With all
my force I adored my pale, lovely, Madonna-like mother, but all the
same, as I trotted toward the priest with a satchel on my back, I used
to think, Would it be very wicked to throw the books into the river and
run away to the fields? And, in truth, I used to run away very often,
scampering over the country around Orte like a mountain-hare, climbing
the belfries of the churches, pulling off their weathercocks or setting
their bells a-ringing--doing a thousand and one mischievous antics; but
I always returned at nightfall to my mother's side. It seemed to me it
would be cruel and cowardly to leave her, for she had but me in the
world.

"You promise to be sensible and quiet, Pippo?" the poor soul always
murmured. And I used to say "Yes," and mean it. But can a bird promise
not to fly when it feels in its instincts the coming of spring? Can a
young colt promise not to fling out his limbs when he feels the yielding
turf beneath his hoofs?

I never wished to be disobedient, but, somehow, ten minutes after I was
out of her sight I was high above on some tower or belfry, with the
martens and the pigeons circling about my curly head. I was so happy on
high there, looking down on all the old town misty with dust, the men
and women like ants on an antheap, the historic river like a mere
ribbon, yellow and twisted, the palaces and the tombs all hidden under
the same gray veil of summer dust! I was so happy there!--and they spoke
of making me into a monk, or, if I would not hear of that, of turning me
into a clerk in a notary's office!

A monk? a clerk? when all the trees cried out to me to climb and all the
birds called to me to fly! I used to cry about it with hot tears that
stung my face like lashes, lying with my head hidden on my arms in the
grass by the old Tiber water. For I was not twelve years old, and to be
shut up in Orte always, growing gray and wrinkled as the notary had done
over the wicked, crabbed, evil-looking skins that set the neighbors at
war! The thought broke my heart. Nevertheless, I loved my mother, and I
mended my quills, and tried to write my best, and said to the boys of
the town, "I cannot bend iron or leap or race any more. I am going to
write for my bread in the notary's office a year hence, for my mother
wishes it, and so it must be."

And I did my best not to look up to the jackdaws circling round the
towers or the old river running away to Rome. For all the waters cried
to me to leap,