Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/58

 Poor head-master! he is always the first at his post in the morning, waiting for the scholars and lending an ear to the parents; and when the other masters are already on their way home, he is still hovering about the school, and looking out that the boys do not get under the carriage-wheels, or hang about the streets to stand on their heads, or fill their bags with sand or stones. And the moment he appears at a corner, so tall and black, flocks of boys scamper off in all directions, leaving their games of coppers and marbles, and he threatens them from afar with his forefinger, with his sad and loving air. No one has ever seen him smile, my mother says, since the death of his son, who was a volunteer in the army: he always keeps the latter's portrait before his eyes, on a little table in his room. He wanted to go away after this misfortune; he wrote his resignation to the Municipal Council, and kept it always on his table, putting off sending it from day to day, because it grieved him to leave the boys.

The other day he seemed undecided; and my father, who was in the director's room with him, was just saying to him, “What a shame it is that you are going away, Signor Director!” when a man came in to put down the name of a boy who was to be transferred from another schoolhouse to ours, because he had changed his residence. At the sight of this boy, the principal made a gesture of astonishment, gazed at him for a while, looked at the portrait that he keeps on his little table, and then stared at the boy again, as he drew him between his knees, and made him hold up his head. The boy resembled his dead son. The