The lessons of ‘Galateo’ were not enforced at dinner only.  Even at other times we were forbidden to raise our voices or interrupt the conversation of our elders, still more to quarrel with each other.  If sometimes as we went to dinner I rushed forward before Matilde, my father would take me by the arm and make me come last, saying, “There is no need to be uncivil because she is your sister.”  The old generation in many parts of Italy have the habit of shouting and raising their voices as if their interlocutor were deaf, interrupting him as if he had no right to speak, and poking him in the ribs and otherwise, as if he could only be convinced by sensations of bodily pain.  The regulations observed in my family were therefore by no means superfluous; and would to Heaven they were universally adopted as the law of the land!

On another occasion my excellent mother gave me a lesson of humility, which I shall never forget any more than the place where I received it.

In the open part of the Cascine, which was once used as a race-course, to the right of the space where the carriages stand, there is a walk alongside the wood.  I was walking there one day with my mother, followed by an old servant, a countryman of Pylades; less heroic than the latter, but a very good fellow too.  I forget why, but I raised a little cane I had in my hand, and I am afraid I struck him.  My mother, before all the passers-by, obliged me to kneel down and beg his pardon.  I can still see poor Giacolin taking off his hat with a face of utter bewilderment, quite unable to comprehend how it was that the Chevalier Massimo Taparelli d’Azeglio came to be at his feet.

An indifference to bodily pain was another of the precepts most carefully instilled by our father; and as usual, the lesson was made more impressive by example whenever an opportunity presented itself.  If, for instance, we complained of any slight pain or accident, our father used to say, half in fun, half in earnest, “When a Piedmontese has both his arms and legs broken, and has received two sword-thrusts in the body, he may be allowed to say, but not till then, ’Really, I almost think I am not quite well.’”

The moral authority he had acquired over me was so great that in no case would I have disobeyed him, even had he ordered me to jump out of window.

I recollect that when my first tooth was drawn, I was in an agony of fright as we went to the dentist; but outwardly I was brave enough, and tried to seem as indifferent as possible.  On another occasion my childish courage and also my father’s firmness were put to a more serious test.  He had hired a house called the Villa Billi, which stands about half a mile from San Domenico di Fiesole, on the right winding up toward the hill.  Only two years ago I visited the place, and found the same family of peasants still there, and my two old playmates, Nando and Sandro,—­who had both become even greater fogies than myself,—­and we had a hearty chat together about bygone times.