KING UMBERTO
At ten o'clock precisely my father, looking from the window, saw Coretti, the wood-seller, and his son waiting for me in the square. So he said:—
“There they are, Enrico; go and see your King.”
I went like a flash. Both father and son were even more alert than usual, and they never seemed to me to resemble each other so strongly as this morning. The father wore on his jacket the medal for valor between two commemorative medals, and his moustaches were curled and as pointed as two pins.
We at once set out for the railway station, where the King was to arrive at half-past ten. Coretti, the father, smoked his pipe and rubbed his hands. “Do you know,” said he, “I have not seen him since the war of 'sixty-six? A trifle of fifteen years and six months. First, three years in France, and then at Mondovi, and here, where I might have seen him, I have never had the good luck of being in the city when he came. Such a piece of luck!”
He called the King “Umberto”, like a comrade. Umberto commanded the 16th division; Umberto was twenty-two years and so many days old; Umberto mounted a horse thus and so.
“Fifteen years!” he said vehemently, quickening his pace. “I really have a great desire to see him again. I left him a prince; I see him once more, a king. And I, too, have changed. From a soldier I have become a hawker of wood.” And he laughed.
“If he were to see you, would he remember you?” asked his son.
He began to laugh.
“You are crazy!” he answered. “That's quite another thing. He, Umberto, was one single man; we were as thick as flies. And then, he never looked at us one by one.”
We turned into the Course Victor Emanuel; there were many people on their way to the station. A company of Alpine soldiers passed with their trumpets. Two armed policemen passed by on horseback at a gallop. The day was calm and glorious.
“Yes!” exclaimed the elder Coretti, growing animated, “it is a real pleasure to me to see him once more, the general of my division. Ah, how quickly I have grown old! It seems as though it were only the other day that I had my knapsack on my shoulders and my gun in my hands, at that affair of the 24th of June, when we were on the point of coming to blows. Umberto was going to and fro with his officers, while the cannon were thundering in the distance; and every one was gazing at him and saying, 'May there not be a bullet for him also!' I was a thousand miles from thinking that I should soon find myself so near him, in front of the lances of the Austrian uhlans; actually, only four paces from each other, boys. That was a fine day; the sky was like a mirror; but so hot! Let us see if we can get in.”
We had arrived at the station; there was a great crowd,—carriages, policemen, carabineers, societies with banners. A regimental band was playing. The elder Coretti attempted to enter the portico, but he was stopped. Then it occurred to him to force his way into the front row of the crowd which formed an opening at the entrance; and making way with his elbow, he succeeded in thrusting us forward also. But the shifting crowd flung us hither and thither. The woodseller got his eye upon the first pillar of the portico, where the police did not allow any one to stand; “Come with me,” he said suddenly, dragging us by the hand; and he crossed the empty space 'in two- bounds, and went and planted himself there, .with his back against the wall.
A police brigadier instantly hurried up and said to him, “You can't stand here.”
“I belong to the fourth battalion of the forty-ninth,” replied Coretti, touching his medal.
The brigadier glanced at it, and said, “Stay where you are.”
“Didn't I say so!” exclaimed Coretti triumphantly; “it's a magic word, that fourth of the forty-ninth! Haven't I the right to see my general with some little comfort,—I, who was in that squadron? I saw him close at hand then; it seems right that I should see him close at hand now. And I say general! He was my battalion commander for a good half-hour; for at such times, while the racket was going, he commanded the battalion himself, and not Major Ubrich, by Heavens!”
In the meantime, in the reception-room and outside, a great mixture of officers and gentlemen was visible, and in front of the door, the carriages, with the lackeys dressed in red, were drawn up in a line.
Coretti asked his father whether Prince Umberto had carried his sword in his hand when he was in a battle.
“Certainly, he held his sword in his hand,” the latter replied, “to ward off a blow from a lance, which might strike him as well as another. Ah! those unchained demons! They came down on us like the wrath of God. They swept between the platoons, the squadrons, the cannon, as though tossed by a hurricane, crushing down everything. There was a whirl of light cavalry of Alessandria, of lancers of Foggia, of infantry, of sharp-shooters, a pandemonium in which nothing could be understood. I heard the shout, ‘Your Highness! your Highness!’ I saw the lowered lances approaching; we discharged our guns; a cloud of smoke hid everything. Then the smoke cleared away. The ground was covered with horses and uhlans, wounded or dead. I turned round, and beheld Umberto in our midst, on horseback, gazing tranquilly about, with the air of demanding, ‘Have any of my lads received a scratch?’ And we shouted, ‘Hurrah!’ right in his face, like madmen. Heavens, what a moment that was! Here's the train coming!”
The band struck up; the officers hastened forward; the crowd stood on tiptoe.
“Eh, he won't come out in a hurry,” said a policeman; “they are presenting him with an address now.”
The elder Coretti was beside himself with impatience.
“Ah! when I think of it,” he said, “I always see him there. Of course, there is cholera and there are earthquakes; and in them, too, he bears himself bravely; but I always have him before my mind as I saw him then, among us, with that quiet face. I am sure that he too recalls the fourth of the forty-ninth, even now that he is King; and that it would give him pleasure to have for once, at a table together, all those whom he saw about him at such moments. Now, he has generals, and great gentlemen, and courtiers; then, there was no one but us poor soldiers. If we could only exchange a few words alone! Our general of twenty-two; our prince, who was intrusted to our bayonets! I have not seen him for fifteen years. Our Umberto! that's what he is! Ah! that music stirs my blood, on my word of honor!”
An outburst of shouts interrupted him; thousands of hats rose in the air; four gentlemen dressed in black got into the first carriage.
“'Tis he!” cried Coretti, and stood as though enchanted. Then he said softly, “By our lady, how gray he has grown!”
We all three uncovered our heads. The carriage advanced slowly through the crowd, who shouted and waved their hats. I looked at the elder Coretti. He seemed to me another man; he seemed to have become taller, graver, rather pale, and fastened bolt upright against the pillar.
The carriage arrived in front of us, a pace distant from the pillar. “Hurrah!” shouted many voices.
“Hurrah!” shouted Coretti, after the others.
The King glanced at his face, and his eye dwelt for a moment on his three medals.
Then Coretti lost his head, and roared, “The fourth battalion of the forty-ninth!”
The King, who had turned away, turned towards us again, and looking Coretti straight in the eye, reached his hand out of the carriage.
Coretti gave one leap forwards and clasped it. The carriage passed on; the crowd broke in and separated us; we lost sight of the elder Coretti. But it was only for a moment. We found him again directly, panting, with wet eyes, calling for his son by name, and holding his hand on high. His son flew towards him, and he said, “Here, little one, while my hand is still warm!” and he passed his hand over the boy's face, saying, “This is a caress from the King.”
And there he stood, as though in a dream, with his eyes fixed on the distant carriage, smiling, with his pipe in his hand, in the centre of a group of curious people, who were staring at him. “He's one of the fourth battalion of the forty-ninth!” they said. “He is a soldier that knows the King.” “And the King recognized him.” “And he offered him his hand.” “He gave the King a petition,” said one, more loudly.
“No,” replied Coretti, whirling round abruptly; “I did not give him any petition. But there is something else that I would give him, if he were to ask it of me.”
They all stared at him.
“My blood,” he said simply.