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

284 MILITARY LIFE.
we were sure of being generals of the army at thirty. That
was a gay time The most cordial laugh of the captains and
!
majors was like the simper of a hypochondriac, a consumptive
cough in comparison with our explosions of hilarity, which threw
us across the chairs, and made the whole house tremble. We
were seven, all
belonging to the same brigade, in one of the
most beautiful
cities of Sicily, and just from the great military
manufactory of Modena. Three had come together from
Turin on a journey full of incidents. Suffice it to say that we
had started from home with a certain sum of money
current expenses, in the certainty of going
to Sicily, and were obliged to stop at Naples,
steamer could not leave on account of the
for our
direct from Genoa
because the
cholera, added to
which was the disagreeable necessity of being forced to live at
our own expense during the quarantine at Palermo, where we
passed ten interminable days in
the Bella Partenope, living on
simple macaroni and broth, which we always devoured at an
eating-house
called the Villa di Torino at the end of a little
private room, reserved for people in embarrassment, and those
under the surveillance of the police. But scarcely had we
reached the regiment before our charming existence began.
We seven new-comers met on the second day, and one of the
number was seized by a brilliant idea. He proposed
that we
should all live together and have a common mess, and the
proposal was accepted. We rented a regular rat's nest, comprising
seven rooms and a kitchen. We got an orderly as
cook, and each one settled himself in his den, hung up the
orders for the day in the dining-room, and off we started with
our house-keeping.
It is quite impossible to give any idea of all that was done