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

264 MILITAR Y LIFE.
his regiment, twisted her hands, swayed backward and forward,
was not
quiet one moment, and by her fixed and excited look,
and the rapid movements of her mouth, she showed a timid and
anxious content, an irrepressible desire, which she did not know
The captain watched her closely.
" Is there no one among you women who has a soldier son " ?
how to gratify.
he asked, with apparent indifference, as he handed back the
glass.
" I have," replied the woman who had brought him the water.
" I have one !
" and she made a sign with her thumb, and
stopped to wait for his reply,
" In what "
regiment ?
as immovable as a statue.
The woman told the regiment, and added hastily
:
" Where
is this regiment, Mr. Colonel ? Do you chance to know my
son ? Have you seen him anywhere
? "
" I ? Oh, no but how is it that you do not know where he
is?"
" Well !
" exclaimed the woman, looking very serious, crossing
and then letting her hands fall idly,
" it is two years since I
have seen him. A month ago he was not very far from here ;
he was fighting the brigands, poor fellow, and he wrote me ;
but
since then I have heard nothing, and he has never sent me
another letter. Oh, he may have sent one, but it has not arrived.
Those gentlemen who ought to forward the letters, who
knows what they have done with them !
(And she grew more
and more excited, and uttered each word with an increasing
expression of sorrow and scorn.) The letters of poor people
are known to those gentlemen by the writing, and they throw
them into a corner. I know how things go. Those poor fellows
write, and their families receive nothing. But the officers who are