Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/357

Rh there on the following Sunday, and go to the Victor Emanuel to see the distribution of prizes to the graduates of the evening schools.

What a beautiful day! How happy I should have been on my return home, had I not encountered my poor schoolmistress! I met her coming down the staircase of our house, almost in the dark, and, as soon as she recognized me, she took both my hands, and whispered in my ear, “Good-bye, Enrico; remember me!” I saw that she was weeping. I went up and told my mother about it.

“I have just met my schoolmistress.”

“She was just going to bed,” replied my mother, whose eyes were red. And then she added very sadly, looking straight at me, “Your poor teacher—is very ill.”

Sunday, 25th.

As we had agreed, we all went together to the Theatre Victor Emanuel, to view the distribution of prizes to the workingmen. The theatre was adorned as on the I4th of March, and thronged, but almost wholly with the families of workmen; and the pit was occupied by the male and female pupils of the school of choral singing. They sang a hymn to the soldiers who had died in the Crimea, which was so beautiful that, when it was finished, all rose and clapped and shouted, so that the song had to be repeated from the beginning. Then the prize-winners began to