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Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/151

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THE PRISONER
127

move again, and the woman to shriek in a way that rent the heart:

“He is dead! He is dead! He is dead!|He is dead! He is dead! He is dead!”

“No, no; he is not dead,” people on all sides said to her. But she paid no heed to them, and tore her hair.

Then I heard an indignant voice say, “You are laughing!” and at the same moment I saw a bearded man staring in Franti's smiling face. Then the man knocked Franti's cap to the ground with his stick, saying:—

“Uncover your head, you wicked boy, when a man wounded by labor is passing by!”

The crowd had already passed, and a long streak of blood was to be seen in the middle of the street.




THE PRISONER

Friday, 17th.

Ah, this is certainly the strangest event of the whole year! Yesterday morning my father took me to the suburbs of Moncalieri, to look at a villa which he thought of hiring for the coming summer, because we shall not go to Chieri again this year, and it turned out that the person who had the keys was a teacher who acts as secretary to the owner. He showed us the house, and then he took us to his own room, where he gave us something to drink. On his table, among the glasses, there was a wooden inkstand, of a conical form, carved in a singular manner. Noting that my father was looking at it, the teacher said:—