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Updated: June 10, 2025
Then, yesterday, while I was asleep, Precossi came and laid his cheek on my hand without waking me; and as he came from his father's workshop, with his face covered with coal dust, he left a black print on my sleeve, the sight of which caused me great pleasure when I awoke. How green the trees have become in these few days!
The boy ran to him instantly; the smith took him and set him directly on the anvil, holding him under the arms, and said to him: "Polish off the frontispiece of this big beast of a daddy of yours a little!" And then Precossi covered his father's black face with kisses, until he was all black himself. "That's as it should be," said the smith, and he set him on the ground again.
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.
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.
Therefore love and respect above all others, among your companions, the sons of the soldiers of labor; honor in them the toil and the sacrifices of their parents; disregard the differences of fortune and of class, upon which the base alone regulate their sentiments and courtesy; reflect that from the veins of laborers in the shops and in the country issued nearly all that blessed blood which has redeemed your country; love Garrone, love Coretti, love Precossi, love your little mason, who, in their little workingmen's breasts, possess the hearts of princes; and take an oath to yourself that no change of fortune shall ever eradicate these friendships of childhood from your soul.
After breakfast yesterday my mother took me, as she had promised, to the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco, in order to recommend to the directress a little sister of Precossi. I had never seen an asylum. How much amused I was! There were two hundred of them, boy-babies and girl-babies, and so small that the children in our lower primary schools are men in comparison.
Precossi made a movement of the throat as though he were swallowing something, and cast upon the benches a very sweet look, which was expressive of immense gratitude. "Go, my dear boy," said the superintendent; "and may God protect you!" It was the hour for dismissing the school. Our class got out before the others.
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