Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/235



Saturday, 1st.

first of April! Only three months more! This has been one of the most beautiful mornings of the year. I was happy in school because Coretti told me to come day after to-morrow to see the King make his entrance. We will go with his father, who knows him. Also my mother had promised to take me the same day to visit the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco. I was pleased, too, because “the little mason” is better, and because the teacher said to my father yesterday evening as he was passing, “He is doing well; he is doing well.”

And then it was a beautiful spring morning. From the school windows we could see the blue sky, the trees of the garden all covered with buds, and the wide-open windows of the houses, with their boxes and vases already growing green. The teacher did not laugh, because he never laughs; but he was in good humor, so that the wrinkle hardly ever appeared on his brow; and he explained a problem on the blackboard, and jested. And it was plain that he felt a pleasure in breathing the air of the gardens which entered through the open window, redolent with the fresh odor of earth and leaves, which suggested thoughts of country rambles.