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

CARMELA. 1
59
She had a beautiful voice, and when she was herself sang
well ;
but since her brain had been affected she only hummed
inarticulately and monotonously, generally when seated on her
own door-step, or at the foot of the stairs of the lieutenant's
house, nibbling Indian figs, which were, as one might say, her
chief nourishment.
She, too, had her melancholy hours, in which she did not
talk or laugh with any one, not even with the children, and she
generally stayed curled up like a dog at the house-door, with
her head enveloped in her apron, or her face covered with a
handkerchief, not moving or stirring from her position at any
noise around her, or no matter how many
times she was called
even by her mother. This happened quite rarely, however,
for she was almost always gay.
She paid no attention, as I have already said, to the soldiers,
nor even looked at them ;
but reserved all her tenderness for
the officers. She did not dispense it, however, in equal
measure to all.
Since her return from the hospital, the detachment
had been changed six or eight times, and officers of every
age, aspect,
and humor had come.
It was noticed that she displayed
a much greater sympathy for the younger ones, even
when there was only a few years' difference in their ages,
between those who
and she knew very well how to distinguish
were handsome and those less so, although
all were equally her
" love
" and her
" treasure." To a certain lieutenant, among
the first arrivals, a man in the forties, all nose and stomach,
with a stentorian voice, and basilisk eyes, she had never shown
any favor. She had addressed a few sweet words to him the
first time they met ;
but he, disgusted, had replied disagreeably,
accompanying his words with a threatening movement of the