MY DEAD SCHOOLMISTRESS
While we were at the Theatre Victor Emanuel, my poor schoolmistress died. She died at two o'clock, a week after she had come to see my mother. The principal came to the school yesterday morning to announce it to us; and he said:—
“Those of you who were her pupils know how good she was, how she loved her boys; she was a mother to them. Now, she is no more. For a long time a terrible malady has been sapping her life. If she had not been obliged to work to earn her bread, she could have taken care of herself, and perhaps recovered. At all events, she could have prolonged her life for several months, if she had obtained a leave of absence. But she wished to remain among her boys to the very last day. On the evening of Saturday, the seventeenth, she took leave of them, with the certainty that she should never see them again. She gave them good advice, kissed them all, and went away sobbing. No one will ever see her again. Remember her, my boys!”
Little Precossi, who had been one of her pupils in the upper primary, dropped his head on his desk and began to cry.
Yesterday afternoon, after school, we all went together to the house of the dead woman, to accompany her body to church. There was a hearse in the street, with two horses, and many people were waiting, and conversing in a low voice. There was the principal, and all the masters and mistresses from our school, and from the other schoolhouses where she had taught in bygone years. There were nearly all the little children in her classes, led by the hand by their mothers, who carried tapers; and there were a very great many from the other classes, and fifty scholars from the Baretti School, some with wreaths in their hands, some with bunches of roses.
A great many bouquets of flowers had already been placed on the hearse, upon which was fastened a large wreath of acacia, with an inscription in black letters: The old pupils of the fourth grade to their mistress. And under the large wreath a little one was suspended, which the babies had brought. Among the crowd were seen many servant-women, who had been sent by their mistresses with candles; and there were also two serving-men in livery, with lighted torches; and a wealthy gentleman, the father of one of the mistress's scholars, had sent his carriage, lined with blue satin. All were crowded together near the door. Several girls were wiping away their tears.
We waited for a while in silence. At length the casket was brought out. Some of the little ones began to cry loudly when they saw the coffin put into the hearse, and one began to shriek, as though he had only then realized that his mistress was dead; and he was seized with such a convulsive fit of sobbing, that they were obliged to carry him away.
The procession got slowly into line and set out. First came the daughters of the Ritiro della Concezione, dressed in green; then the daughters of Maria, all in white, with a blue ribbon; then the priests; and behind the hearse, the masters and mistresses, the tiny scholars of the upper primary, and all the others; and, at the end of all, the crowd. People came to the windows and to the doors, and on seeing all those boys, and the wreath, they said, “It is a schoolmistress.” Even some of the ladies who went with the smallest children wept.
When the church was reached, the casket was removed from the hearse, and carried to the middle of the nave, in front of the great altar: the mistresses laid their wreaths on it, the children covered it with flowers, and the people all about, with lighted candles in their hands, began to chant the prayers in the vast and gloomy church. Then, all of a sudden, when the priest had said the last amen, the candles were extinguished, and all went away in haste, and the mistress was left alone. Poor mistress, who was so kind to me, who had so much patience, who had toiled for so many years! She has left to her scholars her little books and everything which she possessed, to one an inkstand, to another a little picture. Two days before her death, she said to the headmaster that he was not to allow the smallest of them to go to her funeral, because she did not wish them to cry.
She has done good, she has suffered, she is dead! Poor mistress, left alone in that dark church! Farewell! Farewell forever, my kind friend, sad and sweet memory of my childhood!