OUR SCHOOL AND SCHOOLMISTRESS.
We used to go to school, Sofia and I, with a certain Signora Romola. They were very lavish with Greek and Roman names in our village in those days. Teofilo, Pompeo, Lucrezia, Collatino, Quintilia, were appellations frequently bestowed in baptism. Signora Romola was a strongly-built woman, plump and ruddy of face, and with a soft voice, too soft indeed for the air of severity which she wished to assume. It was her aim to strike awe into us with a glance. In fact we scarcely dared to breathe in her presence, by reason of that terrible glance which slowly swept the class, and she always used to say that it was quite sufficient. “I make them tremble with a glance,” she often told people; and as soon as she made her majestic entrance into school there was immediate silence, a fact of which she was very proud. They used to say she had been a beauty in her youth; I would not be persuaded of the truth of this statement. Her husband was Signor Capponio the chemist, who formed a complete contrast to her. He was a long, thin, thread-paper of a man, with a pair of great spectacles on his big nose, and sharp chin and cheek-bones which seemed to make a triangle in hishonest face. He always wore a buffalo-skin cap, with a peak curved like a bird’s beak. I always imagined that he must have come into the world in that cap; I never saw him without it. He could play the flute, and often performed a tune for us boys during our play-hour, stamping vivaciously with one foot, and accompanying with his head, no less vivaciously, the motion of his fingers on the keys. We stood around him with our noses in the air, as though we had been gazing up at the top of a church tower, and held out our arms trying to seize the instrument, whose construction we were eager to examine; but, refusing to let go, he played on as vigorously as before—or even more so—and at last made his escape, saying, “You’ll spoil it! you’ll spoil it!” He had the name of a learned man; and he must, by what I have heard, have understood something of botany; but I think his reputation was really founded on certain sentences from Hippocrates and Galen, in Latin, written up in gilt letters over the shelves in his ancient shop. The gilding of the letters had turned black by reason of the flies which swarmed there, on which, in the summer, Capponio used to wage war—standing in the middle of his shop—by means of a stick with long strips of paper attached to it. I do not remember one of his many proverbs. He must have had a large stock of them, for it was often said, “As Capponio says, with his proverb! Eh!—honest man—heknows a lot about the world!” I used to think that the proverb was a person very much like Capponio himself—buffalo-skin cap and all—but still taller and more serious—appearing now here, now there—always unexpected, and at other times invisible.
Capponio was a great institution among us. Whenever we saw him we rushed up to him, dragging him by the skirts of his long, double-breasted, snuff-coloured coat. And then he would lift us up to let us see Lucca,[27]or showus how to turn somersaults. If, passing through the school-room, he saw one of us on his knees, with the fool’s cap on his head, or his eyes blindfolded, he would try to make fun of his wife’s austerities. She would sometimes inflict punishments even more humiliating than these—for instance, that most terrible one of all, of having to make crosses on the ground with one’s tongue.
“Come, come no sorrow—If you’re not cured to-day, it will cure you to-morrow!”
“Come, come no sorrow—If you’re not cured to-day, it will cure you to-morrow!”
“Come, come no sorrow—If you’re not cured to-day, it will cure you to-morrow!”
“Come, come no sorrow—
If you’re not cured to-day, it will cure you to-morrow!”
Capponio used to say, in a nasal tone, to make the children cease crying and begin to laugh instead, which, in fact, they did; and Sora Romola, who claimed an infallible knowledge of “how to bring up young people,” grew uneasy and said that Capponio was getting us into very bad ways. But we were fonder of Capponio than ever, especially as he was always giving us something—a bunch of grapes, an orange, a pomegranate, or sticks of barley-sugar made by himself. I was particularly fond of these last. In fact, I once succeeded in perpetrating a crime which weighed heavily on my mind. One day I was not allowed to go home at twelve, but kept in to learn my lessons alone, in school. Tired of catching flies, I went down very softly into the shop while Capponio was at dinner. There was no one there but a big cat comfortably asleep on the counter, near the scales. I felt certain that the cat would not report my theft to any one, and very quickly, with my heart beating in a way that is not to be described, I filled my pockets with the delicious transparent morsels, and ate at least half a jar full, being determined, for once in my life, to have really as many as I wanted. But Capponio found it out; and, laying the blame on Camillo, the shop boy, ran after him and seized him by the ear, crying, “Ah! you greedy rascal! I’ve caught you!” When I saw the innocent accused I could hold out no longer, and, coming forward,I blurted out, “It was I!” ... I remembered standing there, very red, with my eyes on the ground, and expecting a sound box on the ear. But Capponio only said, “Will you promise me not to do it again?” “Yes, sir.” “Mind you don’t, then. This time I will forgive you, because you have told the truth; but if you ever do it again I shall tell Sora Romola, and then woe be to you!”
Mario Pratesi.
Mario Pratesi.
Mario Pratesi.
Mario Pratesi.