THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES TO THE WORKINGMEN.
As we had agreed, we all went together to the Theatre Vittorio Emanuele, to view the distribution of prizes to the workingmen. The theatre was adorned as on the 14th of March, and thronged, but almost wholly with the families of workmen; and the pit was occupied with the male and female pupils of the school of choral singing. These sang a hymn to the soldiers who had died in the Crimea; which was so beautiful that, when it was finished, all rose and clapped and shouted, so that the song had to be repeated from the beginning. And then the prize-winners began immediately to march past the mayor, the prefect, and many others, who presented them with books, savings-bank books, diplomas, and medals. In one corner of the pit I espied the little mason, sitting beside his mother; and in another place there was the head-master; and behind him, the red head of my master of the second grade.
The first to defile were the pupils of the evening drawing classes--the goldsmiths, engravers, lithographers, and also the carpenters and masons; then those of the commercial school; then those of the Musical Lyceum, among them several girls, workingwomen, all dressed in festal attire, who were saluted with great applause, and who laughed. Last came the pupils of the elementary evening schools, and then it began to be a beautiful sight. They were of all ages, of all trades, and dressed in all sorts of ways,--men with gray hair, factory boys, artisans with big black beards. The little ones were at their ease; the men, a little embarrassed. The people clapped the oldest and the youngest, but none of the spectators laughed, as they did at our festival: all faces were attentive and serious.
Many of the prize-winners had wives and children in the pit, and there were little children who, when they saw their father pass across the stage, called him by name at the tops of their voices, and signalled to him with their hands, laughing violently. Peasants passed, and porters; they were from the Buoncompagni School. From the Cittadella School there was a bootblack whom my father knew, and the prefect gave him a diploma. After him I saw approaching a man as big as a giant, whom I fancied that I had seen several times before. It was the father of the little mason, who had won the second prize. I remembered when I had seen him in the garret, at the bedside of his sick son, and I immediately sought out his son in the pit. Poor little mason! he was staring at his father with beaming eyes, and, in order to conceal his emotion, he made his hare's face. At that moment I heard a burst of applause, and I glanced at the stage: a little chimney-sweep stood there, with a clean face, but in his working-clothes, and the mayor was holding him by the hand and talking to him.