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

THE DISABLED SOLDIER. 2$$
Oh ! that hour in the country is a sad one. Even if you were
beside the woman whom you love, at the height of your bliss,
none but sad fancies would pass through your mind, and none
but sad words come to your lips.
Just at that hour, one evening, during the early part of May,
in 1866, in a deserted lane which ran across the slope of a hill,
near one of those country shrines where the picture of the Virgin
is painted at the back of a niche, a young girl and a soldier
were talking in an undertone : the former seated on a large
stone, leaning against a projection of the shrine, her elbows
resting on her knees, her chin in h*er hands ;
the latter erect beside
her, leaning with one shoulder against the wall, and his arms
crossed over his breast. He had on his fatigue cap, as soldiers
call it,
and wore a coat his ; knapsack lay at his feet, arid in this
was a bundle.
There was something sad and despairing in the
girl's appearance, and she kept her eyes fixed motionless on the
ground ;
a little light, which was burning before the image of
the Virgin, cast a veiled gleam over the brow buried in the
hands, and showed the imprint of a long fit of weeping around
the eyes. The soldier, without his belt or musket, looked like
a soldier on leave, and such was the case, for he belonged to
one of the classes that had been recalled to arms on the 2 8th of
April, and on the seventh day after the publication of the royal
decree they were to present themselves before the military commandants
of the district.
That soldier must be on the following
day in a neighboring city, ten miles, or less, distant from
that place.
Judging from the attitudes of the young girl and himself, and
from the long silence which followed their few subdued words,
it seemed as if they must have been there for some time. Not