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

238 MILITARY LIFE.
He rejoined his regiment at the beginning of May, and then
wrote a letter home almost every day, received one as often
from his father, mother, and betrothed all ; written, however,
by the latter's hand, as no one in his family was able to write ;
the old father knowing only enough
arithmetic for his own
special use.
He was at the battle of the twenty-fourth of June. Two
weeks elapsed after that day before his family received any
news of him. Picture their anxiety, heart-beats, and disquietude.
But one fine day, as God willed, a letter came, and
how much joy
it
gave them. They opened it with trembling
hands. . . .
Ah, but it was not written by him ;
and they
grew pale. After reading it, however, they recovered from
their first fright,
because he wrote that he had received a
wound in his hand on the day of the battle ;
it was a slight
wound, of which every trace would have vanished within a few
days, and he should have got
out of bed but for a slight fever
caused by the loss of a little blood. They were to keep up
their courage, because it was nothing to cause any anxiety, and
excuse his not having written himself, the right hand being the
one wounded, and his fingers still
paining him ; only a trifle,
however, almost none at all. Little
by little the family became
calm. A week from that day they received the first letter
written by him ; they knew that he had returned to his regiment,
and they said nothing more about that slight
misfortune,
because something worse might have happened to him, and
they ought to thank God that things had gone as they had.
Poor people
! if things had gone so, they really might have
thanked heaven ;
but they did not know the truth. The poor
at a hundred
soldier had been struck by a rifle ball in the leg,