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Updated: June 7, 2025
Beside the little mason there sits Garoffi, a long, thin, silly fellow, with a nose and beak of a screech owl, and very small eyes, who is always trafficking in little pens and images and match-boxes, and who writes the lesson on his nails, in order that he may read it on the sly.
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.
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 interrupted the teacher to inquire if it was true that blind boys learn to reckon better than others. The master replied: "It is true. They learn to reckon and to write. They have books made on purpose for them, with raised characters; they pass their fingers over these, recognize the letters and pronounce the words.
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.
I saluted the little mason, and kissed him, just at the moment when he was making me his last hare's face, dear boy! I saluted Precossi. I saluted Garoffi, who announced to me the approach of his last lottery, and gave me a little paper weight of majolica, with a broken corner; I said farewell to all the others.
Sunday I shall go to walk with Votini, the well-dressed boy who is always polishing himself up, and who is so envious of Derossi. In the meantime, Garoffi came to the house to-day, that long, lank boy, with the nose like an owl's beak, and small, knavish eyes, which seem to be ferreting everywhere.
The people saw, and instantly understood, and several persons ran up with their fists raised; but Garrone thrust himself between, crying: "Do ten men of you set on one boy?" Then they ceased, and a policeman seized Garoffi by the hand and led him, pushing aside the crowd as he went, to a pastry-cook's shop, where the wounded man had been carried.
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?
Precossi came last night to remind me that I was to go and see his workshop, which is down the street, and this morning when I went out with my father, I got him to take me there for a moment. As we approached the shop, Garoffi issued from it on a run, with a package in his hand, and making his big cloak, with which he covers up his merchandise, flutter.
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