There is something beneath that low forehead, in those turbid eyes, kept nearly concealed under the visor of his small cap of waxed cloth, which inspires a shudder. He fears no one. He laughs in the master's face. He steals when he gets a chance and denies it brazenly. He is always in a quarrel with some one. He brings big pins to school, to prick his neighbors with. He tears the buttons from his own jackets and from those of others, and plays with them.
His paper, books, and copy-books are all crushed, torn, dirty. His ruler is jagged, his pens gnawed, his nails bitten, his clothes covered with stains and rents which he has got in his brawls. They say that his mother has fallen ill from the trouble that he causes her, and that his father has driven him from the house three times. His mother comes every now and then to make inquiries, and she always goes away in tears. He hates the school, he hates his companions, he hates the teacher. The master sometimes pretends not to see his rascalities, and he behaves all the worse. The master tried to get a hold on him by kind treatment, and the boy ridiculed him for it. The master said terrible things to him, and the boy covered his face with his hands, as though he were crying; but he was laughing. He was suspended from school for three days, and he came back more perverse and insolent than before. Derossi said to him one day, “Stop it! don't you see how much the teacher suffers?” and the other threatened to stick a nail into his stomach.
But this morning, at last, he got himself driven out like a dog. While the master was giving to Garrone the rough draft of The Sardinian Drummer-Boy, the
