Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/258

226 have come to seek me out. How could you leave your business, to come and see a poor old schoolmaster?”

“Listen, Signor Crosetti,” responded my father with vivacity. “I recollect the first time that my poor mother accompanied me to school. It was to be her first parting from me for two hours; of letting me out of the house alone, in other hands than my father's; in the hands of a stranger, in short. To this good creature my entrance into school was like my entrance into the world,—the first of a long series of necessary and painful separations; it was society which was tearing her son from her for the first time, never again to return him to her entirely. She was much affected; so was I. I bade her farewell with a trembling voice, and then, as she went away, I saluted her once more through the glass in the door, with my eyes full of tears. And just at that point you made a gesture with one hand, laying the other on your breast, as though to say, ‘Trust me, madam.’ Well, the gesture, the glance, from which I saw that you had understood all the feelings, all the thoughts of my mother; that look which seemed to say, ‘Courage!’ that gesture which was an honest promise of protection, of affection, of indulgence, I have never forgotten; it has remained forever engraved on my heart; and it is that memory which induced me to set out from Turin. And here I am, after the lapse of four and forty years, for the purpose of saying to you, ‘I thank you, my dear teacher.’”

The master did not reply; he stroked my hair with his hand, and his hand shook, and glided from my hair