Cuore (Heart): An Italian Schoolboy's Journal

by Edmondo De Amicis

“Perhaps a bullet has grazed him,” thought the captain, and he noted all his movements, quivering with excitement; and he encouraged him, he spoke to him, as though he could hear him; he measured incessantly, with a flashing eye, the space intervening between the fleeing boy and that gleam of arms which he could see in the distance on the plain amid the fields of grain gilded by the sun. And meanwhile he heard the whistle and the crash of the bullets in the rooms beneath, the imperious and angry shouts of the sergeants and the officers, the piercing laments of the wounded, the ruin of furniture, and the fall of rubbish.

“On! courage!” he shouted, following the far-off drummer with his glance. “Forward! run! He halts, that cursed boy! Ah, he resumes his course!”

An officer came panting to tell him that the enemy, without slackening their fire, were flinging out a white flag to hint at a surrender. “Don’t reply to them!” he cried, without detaching his eyes from the boy, who was already on the plain, but who was no longer running, and who seemed to be dragging himself along with difficulty.

“Go! run!” said the captain, clenching his teeth and his fists; “let them kill you; die, you rascal, but go!” Then he uttered a horrible oath. “Ah, the infamous poltroon! he has sat down!” In fact, the boy, whose head he had hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of grain, had disappeared, as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of a minute, his head came into sight again; finally, it was lost behind the hedges, and the captain saw it no more.

Then he descended impetuously; the bullets were coming in a tempest; the rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom were whirling round like drunken men, and clutching at the furniture; the walls and floor were bespattered with blood; corpses lay across the doorways; the lieutenant had had his arm shattered by a ball; smoke and clouds of dust enveloped everything.

“Courage!” shouted the captain. “Stand firm at your post! Succor is on the way! Courage for a little while longer!”

The Austrians had approached still nearer: their contorted faces were already visible through the smoke, and amid the crash of the firing their savage and offensive shouts were audible, as they uttered insults, suggested a surrender, and threatened slaughter. Some soldiers were terrified, and withdrew from the windows; the sergeants drove them forward again. But the fire of the defence weakened; discouragement made its appearance on all faces. It was not possible to protract the resistance longer. At a given moment the fire of the Austrians slackened, and a thundering voice shouted, first in German and then in Italian, “Surrender!”

“No!” howled the captain from a window.

And the firing recommenced more fast and furious on both sides. More soldiers fell. Already more than one window was without defenders. The fatal moment was near at hand. The captain shouted through his teeth, in a strangled voice, “They are not coming! they are not coming!” and rushed wildly about, twisting his sword about in his convulsively clenched hand, and resolved to die; when a sergeant descending from the garret, uttered a piercing shout, “They are coming!” “They are coming!” repeated the captain, with a cry of joy.

At that cry all, well and wounded, sergeants and officers, rushed to the windows, and the resistance became fierce once more. A few moments later a sort of uncertainty was noticeable, and a beginning of disorder among the foe. Suddenly the captain hastily collected a little troop in the room on the ground floor, in order to make a sortie with fixed bayonets. Then he flew up stairs. Scarcely had he arrived there when they heard a hasty trampling of feet, accompanied by a formidable hurrah, and saw from the windows the two-pointed hats of the Italian carabineers advancing through the smoke, a squadron rushing forward at great speed, and a lightning flash of blades whirling in the air, as they fell on heads, on shoulders, and on backs. Then the troop darted out of the door, with bayonets lowered; the enemy wavered, were thrown into disorder, and turned their backs; the field was left unincumbered, the house was free, and a little later two battalions of Italian infantry and two cannons occupied the eminence.