"Enrico, you are going to the floor above this year. I shall never see you pass by any more"! and she gazed sadly at me. The director was surrounded by women in distress because there was no room for their sons, and it struck me that his beard was a little whiter than it had been last year. I found the boys had grown taller and stouter. On the ground floor, where the divisions had already been made, there were little children of the first and lowest section, who did not want to enter the class-rooms, and who resisted like donkeys: it was necessary to drag them in by force, and some escaped from the benches; others, when they saw their parents depart, began to cry, and the parents had to go back and comfort and reprimand them, and the teachers were in despair.
“安利柯!你现在要到楼上去了!此后见不到你走过我的教室了!”说着,恋恋地看我。校长被妇人们围着,头发好像比以前白了。学生们也比夏天的时候健壮长高了许多。才来入一年级的小孩子们像驴子似的倔强,不愿走到教室里去,勉强拉了进去,有的仍旧逃出,有的因为找不着父母,哭了起来。做父母的只得又返回来,有的哄着,有的叱骂,老师们也弄得没有法子了。
My little brother was placed in the class of Mistress Delcati. I was put with Master Perboni, up stairs on the first floor. At ten o'clock we were all in our classes: fifty-four of us; only fifteen or sixteen of my companions of the second class, among them, Derossi, the one who always gets the first prize. The school seemed to me so small and gloomy when I thought of the woods and the mountains where I had passed the summer! I thought again, too, of my master in the second class, who was so good, and who always smiled at us, and was so small that he seemed to be one of us, and I grieved that I should no longer see him there, with his tumbled red hair. Our teacher is tall; he has no beard; his hair is gray and long; and he has a perpendicular wrinkle on his forehead; he has a big voice, and he looks at us fixedly, one after the other, as though he were reading our inmost thoughts; and he never smiles. I said to myself:
我的弟弟被编入在名叫代尔卡谛的女老师所教的一组里。十点时,大家进了教室,我们班共有五十五人。其中十五六个是我三年级的同学,惯得一等奖的代洛西也在里面。一想起暑假中跑来跑去游过的山林,觉得学校里暗闷得讨厌。又忆起三年级时候的老师来:那是常常对着我们笑的好老师,是和我们差不多高的老师。那个老师的红而卷拢的头发已不能看见了,一想到此,就有点难过。这次的老师,身材高长,没有胡须,长长地留着花白的头发,额上有一道笔直的皱纹,说话声大,他瞪着眼一个一个地看我们时候,眼光竟像要透到我们心里似的。而且还是一位没有笑容的老师。我想:
"This is my first day. There are nine months more. What toil, what monthly examinations, what fatigue!"
“唉!今天才刚刚开始,还有九个月呢!什么用功,什么月试,多讨厌啊!”
I really needed to see my mother when I came out, and I ran to kiss her hand. She said to me: "Courage, Enrico! we will study together".
一出教室,恨不得就看见母亲,飞跑到母亲面前去吻她的手。母亲说:“安利柯啊!要用心啊,我们将一起学习!”
And I returned home content. But I no longer have my master, with his kind, merry smile, and school does not seem pleasant to me as it did before.
我高高兴兴地回家了。可是因为那位亲爱而快活的老师已不在,感觉这学校也不如以前的有趣了。