Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/361

Rh months, if she had obtained a leave of absence. But she wished to remain among her boys to the very last day. On the evening of Saturday, the seventeenth, she took leave of them, with the certainty that she should never see them again. She gave them good advice, kissed them all, and went away sobbing. No one will ever see her again. Remember her, my boys!”

Little Precossi, who had been one of her pupils in the upper primary, dropped his head on his desk and began to cry.

Yesterday afternoon, after school, we all went together to the house of the dead woman, to accompany her body to church. There was a hearse in the street, with two horses, and many people were waiting, and conversing in a low voice. There was the principal, and all the masters and mistresses from our school, and from the other schoolhouses where she had taught in bygone years. There were nearly all the little children in her classes, led by the hand by their mothers, who carried tapers; and there were a very great many from the other classes, and fifty scholars from the Baretti School, some with wreaths in their hands, some with bunches of roses.

A great many bouquets of flowers had already been placed on the hearse, upon which was fastened a large wreath of acacia, with an inscription in black letters: The old pupils of the fourth grade to their mistress. And under the large wreath a little one was suspended, which the babies had brought. Among the crowd were seen many servant-women, who had been sent by their mistresses with candles; and there were also two serving-men in livery, with lighted torches; and a