Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/57

 station; and he makes all sorts of frightful faces; though he never punishes any one, but always smiles the while behind his beard, so that no one can see it. There are eight masters in all, including Coatti, and a little, beardless assistant, who looks like a boy. There is one master of the fourth class, who is lame and goes wrapped up in a big woollen scarf, and who is always suffering from pains which he contracted when he was a teacher in the country, in a damp school, where the walls were dripping with moisture. Another of the teachers of the fourth is old and perfectly white-haired, and has been a teacher of the blind. There is one welldressed master, with eye-glasses, and a blonde moustache, who is called the little lawyer, because, while he was teaching, he studied law and took his diploma; and he also got up a book to teach how to write letters. The one who teaches gymnastics is of a soldierly type, and was with Garibaldi, and has on his neck a scar from a sabre wound received at the battle of Milazzo.

Then there is the principal, who is tall and bald, and wears gold spectacles, and has a gray beard that flows down upon his breast; he dresses entirely in black, and is always buttoned up to the chin. He is so kind to the boys, that when they enter his office, all in a tremble, because they have been summoned to receive a reproof, he does not scold them, but takes them by the hand, and tells them so many reasons why they ought not to behave so, and why they should be sorry, and promise to be good, and he speaks in such a kind manner, and in so gentle a voice, that they all come out with red eyes, more confused than if they had been punished.