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

340 MILITARY LIFE.
PARMA, i6tA October.
Just hear what a trick that rascal of an orderly has played me. Two
weeks ago, his saint's name-day coming around, I got a bottle of barb^ra
from the sutler, fastened a piece of paper around the neck on which was
written: "San Remigio," and seizing a moment when he was absent,
put it into his tent. I heard nothing of it he did not thank
;
me ;
nor gave any sign, so I fancied some one must have stolen it from him.
Last evening, on returning from a walk outside the camp, I enter the tent
and see at my place a great pile of fresh straw well gathered and scattered,
so that it seemed as if just taken out of a sack. In the place where I put
my head, the image of a saint hung from the tent-pole, with leaves and
flowers around it, a little wax taper burning before it ; by the side, on the
cover of the trunk, a wooden box, made with a knife, which might have
passed for a cigar-holder under the case a bundle of
; cigars tied with a red
ribbon. I look at the image above it is written
" "
; : Santa Teresa I
;
look at the box
" "
Santa Teresa I look at the ribbon
; holding the cigars
" Santa Teresa." Imagine how touched I was. I did not think that this
poor young fellow, besides being so good, could be so delicate too as to honor,
and fete my mother's name instead of mine.
The mother's reply is a regular box on the ear to the regulation
of discipline.
If Alberto's soldier had suddenly become a
general, she could not have written in any other way.
And it
would seem that Signer Remigio was not illy recompensed for
his delicacy, as one day he presented himself before the officer
with a letter from home in his hand, his eyes quite moist, and
thanked him at length in a trembling voice.
"I understand," said Alberto to himself when he had
"
finished ; the two mothers have become friends."
From Parma to Piacenza, from Piacenza to Pavia, from
Pavia to Bergamo fifteen ; days' more march, half of which
was in the rain.
" I am thinking of the state of your poor
feet," says a letter from the mother, " and I can do nothing
but send you sighs of "
pain." Send me some cotton stockings,"
replies the son.