Heart/The Last Day of the Carnival
under the arm, and a tuft of ribbons and laces on the breast. They were very gorgeous. They were singing a French song and throwing sweetmeats to the people, and the latter clapped their hands and shouted. Suddenly, on our left, we saw a man lift a child of five or six above the heads of the crowd,—a poor, little creature, who wept piteously, and flung her arms about as though in a fit. The man made his way to the gentlemen's chariot; one of the latter bent down, and the other said aloud:—
“Take this child; she has lost her mother in the crowd; hold her in your arms; the mother may not be far off, and she will catch sight of her: there is no other way.”
The gentleman took the child in his arms: all the rest stopped singing. The child screamed and struggled. The gentleman removed his mask. The chariot continued to move slowly. Meanwhile, as we were afterwards told, at the opposite side of the square a poor woman, half-crazed with despair, was forcing her way through the crowd, by main force, elbowing, and shrieking:—
“Maria! Maria! Maria! I have lost my little daughter! She has been stolen from me! They have suffocated my child!” And for a quarter of an hour she raved in this manner, straying now a little way in this direction, and then a little way in that, crushed by the throng through which she strove to force her way.
All this time, the gentleman on the car was holding the child pressed against the ribbons and laces on his breast, looking over the square, and trying to calm the poor creature, who covered her face with her hands, not knowing where she was, and sobbed as though her heart would break. The gentleman was touched: it was evident that these screams went to his soul. All the others offered the child oranges and sugar-plums; but she refused them all, growing constantly more convulsive and frightened.
“Find her mother!” shouted the gentleman to the crowd; “seek her mother!”
And every one turned to the right and the left; but the mother was not to be found. Finally, a few paces from the place where the Via Roma enters the square, a woman was seen to rush towards the chariot. Ah, I shall never forget that! She no longer seemed a human creature: her hair was streaming, her face distorted, her garments torn. She hurled herself forward with a rattle in her throat,—no one knew whether to attribute it to joy, anguish, or rage,—and darted out her hands like two claws to snatch her child. The chariot stopped.
“Here she is,” said the gentleman, reaching out the child after kissing it; and he placed her in her mother's arms, who pressed her to her breast in a transport of feeling. But one of the tiny hands rested a second longer in the hands of the gentleman; and the latter, pulling off of his right hand a gold ring set with a large diamond, and slipping it with a rapid movement upon the finger of the little girl, said:—
“Take this! it shall be your marriage dowry.”
The mother stood rooted to the spot, as though enchanted. The crowd broke into applause. The gentleman put on his mask again, his companions resumed their song, and the chariot started on again slowly, amid a tempest of hand-clapping and hurrahs.
THE BLIND BOYS
The teacher is very ill, and they have sent in his stead the master of the fourth grade, who has been a teacher in the Institute for the Blind. He is the oldest of all the instructors, with hair so white that it looks like a wig made of cotton; and he speaks in a peculiar manner, as though he were chanting a mournful song. But he does it well, and he knows a great deal. No sooner had he entered the schoolroom than, catching sight of a boy with a bandage on his eye, he approached the bench, and asked him what was the matter.
“Take care of your eyes, my boy,” he said to him. And then Derossi asked him:—
“Is it true, sir, that you have been a teacher of the blind?”
“Yes, for several years,” he replied. And Derossi said, in a low tone,—
“Tell us something about it.”
The teacher went and seated himself at his table.
Coretti said aloud, “The Institute for the Blind is in the Via Nizza.”
“You say blind—blind,” said the teacher, “as you would say poor or ill, or I know not what. But do you fully realize the meaning of that word? Reflect a little. Blind! Never to see anything! Not to be