out. These two, with the father and mother following behind, took their way towards the door, making a path with difficulty among the people who formed in line to let them pass,—policemen, boys, soldiers, women, all mingled together in confusion. All pressed forwards and raised on tiptoe to see the boy. Those who stood near him as he passed, touched his hand. When he passed before the schoolboys, they all waved their caps in the air. Those from Borgo Po made a great uproar, pulling him by the arms and by his jacket and shouting, “Pin! hurrah for Pin! bravo, Pinot!” I saw him as he passed very close to me. His face was all aflame and happy; his medal had a red, white, and green ribbon. His mother was crying and smiling; his father was twirling his moustache with one hand, which quivered violently, as though he had a fever. And from the windows and the balconies the people continued to lean out and applaud.
All at once, when they were on the point of entering the portico, there fell from the balcony of the Daughters of Soldiers a veritable shower of pansies, of bunches of violets and daisies, which dropped upon the head of the boy, and of his father and mother, and scattered over the ground. Many people stooped to pick them up and hand them to the mother. And the band at the further end of the courtyard played, very, very softly, a most entrancing air, which seemed like a song by a great many silvery voices fading slowly into the distance on the banks of a river.
