A few Italians had suddenly appeared from across the corner. I was astonished at their youth. Two of them were but children with blue eyes and pretty girlish faces.
“Fourteen years old, the one with the handkerchief around his neck,” explained M——. “The other is fifteen. They were claimed to have been helping the Italian Army and so were brought here along with the soldiers.”
“Pane! Brot!”[2] they persisted. I chucked them a handful of biscuits.
“No! No!” remonstrated M——. “You’ll fetch the whole tribe of them.”
His words were not long in coming true. A few stray Italians had seen the incident and were already coming for their share.
“Pane! Pane! Buono compagno![3] Pane!”
A crowd quickly gathered around the window.
“Allez! Allez! Macaroni, Garibaldi, Sacramento, allez!” and he tried vainly to wave them back.
“Pane, pane!” They were reaching their arms through the windows now. The Frenchman pushed their arms back and closed the window.
Presently another rabble appeared, a working party of two or three hundred starving men, urged on by cursing sentries. Slowly and listlessly they straggled by, hobbling painfully, most of them in their wooden “clogs.” (Boots and puttees had long gone for food.) Many of them were of my battalion and company, but they were so altered that it took a moment’s study to recognize them. There was the smart young battalion clerk, a well-paid accountant in civilian life, plodding along like a broken old man, with a full beard and a shabby costume of German and Russian cast-off clothes. There was “Smiley,” the company barber, never known to be out of humor. The smile still lingered on his pale features, but his jokes were lost on his saddened comrades. All had the hopeless, dejected look of constantly hungry men.