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

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THE MOTHER. 45
had serious faces, were silent, or talked in a low tone with an
effort ;
a little from their extreme fatigue and sleepiness, and a
little from that confusion one generally feels in finding himself
for the first time in an unknown and noisy city.
In the midst of the grave silence reigning in a small group
of soldiers who were seated on the steps of a church near the
barracks, was all the more noticeable the restless gaiety and incessant
chatter of one of them, short of stature,
of slender
build, with beardless face, made most attractive by two great
blue eyes, who continually ran up and down the steps, jumping
about like a boy. Now he would stop near one, now beside
another, and fill their ears with gossip. Then he would pull
the hem of this one's coat, now take off the tassel from
another's fatigue cap and place it on his knee, or pass his
hands over the eyes of a third, crying out as he did so :
" Guess who
"
it is ! It seemed as if he were made of quicksilver.
In passing before the church I noticed him ;
I
stopped on the other side of the street and stood looking
at him for some moments, wondering what could be the
reason of such strange gaiety. The frank and pleasing face
of that soldier was fixed upon my mind. I moved off.
The following day I learned, by the merest chance, what
I had asked myself the evening before. That soldier had been
four years in the service, and by a series of
accidents which it
is not necessary to relate, from the day of his departure until
that time he had never been able to obtain leave,
not even for
the shortest time, in order to return home and see his family.
Four years
! To a soldier, as I knew him to be, full of
heart, much attached to his relatives and the place where he
had been born and brought up, of a mild, gentle disposition,