Heart/The Soldiers
THE SOLDIERS
His son had been a volunteer in the army when he died: this is the reason why the principal 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 satchels. 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 Florentine plush; Precossi, the son of the blacksmith, with his father's jacket; the Calabrian; Muratorino; Crossi, with his red head; Franti, with his bold face; and Robetti, 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 principal. “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 whose hands are tied: it is cowardly.”
Franti disappeared. The soldiers were marching by fours, all perspiring and covered with dust, and their guns were gleaming in the sun. The principal said:—
“You ought to wish the soldiers well, 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 to; they are not many years older than you; and they, too, go to school; and there are poor and rich among them, just as there are among you, and they come from every part of Italy. See if you can 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 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.
“Bravo, 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. “Bravo!” he said; “you have done a noble 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.
“Bravo!” 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.”