Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/104

84 at Pampinara, and entered the count's service when he was five year-old; his father was also a shepherd, who owned a small nock, and lived by the wool and the milk, which he sold at Rome. When quite a child, the little Vampa was of a most extraordinary disposition. One day, when he was seven years old, he came to the cure of Palestrina, and prayed him to teach him to read. It was somewhat difficult, for he could not leave his flock; but the good cure went every day to say mass at a little hamlet too poor to pay a priest, and which, having no other name, was called Borgo; he told Luigi that he might meet him on his return, and that then he would give him a lesson, warning him that it would be short, and that he must profit as much as possible by it. The child accepted joyfully. Every day Luigi led his flock to graze on the road that leads from Palestrino to Borgo; every day, at nine o'clock in the morning, the priest and the boy sat down on a bank by the wayside, and the little shepherd took his lesson out of the priest's breviary. At the end of three months he had learned to read. This was not enough; he must now learn to write. The priest had made, by a teacher of writing at Rome, three alphabets, one large, one middling, and one small, and pointed out to him that by the help of a sharp instrument he could trace the letters on a slate, and thus learn to write. The same evening, when the flock was safe at the farm, the little Luigi hastened to the smith at Palestrina, took a large nail, forged it, sharpened it, and formed a sort of style. The next morning he had collected a quantity of slates, and commenced. At the end of three months he had learned to write. The cure, astonished at his quickness and intelligence, made him a present of pens, paper, and a penknife. This was a fresh labor, but nothing compared to the first; at the end of a week he wrote as well with the pen as with the style. The cure related this anecdote to the Count di San-Felice, who sent for the little shepherd, made him read and write before him, ordering his attendant to let him eat with the domestics and to give him two piastres a month. With this, Luigi purchased books and pencils. He applied to everything his imitative powers, and, like Giotto when young, he drew on his slate sheep, houses, and trees. Then, with his knife, he began to carve^all sorts of objects in wood; it was thus that Pinelli, the famous sculptor, had commenced.

"A girl of six or seven—that is, a little younger than Vampa tended sheep on a farm near Palestrina; she was an orphan, born at Valmontone, and was named Teresa. The two children met, sat down near each other, let their flocks mingle together, played, laughed, and conversed together; in the evening they separated the flock of the Count di San-Felice from those of the Baron di Cervetri, and the children returned to their respective farms, promising to meet the next