an inkstand, to
another a little picture; and two days before her death, she said to the
head-master that he was not to allow the smallest of them to go to her
funeral, because she did not wish them to cry.
She has done good, she has suffered, she is dead! Poor mistress, left
alone in that dark church! Farewell! Farewell forever, my kind friend,
sad and sweet memory of my infancy!