I recall, too, the insuperable difficulty of accomplishing the manual tasks imposed upon me, especially that of sewing on my buttons—how every few seconds the needle would slip through my fingers, till the thread was tangled up in a veritable spider's web, while the button hung as loose as ever, to the derision of my companions and the disgust of the drill-sergeant, whose contemptuous—"You may be a great hand at rhyming, but when it comes to sewing on buttons you're a hundred years behind the times," seemed to exile me to the depths of the eighteenth century.
I see the great refectory, where a battalion might have drilled; I see the long tables, the five hundred heads bent above the plates, the rapid motion of five hundred forks, of a thousand hands and sixteen thousand teeth; the swarm of servants running here and there, called to, scolded, hurried, on every side at once; I hear the clatter of dishes, the deafening noise, the voices choked with food crying out: "Bread—bread!" and I feel once more the formidable appetite, the herculean strength of jaw, the exuberant life and spirits of those far-off days.
The scene changes, and I see myself locked in a narrow cell on the fifth floor, a jug of water at my side, a piece of black bread in my hand, with unkempt hair and unshorn chin, and the image of Silvio Pellico before me; condemned to ten days' imprisonment for having made an address of thanks to the professor of chemistry on the occasion of his closing lecture, thereby committing an infraction of article number so-and-so of the regulation forbidding any cadet to speak in public in the name of his companions. And to this day I can hear the Major saying: "Take my advice and never let your imagination run away with you;" citing the example of his old school-fellow, the poet Regaldi, who had got into just such a scrape, and concluding with the warning that "poetry always made men make asses of themselves."
Yes, I see it all as vividly as though I were reliving the very same life again—the silent march of the companies at night down the long, faintly-lit corridors; the professors behind their desks, deafening us with their Gustavus-Adolphuses, their Fredericks the Great, and their Napoleons; the great lecture-rooms full of motionless faces; the huge, dim dormitories, resounding with the respirations of a hundred pairs of lungs; the garden, the piazza, the ramparts, the winding Modenese sheets, the cafis full of graduates devouring pastry, the picnics in the country, the excursions to neighboring villages, the intrigues, the studies, the rivalries, the sadnesses, the enmities, the friendships.
IV.
A few days before the graduating examinations we were given leave to study wherever we pleased. There were two hundred of us in the second class, and we dispersed ourselves all over the palace, in groups of five or six friends, each group in a separate room, and began the long, desperate grind, cramming away day and night, with only an occasional interruption to discuss the coming examination and our future prospects.
How cheerily we talked, and how bright our anticipations were! After two years of imprisonment, home, freedom, and epaulets were suddenly within our reach. Aside from the common satisfaction of being promoted to be an officer, each one of us had his own special reasons for rejoicing. With one of us it was the satisfaction of being able to say to the family that had pinched and denied itself to pay for his schooling, "Here I am, good people, nineteen years old and able to shift for myself;" with another, the fun of swaggering in full uniform, with clanking heels and rattling sword, into the quiet house where the old uncle who had been so generous sat waiting to welcome him home; with a third, the joy of mounting a familiar staircase, brevet in pocket, and knocking at a certain door, behind which a girlish voice would be heard exclaiming, "There he is!"—the voice of the little cousin to whom he had said good-bye, two years before, in her parents' presence, reassured only by the non-committal phrase: "Well, well, go to college first and make a man of yourself; then we'll see."
Already we saw ourselves surrounded by children eager to finger our sabres, by girls who signed to us as we passed, by old men who clapped us on the shoulder, by mothers crying, "How splendidly he looks!" So that it was with the greatest difficulty that we shook off this importunate folk, saying to ourselves: "Presently, presently, all in good time; but just now, really, you must let us be!"
Then, each following the bent of his disposition, his habits, and his plans, we confided to one another the regiment, province, and city to which we hoped to be assigned. Some of us longed for the noise and merriment of the Milanese carnivals, and dreamed of theatres, balls and convivial suppers. One sighed for a sweet Tuscan village, perched on a hilltop, where, in command of his thirty men, he might spend the peaceful spring days in collecting songs and proverbs among the country-folk. Another longed to carry on his studies in the unbroken solitude of a lonely Alpine fortress, hemmed in by ravines and precipices. One of us craved a life of adventure in the Calabrian forests; another, the activities of some great seaboard city; a third, an island of the Tyrrhenian Sea. We divided up Italy among ourselves a hundred times a day, as though we had been staking off plots in a garden; and each of us detailed to the others the beauties of his chosen home, and all agreed that every one of the places selected would be beautiful and delightful to live in.
And then—war! It was sure to come sooner or later. Hardly was the word mentioned when our books were hurled into a corner and we were all talking at once, our faces flushed, our voices loud and excited. War, to us, was a superhuman vision in which the spirit lost itself as in some strange intoxication; a far-off, rose-colored horizon, etched with the black profiles of gigantic mountains; legion after legion, with flying banners and the sound of music, endlessly ascending the mountain-side; and high up, on the topmost ridges, surrounded by the enemy, our own figures far in advance of the others, dashing forward with brandished swords; while down the farther slope a torrent of foot, horse, and artillery plunged wildly through darkness to an unknown abyss.