Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Italian).djvu/156

148 "There he is!"—the voice of the little cousin to whom he had said good-bye, two years before, in her parents' presence, reassured only by the non-committal phrase: "Well, well, go to college first and make a man of yourself; then we'll see."

Already we saw ourselves surrounded by children eager to finger our sabres, by girls who signed to us as we passed, by old men who clapped us on the shoulder, by mothers crying, "How splendidly he looks!" So that it was with the greatest difficulty that we shook off this importunate folk, saying to ourselves: "Presently, presently, all in good time; but just now, really, you must let us be!"

Then, each following the bent of his disposition, his habits, and his plans, we confided to one another the regiment, province, and city to which we hoped to be assigned. Some of us longed for the noise and merriment of the Milanese carnivals, and dreamed of theatres, balls and convivial suppers. One sighed for a sweet Tuscan village, perched on a hilltop, where, in command of his thirty men, he might spend the peaceful spring days in collecting songs and proverbs among the country-folk. Another longed to carry on his studies in the unbroken solitude of a lonely Alpine fortress, hemmed in by ravines and precipices. One of us craved a life of adventure in the Calabrian forests; another, the activities of some great seaboard city; a third, an