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

THE SON OF THE XEGIMENT. 63
of a knife-grinder. And in fact, when we set the marionettes
dancing, and improvised comedies, there might
be a fierce
struggle on the stage between ten armed characters, or there
might be even princes and kings to make a great deal of racket
with their swords in hand ;
but at the appearance of two soldiers
with muskets slung across their shoulders, all the other
wooden heads suddenly were quiet, and on their good behavior,
and sometimes even the crowns bowed before the
fatigue caps. When late at evening, suddenly hearing down
in
the street, before the door of a tavern, a confused sound of
angry and threatening voices, oaths, blows, and cudgels, and a
crying of women and children, and on going to the window
we could see the daggers gleam, we understood that there was
a fight between the soldiers and workmen, did n't we always
pray that the former should do all the killing, and the latter be
beaten ? And if the contrary occurred, how provoked were we !
This intense affection of children is returned by the soldiers
with an affection naturally less enthusiastic, but not less strong.
Conscripts who have just come into the regiment, or
even old
soldiers who have barely arrived from an unknown city, pray,
where do they seek and find their first friends ? In that crowd
of gamins who hang around the drummers when the regiment
goes to the parade ground. From them come the first
smiles, the first hand-shakings with them the first ; meetings,
the first genial and confidential conversations, the first solitary
walks in the country, the first outbursts of rage against their
all-powerful superiors, the first laments over the severity of the
discipline, and from them the first words of comfort and consolation.
They let them write and read their letters from
home, and relate all the most insignificant particulars of their