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

find all the hilts tied to the sheaths by a
AT TWENTY. 293
fine silken cord, with
which, at that moment, we would gladly have hanged our dear
friend to the nearest lamp-post.
The greatest fun, however, was always at table, where something
new was invented each day.
For some time we had the
habit of unbuttoning our coats, for air, every time an extraordinary
statement was made and we did little but button
;
and unbutton that garment. For certain canards of Boccetti
we all six got into our shirt-sleeves without any ceremony, or
we left the table to run and throw open the
the house ;
seven windows of
in fact, one evening he gave vent to such a colossal
one, in relating one of his old adventures with a Florentine
lady, who, from a marchioness of twenty at the beginning of
the tale, changed into a princess of eighteen toward the end,
that we all rushed down into the street and obliged him to
hold forth from the
balcony for some time before returning to
the house for dinner. One day we ate in the Oriental fashion,
without knives and forks, talking Turkish, that is to say, putting
an a into every syllable, with a forfeit for every one who
made a mistake, which nominally resulted to three hundred
lire in one evening.
Another day six of us agreed not to allow
the seventh to speak, and we silenced him by drowning his
voice with a continuous and deafening chorus of disapprobation.
Another time no one was allowed to talk except in verses
of melodrama, song, or quotations of the master, or title of the
opera. Then came the mania for " food-stealing," which was
a regular calamity. However, we made a rule by which every
one was obliged to abide. Any one who could carry off some
tid-bit from a friend's plate had a right to it,
and the friend, if
he did not wish to fast, was obliged to send the orderly to buy