Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/186

158 are good comrades to each other. In play time they are always together, according to their habit. In the girls' school, for instance, they form into groups according to the instrument on which they play,—violinists, pianists, and flute-players,—and they never separate. When they have become attached to any one, it is difficult for them to break it off. They take much comfort in friendship. They judge correctly among themselves. They have a clear and profound idea of good and evil. No one grows so enthusiastic as they over the story of a kind action, of a grand deed.”

Votini inquired if they played well.

“They are ardently fond of music”, replied the teacher. “It is their delight. Music is their life. Little blind children, when they first enter the Institute, are capable of standing three hours perfectly motionless, to listen to playing. They learn easily: they play with fire. When the teacher tells one of them that he has no talent for music, he feels very sorrowful, but he sets to studying desperately. Ah! if you could hear the music there, if you could see them when they are playing, with their heads thrown back, a smile on their lips, their faces aflame, trembling with emotion, in ecstasies at listening to that harmony which replies to them in the obscurity which envelops them, you would feel what a divine consolation is music! And they shout for joy, they beam with happiness when a teacher says to them, ‘You will become an artist.’ The one who is first in music, who succeeds the best on the violin or piano, is like a king to them; they love, they venerate him. If a quarrel arises between two of