Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/35

 , the field of battle is the whole earth, and the victory is human civilization. Be not a cowardly soldier, my Enrico.

(The Monthly Story.)

Saturday, 29th.

I will not be a “cowardly soldier”, no; but I should be much more willing to go to school if the master would tell us a story every day, like the one he told us this morning.

“Every month” said he, “I shall tell you one; I shall give it to you in writing, and it will always be the tale of a fine and noble deed performed by a boy. This one is called The Little Patriot of Padua. Here it is.

“A French steamer set out from Barcelona, a city in Spain, for Genoa; there were on board Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, and Swiss. Among the rest was a lad of eleven, poorly clad, and alone, who always held himself aloof, like a wild animal, and stared at all with gloomy eyes. He had good reasons for looking at every one with forbidding eyes. Two years previous to this time his parents, peasants in the neighborhood of Padua, had sold him to a company of mountebanks, who, after they had taught him how to perform tricks, by dint of blows and kicks and starving, had carried him all over France and Spain, beating him continually and never giving him enough to eat.

“On his arrival in Barcelona, being no longer able to endure ill treatment and hunger, and being reduced to