His delirium increased; death hovered over him, and with burning words he invoked General Garibaldi, with whom he had had disagreements, and Venice and Rome, which were not yet free: he had vast visions of the future of Italy and of Europe; he dreamed of a foreign invasion; he inquired where the corps of the army were, and the generals; he still trembled for us, for his people. His great sorrow was not, you understand, that he felt that his life was going, but to see himself fleeing his country, which still had need of him, and for which he had, in a few years, worn out the measureless forces of his miraculous organism. He died with the battle-cry in his throat, and his death was as great as his life. Now reflect a little, Enrico, what sort of a thing is our labor, which nevertheless so weighs us down; what are our griefs, our death itself, in the face of the toils, the terrible anxieties, the tremendous agonies of these men upon whose hearts rests a world! Think of this, my son, when you pass before that marble image, and say to it, “Glory!” in your heart.
Thy Father.
APRIL.
SPRING.
Saturday, 1st.
The first of April! Only three months more! This has been one of the most beautiful mornings of the year. I was happy in school because Coretti told me to come day after to-morrow to see the king make his entrance with his father, who knows him, and because my mother had promised to take me the same day to visit the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco. I was pleased, too, because the little mason is better, and because the teacher said to my father yesterday evening as he was passing, “He is doing well; he is doing well.”
And then it was a beautiful spring morning. From the school windows we could see the blue sky, the trees of the garden all covered with buds, and the wide-open windows of the houses, with their boxes and vases already growing green. The master did not laugh, because he never laughs; but he was in a good humor, so that that perpendicular wrinkle hardly ever appeared on his brow; and he explained a problem on the blackboard, and jested. And it was plain that he felt a pleasure in breathing the air of the gardens which entered through the open window, redolent with the fresh odor of earth and leaves, which suggested thoughts of country rambles.
While he was explaining, we could hear in a neighboring street a blacksmith hammering on his anvil, and in the house opposite, a woman singing to lull her baby to sleep; far away, in the Cernaia barracks, the trumpets were sounding. Every one appeared pleased, even Stardi. At a certain moment the blacksmith began to hammer more vigorously, the woman to sing more loudly. The master paused and lent an ear. Then he said, slowly, as he gazed out of the window:—