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

DEPARTURE AND RETURN. 329
"
My mother dashes at the woman, tears the letter from her,
looks at it,
utters a cry, looks at it again, presses it convulsively
to- her heart, gasps, smiles, raises her eyes to heaven, and exclaims
:
'
Thanks ! thanks !
'
then kisses and kisses again the
sheet, presses her daughter's head to her breast, and murmurs
in a feeble voice :
'
Alberto !
'
then drops on to a chair.
The
two friends support her, and try to take the letter from her
hands ;
but it is quite in vain ; they are like pincers."
Here are some extracts from the letter :
CERLUNGO, 2$t/i June.
I have told you all that I have seen, which is little ;
I cannot account
for certain lapses in my memory, which, if I did not recall many other
things, would make me think I had lost all power of retention, so strange
and incredible are they. I have quite forgotten where and when my battalion
stopped for the first time, and I remember clearly a.soldier of another
regiment whom I stopped and asked while he was :
running "Where do
you come from " ? and he pointed to a little house on the slope of the
mountain, exclaiming " We have made a salad of them " which meant that
:
in that house there had been a massacre of the Austrians, and this was
quite true. I remember another who had a ball in his finger ;
while he
stooped to touch a dead man, he uttered a cry, looked around astonished,
drawing his hand behind his back, and " murmuring plaintively: It
hurts me ! " I remember my major's harangue to the battalion a few
moments before we started ; it was singularly simple and laconic. " "
Soldiers !
he said coldly, without even turning his horse toward
" us, I am afraid we
shall have nothing to do to-day ;
but in case we should ... I believe
that ... we are Italians ;
the devil !
"
And here
he ended with exactly
these words. A short time before, in handing his flask full of rum to
a small group of officers who did not appear very gay, he had said smilingly :
" Take some
"
;
it refreshes weak spirits
!
I am thoroughly convinced that true courage comes from the heart and
from culture of the mind ;
and true courage consists less in not being
afraid, than in showing one's self and working, while being so, as if this were
really not the case all of which is the effect of
;
reasoning, or rather of an infinite
number of reasons, recollections, pictures, and examples, which pass
through one's mind at such moments with the rapidity of lightning, and
say " "
Be firm : ! Even entire strophes of patriotic poetry pass through