Heart (de Amicis)/Spring
APRIL
SPRING
Saturday, 1st.
The first of April! Only three months more! This has been one of the most beautiful mornings of the year. I was happy in school because Coretti told me to come day after to-morrow to see the King make his entrance. We will go with his father, who knows him. Also my mother had promised to take me the same day to visit the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco. I was pleased, too, because “the little mason” is better, and because the teacher said to my father yesterday evening as he was passing, “He is doing well; he is doing well.”
And then it was a beautiful spring morning. From the school windows we could see the blue sky, the trees of the garden all covered with buds, and the wide-open windows of the houses, with their boxes and vases already growing green. The teacher did not laugh, because he never laughs; but he was in good humor, so that the wrinkle hardly ever appeared on his brow; and he explained a problem on the blackboard, and jested. And it was plain that he felt a pleasure in breathing the air of the gardens which entered through the open window, redolent with the fresh odor of earth and leaves, which suggested thoughts of country rambles.
While he was explaining, we could hear in a neighboring street a blacksmith hammering on his anvil, and in the house opposite a woman singing to lull her baby to sleep. Far away, in the Cernaia barracks, the trumpets were sounding. Every one seemed glad, even Stardi. Presently the blacksmith began to hammer more vigorously, the woman to sing more loudly. The teacher paused and lent an ear. Then he said, slowly, as he gazed out of the window:—
“The smiling sky, a singing mother, an honest man at work, boys at study,—these are beautiful things.”
When we left school, we saw that every one else was cheerful also. All walked in a line, stamping loudly with their feet, and humming, as though on the eve of a four days' vacation, The schoolmistresses were playful; the one with the red feather tripped along behind the children like a schoolgirl. The parents of the boys were chatting together and smiling, and Crossi's mother, the vegetable-vendor, had so many bunches of violets in her basket, that they filled the whole large hall with perfume.
I have never felt so glad as this morning on catching sight of my mother, who was waiting for me in the street. And I said to her as I ran to meet her:—
“Oh, I am happy! what is it that makes me so happy to-day?”
And my mother answered smilingly that it was the beautiful season and a good conscience.