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

I
2/8 MILITARY LIFE.
These, however, are roses in comparison to what I was
obliged to see before having trained him to put my room in
order, I do not say, as I wished it,
but in a manner that would
indistinctly reveal at least the rational being. For him the
highest art in putting things in order consisted in arranging
them in architectural style one above the other ;
and his greatest
ambition was to construct the tallest edifice possible. During
the first few days my books formed a semicircle of towers
which tottered at the slightest breath ;
the wash-bowl, turned
upside down, upheld a bold pyramid of little dishes and vases,
on the top of which my shaving-brush rose proudly ;
old and
new high hats reared themselves in the form of a triumphal
column to a dizzy height. So that often in the dead of night
there occurred noisy overturns and tremendous scatterings of my
property, which were only restrained by the walls of the room
from going on no one knows where. In order to make him
comprehend that the tooth-brush did not belong to the family
of those intended for the head, that the jar of pomade was
quite different from that of the extract of beef, and that the
commode was not designed as a receptacle of freshly ironed
shirts, required the eloquence of a Cicero and the patience of
a Job.
Whether he were grateful for my kindness to him, or
felt the slighest affection for me, I have never been able to
learn.
Once only did he display a certain solicitude about my
person, and that in a very strange manner.
I was in bed, having
been ill for fifteen days, and growing
neither better nor
worse. One evening he stopped on the stairs my physician,
who was a very grave man, and asked him brusquely
:
now, are you going to cure him, or are you not ? "
"
Well,
The doc-