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

130 MILITARY LIFE.
a genuine woman's question
:
" But why did you provoke him ?
Would it not have been better to have pretended not to hear ?"
My friend and I looked at each other, and both burst out laughing.
"
Why are you laughing ? "
"
Listen, my dear lady," my friend replied.
"
Supposing
(which could not be the case) that I ought to have pretended
that I did not hear, how could I have done so when my blood was
boiling and my head in a ferment ? Do you suppose
I knew
what I was doing at that moment " ?
The lady did not appear at all convinced.
" The people all around had heard," continued the officer ;
" the insult was one that touched the whole army, and those
words were a lie ; then, just on that occasion the lie was a calumny,
the tone of voice in which the calumny had been uttered
sounded like a provocation then that
; man, as I afterward
learned (and it could not have been otherwise, because
these are words which reveal a man's soul), was nothing but
a ..."
" Silence ! It is not necessary that I should know."
" Then there was another reason still
why these words offended
me more than they might have another person.
And the reason
is this. Listen. Fourteen years ago
. . ."
" "
No less than that !
" Listen ;
I was at Turin with my family ;
and only seven
years old. The last day but one of the carnival my mother
dressed me in a pretty costume of blue and white striped silk,
with a red sash, a blonde curly wig, and a green velvet cap,
and took me to the eorso in a carriage. My father and
a friend of his, a major in the artillery, were with us. We