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

402 MILITARY LIFE.
the engineers, who, having heard of the misfortunes with
which your poor Messina was afflicted, sent thirty lire to the
syndic, writing him : "
They gave me this money because I
nursed the cholera patients in my regiment ;
and I have nothing
more ;
but this little I give with all my heart to the poor of my
native place."
even
Works of charity are always praiseworthy and very estimable,
if the impulse which prompts us to perform them is nothing
but the desire for the gratitude and affection of those benefited.
But when not even gratitude accrues from the work,
and those who ought to love and bless us, return our charity
with hatred, and suspect snare in the offer and crime in the
benefit ;
and yet, despite this we persist in doing good, loving
and pardoning with no other motive power than pity, without
any other comfort than our conscience, then we have a greater
right to esteem and praise than is usually bestowed upon the
common virtues. I refer to the generous work of the soldiers
in those places where it was supposed they were scattering
poison by order of the government, and the people hated and
cursed them. Unfortunately, these places were not a few in
number.
At last, when they saw that the soldiers died also, that all
those whom they carried to the hospitals were not poisoned,
that in fact the survivors never ceased praising the care and
affection with which
they had been nursed and watched over,
the senseless superstition disappeared. But that the soldiers
poisoned the people was at first a universal belief, a profound
conviction, a fact which it would not have been proper to
doubt. There was no one who would not have sworn to it in
perfect faith if the occasion had offered. Every one held,