“But I am a woman,” Bianca protested, drawing away from Enrico and raising her pretty head. “I shall get the hospital training and go up north, too—to be near ’Rico.”
Something surely had come to the youth of this country when girls like Bianca Maironi spoke with such assurance of going forth from the home into the unknown.
“Sicuro!” She nodded her head to emphasize what I suspected had been a moot point between mother and daughter. The signora looked inscrutably at the girl for a little while, then said quietly: “It’s ’most ten, Enrico.”
The boy unclasped Bianca’s tight little hands, kissed his mother and father, gave me the military salute ... and we could hear him running fast down the street. The signora blew out the sputtering candle and closed the door.
“I am going, too!” Bianca exclaimed.
The poet was coming to Rome. After the politician, close on his heels, the poet, fresh from his triumph at the celebration of Quarto, where with his flaming allegory he had stirred the youth of Italy to their depths! A few henchmen, waiting for the leader’s word, had met Giolitti; all Rome, it seemed to me, was turning out to greet the poet. They had poured into the great square before the terminus station from every quarter. The packed throng reached from the dark walls of the ancient baths around the splashing fountain, into the radiating avenues, and up to the portico of the station itself, which was black with human figures. It was a quiet, orderly, well-dressed crowd that swayed back and forth, waiting patiently hour after hour—the train was very late—to see the poet’s face, to hear, perhaps, his word of courage for which it thirsted.
There were soldiers everywhere, as usual. I looked in vain for the familiar uniform of the granatieri, but the gray-coated boyish figures seemed all alike. In the midst of the press I saw the signora and Bianca, whose eyes were also wandering after the soldiers.
“You came to welcome D’Annunzio?” I queried, knowing the good woman’s prejudices.
“Him!” the signora retorted with curling lip. “Bianca brought me.”