Edmondo De Amicis

June 3d.
To-morrow is the National Festival Day.

To-day is a day of national mourning. Garibaldi died last night. Do you know who he is? He is the man who liberated ten millions of Italians from the tyranny of the Bourbons. He died at the age of seventy-five. He was born at Nice, the son of a ship captain. At eight years of age, he saved a woman’s life; at thirteen, he dragged into safety a boat-load of his companions who were shipwrecked; at twenty-seven, he rescued from the water at Marseilles a drowning youth; at forty-one, he saved a ship from burning on the ocean. He fought for ten years in America for the liberty of a strange people; he fought in three wars against the Austrians, for the liberation of Lombardy and Trentino; he defended Rome from the French in 1849; he delivered Naples and Palermo in 1860; he fought again for Rome in 1867; he combated with the Germans in defence of France in 1870. He was possessed of the flame of heroism and the genius of war. He was engaged in forty battles, and won thirty-seven of them.

When he was not fighting, he was laboring for his living, or he shut himself up in a solitary island, and tilled the soil. He was teacher, sailor, workman, trader, soldier, general, dictator. He was simple, great, and good. He hated all oppressors, he loved all peoples, he protected all the weak; he had no other aspiration than good, he refused honors, he scorned death, he adored Italy. When he uttered his war-cry, legions of valorous men hastened to him from all quarters; gentlemen left their palaces, workmen their ships, youths their schools, to go and fight in the sunshine of his glory. In time of war he wore a red shirt. He was strong, blond, and handsome. On the field of battle he was a thunder-bolt, in his affections he was a child, in affliction a saint. Thousands of Italians have died for their country, happy, if, when dying, they saw him pass victorious in the distance; thousands would have allowed themselves to be killed for him; millions have blessed and will bless him.

He is dead. The whole world mourns him. You do not understand him now. But you will read of his deeds, you will constantly hear him spoken of in the course of your life; and gradually, as you grow up, his image will grow before you; when you become a man, you will behold him as a giant; and when you are no longer in the world, when your sons’ sons and those who shall be born from them are no longer among the living, the generations will still behold on high his luminous head as a redeemer of the peoples, crowned by the names of his victories as with a circlet of stars; and the brow and the soul of every Italian will beam when he utters his name.

Thy Father.

THE ARMY.

Sunday, 11th.
The National Festival Day. Postponed for a week on
account of the death of Garibaldi.

We have been to the Piazza Castello, to see the review of soldiers, who defiled before the commandant of the army corps, between two vast lines of people. As they marched past to the sound of flourishes from trumpets and bands, my father pointed out to me the Corps and the glories of the banners. First, the pupils of the Academy, those who will become officers in the Engineers and the Artillery, about three hundred in number, dressed in black, passed with the bold and easy elegance of students and soldiers. After them defiled the infantry, the brigade of Aosta, which fought at Goito and at San Martino, and the Bergamo brigade, which fought at Castelfidardo, four regiments of them, company after company, thousands of red aiguillettes, which seemed like so many double and very long garlands of blood-colored flowers, extended and agitated from the two ends, and borne athwart the crowd. After the infantry, the soldiers of the Mining Corps advanced,—the workingmen of war, with their plumes of black horse-tails, and their crimson bands; and while these were passing, we beheld advancing behind them hundreds of long, straight plumes, which rose above the heads of the spectators; they were the mountaineers, the defenders of the portals of Italy, all tall, rosy, and stalwart, with hats of Calabrian fashion, and revers of a beautiful, bright green, the color of the grass on their native mountains. The mountaineers were still marching past, when a quiver ran through the crowd, and the bersaglieri, the old twelfth battalion, the first who entered Rome through the breach at the Porta Pia, bronzed, alert, brisk, with fluttering plumes, passed like a wave in a sea of black, making the piazza ring with the shrill blasts of their trumpets, which seemed shouts of joy. But their trumpeting was drowned by a broken and hollow rumble, which announced the field artillery; and then the latter passed in triumph, seated on their lofty caissons, drawn by three hundred pairs of fiery horses,—those fine soldiers with yellow lacings, and their long cannons of brass and steel gleaming on the light carriages, as they jolted and resounded, and made the earth tremble.

And then came the mountain artillery, slowly, gravely, beautiful in its laborious and rude semblance, with its large soldiers, with its powerful mules—that mountain artillery which carries dismay and death wherever man can set his foot. And last of all, the fine regiment of the Genoese cavalry, which had wheeled down like a whirlwind on ten fields of battle, from Santa Lucia to Villafranca, passed at a gallop, with their helmets glittering in the sun, their lances erect, their pennons floating in the air, sparkling with gold and silver, filling the air with jingling and neighing.

“How beautiful it is!” I exclaimed. My father almost reproved me for these words, and said to me:—

“You are not to regard the army as a fine spectacle. All these young men, so full of strength and hope, may be called upon any day to defend our country, and fall in a few hours, crushed to fragments by bullets and grape-shot. Every time that you hear the cry, at a feast, ‘Hurrah for the army! hurrah for Italy!’ picture to yourself, behind the regiments which are passing, a plain covered with corpses, and inundated with blood, and then the greeting to the army will proceed from the very depths of your heart, and the image of Italy will appear to you more severe and grand.”

ITALY.

Tuesday, 14th.

THIRTY-TWO DEGREES.

Friday, 16th.

During the five days which have passed since the National Festival, the heat has increased by three degrees. We are in full summer now, and begin to feel weary; all have lost their fine rosy color of springtime; necks and legs are growing thin, heads droop and eyes close. Poor Nelli, who suffers much from the heat, has turned the color of wax in the face; he sometimes falls into a heavy sleep, with his head on his copy-book; but Garrone is always watchful, and places an open book upright in front of him, so that the master may not see him. Crossi rests his red head against the bench in a certain way, so that it looks as though it had been detached from his body and placed there separately. Nobis complains that there are too many of us, and that we corrupt the air. Ah, what an effort it costs now to study! I gaze through the windows at those beautiful trees which cast so deep a shade, where I should be so glad to run, and sadness and wrath overwhelm me at being obliged to go and shut myself up among the benches. But then I take courage at the sight of my kind mother, who is always watching me, scrutinizing me, when I return from school, to see whether I am not pale; and at every page of my work she says to me:—

“Do you still feel well?” and every morning at six, when she wakes me for my lesson, “Courage! there are only so many days more: then you will be free, and will get rested,—you will go to the shade of country lanes.”

Yes, she is perfectly right to remind me of the boys who are working in the fields in the full heat of the sun, or among the white sands of the river, which blind and scorch them, and of those in the glass-factories, who stand all day long motionless, with head bent over a flame of gas; and all of them rise earlier than we do, and have no vacations. Courage, then! And even in this respect, Derossi is at the head of all, for he suffers neither from heat nor drowsiness; he is always wide awake, and cheery, with his golden curls, as he was in the winter, and he studies without effort, and keeps all about him alert, as though he freshened the air with his voice.

And there are two others, also, who are always awake and attentive: stubborn Stardi, who pricks his face, to prevent himself from going to sleep; and the more weary and heated he is, the more he sets his teeth, and he opens his eyes so wide that it seems as though he wanted to eat the teacher; and that barterer of a Garoffi, who is wholly absorbed in manufacturing fans out of red paper, decorated with little figures from match-boxes, which he sells at two centesimi apiece.

But the bravest of all is Coretti; poor Coretti, who gets up at five o’clock, to help his father carry wood! At eleven, in school, he can no longer keep his eyes open, and his head droops on his breast. And nevertheless, he shakes himself, punches himself on the back of the neck, asks permission to go out and wash his face, and makes his neighbors shake and pinch him. But this morning he could not resist, and he fell into a leaden sleep. The master called him loudly; “Coretti!” He did not hear. The master, irritated, repeated, “Coretti!” Then the son of the charcoal-man, who lives next to him at home, rose and said:—

“He worked from five until seven carrying faggots.” The teacher allowed him to sleep on, and continued with the lesson for half an hour. Then he went to Coretti’s seat, and wakened him very, very gently, by blowing in his face. On beholding the master in front of him, he started back in alarm. But the master took his head in his hands, and said, as he kissed him on the hair:—

“I am not reproving you, my son. Your sleep is not at all that of laziness; it is the sleep of fatigue.”

MY FATHER.

Saturday, 17th.

IN THE COUNTRY.

Monday, 19th.

My good father forgave me, even on this occasion, and allowed me to go on an expedition to the country, which had been arranged on Wednesday, with the father of Coretti, the wood-peddler.

We were all in need of a mouthful of hill air. It was a festival day. We met yesterday at two o’clock in the place of the Statuto, Derossi, Garrone, Garoffi, Precossi, Coretti, father and son, and I, with our provisions of fruit, sausages, and hard-boiled eggs; we had also leather bottles and tin cups. Garrone carried a gourd filled with white wine; Coretti, his father’s soldier-canteen, full of red wine; and little Precossi, in the blacksmith’s blouse, held under his arm a two-kilogramme loaf.

We went in the omnibus as far as Gran Madre di Dio, and then off, as briskly as possible, to the hills. How green, how shady, how fresh it was! We rolled over and over in the grass, we dipped our faces in the rivulets, we leaped the hedges. The elder Coretti followed us at a distance, with his jacket thrown over his shoulders, smoking his clay pipe, and from time to time threatening us with his hand, to prevent our tearing holes in our trousers.

Precossi whistled; I had never heard him whistle before. The younger Coretti did the same, as he went along. That little fellow knows how to make everything with his jack-knife a finger’s length long,—mill-wheels, forks, squirts; and he insisted on carrying the other boys’ things, and he was loaded down until he was dripping with perspiration, but he was still as nimble as a goat. Derossi halted every moment to tell us the names of the plants and insects. I don’t understand how he manages to know so many things. And Garrone nibbled at his bread in silence; but he no longer attacks it with the cheery bites of old, poor Garrone! now that he has lost his mother. But he is always as good as bread himself. When one of us ran back to obtain the momentum for leaping a ditch, he ran to the other side, and held out his hands to us; and as Precossi was afraid of cows, having been tossed by one when a child, Garrone placed himself in front of him every time that we passed any. We mounted up to Santa Margherita, and then went down the decline by leaps, rolls, and slides. Precossi tumbled into a thorn-bush, and tore a hole in his blouse, and stood there overwhelmed with shame, with the strip dangling; but Garoffi, who always has pins in his jacket, fixed it so that it was not perceptible, while the other kept saying, “Excuse me, excuse me,” and then he set out to run once more.

Garoffi did not waste his time on the way; he picked salad herbs and snails, and put every stone that glistened in the least into his pocket, supposing that there was gold and silver in it. And on we went, running, rolling, and climbing through the shade and in the sun, up and down, through all the lanes and cross-roads, until we arrived dishevelled and breathless at the crest of a hill, where we seated ourselves to take our lunch on the grass.

We could see an immense plain, and all the blue Alps with their white summits. We were dying of hunger; the bread seemed to be melting. The elder Coretti handed us our portions of sausage on gourd leaves. And then we all began to talk at once about the teachers, the comrades who had not been able to come, and the examinations. Precossi was rather ashamed to eat, and Garrone thrust the best bits of his share into his mouth by force. Coretti was seated next his father, with his legs crossed; they seem more like two brothers than father and son, when seen thus together, both rosy and smiling, with those white teeth of theirs. The father drank with zest, emptying the bottles and the cups which we left half finished, and said:—

“Wine hurts you boys who are studying; it is the wood-sellers who need it.” Then he grasped his son by the nose, and shook him, saying to us, “Boys, you must love this fellow, for he is a flower of a man of honor; I tell you so myself!” And then we all laughed, except Garrone. And he went on, as he drank, “It’s a shame, eh! now you are all good friends together, and in a few years, who knows, Enrico and Derossi will be lawyers or professors or I don’t know what, and the other four of you will be in shops or at a trade, and the deuce knows where, and then—good night comrades!”

“Nonsense!” rejoined Derossi; “for me, Garrone will always be Garrone, Precossi will always be Precossi, and the same with all the others, were I to become the emperor of Russia: where they are, there I shall go also.”

“Bless you!” exclaimed the elder Coretti, raising his flask; “that’s the way to talk, by Heavens! Touch your glass here! Hurrah for brave comrades, and hurrah for school, which makes one family of you, of those who have and those who have not!”

We all clinked his flask with the skins and the cups, and drank for the last time.

“Hurrah for the fourth of the 49th!” he cried, as he rose to his feet, and swallowed the last drop; “and if you have to do with squadrons too, see that you stand firm, like us old ones, my lads!”

It was already late. We descended, running and singing, and walking long distances all arm in arm, and we arrived at the Po as twilight fell, and thousands of fireflies were flitting about. And we only parted in the Piazza dello Statuto after having agreed to meet there on the following Sunday, and go to the Vittorio Emanuele to see the distribution of prizes to the graduates of the evening schools.

What a beautiful day! How happy I should have been on my return home, had I not encountered my poor schoolmistress! I met her coming down the staircase of our house, almost in the dark, and, as soon as she recognized me, she took both my hands, and whispered in my ear, “Good by, Enrico; remember me!” I perceived that she was weeping. I went up and told my mother about it.

“I have just met my schoolmistress.”—“She was just going to bed,” replied my mother, whose eyes were red. And then she added very sadly, gazing intently at me, “Your poor teacher—is very ill.”

THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES TO THE WORKINGMEN.

Sunday, 25th.

As we had agreed, we all went together to the Theatre Vittorio Emanuele, to view the distribution of prizes to the workingmen. The theatre was adorned as on the 14th of March, and thronged, but almost wholly with the families of workmen; and the pit was occupied with the male and female pupils of the school of choral singing. These sang a hymn to the soldiers who had died in the Crimea; which was so beautiful that, when it was finished, all rose and clapped and shouted, so that the song had to be repeated from the beginning. And then the prize-winners began immediately to march past the mayor, the prefect, and many others, who presented them with books, savings-bank books, diplomas, and medals. In one corner of the pit I espied the little mason, sitting beside his mother; and in another place there was the head-master; and behind him, the red head of my master of the second grade.

The first to defile were the pupils of the evening drawing classes—the goldsmiths, engravers, lithographers, and also the carpenters and masons; then those of the commercial school; then those of the Musical Lyceum, among them several girls, workingwomen, all dressed in festal attire, who were saluted with great applause, and who laughed. Last came the pupils of the elementary evening schools, and then it began to be a beautiful sight. They were of all ages, of all trades, and dressed in all sorts of ways,—men with gray hair, factory boys, artisans with big black beards. The little ones were at their ease; the men, a little embarrassed. The people clapped the oldest and the youngest, but none of the spectators laughed, as they did at our festival: all faces were attentive and serious.

Many of the prize-winners had wives and children in the pit, and there were little children who, when they saw their father pass across the stage, called him by name at the tops of their voices, and signalled to him with their hands, laughing violently. Peasants passed, and porters; they were from the Buoncompagni School. From the Cittadella School there was a bootblack whom my father knew, and the prefect gave him a diploma. After him I saw approaching a man as big as a giant, whom I fancied that I had seen several times before. It was the father of the little mason, who had won the second prize. I remembered when I had seen him in the garret, at the bedside of his sick son, and I immediately sought out his son in the pit. Poor little mason! he was staring at his father with beaming eyes, and, in order to conceal his emotion, he made his hare’s face. At that moment I heard a burst of applause, and I glanced at the stage: a little chimney-sweep stood there, with a clean face, but in his working-clothes, and the mayor was holding him by the hand and talking to him.

After the chimney-sweep came a cook; then came one of the city sweepers, from the Raineri School, to get a prize. I felt I know not what in my heart,—something like a great affection and a great respect, at the thought of how much those prizes had cost all those workingmen, fathers of families, full of care; how much toil added to their labors, how many hours snatched from their sleep, of which they stand in such great need, and what efforts of intelligences not habituated to study, and of huge hands rendered clumsy with work!

A factory boy passed, and it was evident that his father had lent him his jacket for the occasion, for his sleeves hung down so that he was forced to turn them back on the stage, in order to receive his prize: and many laughed; but the laugh was speedily stifled by the applause. Next came an old man with a bald head and a white beard. Several artillery soldiers passed, from among those who attended evening school in our schoolhouse; then came custom-house guards and policemen, from among those who guard our schools.

At the conclusion, the pupils of the evening schools again sang the hymn to the dead in the Crimea, but this time with so much dash, with a strength of affection which came so directly from the heart, that the audience hardly applauded at all, and all retired in deep emotion, slowly and noiselessly.

In a few moments the whole street was thronged. In front of the entrance to the theatre was the chimney-sweep, with his prize book bound in red, and all around were gentlemen talking to him. Many exchanged salutations from the opposite side of the street,—workmen, boys, policemen, teachers. My master of the second grade came out in the midst of the crowd, between two artillery men. And there were workmen’s wives with babies in their arms, who held in their tiny hands their father’s diploma, and exhibited it to the crowd in their pride.

MY DEAD SCHOOLMISTRESS.

Tuesday, 27th.

While we were at the Theatre Vittorio Emanuele, my poor schoolmistress died. She died at two o’clock, a week after she had come to see my mother. The head-master came to the school yesterday morning to announce it to us; and he said:—

“Those of you who were her pupils know how good she was, how she loved her boys: she was a mother to them. Now, she is no more. For a long time a terrible malady has been sapping her life. If she had not been obliged to work to earn her bread, she could have taken care of herself, and perhaps recovered. At all events, she could have prolonged her life for several months, if she had procured a leave of absence. But she wished to remain among her boys to the very last day. On the evening of Saturday, the seventeenth, she took leave of them, with the certainty that she should never see them again. She gave them good advice, kissed them all, and went away sobbing. No one will ever behold her again. Remember her, my boys!”

Little Precossi, who had been one of her pupils in the upper primary, dropped his head on his desk and began to cry.

Yesterday afternoon, after school, we all went together to the house of the dead woman, to accompany her to church. There was a hearse in the street, with two horses, and many people were waiting, and conversing in a low voice. There was the head-master, all the masters and mistresses from our school, and from the other schoolhouses where she had taught in bygone years. There were nearly all the little children in her classes, led by the hand by their mothers, who carried tapers; and there were a very great many from the other classes, and fifty scholars from the Baretti School, some with wreaths in their hands, some with bunches of roses. A great many bouquets of flowers had already been placed on the hearse, upon which was fastened a large wreath of acacia, with an inscription in black letters: The old pupils of the fourth grade to their mistress. And under the large wreath a little one was suspended, which the babies had brought. Among the crowd were visible many servant-women, who had been sent by their mistresses with candles; and there were also two serving-men in livery, with lighted torches; and a wealthy gentleman, the father of one of the mistress’s scholars, had sent his carriage, lined with blue satin. All were crowded together near the door. Several girls were wiping away their tears.

We waited for a while in silence. At length the casket was brought out. Some of the little ones began to cry loudly when they saw the coffin slid into the hearse, and one began to shriek, as though he had only then comprehended that his mistress was dead, and he was seized with such a convulsive fit of sobbing, that they were obliged to carry him away.

The procession got slowly into line and set out. First came the daughters of the Ritiro della Concezione, dressed in green; then the daughters of Maria, all in white, with a blue ribbon; then the priests; and behind the hearse, the masters and mistresses, the tiny scholars of the upper primary, and all the others; and, at the end of all, the crowd. People came to the windows and to the doors, and on seeing all those boys, and the wreath, they said, “It is a schoolmistress.” Even some of the ladies who accompanied the smallest children wept.

When the church was reached, the casket was removed from the hearse, and carried to the middle of the nave, in front of the great altar: the mistresses laid their wreaths on it, the children covered it with flowers, and the people all about, with lighted candles in their hands, began to chant the prayers in the vast and gloomy church. Then, all of a sudden, when the priest had said the last amen, the candles were extinguished, and all went away in haste, and the mistress was left alone. Poor mistress, who was so kind to me, who had so much patience, who had toiled for so many years! She has left her little books to her scholars, and everything which she possessed,—to one an inkstand, to another a little picture; and two days before her death, she said to the head-master that he was not to allow the smallest of them to go to her funeral, because she did not wish them to cry.

She has done good, she has suffered, she is dead! Poor mistress, left alone in that dark church! Farewell! Farewell forever, my kind friend, sad and sweet memory of my infancy!

THANKS.

Wednesday, 28th.

My poor schoolmistress wanted to finish her year of school: she departed only three days before the end of the lessons. Day after to-morrow we go once more to the schoolroom to hear the reading of the monthly story, Shipwreck, and then—it is over. On Saturday, the first of July, the examinations begin. And then another year, the fourth, is past! And if my mistress had not died, it would have passed well.

I thought over all that I had known on the preceding October, and it seems to me that I know a good deal more: I have so many new things in my mind; I can say and write what I think better than I could then; I can also do the sums of many grown-up men who know nothing about it, and help them in their affairs; and I understand much more: I understand nearly everything that I read. I am satisfied. But how many people have urged me on and helped me to learn, one in one way, and another in another, at home, at school, in the street,—everywhere where I have been and where I have seen anything! And now, I thank you all. I thank you first, my good teacher, for having been so indulgent and affectionate with me; for you every new acquisition of mine was a labor, for which I now rejoice and of which I am proud. I thank you, Derossi, my admirable companion, for your prompt and kind explanations, for you have made me understand many of the most difficult things, and overcome stumbling-blocks at examinations; and you, too, Stardi, you brave and strong boy, who have showed me how a will of iron succeeds in everything: and you, kind, generous Garrone, who make all those who know you kind and generous too; and you too, Precossi and Coretti, who have given me an example of courage in suffering, and of serenity in toil, I render thanks to you: I render thanks to all the rest. But above all, I thank thee, my father, thee, my first teacher, my first friend, who hast given me so many wise counsels, and hast taught me so many things, whilst thou wert working for me, always concealing thy sadness from me, and seeking in all ways to render study easy, and life beautiful to me; and thee, sweet mother, my beloved and blessed guardian angel, who hast tasted all my joys, and suffered all my bitternesses, who hast studied, worked, and wept with me, with one hand caressing my brow, and with the other pointing me to heaven. I kneel before you, as when I was a little child; I thank you for all the tenderness which you have instilled into my mind through twelve years of sacrifices and of love.

SHIPWRECK.

(Last Monthly Story.)

One morning in the month of December, several years ago, there sailed from the port of Liverpool a huge steamer, which had on board two hundred persons, including a crew of sixty. The captain and nearly all the sailors were English. Among the passengers there were several Italians,—three gentlemen, a priest, and a company of musicians. The steamer was bound for the island of Malta. The weather was threatening.

Among the third-class passengers forward, was an Italian lad of a dozen years, small for his age, but robust; a bold, handsome, austere face, of Sicilian type. He was alone near the fore-mast, seated on a coil of cordage, beside a well-worn valise, which contained his effects, and upon which he kept a hand. His face was brown, and his black and wavy hair descended to his shoulders. He was meanly clad, and had a tattered mantle thrown over his shoulders, and an old leather pouch on a cross-belt. He gazed thoughtfully about him at the passengers, the ship, the sailors who were running past, and at the restless sea. He had the appearance of a boy who has recently issued from a great family sorrow,—the face of a child, the expression of a man.

A little after their departure, one of the steamer’s crew, an Italian with gray hair, made his appearance on the bow, holding by the hand a little girl; and coming to a halt in front of the little Sicilian, he said to him:—

“Here’s a travelling companion for you, Mario.” Then he went away.

The girl seated herself on the pile of cordage beside the boy.

They surveyed each other.

“Where are you going?” asked the Sicilian.

The girl replied: “To Malta on the way of Naples.” Then she added: “I am going to see my father and mother, who are expecting me. My name is Giulietta Faggiani.”

The boy said nothing.

After the lapse of a few minutes, he drew some bread from his pouch, and some dried fruit; the girl had some biscuits: they began to eat.

“Look sharp there!” shouted the Italian sailor, as he passed rapidly; “a lively time is at hand!”

The wind continued to increase, the steamer pitched heavily; but the two children, who did not suffer from seasickness, paid no heed to it. The little girl smiled. She was about the same age as her companion, but was considerably taller, brown of complexion, slender, somewhat sickly, and dressed more than modestly. Her hair was short and curling, she wore a red kerchief over her head, and two hoops of silver in her ears.

As they ate, they talked about themselves and their affairs. The boy had no longer either father or mother. The father, an artisan, had died a few days previously in Liverpool, leaving him alone; and the Italian consul had sent him back to his country, to Palermo, where he had still some distant relatives left. The little girl had been taken to London, the year before, by a widowed aunt, who was very fond of her, and to whom her parents—poor people—had given her for a time, trusting in a promise of an inheritance; but the aunt had died a few months later, run over by an omnibus, without leaving a centesimo; and then she too had had recourse to the consul, who had shipped her to Italy. Both had been recommended to the care of the Italian sailor.—“So,” concluded the little maid, “my father and mother thought that I would return rich, and instead I am returning poor. But they will love me all the same. And so will my brothers. I have four, all small. I am the oldest at home. I dress them. They will be greatly delighted to see me. They will come in on tiptoe—The sea is ugly!”

Then she asked the boy: “And are you going to stay with your relatives?”

“Yes—if they want me.”

“Do not they love you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I shall be thirteen at Christmas,” said the girl.

Then they began to talk about the sea, and the people on board around them. They remained near each other all day, exchanging a few words now and then. The passengers thought them brother and sister. The girl knitted at a stocking, the boy meditated, the sea continued to grow rougher. At night, as they parted to go to bed, the girl said to Mario, “Sleep well.”

“No one will sleep well, my poor children!” exclaimed the Italian sailor as he ran past, in answer to a call from the captain. The boy was on the point of replying with a “good night” to his little friend, when an unexpected dash of water dealt him a violent blow, and flung him against a seat.

“My dear, you are bleeding!” cried the girl, flinging herself upon him. The passengers who were making their escape below, paid no heed to them. The child knelt down beside Mario, who had been stunned by the blow, wiped the blood from his brow, and pulling the red kerchief from her hair, she bound it about his head, then pressed his head to her breast in order to knot the ends, and thus received a spot of blood on her yellow bodice just above the girdle. Mario shook himself and rose:

“Are you better?” asked the girl.

“I no longer feel it,” he replied.

“Sleep well,” said Giulietta.

“Good night,” responded Mario. And they descended two neighboring sets of steps to their dormitories.

The sailor’s prediction proved correct. Before they could get to sleep, a frightful tempest had broken loose. It was like the sudden onslaught of furious great horses, which in the course of a few minutes split one mast, and carried away three boats which were suspended to the falls, and four cows on the bow, like leaves. On board the steamer there arose a confusion, a terror, an uproar, a tempest of shrieks, wails, and prayers, sufficient to make the hair stand on end. The tempest continued to increase in fury all night. At daybreak it was still increasing. The formidable waves dashing the craft transversely, broke over the deck, and smashed, split, and hurled everything into the sea. The platform which screened the engine was destroyed, and the water dashed in with a terrible roar; the fires were extinguished; the engineers fled; huge and impetuous streams forced their way everywhere. A voice of thunder shouted:

“To the pumps!” It was the captain’s voice. The sailors rushed to the pumps. But a sudden burst of the sea, striking the vessel on the stern, demolished bulwarks and hatchways, and sent a flood within.

All the passengers, more dead than alive, had taken refuge in the grand saloon. At last the captain made his appearance.

“Captain! Captain!” they all shrieked in concert. “What is taking place? Where are we? Is there any hope! Save us!”

The captain waited until they were silent, then said coolly; “Let us be resigned.”

One woman uttered a cry of “Mercy!” No one else could give vent to a sound. Terror had frozen them all. A long time passed thus, in a silence like that of the grave. All gazed at each other with blanched faces. The sea continued to rage and roar. The vessel pitched heavily. At one moment the captain attempted to launch one life-boat; five sailors entered it; the boat sank; the waves turned it over, and two of the sailors were drowned, among them the Italian: the others contrived with difficulty to catch hold of the ropes and draw themselves up again.

After this, the sailors themselves lost all courage. Two hours later, the vessel was sunk in the water to the height of the port-holes.

A terrible spectacle was presented meanwhile on the deck. Mothers pressed their children to their breasts in despair; friends exchanged embraces and bade each other farewell; some went down into the cabins that they might die without seeing the sea. One passenger shot himself in the head with a pistol, and fell headlong down the stairs to the cabin, where he expired. Many clung frantically to each other; women writhed in horrible convulsions. There was audible a chorus of sobs, of infantile laments, of strange and piercing voices; and here and there persons were visible motionless as statues, in stupor, with eyes dilated and sightless,—faces of corpses and madmen. The two children, Giulietta and Mario, clung to a mast and gazed at the sea with staring eyes, as though senseless.

The sea had subsided a little; but the vessel continued to sink slowly. Only a few minutes remained to them.

“Launch the long-boat!” shouted the captain.

A boat, the last that remained, was thrown into the water, and fourteen sailors and three passengers descended into it.

The captain remained on board.

“Come down with us!” they shouted to him from below.

“I must die at my post,” replied the captain.

“We shall meet a vessel,” the sailors cried to him; “we shall be saved! Come down! you are lost!”

“I shall remain.”

“There is room for one more!” shouted the sailors, turning to the other passengers. “A woman!”

A woman advanced, aided by the captain; but on seeing the distance at which the boat lay, she did not feel sufficient courage to leap down, and fell back upon the deck. The other women had nearly all fainted, and were as dead.

“A boy!” shouted the sailors.

At that shout, the Sicilian lad and his companion, who had remained up to that moment petrified as by a supernatural stupor, were suddenly aroused again by a violent instinct to save their lives. They detached themselves simultaneously from the mast, and rushed to the side of the vessel, shrieking in concert: “Take me!” and endeavoring in turn, to drive the other back, like furious beasts.

“The smallest!” shouted the sailors. “The boat is overloaded! The smallest!”

On hearing these words, the girl dropped her arms, as though struck by lightning, and stood motionless, staring at Mario with lustreless eyes.

Mario looked at her for a moment,—saw the spot of blood on her bodice,—remembered—The gleam of a divine thought flashed across his face.

“The smallest!” shouted the sailors in chorus, with imperious impatience. “We are going!”

And then Mario, with a voice which no longer seemed his own, cried: “She is the lighter! It is for you, Giulietta! You have a father and mother! I am alone! I give you my place! Go down!”

“Throw her into the sea!” shouted the sailors.

Mario seized Giulietta by the body, and threw her into the sea.

The girl uttered a cry and made a splash; a sailor seized her by the arm, and dragged her into the boat.

The boy remained at the vessel’s side, with his head held high, his hair streaming in the wind,—motionless, tranquil, sublime.

The boat moved off just in time to escape the whirlpool which the vessel produced as it sank, and which threatened to overturn it.

Then the girl, who had remained senseless until that moment, raised her eyes to the boy, and burst into a storm of tears.

“Good by, Mario!” she cried, amid her sobs, with her arms outstretched towards him. “Good by! Good by! Good by!”

“Good by!” replied the boy, raising his hand on high.

The boat went swiftly away across the troubled sea, beneath the dark sky. No one on board the vessel shouted any longer. The water was already lapping the edge of the deck.

Suddenly the boy fell on his knees, with his hands folded and his eyes raised to heaven.

The girl covered her face.

When she raised her head again, she cast a glance over the sea: the vessel was no longer there.