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

46 MILITARY LIFE.
knowing nothing of the revels which dull the liveliest affections
and clearest memories ;
to a soldier like this, four years passed
without seeing his family and his home must have seemed
long indeed And so they had been he had ! ; always appeared
a little melancholy and taciturn in the barracks, and
always alone when outside. In
his hours of freedom, while his
comrades lounged around in the public gardens to bestow
hairy caresses on the children under the care of pretty girls,
he used to pace the parade ground in its length and breadth,
his chin resting on his chest ;
or was seated on a stone bench
at the end of a solitary avenue, drawing puppets in the sand with
the end of his foot. He was always thinking of his relatives,
friends, and the places that he had not seen for four years, and
above all of his mother, who was a poor old, infirm peasant, but
with a genial and true-loving nature and the heart of an angel.
Of all her children, the one whom she loved with the greatest
tenderness, and also with a particular feeling of solicitude and
pity, was the soldier son which was also natural. He
; wrote, or
had some one write frequently ;
and his letters, read and re-read,
kissed and re-kissed, then placed in her bosom like the relic of
a saint, mitigated much of the bitterness of their separation.
And such was the case with the son and his mother's letters ?
Yes, indeed. Paper, in the end, is paper, and loving mothers
wish to see them (their children), wish to have them under
their eyes, to 4ouch them with their hands, and kiss them on
the forehead, twice, ten times in one breath ;
and the children
are not satisfied with the knowledge
its white hair is at home and thinks of them ;
that that dear head with
they wish to take
that head in their arms, and place their lips on those white
locks.
Yet the good old woman, like her dear soldier boy had