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

434 MILITARY LIFE.
under that continuous clanger and before that continual spectacle
of death. The streets, squares, shops, were filled, the
workshops opened once more, commerce began to revive, and
the joyful sound of labor sprang up where solitude and silence
had reigned before, or only the lament of the dying or beggars
had been heard. The public administrations, deserted by
dead, fugitive, or expelled officials, were put in working order
again ;
were reorganized, and upheld by those citizens who had
abandoned them at first ;
they began
to dedicate themselves to
the needs of the country in an active, intelligent, and quiet
way. The highwaymen, rendered audacious by the general
confusion and fright, and scarcity of the troops, who were
interested for .the most part in graver duties, had committed
every kind of depredation in city and country. On perceiving
now, that, with the cessation
of the cholera, the military forces
would all turn against them with
renewed vigor, they began to
restrain themselves, and the condition of the public security
suddenly improved. The soldiers had a little rest
at last, could indulge in unbroken and quiet slumber at night,
and during the day they could eat,
in peace, their black bread,
which had been earned by such long and wearisome labors.
Like the convalescent, who, when returning to the usages of
every-day life, is amused by every thing, glad to see every
person, and attends with the greatest solicitude and joy to all
those duties which he formerly neglected or disliked, so the
soldiers, on abandoning that life so full of labor and sadness,
took up their ordinary occupations, even those that had seemed
most irksome at first, as a sort of amusement ;
almost all of
them felt a freshness of affection and hope, a great joyfulness, a
powerful desire to open their hearts to one another, to become