Cuore (Heart) by Edmondo De Amicis (ebook reader below 3000 txt) 📖

“STOP THAT, YOU LITTLE RASCALS!”

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Friday, 16th.

It is still snow, snow. A shameful thing happened in connection with the snow this morning when we came out of school. A flock of boys had no sooner got into the Corso than they began to throw balls of that watery snow which makes missiles as solid and heavy as stones. Many persons were passing along the sidewalks. A gentleman called out, “Stop that, you little rascals!” and just at that moment a sharp cry rose from another part of the street, and we saw an old man who had lost his hat and was staggering about, covering his face with his hands, and beside him a boy who was shouting, “Help! help!”

People instantly ran from all directions. He had been struck in the eye with a ball. All the boys dispersed, fleeing like arrows. I was standing in front of the bookseller’s shop, into which my father had gone, and I saw several of my companions approaching at a run, mingling with others near me, and pretending to be engaged in staring at the windows: there was Garrone, with his penny roll in his pocket, as usual; Coretti, the little mason; and Garoffi, the boy with the postage-stamps. In the meantime a crowd had formed around the old man, and a policeman and others were running to and fro, threatening and demanding: “Who was it? Who did it? Was it you? Tell me who did it!” and they looked at the boys’ hands to see whether they were wet with snow.

Garoffi was standing beside me. I perceived that he was trembling all over, and that his face was as white as that of a corpse. “Who was it? Who did it?” the crowd continued to cry.

Then I overheard Garrone say in a low voice to Garoffi, “Come, go and present yourself; it would be cowardly to allow any one else to be arrested.”

“But I did not do it on purpose,” replied Garoffi, trembling like a leaf.

“No matter; do your duty,” repeated Garrone.

“But I have not the courage.”

“Take courage, then; I will accompany you.”

And the policeman and the other people were crying more loudly than ever: “Who was it? Who did it? One of his glasses has been driven into his eye! He has been blinded! The ruffians!”

I thought that Garoffi would fall to the earth. “Come,” said Garrone, resolutely, “I will defend you;” and grasping him by the arm, he thrust him forward, supporting him as though he had been a sick man. The people saw, and instantly understood, and several persons ran up with their fists raised; but Garrone thrust himself between, crying:—

“Do ten men of you set on one boy?”

Then they ceased, and a policeman seized Garoffi by the hand and led him, pushing aside the crowd as he went, to a pastry-cook’s shop, where the wounded man had been carried. On catching sight of him, I suddenly recognized him as the old employee who lives on the fourth floor of our house with his grandnephew. He was stretched out on a chair, with a handkerchief over his eyes.

“I did not do it intentionally!” sobbed Garoffi, half dead with terror; “I did not do it intentionally!”

Two or three persons thrust him violently into the shop, crying, “Your face to the earth! Beg his pardon!” and they threw him to the ground. But all at once two vigorous arms set him on his feet again, and a resolute voice said:—

“No, gentlemen!” It was our head-master, who had seen it all. “Since he has had the courage to present himself,” he added, “no one has the right to humiliate him.” All stood silent. “Ask his forgiveness,” said the head-master to Garoffi. Garoffi, bursting into tears, embraced the old man’s knees, and the latter, having felt for the boy’s head with his hand, caressed his hair. Then all said:—

“Go away, boy! go, return home.”

And my father drew me out of the crowd, and said to me as we passed along the street, “Enrico, would you have had the courage, under similar circumstances, to do your duty,—to go and confess your fault?”

I told him that I should. And he said, “Give me your word, as a lad of heart and honor, that you would do it.” “I give thee my word, father mine!”

Saturday, 17th.

Garoffi was thoroughly terrified to-day, in the expectation of a severe punishment from the teacher; but the master did not make his appearance; and as the assistant was also missing, Signora Cromi, the oldest of the schoolmistresses, came to teach the school; she has two grown-up children, and she has taught several women to read and write, who now come to accompany their sons to the Baretti schoolhouse.

She was sad to-day, because one of her sons is ill. No sooner had they caught sight of her, than they began to make an uproar. But she said, in a slow and tranquil tone, “Respect my white hair; I am not only a school-teacher, I am also a mother”; and then no one dared to speak again, in spite of that brazen face of Franti, who contented himself with jeering at her on the sly.

Signora Delcati, my brother’s teacher, was sent to take charge of Signora Cromi’s class, and to Signora Delcati’s was sent the teacher who is called “the little nun,” because she always dresses in dark colors, with a black apron, and has a small white face, hair that is always smooth, very bright eyes, and a delicate voice, that seems to be forever murmuring prayers. And it is incomprehensible, my mother says; she is so gentle and timid, with that thread of a voice, which is always even, which is hardly audible, and she never speaks loud nor flies into a passion; but, nevertheless, she keeps the boys so quiet that you cannot hear them, and the most roguish bow their heads when she merely admonishes them with her finger, and her school seems like a church; and it is for this reason, also, that she is called “the little nun.”

But there is another one who pleases me,—the young mistress of the first lower, No. 3, that young girl with the rosy face, who has two pretty dimples in her cheeks, and who wears a large red feather on her little bonnet, and a small cross of yellow glass on her neck. She is always cheerful, and keeps her class cheerful; she is always calling out with that silvery voice of hers, which makes her seem to be singing, and tapping her little rod on the table, and clapping her hands to impose silence; then, when they come out of school, she runs after one and another like a child, to bring them back into line: she pulls up the cape of one, and buttons the coat of another, so that they may not take cold; she follows them even into the street, in order that they may not fall to quarrelling; she beseeches the parents not to whip them at home; she brings lozenges to those who have coughs; she lends her muff to those who are cold; and she is continually tormented by the smallest children, who caress her and demand kisses, and pull at her veil and her mantle; but she lets them do it, and kisses them all with a smile, and returns home all rumpled and with her throat all bare, panting and happy, with her beautiful dimples and her red feather. She is also the girls’ drawing-teacher, and she supports her mother and a brother by her own labor.

Sunday, 18th.

The grandnephew of the old employee who was struck in the eye by Garoffi’s snowball is with the schoolmistress who has the red feather: we saw him to-day in the house of his uncle, who treats him like a son. I had finished writing out the monthly story for the coming week,—The Little Florentine Scribe,—which the master had given to me to copy; and my father said to me:—

“Let us go up to the fourth floor, and see how that old gentleman’s eye is.”

We entered a room which was almost dark, where the old man was sitting up in bed, with a great many pillows behind his shoulders; by the bedside sat his wife, and in one corner his nephew was amusing himself. The old man’s eye was bandaged. He was very glad to see my father; he made us sit down, and said that he was better, that his eye was not only not ruined, but that he should be quite well again in a few days.

“It was an accident,” he added. “I regret the terror which it must have caused that poor boy.” Then he talked to us about the doctor, whom he expected every moment to attend him. Just then the door-bell rang.

“There is the doctor,” said his wife.

The door opened—and whom did I see? Garoffi, in his long cloak, standing, with bowed head, on