Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/194

166 entered a squad of artillery workmen, dressed like soldiers and headed by a corporal. They all filed briskly to their benches, removed the board underneath, on which we put our feet, and immediately bent their heads over their work.

Some stepped up to the teachers to ask explanations, with their open copy-books in their hands. I caught sight of the young and well-dressed master, “the little lawyer,” who had three or four workingmen clustered around the table, and who was making corrections with his pen; and also the lame one, who was laughing with a dyer who had brought him a copy-book all adorned with red and blue dyes. My teacher, who had recovered, and who will return to school tomorrow, was there also. The doors of the schoolroom were open. I was amazed when the lessons began, to see how attentive they all were, and how they kept their eyes fixed on their work. Yet the greater part of them, so the principal said, for fear of being late, had not even been home to eat a mouthful of supper, and they were hungry.

But the younger ones, after half an hour of school, were falling off the benches with sleep; some even went fast asleep with their heads on the bench, and the teacher awakened them by tickling their ears with a pen. But the grown-up men did nothing of the sort; they kept awake, and listened, with their mouths wide open, and without even winking. It seemed strange to me to see all those bearded men on our benches.

We also went up to the floor above, and I ran to the door of my schoolroom where I saw in my seat a man with a big moustache and a bandaged hand, who