I do not bother about dreams; they mean nothing and make no difference. Reality is the only thing that matters.
Obviously he must be misshapen; I decided that long ago.
BOCCAROSSA HAS crossed the frontier at the head of four thousand men! Already he is four leagues from the border and il Toro has not yet recovered from the surprise attack!
Such is the tremendous news which aroused the town today like a thunderclap, the unprecedented occurrence which preoccupies all minds!
The great condottiere had assembled his mercenaries in deepest secrecy in the inaccessible mountain districts at the southwest frontier, and prepared the successful invasion with diabolical cunning. Nobody suspected a thing, not even we ourselves. Only the Prince, the originator of the masterly plan of attack! It is almost inconceivable! One scarcely dares believe it!
Now the days of the Montanzas draw to a close, and the detestable Lodovico, who is reported to be as hated by his own people as by us, will at last crack his bull neck and shut up the story of his shameless clan.
He has been completely hoodwinked, the cunning scoundrel! Undoubtedly he suspected that the Prince was planning to attack him, but he knew that no army was being set up here, and so he was lulled into security. And least of all did he expect an onslaught in that part of the country where the ground is so impassable and where he has no border fortresses! It is the end of il Toro! His day of reckoning has come!
The atmosphere in the town is indescribable. People crowd excitedly together in the streets, gesticulating and talking; or they stand in silence watching the troops march by, the Prince’s own troops which are now being concentrated, though no one knows where they have come from. It is as though they had sprung from the earth. One can see that everything was very carefully and secretly prepared. All the bells are ringing and the churches are crammed to bursting. The priests pray earnestly for the war and obviously it has the blessing of the church. How could it be otherwise? This is going to be a glorious war!
All the people are rejoicing, and here at court there is no limit to the admiration and enthusiasm for the Prince.
OUR OWN troops are going to another sector. They will cross the border to the east in the broad river valley, the old classic road of attack. It is only a day’s march away, and there on the level, where the ground is suited to a regular battle and the soil watered with glorious blood, they will join up with the condottiere’s army. That is the plan of campaign! I have worked it out!
I do not know for certain that that is the plan, but I have picked up bits here and there and come to that conclusion. I am busy finding out everything, keeping up with everything, listening at keyholes, hiding behind cupboards and curtains to hear as much as possible of the great impending events.
What a plan of attack! And of course it must succeed. There are fortresses on that section of the border, but they will fall. Maybe they will surrender straightway, knowing the hopelessness of resistance. Maybe they will be stormed. In any case, they will not stop us. Nothing can stop us, since the initial assault came as such a surprise, catching them unawares.
And the Prince-what a general! What a sly fox! Such cunning, such foresight! And what grandeur in the whole plan of campaign!
It fills me with pride to be the dwarf of such a prince.
I can think of one thing only: how can I go to the war? I must. But how? How can my dream be realized? I have no military training in the ordinary sense such as is necessary to an officer or even a common soldier. But I can bear arms! And fence like a man! My rapier is as good as anybody’s! Maybe not quite so long, but a short sword is not the least dangerous! The enemy will soon find that outl
This constant brooding makes me ill, the fear of being left behind with the women and children, of not being allowed to go along when at last something is actually happening. And the bloodiest slaughter may be just now, at the very beginning.
I crave blood!
I AM GOING with them! I am going with them!
This morning I plucked up my courage and confided in the Prince, telling him my burning wish to share in the campaign. I presented my request with such passion that it made an obvious impression on him. Also I was fortunate enough to arrive at a time when he was in a particularly favorable mood. He passed his hand over his cropped fringed hair as is his wont when in good humor and his black eyes glittered as he looked at me.
Naturally I could go to war, he said. He was going himself and would take me along as a matter of course. Can a prince be without his dwarf? Who else would pour his wine, he added, smiling at rne.
I am going with them! I am going with them!
AT PRESENT I am in a tent on a mound with a few pine trees, from which one has an excellent view of the enemy on the level ground below. The tent is in the Prince’s colors, striped with red and yellow, and its rattlings are as stimulating as a fanfare of trumpets. I am fully armed, just like the Prince, with breastplate and helmet, and my sword in a silver baldric by my side. It is near sunset, and for the moment I am alone. I can hear the officers’ voices planning the morrow’s attack, and in the distance the gay melodious songs of the soldiers. I can glimpse il Toro’s black-and-white tent down below and the men about it looking so small as to be innocuous; far off to the left are unarmed knights, stripped to the waist, watering their horses in the river.
We have been in the field for more than a week, and the time has been crammed with great happenings. The campaign has developed exactly as I prophesied. We stormed the border forts after bombarding them with Messer Bernardo’s excellent culverins; the effect of their awe-inspiring cannonade was unsurpassed, and terrorized the garrison into surrender. Il Toro sent inadequate troops against us, taken from the forces with which he was trying to check Boccarossa’s advance, and we have fought some fierce skirmishes with them. However, they were vastly inferior to us, so the victory has always been ours. During this time Boccarossa’s army, opposed to ever weakening and dwindling troops, has pressed forward over the lowlands, burning and pillaging and always bearing north in order to make contact with us. This longed-for and vital objective was attained at midday yesterday, and now we stand together on the slopes between the lowland and the mountains, a combined host of more than fifteen thousand men, including two thousand horsemen.
I was present at the meeting between the Prince and his condottiere. It was a historic moment, never to be forgotten. The Prince, who has been rejuvenated these days in a manner which arouses general admiration, was clad in a suit of splendid armor, with breastplate and armpieces of silver gilt. On his helmet were plumes of yellow and red which dipped and swayed as, surrounded by his foremost captains, he courteously greeted his celebrated brother in arms. For once there was a faint color on his pale and aristocratic face and the thin lips were curved in a candid and friendly smile which, like everything else connected with him, was yet reticent and somewhat cautious. Opposite him stood Boccarossa, broad and powerful, with a body that, to me, seemed gigantic. I had a peculiar sensation of never having seen him before. He had come straight from the battle. He wore steel armor, very plain in comparison with that of the Prince, and its only adornment was a beast’s head in bronze on the cuirass, an enraged lion whose tongue protruded from its gaping jaws. His helmet had no crest and no ornament of any kind, but fitted close to that head of his which seemed the most terrifying I had ever seen. The jaw alone of that fat pockmarked visage was enough to inspire awe; the thick blackish red lips were pressed together into a mouth which seemed incapable of opening, and the expression which crouched brooding within the eyes might force an adversary into submission without ever leaving them, merely by showing that it was there. He was a frightening sight, but more of a man than anybody else whom I ever have met. I must admit that he made such an impression on me that I may never be able to rid myself of it. He was a revelation of something-I know not what. Perhaps of humanity when it really is capable of something. As though bewitched, I stood and scrutinized him with that ancient gaze of mine which has already witnessed everything, with my dwarf’s eyes in which all the centuries dwell.