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But he added: "I shall wait for you outside!" I felt ill at ease; my wrath had simmered away; I repented. No; Coretti could not have done it intentionally. He is good, I thought. I recalled how I had seen him in his own home; how he had worked and helped his sick mother; and then how heartily he had been welcomed in my house; and how he had pleased my father.
Coretti, too, has abandoned his catskin cap, and wears an old travelling-cap of gray silk. Votini has a sort of Scotch dress, all decorated; Crossi displays his bare breast; Precossi is lost inside of a blue blouse belonging to the blacksmith-ironmonger. And Garoffi?
When the fourth grade is once finished, then good by! we shall never see each other again: I shall never see them again at my bedside when I am ill, Garrone, Precossi, Coretti, who are such fine boys and kind and dear comrades, never more! Thursday, 20th. Why "never more," Enrico? That will depend on yourself.
"I belong to the fourth battalion of forty-nine," replied Coretti, touching his medal. The brigadier glanced at it, and said, "Remain." "Didn't I say so!" exclaimed Coretti triumphantly; "it's a magic word, that fourth of the forty-ninth! Haven't I the right to see my general with some little comfort, I, who was in that squadron?
Why, Enrico, after our father has already reproved you for having behaved badly to Coretti, were you so unkind to me? You cannot imagine the pain that you caused me. Do you not know that when you were a baby, I stood for hours and hours beside your cradle, instead of playing with my companions, and that when you were ill, I got out of bed every night to feel whether your forehead was burning?
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.
"Is there any one here?" sounded a call from the shop at that moment. It was a woman who had come to buy some little fagots. "Here I am!" replied Coretti; and he sprang out, weighed the fagots, took the money, ran to a corner to enter the sale in a shabby old account-book, and returned to his work, saying, "Let's see if I can finish that sentence."
"Ah, brave little master!" said the woman to me; "you have come to visit the sick, have you not?" Meanwhile, Coretti was arranging the pillows behind his mother's back, readjusting the bedclothes, brightening up the fire, and driving the cat off the chest of drawers. "Do you want anything else, mamma?" he asked, as he took the cup from her. "Have you taken the two spoonfuls of syrup?
The band struck up; the officers hastened forward; the crowd elevated themselves on tiptoe. "Eh, he won't come out in a hurry," said a policeman; "they are presenting him with an address now." The elder Coretti was beside himself with impatience. "Ah! when I think of it," he said, "I always see him there.
There were Garrone's father, Derossi's mother, the blacksmith Precossi, Coretti, Signora Nelli, the vegetable-vender, the father of the little mason, Stardi's father, and many others whom I had never seen; and on all sides a whispering and a hum were audible, that seemed to proceed from the square outside. The master entered, and a profound silence ensued.
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