Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/61

 turned to look; it was an old man who wore in his button-hole the blue ribbon of the Crimean campaign—a pensioned officer. “Bravo!” he said; “you have done a noble deed.”

In the meantime, the band of the regiment had made a turn at the end of the Corso, surrounded by a throng of boys, and a hundred merry shouts accompanied the blasts of the trumpets, like a war-song.

“Bravo!” repeated the old officer, as he gazed upon us; “he who respects the flag when he is little will know how to defend it when he is grown up.”

Wednesday, 23d.

Nelli, too, poor little hunchback! was looking at the soldiers yesterday, but with an air as though he were thinking, “I can never be a soldier!” He is good, and he studies; but he is so puny and wan, and he breathes with difficulty. He always wears a long apron of shining black cloth. His mother is a little blonde woman who dresses in black. She always comes to get him at the end of school, so that he may not come out in the crowd with the others, and she pets him. At first many of the boys ridiculed him, and thumped him on the back with their bags, because he is so unfortunate as to be a hunchback; but he never offered any resistance, nor said anything to his mother, in order not to give her the pain of knowing that her son was the laughing-stock of his companions. They jeered at him, and he cried quietly, with his head laid against the bench.