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

66 MILITARY LIFE.
hands ;
of feeling myself kissed in the face by burning mouths,
with the same fury with which a mother would kiss her son
on
first seeing him after a long absence ; of having
felt the contact
of many gloves wet with tears of ; having stopped several
times to disengage my sword from the hands of some boy who
was shaking it violently in order to make me turn around and
take notice of his small " ewiva" ;
then of having walked quite
a distance with half a dozen bunches of flowers in my jacket, so
that I looked like a country bridegroom ;
and, finally,
of hearing
resound about me a continuous and very loud hurrah. . . .
But nonsense, they were not hurrahs, but inarticulate cries,
broken by sobs, stifled by embraces ;
they were groans coming
from chests oppressed and exhausted by the depth of joy ;
voices with a tone that my ear had never heard before, but
which had sounded many times in my mind, when imagining
the expression of a joy greater than human strength. The
crowd mingled with a dizzy rapidity, and, flowing along, bore
the soldiers here and there, always, however, advancing in the
direction that the column had taken on its entrance ;
and above
the heads of the multitude could be seen a great waving of arms,
muskets, and banners, and this one and that one rushing violently
together and instantly separating, according to the impetuosity
of the embrace and the rapid separation of the civilians
and soldiers. The boys seized the soldiers by the hems of
their coats or by the sheath of the
bayonet, and jealously disputed
their hands in order to press their lips on them ;
and
the women, too, young, old, of the people, or of rank, pressed
the hands of the soldiers and put flowers in the button-holes
of their coats, asking them gently if they had come from far
and felt tired. They handed them fruit and cigars, offered