Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/300

268 because he is far from home! The Genoese go round the world, gallantly and triumphantly!”

And at these words he shook himself, he heard the voice of the Genoese blood, and he raised his head aloft with pride, dashing his fists down on the rudder. “Yes,” he said to himself; “and if I am also obliged to travel for years and years to come, over the world, and to traverse hundreds of miles on foot, I will go on until I find my mother, were I to arrive in a dying condition, and fall dead at her feet! If only I can see her once again! Courage!” And in this frame of mind he arrived at daybreak, on a cool rosy morning, in front of the city of Rosario, situated on the high bank of the Parana, where the flags and yards of a hundred vessels of every land were mirrored in the waves.

Shortly after landing, he went to the town, bag in hand, to seek the Argentine gentleman for whom his protector in Boca had intrusted him with a visiting-card, with a few words of recommendation. On entering Rosario, it seemed to him that he was coming into a city with which he was already familiar. There were the straight, endless streets, bordered with low white houses, traversed in all directions above the roofs by great bundles of telegraph and telephone wires, which looked like enormous spiders' webs; and a great confusion of people, of horses, and of vehicles. His head grew confused; he almost thought that he had got back to Buenos Ayres, and must hunt up his cousin once more. He wandered about for nearly an hour, making one turn after another, and seeming always to come back to the same street; and after much inquiring, he found the house of his new protector. He pulled