f the upper first, who was almost in a swoon. At the same
moment I felt a touch on the elbow; it was the little mason, who was
ghastly white and trembling from head to foot. He was certainly thinking
of his father. I was thinking of him, too. I, at least, am at peace in
my mind while I am in school: I know that my father is at home, seated
at his table, far removed from all danger; but how many of my companions
think that their fathers are at work on a very high bridge or close to
the wheels of a machine, and that a movement, a single false step, may
cost them their lives! They are like so many sons of soldiers who have
fathers in the battle. The little mason gazed and gazed, and trembled
more and more, and my father noticed it and said:--

"Go home, my boy; go at once to your father, and you will find him safe
and tranquil; go!"

The little mason went off, turning round at every step. And in the
meanwhile the crowd had begun to move again, and the woman to shriek in
a way that rent the heart, "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 face. Then the man knocked his 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 visible 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. Perceiving
that my father was looking at it, the teacher said:--

"That inkstand is very precious to me: if you only knew, sir, the
history of that inkstand!" And he told it.

Years ago he was a teacher at Turin, and all one winter he went to give
lessons to the prisoners in the judicial prison. He gave the lessons in
the ch