Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

8O
MILITARY LIFE.
any thing. These things made me unhappy, because I had
never done any thing to them, and every time either of them
teased me, and I wanted to do something, I always controlled
myself and had patience. There were times when they had
finished eating, that mother made me carry away the dishes,
and while I carried them the boys said '
Scullion : !
'
Oh,
heavens ! if
they had given me a blow on the head I should
not have felt it as much as I did those words. . . .
Once,
the evening of a fete day, she returned home late, and her face
was all red, her eyes shining ;
she talked and laughed loudly with
the other two, and they all
began supper, and mother drank an
entire bottle of wine. After they had finished she called me,
put all the dishes in my hands, and said :
'
Here, carry these
away ;
that 's
your duty ' ; she gave me a kick, and all three
began to laugh. I said nothing ;
but when I was in the kitchen
I put down the dishes, threw myself on a chair, and began weeping
bitterly in the dark until they went to bed. If it had not
been for Giovannina, a young
dressmaker who lived near us
and was kind to me, I should have always been entirely in
rags. ..."
I then asked how he came to think of running away.
" At the beginning," he "
replied, I wanted to go off with a
company of jugglers, those who play tricks, and when they find
boys whom no one wants, they take them with them ;
but then I
was told that there were tricks for which, if they wished to become
jugglers, they must have their bones dislocated at the shoulders,
and this must be done when they are small, so as I was
big, I did not run away. Mother continued to ill-treat me,
and gave me little to eat. But one fine day the Italian soldiers
began to pass, and all the people welcomed them warmly, and