“There shall be great want”

I
MONGIBELLO

Towards the end of the seventies there was in Palermo a poor boy whose name was Gaetano Alagona. That was lucky for him! If he had not been one of the old Alagonas people would have let him starve to death. He was only a child, and had neither money nor parents. The Jesuits of Santa Maria i Jesu had taken him out of charity into the cloister school.

One day, when studying his lesson, a father came and called him from the school-room, because a cousin wished to see him. What, a cousin! He had always heard that all his relatives were dead. But Father Josef insisted that it was a real Signora, who was his relative and wished to take him out of the monastery. It became worse and worse. Did she want to take him out of the monastery? That she could never do! He was going to be a monk.

He did not at all wish to see the Signora. Could not Father Josef tell her that Gaetano would never leave the monastery, and that it was of no avail to ask him? No, Father Josef said that he could not let her depart without seeing him, and he half dragged Gaetano into the reception-room. There she stood by one of the windows. She had gray hair; her skin was brown; her eyes were black and as round as beads. She had a lace veil on her head, and her black dress was smooth with wear, and a little green, like Father Josef’s very oldest cassock.

She made the sign of the cross when she saw Gaetano. “God be praised, he is a true Alagona!” she said, and kissed his hand.

She said that she was sorry that Gaetano had reached his twelfth year without any of his family asking after him; but she had not known that there were any of the other branch alive. How had she found it out now? Well, Luca had read the name in a newspaper. It had stood among those who had got a prize. It was a half-year ago now, but it was a long journey to Palermo. She had had to save and save to get the money for the journey. She had not been able to come before. But she had to come and see him. Santissima madre, she had been so glad! It was she, Donna Elisa, who was an Alagona. Her husband, who was dead, had been an Antonelli. There was one other Alagona, that was her brother. He, too, lived at Diamante. But Gaetano probably did not know where Diamante was. The boy drew his head back. No, she thought as much, and she laughed.

“Diamante is on Monte Chiaro. Do you know where Monte Chiaro is?”

“No.”

She drew up her eyebrows and looked very roguish.

“Monte Chiaro is on Etna, if you know where Etna is.”

It sounded so anxious, as if it were too much to ask that Gaetano should know anything about Etna. And they laughed, all three, she and Father Josef and Gaetano.

She seemed a different person after she had made them laugh. “Will you come and see Diamante and Etna and Monte Chiaro?” she asked briskly. “Etna you must see. It is the greatest mountain in the world. Etna is a king, and the mountains round about kneel before him, and do not dare to lift their eyes to his face.”

Then she told many tales about Etna. She thought perhaps that it would tempt him.

And it was really true that Gaetano had not thought before what kind of a mountain Etna was. He had not remembered that it had snow on its head, oak forests in its beard, vineyards about its waist, and that it stood in orange groves up to its knees. And down it ran broad, black rivers. Those streams were wonderful; they flowed without a ripple; they heaved without a wind; the poorest swimmer could cross them without a bridge. He guessed that she meant lava. And she was glad that he had guessed it. He was a clever boy. A real Alagona!

And Etna was so big! Fancy that it took three days to drive round it and three days to ride up to the top and down again! And that there were fifty towns beside Diamante on it, and fourteen great forests, and two hundred small peaks, which were not so small either, although Etna was so big that they seemed as insignificant as a swarm of flies on a church roof. And that there were caves which could hold a whole army, and hollow old trees, where a flock of sheep could find shelter from the storm!

Everything wonderful was to be found on Etna. There were rivers of which one must beware. The water in them was so cold that any one who drank of it would die. There were rivers which flowed only by day, and others that flowed only in winter, and some which ran deep under the earth. There were hot springs, and sulphur springs, and mud-volcanoes.

It would be a pity for Gaetano not to see the mountain, for it was so beautiful. It stood against the sky like a great tent. It was as gayly colored as a merry-go-round. He ought to see it in the morning and evening, when it was red; he ought to see it at night, when it was white. He ought also to know that it truly could take every color; that it could be blue, black, brown or violet; sometimes it wore a veil of beauty, like a signora; sometimes it was a table covered with velvet; sometimes it had a tunic of gold brocade and a mantle of peacock’s-feathers.

He would also like to know how it could be that old King Arthur was sitting there in a cave. Donna Elisa said that it was quite certain that he still lived on Etna, for once, when the bishop of Catania was riding over the mountain, three of his mules ran away, and the men who followed them found them in the cave with King Arthur. Then the king asked the guides to tell the bishop that when his wounds were healed he would come with his knights of the Round Table and right everything that was in disorder in Sicily. And he who had eyes to see knew well enough that King Arthur had not yet come out of his cave.

Gaetano did not wish to let her tempt him, but he thought that he might be a little friendly. She was still standing, but now he fetched her a chair. That would not make her think that he wanted to go with her.

He really liked to hear her tell about her mountain. It was so funny that it should have so many tricks. It was not at all like Monte Pellegrino, near Palermo, that only stood where it stood. Etna could smoke like a chimney and blow out fire like a gas jet. It could rumble, shake, vomit forth lava, throw stones, scatter ashes, foretell the weather, and collect rain. If Mongibello merely stirred, town after town fell, as if the houses had been cards set on end.

Mongibello, that was also a name for Etna. It was called Mongibello because that meant the mountain of mountains. It deserved to be called so.

Gaetano saw that she really believed that he would not be able to resist. She had so many wrinkles in her face, and when she laughed, they ran together like a net. He stood and looked at it; it seemed so strange. But he was not caught yet in the net.

She wondered if Gaetano really would have the courage to come to Etna. For inside the mountain were many bound giants and a black castle, which was guarded by a dog with many heads. There was also a big forge and a lame smith with only one eye in the middle of his forehead. And worst of all, in the very heart of the mountain, there was a sulphur sea which cooked like an oil kettle, and in it lay Lucifer and all the damned. No, he never would have the courage to come there, she said.

Otherwise there was no danger in living there, for the mountain feared the saints. Donna Elisa said that it feared many saints, but most Santa Agata of Catania. If the Catanians always were as they should be to her, then neither earthquake nor lava could do them any harm.

Gaetano stood quite close to her and he laughed at everything she said. How had he come there and why could he not stop laughing? It was a wonderful signora.

Suddenly he said, in order not to deceive her, “Donna Elisa, I am going to be a monk.”—“Oh, are you?” she said. Then without anything more she began again to tell about the mountain.

She said that now he must really listen; now she was coming to the most important of all. He was to fellow her to the south side of the mountain so far down that they were near the castle of Catania, and there he would see a valley, a quite big and wide oval valley. But it was quite black; the lava streams came from all directions flowing down into it. There were only stones there, not a blade of grass.

But what had Gaetano believed about the lava? Donna Elisa was sure that he believed that it lay as even and smooth on Etna as it lies in the streets. But on Etna there are so many surprises. Could he understand that all the serpents and dragons and witches that lay and boiled in the lava ran out with it when there was an eruption? There they lay and crawled and crept and twisted about each other, and tried to creep up to the cold earth, and held each other fast in misery until the lava hardened about them. And then they could never come free. No indeed!

The lava was not unproductive, as he thought. Although no grass grew, there was always something to see. But he could never guess what it was. It groped and fell; it tumbled and crept; it moved on its knees, on its head, and on its elbows. It came up the sides of the valley and down the sides of the valley; it was all thorns and knots; it had a cloak of spider’s-web and a wig of dust, and as many joints as a worm. Could it be anything but the cactus? Did he know that the cactus goes out on the lava and breaks the ground like a peasant? Did he know that nothing but the cactus can do anything with the lava?

Now she looked at Father Josef and made a funny face. The cactus was the best goblin to be found on Etna; but goblins were goblins. The cactus was a Turk, for it kept female slaves. No sooner had the cactus taken root anywhere than it must have almond trees near it. Almond trees are fine and shining signoras. They hardly dare to go out on the black surface, but that does not help them. Out they must, and out they are. Oh, Gaetano should see if he came there. When the almond trees stand white with their blossoms in the spring on the black field among the gray cacti, they are so innocent and beautiful that one could weep over them as over captive princesses.

Now he must know where Monte Chiaro lay. It shot up from the bottom of that black valley. She tried to make her umbrella stand on the floor. It stood so. It stood right up. It had never thought of either sitting or lying. And Monte Chiaro was as green as the valley was black. It was palm next palm, vine upon vine. It was a gentleman in a flowery dressing-gown. It was a king with a crown on his head. It bore the whole of Diamante about its temples.

Some time before Gaetano had a desire to take her hand. If he only could do it. Yes, he could. He drew her hand to him like a captured treasure. But what should he do with it? Perhaps pat it. If he tried quite gently with one finger, perhaps she would not notice it. Perhaps she would not notice if he took two fingers. Perhaps she would not even notice if he should kiss her hand. She talked and talked. She noticed nothing at all.

There was still so much she wished to say. And nothing so droll as her story about Diamante!

She said that the town had once lain down on the bottom of the valley. Then the lava came, and fiery red looked over the edge of the valley. What, what! was the last day come? The town in great haste took its houses on its back, on its head, and under its arms, and ran up Monte Chiaro, that lay close at hand.

Zigzagging up the mountain the town ran. When it was far enough up it threw down a town gate and a piece of town wall. Then it ran round the mountain in a spiral and dropped down houses. The poor people’s houses tumbled as they could and would. There was no time for anything else. No one could ask anything better than crowding and disorder and crooked streets. No, that you could not. The chief street went in a spiral round the mountain, just as the town had run, and along it had set down here a church and there a palace. But there had been that much order that the best came highest up. When the town came to the top of the mountain it had laid out a square, and there it had placed the city hall and the Cathedral and the old palazzo Geraci.

If he, Gaetano Alagona, would follow her to Diamante, she would take him with her up to the square on the top of the mountain, and show him what stretches of land the old Alagonas had owned on Etna, and on the plain of Catania, and where they had raised their strongholds on the inland peaks. For up there all that could be seen, and even more. One could see the whole sea.

Gaetano had not thought that she had talked long, but Father Josef seemed to be impatient. “Now we have come to your own home, Donna Elisa,” he said quite gently.

But she assured Father Josef that at her house there was nothing to see. What she first of all wished to show Gaetano was the big house on the corso, that was called the summer palace. It was not so beautiful as the palazzo Geraci, but it was big; and when the old Alagonas were prosperous they came there in summer to be nearer the snows of Etna. Yes, as she said, towards the street it was nothing to see, but it had a beautiful court-yard with open porticos in both the stories. And on the roof there was a terrace. It was paved with blue and white tiles, and on every tile the coat of arms of the Alagonas was burnt in. He would like to come and see that?

It occurred to Gaetano that Donna Elisa must be used to having children come and sit on her knees when she was at home. Perhaps she would not notice if he should also come. And he tried. And so it was. She was used to it. She never noticed it at all.

She only went on talking about the palace. There was a great state suite, where the old Alagonas had danced and played. There was a great hall with a gallery for the music; there was old furniture and clocks like small white alabaster temples that stood on black ebony pedestals. In the state apartment no one lived, but she would go there with him. Perhaps he had thought that she lived in the summer palace. Oh, no; her brother, Don Ferrante, lived there. He was a merchant, and had his shop on the lower floor; and as he had not yet brought home a signora, everything stood up there as it had stood.

Gaetano wondered if he could sit on her knees any longer. It was wonderful that she did not notice anything. And it was fortunate, for otherwise she might have believed that he had changed his mind about being a monk.

But she was just now more than ever occupied with her own affairs. A little flush flamed up in her cheeks under all the brown, and she made a few of the funniest faces with her eyebrows. Then she began to tell how she herself lived.

It seemed as if Donna Elisa must have the very smallest house in the town. It lay opposite the summer palace, but that was its only good point. She had a little shop, where she sold medallions and wax candles and everything that had to do with divine service. But, with all respect to Father Josef, there was not much profit in such a trade now-a-days, however it may have been formerly. Behind the shop there was a little workshop. There her husband had stood and carved images of the saints, and rosary beads; for he had been an artist, Signor Antonelli. And next to the workshop were a couple of small rat-holes; it was impossible to turn in them; one had to squat down, as in the cells of the old kings. And up one flight were a couple of small hen-coops. In one of them she had laid a little straw and put up a few hooks. That would be for Gaetano, if he would come to her.

Gaetano thought that he would like to pat her cheek. She would be sorry when he could not go with her. Perhaps he could permit himself to pat her. He looked under his hair at Father Josef. Father Josef sat and looked on the floor and sighed, as he was in the habit of doing. He did not think of Gaetano, and she, she noticed nothing at all.

She said that she had a maid, whose name was Pacifica, and a man, whose name was Luca. She did not get much help, however, for Pacifica was old; and, since she had grown deaf, she had become so irritable that she could not let her help in the shop. And Luca, who really was to have been a wood-carver, and carve saints that she could sell, never gave himself time to stand still in the workshop; he was always out in the garden, looking after the flowers. Yes, they had a little garden among the stones on Monte Chiaro. But he need not think it was worth anything. She had nothing like the one in the cloister, that Gaetano would understand. But she wanted so much to have him, because he was one of the old Alagonas. And there at home she and Luca and Pacifica had said to one another: “Do we ask whether we will have a little more care, if we can only get him here?” No, the Madonna knew that they had not done so. But now the question was, whether he was willing to endure anything to be with them.

And now she had finished, and Father Josef asked what Gaetano thought of answering. It was the prior’s wish, Father Josef said, that Gaetano should decide for himself. And they had nothing against his going out into the world, because he was the last of his race.

Gaetano slid gently down from Donna Elisa’s lap. But to answer! That was not such an easy thing to answer. It was very hard to say no to the signora.

Father Josef came to his assistance. “Ask the signora that you may be allowed to answer in a couple of hours, Gaetano. The boy has never thought of anything but being a monk,” he explained to Donna Elisa.

She stood up, took her umbrella, and tried to look glad, but there were tears in her eyes.

Of course, of course he must consider it, she said. But if he had known Diamante he would not have needed to. Now only peasants lived there, but once there had been a bishop, and many priests, and a multitude of monks. They were gone now, but they were not forgotten. Ever since that time Diamante was a holy town. More festival days were celebrated there than anywhere else, and there were quantities of saints; and even to-day crowds of pilgrims came there. Whoever lived at Diamante could never forget God. He was almost half a priest. So for that reason he ought to come. But he should consider it, if he so wished. She would come again to-morrow.

Gaetano behaved himself very badly. He turned away from her and rushed to the door. He did not say a word of thanks to her for coming. He knew that Father Josef had expected it, but he could not. When he thought of the great Mongibello that he never would see, and of Donna Elisa, who would never come again, and of the school, and of the shut-in cloister garden, and of a whole restricted life! Father Josef never could expect so much of him; Gaetano had to run away.

It was high time too. When Gaetano was ten steps from the door, he began to cry. It was too bad about Donna Elisa. Oh, that she should be obliged to travel home alone! That Gaetano could not go with her!

He heard Father Josef coming, and he hid his face against the wall. If he could only stop sobbing!

Father Josef came sighing and murmuring to himself, as he always did. When he came up to Gaetano he stopped, and sighed more than ever.

“It is Mongibello, Mongibello,” said Father Josef; “no one can resist Mongibello.”

Gaetano answered him by weeping more violently.

“It is the mountain calling,” murmured Father Josef. “Mongibello is like the whole earth; it has all the earth’s beauty and charm and vegetation and expanses and wonders. The whole earth comes at once and calls him.”

Gaetano felt that Father Josef spoke the truth. He felt as if the earth stretched out strong arms to catch him. He felt that he needed to bind himself fast to the wall in order not to be torn away.

“It is better for him to see the earth,” said Father Josef. “He would only be longing for it if he stayed in the monastery. If he is allowed to see the earth perhaps he will begin again to long for heaven.”

Gaetano did not understand what Father Josef meant when he felt himself lifted into his arms, carried back into the reception-room, and put down on Donna Elisa’s knees.

“You shall take him, Donna Elisa, since you have won him,” said Father Josef. “You shall show him Mongibello, and you shall see if you can keep him.”

But when Gaetano once more sat on Donna Elisa’s lap he felt such happiness that it was impossible for him to run away from her again. He was as much captured as if he had gone into Mongibello and the mountain walls had closed in on him.

Gaetano had lived with Donna Elisa a month, and had been as happy as a child can be. Merely to travel with Donna Elisa had been like driving behind gazelles and birds of paradise; but to live with her was to be carried on a golden litter, screened from the sun.

Then the famous Franciscan, Father Gondo, came to Diamante, and Donna Elisa and Gaetano went up to the square to listen to him. For Father Gondo never preached in a church; he always gathered the people about him by fountains or at the town gates.

The square was swarming with people; but Gaetano, who sat on the railing of the court-house steps, plainly saw Father Gondo where he stood on the curb-stone. He wondered if it could be true that the monk wore a horse-hair shirt under his robes, and that the rope that he had about his waist was full of knots and iron points to serve him as a scourge.

Gaetano could not understand what Father Gondo said, but one shiver after another ran through him at the thought that he was looking at a saint.

When the Father had spoken for about an hour, he made a sign with his hand that he would like to rest a moment. He stepped down from the steps of the fountain, sat down, and rested his face in his hands. While the monk was sitting so, Gaetano heard a gentle roaring. He had never before heard any like it. He looked about him to discover what it was. And it was all the people talking. “Blessed, blessed, blessed!” they all said at once. Most of them only whispered and murmured; none called aloud, their devotion was too great. And every one had found the same word. “Blessed, blessed!” sounded over the whole market-place. “Blessings on thy lips; blessings on thy tongue; blessings on thy heart!”

The voices sounded soft, choked by weeping and emotion, but it was as if a storm had passed by through the air. It was like the murmuring of a thousand shells.

That took much greater hold of Gaetano than the monk’s sermon. He did not know what he wished to do, for that gentle murmuring filled him with emotion; it seemed almost to suffocate him. He climbed up on the iron railing, raised himself above all the others, and began to cry the same as they, but much louder, so that his voice cut through all the others.

Donna Elisa heard it and seemed to be displeased. She drew Gaetano down and would not stay any longer, but went home with him.

In the middle of the night Gaetano started up from his bed. He put on his clothes, tied together what he possessed in a bundle, set his hat on his head and took his shoes under his arm. He was going to run away. He could not bear to live with Donna Elisa.

Since he had heard Father Gondo, Diamante and Mongibello were nothing to him. Nothing was anything compared to being like Father Gondo, and being blessed by the people. Gaetano could not live if he could not sit by the fountain in the square and tell legends.

But if Gaetano went on living in Donna Elisa’s garden, and eating peaches and mandarins, he would never hear the great human sea roar about him. He must go out and be a hermit on Etna; he must dwell in one of the big caves, and live on roots and fruits. He would never see a human being; he would never cut his hair; and he would wear nothing but a few dirty rags. But in ten or twenty years he would come back to the world. Then he would look like a beast and speak like an angel.

That would be another matter than wearing velvet clothes and a glazed hat, as he did now. That would be different from sitting in the shop with Donna Elisa and taking saint after saint down from the shelf and hearing her tell about what they had done. Several times he had taken a knife and a piece of wood and had tried to carve images of the saints. It was very hard, but it would be worse to make himself into a saint; much worse. However, he was not afraid of difficulties and privations.

He crept out of his room, across the attic and down the stair. It only remained to go through the shop out to the street, but on the last step he stopped. A faint light filtered through a crack in the door to the left of the stairs.

It was the door to Donna Elisa’s room, and Gaetano did not dare to go any further, since his foster mother had her candle lighted. If she was not asleep she would hear him when he drew the heavy bolts on the shop door. He sat softly down on the stairs to wait.

Suddenly he happened to think that Donna Elisa must sit up so long at night and work in order to get him food and clothes. He was much touched that she loved him so much as to want to do it. And he understood what a grief it would be to her if he should go.

When he thought of that he began to weep.

But at the same time he began to upbraid Donna Elisa in his thoughts. How could she be so stupid as to grieve because he went. It would be such a joy for her when he should become a holy man. That would be her reward for having gone to Palermo and fetched him.

He cried more and more violently while he was consoling Donna Elisa. It was hard that she did not understand what a reward she would receive.

There was no need for her to be sad. For ten years only would Gaetano live on the mountain, and then he would come back as the famous hermit Fra Gaetano. Then he would come walking through the streets of Diamante, followed by a great crowd of people, like Father Gondo. And there would be flags, and the houses would be decorated with cloths and wreaths. He would stop in front of Donna Elisa’s shop, and Donna Elisa would not recognize him and would be ready to fall on her knees before him. But so should it not be; he would kneel to Donna Elisa, and ask her forgiveness, because he had run away from her ten years ago. “Gaetano,” Donna Elisa would then answer, “you give me an ocean of joy against a little brook of sorrow. Should I not forgive you?”

Gaetano saw all this before him, and it was so beautiful that he began to weep more violently. He was only afraid that Donna Elisa would hear how he was sobbing and come out and find him. And then she would not let him go.

He must talk sensibly with her. Would he ever give her greater pleasure than if he went now?

It was not only Donna Elisa, there was also Luca and Pacifica, who would be so glad when he came back as a holy man.

They would all follow him up to the market-place. There, there would be even more flags than in the streets, and Gaetano would speak from the steps of the town hall. And from all the streets and courts people would come streaming.

Then Gaetano would speak, so that they should all fall on their knees and cry: “Bless us, Fra Gaetano, bless us!”

After that he would never leave Diamante again. He would live under the great steps outside Donna Elisa’s shop.

And they would come to him with their sick, and those in trouble would make a pilgrimage to him.

When the syndic of Diamante went by he would kiss Gaetano’s hand.

Donna Elisa would sell Fra Gaetano’s image in her shop.

And Donna Elisa’s god-daughter, Giannita, would bow before Fra Gaetano and never again call him a stupid monk-boy.

And Donna Elisa would be so happy.

Ah … Gaetano started up, and awoke. It was bright daylight, and Donna Elisa and Pacifica stood and looked at him. And Gaetano sat on the stairs with his shoes under his arm, his hat on his head and his bundle at his feet. But Donna Elisa and Pacifica wept. “He has wished to run away from us,” they said.

“Why are you sitting here, Gaetano?”

“Donna Elisa, I wanted to run away.”

Gaetano was in a good mood, and answered as boldly as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.

“Do you want to run away?” repeated Donna Elisa.

“I wished to go off on Etna and be a hermit.”

“And why are you sitting here now?”

“I do not know, Donna Elisa; I must have fallen asleep.”

Donna Elisa now showed how distressed she was. She pressed her hands over her heart, as if she had terrible pains, and she wept passionately.

“But now I shall stay, Donna Elisa,” said Gaetano.

“You, stay!” cried Donna Elisa. “You might as well go. Look at him, Pacifica, look at the ingrate! He is no Alagona. He is an adventurer.”

The blood rose in Gaetano’s face and he sprang to his feet and struck out with his hands in a way which astonished Donna Elisa. So had all the men of her race done. It was her father and her grandfather; she recognized all the powerful lords of the family of Alagona.

“You speak so because you know nothing about it, Donna Elisa,” said the boy. “No, no, you do not know anything; you do not know why I had to serve God. But you shall know it now. Do you see, it was long ago. My father and mother were so poor, and we had nothing to eat; and so father went to look for work, and he never came back, and mother and we children were almost dead of starvation. So mother said: ‘We will go and look for your father.’ And we went. Night came and a heavy rain, and in one place a river flowed over the road. Mother asked in one house if we might pass the night there. No, they showed us out. Mother and children stood in the road and cried. Then mother tucked up her dress and went down into the stream that roared over the road. She had my little sister on her arm and my big sister by the hand and a big bundle on her head. I went after as near as I could. I saw mother lose her footing. The bundle she carried on her head fell into the stream, and mother caught at it and dropped little sister. She snatched at little sister and big sister was whirled away. Mother threw herself after them, and the river took her too. I was frightened and ran to the shore. Father Josef has told me that I escaped because I was to serve God for the dead, and pray for them. And that was why it was first decided that I was to be a monk, and why I now wish to go away on Etna and become a hermit. There is nothing else for me but to serve God, Donna Elisa.”

Donna Elisa was quite subdued. “Yes, yes, Gaetano,” she said, “but it hurts me so. I do not want you to go away from me.”

“No, I shall not go either,” said Gaetano. He was in such a good mood that he felt a desire to laugh. “I shall not go.”

“Shall I speak to the priest, so that you may be sent to a seminary?” asked Donna Elisa, humbly.

“No; but you do not understand, Donna Elisa; you do not understand. I tell you that I will not go away from you. I have thought of something else.”

“What have you thought of?” she asked sadly.

“What do you suppose I was doing while I sat there on the stairs? I was dreaming, Donna Elisa. I dreamed that I was going to run away. Yes, Donna Elisa, I stood in the shop, and I was going to open the shop door, but I could not because there were so many locks. I stood in the dark and unlocked lock after lock, and always there were new ones. I made a terrible noise, and I thought: ‘Now surely Donna Elisa will come.’ At last the door opened, and I was going to rush out; but just then I felt your hand on my neck, and you drew me in, and I kicked, and I struck you because I was not allowed to go. But, Donna Elisa, you had a candle with you, and then I saw that it was not you, but my mother. Then I did not dare to struggle any more, and I was very frightened, for mother is dead. But mother took the bundle I was carrying and began to take out what was in it. Mother laughed and looked so glad, and I grew glad that she was not angry with me. It was so strange. What she drew out of the bundle was all the little saints’ images that I had carved while I sat with you in the shop, and they were so pretty. ‘Can you carve such pretty images, Gaetano?’ said mother. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Then you can serve God by it,’ said mother. ‘Do I not need to leave Donna Elisa, then?’ ‘No,’ said mother. And just as mother said that, you waked me.”

Gaetano looked at Donna Elisa in triumph.

“What did mother mean by that?”

Donna Elisa only wondered.

Gaetano threw his head back and laughed.

“Mother meant that you should apprentice me, so that I could serve God by carving beautiful images of angels and saints, Donna Elisa.”

III
THE GOD-SISTER

In the noble island of Sicily, where there are more old customs left than in any other place in the south, it is always the habit of every one while yet a child to choose a god-brother or god-sister, who shall carry his or her children to be christened, if there ever are any.

But this is not by any means the only use god-brothers and sisters have of one another. God-brothers and sisters must love one another, serve one another, and revenge one another. In a god-brother’s ear a man can bury his secrets. He can trust him with both money and sweetheart, and not be deceived. God-brothers and sisters are as faithful to each other as if they were born of the same mother, because their covenant is made before San Giovanni Battista, who is the most feared of all the saints.

It is also the custom for the poor to take their half-grown children to rich people and ask that they may be god-brothers and sisters to their young sons and daughters. What a glad sight it is on the holy Baptist’s day to see all those little children in festival array wandering through the great towns looking for a god-brother or sister! If the parents succeed in giving their son a rich god-brother, they are as glad as if they were able to leave him a farm as an inheritance.

When Gaetano first came to Diamante, there was a little girl who was always coming in and out of Donna Elisa’s shop. She had a red cloak and pointed cap and eight heavy, black curls that stood out under the cap. Her name was Giannita, and she was daughter of Donna Olivia, who sold vegetables. But Donna Elisa was her god-mother, and therefore thought what she could do for her.

Well, when midsummer day came, Donna Elisa ordered a carriage and drove down to Catania, which lies full twenty miles from Diamante. She had Giannita with her, and they were both dressed in their best. Donna Elisa was dressed in black silk with jet, and Giannita had a white tulle dress with garlands of flowers. In her hand Giannita held a basket of flowers, and among the flowers lay a pomegranate.

The journey went well for Donna Elisa and Giannita. When at last they reached the white Catania, that lies and shines on the black lava background, they drove up to the finest palace in the town.

It was lofty and wide, so that the poor little Giannita felt quite terrified at the thought of going into it. But Donna Elisa walked bravely in, and she was taken to Cavaliere Palmeri and his wife who owned the house.

Donna Elisa reminded Signora Palmeri that they were friends from infancy, and asked that Giannita might be her young daughter’s god-sister.

That was agreed upon, and the young signorina was called in. She was a little marvel of rose-colored silk, Venetian lace, big, black eyes, and thick, bushy hair. Her little body was so small and thin that one hardly noticed it.

Giannita offered her the basket of flowers, and she graciously accepted it. She looked long and thoughtfully at Giannita, walked round her, and was fascinated by her smooth, even curls. When she had seen them, she ran after a knife, cut the pomegranate and gave Giannita half.

While they ate the fruit, they held each other’s hand and both said:—

Then they kissed each other and called each other god-sister.

“You must never fail me, god-sister,” said the little signorina, and both the children were very serious and moved.

They had become such good friends in the short time that they cried when they parted.

But then twelve years went by and the two god-sisters lived each in her own world and never met. During the whole time Giannita was quietly in her home and never came to Catania.

But then something really strange happened. Giannita sat one afternoon in the room back of the shop embroidering. She was very skilful and was often overwhelmed with work. But it is trying to the eyes to embroider, and it was dark in Giannita’s room. She had therefore half-opened the door into the shop to get a little more light.

Just after the clock had struck four, the old miller’s widow, Rosa Alfari, came walking by. Donna Olivia’s shop was very attractive from the street. The eyes fell through the half-open door on great baskets with fresh vegetables and bright-colored fruits, and far back in the background the outline of Giannita’s pretty head. Rosa Alfari stopped and began to talk to Donna Olivia, simply because her shop looked so friendly.

Laments and complaints always followed old Rosa Alfari. Now she was sad because she had to go to Catania alone that night. “It is a misfortune that the post-wagon does not reach Diamante before ten,” she said. “I shall fall asleep on the way, and perhaps they will then steal my money. And what shall I do when I come to Catania at two o’clock at night?”

Then Giannita suddenly called out into the shop. “Will you take me with you to Catania, Donna Alfari?” she asked, half in joke, without expecting an answer.

But Rosa Alfari said eagerly, “Lord, child, will you go with me? Will you really?”

Giannita came out into the shop, red with pleasure. “If I will!” she said. “I have not been in Catania for twelve years.”

Rosa Alfari looked delightedly at her; Giannita was tall and strong, her eyes gay, and she had a careless smile on her lips. She was a splendid travelling companion.

“Get ready,” said the old woman. “You will go with me at ten o’clock; it is settled.”

The next day Giannita wandered about the streets of Catania. She was thinking the whole time of her god-sister. She was strangely moved to be so near her again. She loved her god-sister, Giannita, and she did it not only because San Giovanni has commanded people to love their god-brothers and sisters. She had adored the little child in the silk dress; she was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She had almost become her idol.

She knew this much about her sister, that she was still unmarried and lived in Catania. Her mother was dead, and she had not been willing to leave her father, and had stayed as hostess in his house. “I must manage to see her,” thought Giannita.

Whenever Giannita met a well-appointed carriage she thought: “Perhaps it is my god-sister driving there.” And she stared at everybody to see if any of them was like the little girl with the thick hair and the big eyes.

Her heart began to beat wildly. She had always longed for her god-sister. She herself was still unmarried, because she liked a young wood-carver, Gaetano Alagona, and he had never shown the slightest desire to marry her. Giannita had often been angry with him for that, and not least had it irritated her never to be able to invite her god-sister to her wedding.

She had been so proud of her, too. She had thought herself finer than the others, because she had such a god-sister. What if she should now go to see her, since she was in the town? It would give a lustre to the whole journey.

As she thought and thought of it, a newspaper-boy came running. “Giornale da Sicilia,” he called. “The Palmeri affair! Great embezzlements!”

Giannita seized the boy by the neck as he rushed by. “What are you saying?” she screamed. “You lie, you lie!” and she was ready to strike him.

“Buy my paper, signora, before you strike me,” said the boy. Giannita bought the paper and began to read. She found in it without difficulty the Palmeri affair.

“Since this case is to be tried to-day in the courts,” wrote the paper, “we will give an account of it.”

Giannita read and read. She read it over and over before she understood. There was not a muscle in her body which did not begin to tremble with horror when she at last comprehended it.

Her god-sister’s father, who had owned great vineyards, had been ruined, because the blight had laid them waste. And that was not the worst. He had also dissipated a charitable fund which had been intrusted to him. He was arrested, and to-day he was to be tried.

Giannita crushed the newspaper together, threw it into the street and trampled on it. It deserved no better for bringing such news.

Then she stood quite crushed that this should meet her when she came to Catania for the first time in twelve years. “Lord God,” she said, “is there any meaning in it?”

At home, in Diamante, no one would ever have taken the trouble to tell her what was going on. Was it not destiny that she should be here on the very day of the trial?

“Listen, Donna Alfari,” she said; “you may do as you like, but I must go to the court.”

There was a decision about Giannita. Nothing could disturb her. “Do you not understand that it is for this, and not for your sake, that God has induced you to take me with you to Catania?” she said to Rosa Alfari.

Giannita did not doubt for a moment that there was something supernatural in it all.

Rosa Alfari must needs let her go, and she found her way to the Palace of Justice. She stood among the street boys and riff-raff, and saw Cavaliere Palmeri on the bench of the accused. He was a fine gentleman, with a white, pointed beard and moustache. Giannita recognized him.

She heard that he was condemned to six months’ imprisonment, and Giannita thought she saw even more plainly that she had come there as an emissary from God. “Now my god-sister must need me,” she thought.

She went out into the street again and asked her way to the Palazzo Palmeri.

On the way a carriage drove by her. She looked up, and her eyes met those of the lady who sat in the carriage. At the same moment something told her that this was her god-sister. She who was driving was pale and bent and had beseeching eyes. Giannita loved her from the first sight. “It is you who have given me pleasure many times,” she said, “because I expected pleasure from you. Now perhaps I can pay you back.”

Giannita felt filled with devotion when she went up the high, white marble steps to the Palazzo Palmeri, but suddenly a doubt struck her. “What can God wish me to do for one who has grown up in such magnificence?” she thought. “Does our Lord forget that I am only poor Giannita from Diamante?”

She told a servant to greet Signorina Palmeri and say to her that her god-sister wished to speak to her. She was surprised when the servant came back and said that she could not be received that day. Should she be content with that? Oh, no; oh, no!

“Tell the signorina that I am going to wait here the whole day, for I must speak to her.”

“The signorina is going to move out of the palace in half an hour,” said the servant.

Giannita was beside herself. “But I am her god-sister, her god-sister, do you not understand?” she said to the man. “I must speak to her.” The servant smiled, but did not move.

But Giannita would not be turned away. Was she not sent by God? He must understand, understand, she said, and raised her voice. She was from Diamante and had not been in Catania for twelve years. Until yesterday afternoon at four o’clock she had not thought of coming here. He must understand, not until yesterday afternoon at four o’clock.

The servant stood motionless. Giannita was ready to tell him the whole story to move him, when the door was thrown open. Her god-sister stood on the threshold.

“Who is speaking of yesterday at four o’clock?” she said.

“It is a stranger, Signorina Micaela.”

Then Giannita rushed forward. It was not at all a stranger. It was her god-sister from Diamante, who came here twelve years ago with Donna Elisa. Did she not remember her? Did she not remember that they had divided a pomegranate?

The signorina did not listen to that. “What was it that happened yesterday at four o’clock?” she asked, with great anxiety.

“I then got God’s command to go to you, god-sister,” said Giannita.

The other looked at her in terror. “Come with me,” she said, as if afraid that the servant should hear what Giannita wished to say to her.

She went far into the apartment before she stopped. Then she turned so quickly towards Giannita that she was frightened. “Tell me instantly!” she said. “Do not torture me; let me hear it instantly!”

She was as tall as Giannita, but very unlike her. She was more delicately made, and she, the woman of the world, had a much more wild and untamed appearance than the country girl. Everything she felt showed in her face. She did not try to conceal it.

Giannita was so astonished at her violence that she could not answer at first.

Then her god-sister lifted her arms in despair over her head and the words streamed from her lips. She said that she knew that Giannita had been commanded by God to bring her word of new misfortunes. God hated her, she knew it.

Giannita clasped her hands. God hate her! on the contrary, on the contrary!

“Yes, yes,” said Signorina Palmeri. “It is so.” And as she was inwardly afraid of the message Giannita had for her, she began to talk. She did not let her speak; she interrupted her constantly. She seemed to be so terrified by everything that had happened to her during the last days that she could not at all control herself.

Giannita must understand that God hated her, she said. She had done something so terrible. She had forsaken her father, failed her father. Giannita must have read the last account. Then she burst out again in passionate questionings. Why did she not tell her what she wished to tell her? She did not expect anything but bad news. She was prepared.

But poor Giannita never got a chance to speak; as soon as she began, the signorina became frightened and interrupted her. She told her story as if to induce Giannita not to be too hard to her.

Giannita must not think that her unhappiness only came from the fact of her no longer having her carriage, or a box at the theatre, or beautiful dresses, or servants, or even a roof over her head. Neither was it enough that she had now lost all her friends, so that she did not at all know where she should ask for shelter. Neither was it misfortune enough that she felt such shame that she could not raise her eyes to any one’s face.

But there was something else much worse.

She sat down, and was silent a moment, while she rocked to and fro in agony. But when Giannita began to speak, she interrupted her.

Giannita could not think how her father had loved her. He had always had her live in splendor and magnificence, like a princess.

She had not done much for him; only let him think out delightful things to amuse her. It had been no sacrifice to remain unmarried, for she had never loved any one like her father, and her own home had been finer than any one else’s.

But one day her father had come and said to her, “They wish to arrest me. They are spreading the report that I have stolen, but it is not true.” Then she had believed him, and helped him to hide from the Carabinieri. And they had looked for him in vain in Catania, on Etna, over the whole of Sicily.

But when the police could not find Cavaliere Palmeri, the people began to say: “He is a fine gentleman, and they are fine gentlemen who help him; otherwise they would have found him long ago.” And the prefect in Catania had come to her. She received him smiling, and the prefect came as if to talk of roses, and the beautiful weather. Then he said: “Will the signorina look at this little paper? Will the signorina read this little letter? Will the signorina observe this little signature?” She read and read. And what did she see? Her father was not innocent. Her father had taken the money of others.

When the prefect had left her, she had gone to her father. “You are guilty,” she said to him. “You may do what you will, but I cannot help you any more.” Oh, she had not known what she said! She had always been very proud. She had not been able to bear to have their name stamped with dishonor. She had wished for a moment that her father had been dead, rather than that this had happened to her. Perhaps she had also said it to him. She did not rightly know what she had said.

But after that God had forsaken her. The most terrible things had happened. Her father had taken her at her word. He had gone and given himself up. And ever since he had been in prison he had not been willing to see her. He did not answer her letters, and the food that she sent him he sent back untouched. That was the most dreadful thing of all. He seemed to think that she wished to kill him.

She looked at Giannita as anxiously as if she awaited her sentence of death.

“Why do you not say to me what you have to say?” she exclaimed. “You are killing me!”

But it was impossible for her to force herself to be silent.

“You must know,” she continued, “that this palace is sold, and the purchaser has let it to an English lady, who is to move in to-day. Some of her things were brought in already yesterday, and among them was a little image of Christ.

“I caught sight of it as I passed through the vestibule, Giannita. They had taken it out of a trunk, and it lay there on the floor. It had been so neglected that no one took any trouble about it. Its crown was dented, and its dress dirty, and all the small ornaments which adorned it were rusty and broken. But when I saw it lying on the floor, I took it up and carried it into the room and placed it on a table. And while I did so, it occurred to me that I would ask its help. I knelt down before it and prayed a long time. ‘Help me in my great need!’ I said to the Christchild.

“While I prayed, it seemed to me that the image wished to answer me. I lifted my head, and the child stood there as dull as before, but a clock began to strike just then. It struck four, and it was as if it had said four words. It was as if the Christchild had answered a fourfold yes to my prayer.

“That gave me courage, Giannita, so that to-day I drove to the Palace of Justice to see my father. But he never turned his eyes toward me during the whole time he stood before his judges.

“I waited until they were about to lead him away, and threw myself on my knees before him in one of the narrow passages. Giannita, he let the soldiers lead me away without giving me a word.

“So, you see, God hates me. When I heard you speak of yesterday afternoon at four o’clock, I was so frightened. The Christchild sends me a new misfortune, I thought. It hates me for having failed my father.”

When she had said that, she was at last silent and listened breathlessly for what Giannita should say.

And Giannita told her story to her.

“See, see, is it not wonderful?” she said at the end. “I have not been in Catania for twelve years, and then I come here quite unexpectedly. And I know nothing at all; but as soon as I set my foot on the street here, I hear your misfortune. God has sent a message to me, I said to myself. He has called me here to help my god-sister.”

Signorina Palmeri’s eyes were turned anxiously questioning towards her. Now the new blow was coming. She gathered all her courage to meet it.

“What do you wish me to do for you, god-sister?” said Giannita. “Do you know what I thought as I was walking through the streets? I will ask her if she will go with me to Diamante, I thought. I know an old house there, where we could live cheaply. And I would embroider and sew, so that we could support ourselves. When I was out in the street I thought that it might be, but now I understand that it is impossible, impossible. You require something more of life; but tell me if I can do anything for you. You shall not thrust me away, for God has sent me.”

The signorina bent towards Giannita. “Well?” she said anxiously.

“You shall let me do what I can for you, for I love you,” said Giannita, and fell on her knees and put her arms about her.

“Have you nothing else to say?” asked the signorina.

“I wish I had,” said Giannita, “but I am only a poor girl.”

It was wonderful to see how the features of the young signorina’s face softened; how her color came back and how her eyes began to shine. Now it was plain that she had great beauty.

“Giannita,” she said, low and scarcely audibly, “do you think that it is a miracle? Do you think that God can let a miracle come to pass for my sake?”

“Yes, yes,” whispered Giannita back.

“I prayed the Christchild that he should help me, and he sends you to me. Do you think that it was the Christchild who sent you, Giannita?”

“Yes, it was; it was!”

“Then God has not forsaken me, Giannita?”

“No, God has not forsaken you.”

The god-sisters sat and wept for a while. It was quite quiet in the room. “When you came, Giannita, I thought that nothing was left me but to kill myself,” she said at last. “I did not know where to turn, and God hated me.”

“But tell me now what I can do for you, god-sister,” said Giannita.

As an answer the other drew her to her and kissed her.

“But it is enough that you are sent by the little Christchild,” she said. “It is enough that I know that God has not forsaken me.”

IV
DIAMANTE

Micaela Palmeri was on her way to Diamante with Giannita.

They had taken their places in the post-carriage at three o’clock in the morning, and had driven up the beautiful road over the lower slopes of Etna, circling round the mountain. But it had been quite dark. They had not seen anything of the surrounding country.

The young signorina by no means lamented over that. She sat with closed eyes and buried herself in her sorrow. Even when it began to grow light, she would not lift her eyes to look out. It was not until they were quite near Diamante that Giannita could persuade her to look at the landscape.

“Look! Here is Diamante; this is to be your home,” she said.

Then Micaela Palmeri, to the right of the road, saw mighty Etna, that cut off a great piece of the sky. Behind the mountain the sun was rising, and when the upper edge of the sun’s disc appeared above the line of the mountain, it looked as if the white summit began to burn and send out sparks and rays.

Giannita entreated her to look at the other side.

And on the other side she saw the whole jagged mountain chain, which surrounds Etna like a towered wall, glowing red in the sunrise.

But Giannita pointed in another direction. It was not that she was to look at, not that.

Then she lowered her eyes and looked down into the black valley. There the ground shone like velvet, and the white Simeto foamed along in the depths of the valley.

But still she did not turn her eyes in the right direction.

At last she saw the steep Monte Chiaro rising out of the black, velvet-lined valley, red in the morning light and encircled by a crown of shady palms. On its summit she saw a town flanked with towers, and encompassed by a wall, and with all its windows and weather-vanes glittering in the light.

At that sight she seized Giannita’s arm and asked her if it was a real town, and if people lived there.

She believed that it was one of heaven’s cities, and that it would disappear like a vision. She was certain that no mortal had ever passed up the path that from the edge of the valley went in great curves over to Monte Chiaro and then zigzagged up the mountain, disappearing through the dark gates of the town.

But when she came nearer to Diamante, and saw that it was of the earth, and real, tears rose to her eyes. It moved her that the earth still held all this beauty for her. She had believed that, since it had been the scene of all her misfortunes, she would always find it gray and withered and covered with thistles and poisonous growths.

She entered poor Diamante with clasped hands, as if it were a sanctuary. And it seemed to her as if this town could offer her as much happiness as beauty.

V
DON FERRANTE

A few days later Gaetano was standing in his workshop, cutting grape-leaves on rosary beads. It was Sunday, but Gaetano did not feel it on his conscience that he was working, for it was a work in God’s honor.

A great restlessness and anxiety had come over him. It had come into his mind that the time he had been living at peace with Donna Elisa was now drawing to a close, and he thought that he must soon start out into the world.

For great poverty had come to Sicily, and he saw want wandering from town to town and from house to house like the plague, and it had come to Diamante also.

No one ever came now to Donna Elisa’s shop to buy anything. The little images of the saints that Gaetano made stood in close rows on the shelves, and the rosaries hung in great bunches under the counter. And Donna Elisa was in great want and sorrow, because she could not earn anything.

That was a sign to Gaetano that he must leave Diamante, go out into the world, emigrate if there was no other way. For it could not be working to the honor of God to carve images that never were worshipped, and to turn rosary beads that never glided through a petitioner’s fingers.

It seemed to him that, somewhere in the world, there must be a beautiful, newly built cathedral, with finished walls, but whose interior yet stood shivering in nakedness. It awaited Gaetano’s coming to carve the choir chairs, the altar-rail, the pulpit, the lectern, and the shrine. His heart ached with longing for that work which was waiting.

But there was no such cathedral in Sicily, for there no one ever thought of building a new church; it must be far away in such lands as Florida or Argentina, where the earth is not yet overcrowded with holy buildings.

He felt at the same time trembling and happy, and had begun to work with redoubled zeal in order that Donna Elisa should have something to sell while he was away earning great fortunes for her.

Now he was waiting for but one more sign from God before he decided on the journey. And this was that he should have the strength to speak to Donna Elisa of his longing to go. For he knew that it would cause her such sorrow that he did not know how he could bring himself to speak of it.

While he stood and thought Donna Elisa came into the workshop. Then he said to himself that this day he could not think of saying it to her, for to-day Donna Elisa was happy. Her tongue wagged and her face beamed.

Gaetano asked himself when he had seen her so. Ever since the famine had come, it had been as if they had lived without light in one of the caves of Etna.

Why had Gaetano not been with her in the square and heard the music? asked Donna Elisa. Why did he never come to hear and see her brother, Don Ferrante? Gaetano, who only saw him when he stood in the shop with his tufts of hair and his short jacket, did not know what kind of a man he was. He considered him an ugly old tradesman, who had a wrinkled face and a rough beard. No one knew Don Ferrante who had not seen him on Sunday, when he conducted the music.

That day he had donned a new uniform. He wore a three-cornered hat with green, red, and white feathers, silver on his collar, silver-fringed epaulets, silver braid on his breast, and a sword at his side. And when he stepped up to the conductor’s platform the wrinkles had been smoothed out of his face and his figure had grown erect. He could almost have been called handsome.

When he had led Cavalleria, people had hardly been able to breathe. What had Gaetano to say to that, that the big houses round the market-place had sung too? From the black Palazzo Geraci, Donna Elisa had distinctly heard a love song, and from the convent, empty as it was, a beautiful hymn had streamed out over the market-place.

And when there was a pause in the music the handsome advocate Favara, who had been dressed in a black velvet coat and a big broad-brimmed hat and a bright red necktie, had gone up to Don Ferrante, and had pointed out over the open side of the square, where Etna and the sea lay. “Don Ferrante,” he had said, “you lift us toward the skies, just as Etna does, and you carry us away into the eternal, like the infinite sea.”

If Gaetano had seen Don Ferrante to-day he would have loved him. At least he would have been obliged to acknowledge his stateliness. When he laid down his baton for a while and took the advocate’s arm, and walked forward and back with him on the flat stones by the Roman gate and the Palazzo Geraci, every one could see that he could well measure himself against the handsome Favara.

Donna Elisa sat on the stone bench by the cathedral, in company with the wife of the syndic. And Signora Voltaro had said quite suddenly, after sitting for a while, watching Don Ferrante: “Donna Elisa, your brother is still a young man. He may still be married, in spite of his fifty years.”

And she, Donna Elisa, had answered that she prayed heaven for it every day.

But she had hardly said it, when a lady dressed in mourning came into the square. Never had anything so black been seen before. It was not enough that dress and hat and gloves were black; her veil was so thick that it was impossible to believe that there was a face behind it. Santissimo Dio! it looked as if she had hung a pall over herself. And she had walked slowly, and with a stoop. People had almost feared, believing that it was a ghost.

Alas, alas! the whole market-place had been so full of gayety! The peasants, who were at home over Sunday, had stood there in great crowds in holiday dress, with red shawls wound round their necks. The peasant women on their way to the cathedral had glided by, dressed in green skirts and yellow neckerchiefs. A couple of travellers had stood by the balustrade and looked at Etna; they had been dressed in white. And all the musicians in uniform, who had been almost as fine as Don Ferrante, and the shining instruments, and the carved cathedral faÇade! And the sunlight, and Mongibello’s snow top—so near to-day that one could almost touch it—had all been so gay.

Now, when the poor black lady came into the midst of it all, they had stared at her, and some had made the sign of the cross. And the children had rushed down from the steps of the town-hall, where they were riding on the railing, and had followed her at a few feet’s distance. And even the lazy Piero, who had been asleep in the corner of the balustrade, had raised himself on his elbow. It had been a resurrection, as if the black Madonna from the cathedral had come strolling by.

But had no one thought that it was unkind that all stared at the black lady? Had no one been moved when she came so slowly and painfully?

Yes, yes; one had been touched, and that had been Don Ferrante. He had the music in his heart; he was a good man and he thought: “Curses on all those funds that are gathered together for the poor, and that only bring people misfortune! Is not that poor Signorina Palmeri, whose father has stolen from a charitable fund, and who is now so ashamed that she dares not show her face?” And, as he thought of it, Don Ferrante went towards the black lady and met her just by the church door.

There he made her a bow, and mentioned his name. “If I am not mistaken,” Don Ferrante had said, “you are Signorina Palmeri. I have a favor to ask of you.”

Then she had started and taken a step backwards, as if to flee, but she had waited.

“It concerns my sister, Donna Elisa,” he had said. “She knew your mother, signorina, and she is consumed with a desire to make your acquaintance. She is sitting here by the Cathedral. Let me take you to her!”

And then Don Ferrante put her hand on his arm and led her over to Donna Elisa. And she made no resistance. Donna Elisa would like to see who could have resisted Don Ferrante to-day.

Donna Elisa rose and went to meet the black lady, and throwing back her veil, kissed her on both cheeks.

But what a face, what a face! Perhaps it was not pretty, but it had eyes that spoke, eyes that mourned and lamented, even when the whole face smiled. Yes, Gaetano perhaps would not wish to carve or paint a Madonna from that face, for it was too thin and too pale; but it is to be supposed that our Lord knew what he was doing when he did not put those eyes in a face that was rosy and round.

When Donna Elisa kissed her, she laid her head down on her shoulder, and a few short sobs shook her. Then she looked up with a smile, and the smile seemed to say: “Ah, does the world look so? Is it so beautiful? Let me see it and smile at it! Can a poor unfortunate really dare to look at it? And to be seen? Can I bear to be seen?”

All that she had said without a word, only with a smile. What a face, what a face!

But here Gaetano interrupted Donna Elisa. “Where is she now?” he said. “I too must see her.”

Then Donna Elisa looked Gaetano in the eyes. They were glowing and clear, as if they were filled with fire, and a dark flush rose to his temples.

“You will see her all in good time,” she said, harshly. And she repented of every word she had said.

Gaetano saw that she was afraid, and he understood what she feared. It came into his mind to tell her now that he meant to go away, to go all the way to America.

Then he understood that the strange signorina must be very dangerous. Donna Elisa was so sure that Gaetano would fall in love with her that she was almost glad to hear that he meant to go away.

For anything seemed better to her than a penniless daughter-in-law, whose father was a thief.

VI
DON MATTEO’S MISSION

One afternoon the old priest, Don Matteo, inserted his feet into newly polished shoes, put on a newly brushed soutane, and laid his cloak in the most effective folds. His face shone as he went up the street, and when he distributed blessings to the old women spinning by the doorposts, it was with gestures as graceful as if he had scattered roses.

The street along which Don Matteo was walking was spanned by at least seven arches, as if every house wished to bind itself to a neighbor. It ran small and narrow down the mountain; it was half street and half staircase; the gutters were always overflowing, and there were always plenty of orange-skins and cabbage-leaves to slip on. Clothes hung on the line, from the ground up to the sky. Wet shirt-sleeves and apron-strings were carried by the wind right into Don Matteo’s face. And it felt horrid and wet, as if Don Matteo had been touched by a corpse.

At the end of the street lay a little dark square, and there Don Matteo saw an old house, before which he stopped. It was big, and square, and almost without windows. It had two enormous flights of steps, and two big doors with heavy locks. And it had walls of black lava, and a “loggia,” where green slime grew over the tiled floor, and where the spider-webs were so thick that the nimble lizards were almost held fast in them.

Don Matteo lifted the knocker, and knocked till it thundered. All the women in the street began to talk, and to question. All the washerwomen by the fountain in the square dropped soap and wooden clapper, and began to whisper, and ask, “What is Don Matteo’s errand? Why does Don Matteo knock on the door of an old, haunted house, where nobody dares to live except the strange signorina, whose father is in prison?”

But now Giannita opened the door for Don Matteo, and conducted him through long passages, smelling of mould and damp. In several places in the floor the stones were loose, and Don Matteo could see way down into the cellar, where great armies of rats raced over the black earth floor.

As Don Matteo walked through the old house, he lost his good-humor. He did not pass by a stairway without suspiciously spying up it, and he could not hear a rustle without starting. He was depressed as before some misfortune. Don Matteo thought of the little turbaned Moor who was said to show himself in that house, and even if he did not see him, he might be said to have felt him.

At last Giannita opened a door and showed the priest into a room. The walls there were bare, as in a stable; the bed was as narrow as a nun’s, and over it hung a Madonna that was not worth three soldi. The priest stood and stared at the little Madonna till the tears rose to his eyes.

While he stood so Signorina Palmeri came into the room. She kept her head bent and moved slowly, as if wounded. When the priest saw her he wished to say to her: “You and I, Signorina Palmeri, have met in a strange old house. Are you here to study the old Moorish inscriptions or to look for mosaics in the cellar?” For the old priest was confounded when he saw Signorina Palmeri. He could not understand that the noble lady was poor. He could not comprehend that she was living in the house of the little Moor.

He said to himself that he must save her from this haunted house, and from poverty. He prayed to the tender Madonna for power to save her.

Thereupon he said to the signorina that he had come with a commission from Don Ferrante Alagona. Don Ferrante had confided to him that she had refused his proposal of marriage. Why was that? Did she not know that, although Don Ferrante seemed to be poor as he stood in his shop, he was really the richest man in Diamante? And Don Ferrante was of an old Spanish family of great consideration, both in their native country and in Sicily. And he still owned the big house on the Corso that had belonged to his ancestors. She should not have said no to him.

While Don Matteo was speaking, he saw how the signorina’s face grew stiff and white. He was almost afraid to go on. He feared that she was going to faint.

It was only with the greatest effort that she was able to answer him. The words would not pass her lips. It seemed as if they were too loathsome to utter. She quite understood, she said, that Don Ferrante would like to know why she had refused his proposal. She was infinitely touched and grateful on account of it, but she could not be his wife. She could not marry, for she brought dishonor and disgrace with her as a marriage portion.

“If you marry an Alagona, dear signorina,” said Don Matteo, “you need not fear that any one will ask of what family you are. It is an honorable old name. Don Ferrante and his sister, Donna Elisa, are considered the first people in Diamante, although they have lost all the family riches, and have to keep a shop. Don Ferrante knows well enough that the glory of the old name would not be tarnished by a marriage with you. Have no scruples for that, signorina, if otherwise you may be willing to marry Don Ferrante.”

But Signorina Palmeri repeated what she had said. Don Ferrante should not marry the daughter of a convict. She sat pale and despairing, as if wishing to practise saying those terrible words. She said that she did not wish to enter a family which would despise her. She succeeded in saying it in a hard, cold voice, without emotion.

But the more she said, the greater became Don Matteo’s desire to help her. He felt as if he had met a queen who had been torn from her throne. A burning desire came over him to set the crown again upon her head, and fasten the mantle about her shoulders.

Therefore Don Matteo asked her if her father were not soon coming out of prison, and he wondered what he would live on.

The signorina answered that he would live on her work.

Don Matteo asked her very seriously whether she had thought how her father, who had always been rich, could bear poverty.

Then she was silent. She tried to move her lips to answer, but could not utter a sound.

Don Matteo talked and talked. She looked more and more frightened, but she did not yield.

At last he knew not what to do. How could he save her from that haunted house, from poverty, and from the burden of dishonor that weighed her down? But then his eyes chanced to fall on the little image of the Madonna over the bed. So the young signorina was a believer.

The spirit of inspiration came to Don Matteo. He felt that God had sent him to save this poor woman. When he spoke again, there was a new ring in his voice. He understood that it was not he alone who spoke.

“My daughter,” he said, and rose, “you will marry Don Ferrante for your father’s sake! It is the Madonna’s will, my daughter.”

There was something impressive in Don Matteo’s manner. No one had ever seen him so before. The signorina trembled, as if a spirit voice had spoken to her, and she clasped her hands.

“Be a good and faithful wife to Don Ferrante,” said Don Matteo, “and the Madonna promises you through me that your father will have an old age free of care.”

Then the signorina saw that it was an inspiration which guided Don Matteo. It was God speaking through him. And she sank down on her knees, and bent her head. “I shall do what you command,” she said.

But when the priest, Don Matteo, came out of the house of the little Moor and went up the street, he suddenly took out his breviary and began to read. And although the wet clothes struck him on the cheek, and the little children and the orange-peels lay in wait for him, he only looked in his book. He needed to hear the great words of God.

For within that black house everything had seemed certain and sure, but when he came out into the sunshine he began to worry about the promise he had given in the name of the Madonna.

Don Matteo prayed and read, and read and prayed. Might the great God in heaven protect the woman, who had believed him and obeyed him as if he had been a prophet!

Don Matteo turned the corner into the Corso. He struck against donkeys on their way home, with travelling signorinas on their backs; he walked right into peasants coming home from their work, and he pushed against the old women spinning, and entangled their thread. At last he came to a little, dark shop.

It was a shop without a window which was at the corner of an old palace. The threshold was a foot high; the floor was of trampled earth; the door almost always stood open to let in the light. The counter was besieged by peasants and mule-drivers.

And behind the counter stood Don Ferrante. His beard grew in tufts; his face was in one wrinkle; his voice was hoarse with rage. The peasants demanded an immoderately high payment for the loads that they had driven up from Catania.

VII
THE BELLS OF SAN PASQUALE

The people of Diamante soon perceived that Don Ferrante’s wife, Donna Micaela, was nothing but a great child. She could never succeed in looking like a woman of the world, and she really was nothing but a child. And nothing else was to be expected, after the life she had led.

Of the world she had seen nothing but its theatres, museums, ball-rooms, promenades, and race courses; and all such are only play places. She had never been allowed to go alone on the street. She had never worked. No one had ever spoken seriously to her. She had not even been in love with any one.

After she had moved into the summer palace she forgot her cares as gayly and easily as a child would have done. And it appeared that she had the playful disposition of a child, and that she could transform and change everything about her.

The old dirty Saracen town Diamante seemed like a paradise to Donna Micaela. She said that she had not been at all surprised when Don Ferrante had spoken to her in the square, nor when he had proposed to her. It seemed quite natural to her that such things should happen in Diamante. She had seen instantly that Diamante was a town where rich men went and sought out poor, unfortunate signorinas to make them mistresses of their black lava palaces.

She also liked the summer-palace. The faded chintz, a hundred years old, that covered the furniture told her stories. And she found a deep meaning in all the love scenes between the shepherds and shepherdesses on the walls.

She had soon found out the secret of Don Ferrante. He was no ordinary shop-keeper in a side street. He was a man of ambition, who was collecting money in order to buy back the family estate on Etna and the palace in Catania and the castle on the mainland. And if he went in short jacket and pointed cap, like a peasant, it was in order the sooner to be able to appear as a grandee of Spain and prince of Sicily.

After they were married Don Ferrante always used every evening to put on a velvet coat, take his guitar under his arm, and place himself on the stairway to the gallery in the music-room in the summer-palace and sing canzoni. While he sang, Donna Micaela dreamed that she had been married to the noblest man in beautiful Sicily.

When Donna Micaela had been married a few months her father was released from prison and came to live at the summer palace with his daughter. He liked the life in Diamante and became friends with every one. He liked to talk to the bee-raisers and vineyard workers whom he met at the CafÉ Europa, and he amused himself every day by riding about on the slopes of Etna to look for antiquities.

But he had by no means forgiven his daughter. He lived under her roof, but he treated her like a stranger, and never showed her affection. Donna Micaela let him go on and pretended not to notice it. She could not take his anger seriously any longer. That old man, whom she loved, believed that he would be able to go on hating her year after year! He would live near her, hear her speak, see her eyes, be encompassed by her love, and he could continue to hate her! Ah, he knew neither her nor himself. She used to sit and imagine how it would be when he must acknowledge that he was conquered; when he must come and show her that he loved her.

One day Donna Micaela was standing on her balcony waving her hand to her father, who rode away on a small, dark-brown pony, when Don Ferrante came up from the shop to speak to her. And what Don Ferrante wished to say was that he had succeeded in getting her father admitted to “The Brotherhood of the Holy Heart” in Catania.

But although Don Ferrante spoke very distinctly, Donna Micaela seemed not to understand him at all.

He had to repeat to her that he had been in Catania the day before, and that he had succeeded in getting Cavaliere Palmeri into a brotherhood. He was to enter it in a month.

She only asked: “What does that mean? What does that mean?”

“Oh,” said Don Ferrante, “can I not have wearied of buying your father expensive wines from the mainland, and may I not sometimes wish to ride Domenico?”

When he had said that, he wished to go. There was nothing more to say.

“But tell me first what kind of a brotherhood it is,” she said.—“What it is! A lot of old men live there.”—“Poor old men?”—“Oh, well, not so rich.”—“They do not have a room to themselves, I suppose?”—“No, but very big dormitories.”—“And they eat from tin basins on a table without a cloth?”—“No, they must be china.”—“But without a table-cloth?”—“Lord, if the table is clean!”

He added, to silence her: “Very good people live there. If you like to know it, it was not without hesitation they would receive Cavaliere Palmeri.”

Thereupon Don Ferrante went. His wife was in despair, but also very angry. She thought that he had divested himself of rank and class and become only a plain shop-keeper.

She said aloud, although no one heard her, that the summer palace was only a big, ugly old house, and Diamante a poor and miserable town.

Naturally, she would not allow her father to leave her. Don Ferrante would see.

When they had eaten their dinner Don Ferrante wished to go to the CafÉ Europa and play dominoes, and he looked about for his hat. Donna Micaela took his hat and followed him out to the gallery that ran round the court-yard. When they were far enough from the dining-room for her father not to be able to hear them, she said passionately:—

“Have you anything against my father?”—“He is too expensive.”—“But you are rich.”—“Who has given you such an idea? Do you not see how I am struggling?”—“Save in some other way.”—“I shall save in other ways. Giannita has had presents enough.”—“No, economize on something for me.”—“You! you are my wife; you shall have it as you have it.”

She stood silent a moment. She was thinking what she could say to frighten him.

“If I am now your wife, do you know why it is?”—“Oh yes.”—“Do you also know what the priest promised me?”—“That is his affair, but I do what I can.”—“You have heard, perhaps, that I broke with all my friends in Catania when I heard that my father had sought help from them and had not got it.”—“I know it.”—“And that I came here to Diamante that he might escape from seeing them and being ashamed?”—“They will not be coming to the brotherhood.”—“When you know all this, are you not afraid to do anything against my father?”—“Afraid? I am not afraid of my wife.”

“Have I not made you happy?” she asked.—“Yes, of course,” he answered indifferently.—“Have you not enjoyed singing to me? Have you not liked me to have considered you the most generous man in Sicily? Have you not been glad that I was happy in the old palace? Why should it all come to an end?”

He laid his hand on her shoulder and warned her. “Remember that you are not married to a fine gentleman from the Via Etnea!”—“Oh, no!”—“Up here on the mountain the ways are different. Here wives obey their husbands. And we do not care for fair words. But if we want them we know how to get them.”

She was frightened when he spoke so. In a moment she was on her knees before him. It was dark, but enough light came from the other rooms for him to see her eyes. In burning prayer, glorious as stars, they were fixed on him.

“Be merciful! You do not know how much I love him!” Don Ferrante laughed. “You ought to have begun with that. Now you have made me angry.” She still knelt and looked up at him. “It is well,” he said, “for you hereafter to know how you shall behave.” Still she knelt. Then he asked: “Shall I tell him, or will you?”

Donna Micaela was ashamed that she had humbled herself. She rose and answered imperiously: “I shall tell him, but not till the last day. And you shall not let him notice anything.”

“No, I shall not,” he said, and mimicked her. “The less talk about it, the better for me.”

But when he was gone Donna Micaela laughed at Don Ferrante for believing that he could do what he liked with her father. She knew some one who would help her.

In the Cathedral at Diamante there is a miracle-working image of the Madonna, and this is its story.

Long, long ago a holy hermit lived in a cave on Monte Chiaro. And this hermit dreamed one night that in the harbor of Catania lay a ship loaded with images of the saints, and among these there was one so holy that Englishmen, who are richer than anybody else, would have paid its weight in gold for it. As soon as the hermit awoke from this dream he started for Catania. In the harbor lay a ship loaded with images of the saints, and among the images was one of the holy Madonna that was more holy than all the others. The hermit begged the captain not to carry that image away from Sicily, but to give it to him. But the captain refused. “I shall take it to England,” he said, “and the Englishmen will pay its weight in gold.” The hermit renewed his petitions. At last the captain had his men drive him on shore, and hoisted his sail to depart.

It looked as if the holy image was to be lost to Sicily; but the hermit knelt down on one of the lava blocks on the shore and prayed to God that it might not be. And what happened? The ship could not go. The anchor was up, the sail hoisted, and the wind fresh; but for three long days the ship lay as motionless as if it had been a rock. On the third day the captain took the Madonna image and threw it to the hermit, who still lay on the shore. And immediately the ship glided out of the harbor. The hermit carried the image to Monte Chiaro, and it is still in Diamante, where it has a chapel and an altar in the Cathedral.

Donna Micaela was now going to this Madonna to pray for her father.

She sought out the Madonna’s chapel, which was built in a dark corner of the Cathedral. The walls were covered with votive offerings, with silver hearts and pictures that had been given by all those who had been helped by the Madonna of Diamante.

The image was hewn in black marble, and when Donna Micaela saw it standing in its niche, high and dark, and almost hidden by a golden railing, it seemed to her that its face was beautiful, and that it shone with mildness. And her heart was filled with hope.

Here was the powerful queen of heaven; here was the good Mother Mary; here was the afflicted mother who understood every sorrow; here was one who would not allow her father to be taken from her.

Here she would find help. She would need only to fall on her knees and tell her trouble, to have the black Madonna come to her assistance.

While she prayed she felt certain that Don Ferrante was even at that moment changing his mind. When she came home he would come to meet her and say to her that she might keep her father.

It was a morning three weeks later.

Donna Micaela came out of the summer palace to go to early mass; but before she set out to the church, she went into Donna Elisa’s shop to buy a wax candle. It was so early that she had been afraid that the shop would not be open; but it was, and she was glad to be able to take a gift with her to the black Madonna.

The shop was empty when Donna Micaela came in, and she pushed the door forward and back to make the bell ring and call Donna Elisa in. At last some one came, but it was not Donna Elisa; it was a young man.

That young man was Gaetano, whom Donna Micaela scarcely knew. For Gaetano had heard so much about her that he was afraid to meet her, and every time she had come over to Donna Elisa he had shut himself into his workshop. Donna Micaela knew no more about him than that he was to leave Diamante, and that he was always carving holy images for Donna Elisa to have something to sell while he was earning great fortunes away in Argentina.

When she now saw Gaetano, she found him so handsome that it made her glad to look at him. She was full of anxiety as a hunted animal, but no sorrow in the world could prevent her from feeling joy at the sight of anything so beautiful.

She asked herself where she had seen him before, and she remembered that she had seen his face in her father’s wonderful collection of pictures in the palace at Catania. There he had not been in working blouse; he had had a black felt hat with long, flowing, white feathers, and a broad lace collar over a velvet coat. And he had been painted by the great master Van Dyck.

Donna Micaela asked Gaetano for a wax candle, and he began to look for one. And now, strangely enough, Gaetano, who saw the little shop every day, seemed to be quite strange there. He looked for the wax candle in the drawers of rosaries and in the little medallion boxes. He could not find anything, and he grew so impatient that he turned out the drawers and broke the boxes open. The destruction and disorder were terrible. And it would be a real grief to Donna Elisa when she came home.

But Donna Micaela liked to see how he shook the thick hair back from his face, and how his gold-colored eyes glowed like yellow wine when the sun shines through it. It was a consolation to see any one so beautiful.

Then Donna Micaela asked pardon of the noble gentlemen whom the great Van Dyck had painted. For she had often said to them: “Ah, signor, you have been beautiful, but you never could have been so dark and so pale and so melancholy. And you did not possess such eyes of fire. All that the master who painted you has put into your face.” But when Donna Micaela saw Gaetano she found that it all could be in a face, and that the master had not needed to add anything. Therefore she asked the noble old gentlemen’s pardon.

At last Gaetano had found the long candle-boxes that stood under the counter, where they had always stood. And he gave her the candle, but he did not know what it cost, and said that she could come in and pay it later. When she asked him for something to wrap it in he was in such trouble that she had to help him to look.

It grieved her that such a man should think of travelling to Argentina.

He let Donna Micaela wrap up the candle and watched her while she did it. She wished she could have asked him not to look at her now, when her face reflected only hopelessness and misery.

Gaetano had not scrutinized her features more than a moment before he sprang up on a little step-ladder, took down an image from the topmost shelf, and came back with it to her. It was a little gilded and painted wooden angel, a little San Michele fighting with the arch-fiend, which he had created from paper and wadding.

He handed it to Donna Micaela and begged her to accept it. He wished to give it to her, he said, because it was the best he had ever carved. He was so certain that it had greater power than his other images that he had put it away on the top shelf, so that no one might see and buy it. He had forbidden Donna Elisa to sell it except to one who had a great sorrow. And now Donna Micaela was to take it.

She hesitated. She found him almost too daring.

But Gaetano begged her to look how well the image was carved. She saw that the archangel’s wings were ruffled with anger, and that Lucifer was pressing his claws into the steel plate on his leg? Did she see how San Michele was driving in his spear, and how he was frowning and pressing his lips together?

He wished to lay the little image in her hand, but she gently pushed it away. She saw that it was beautiful and spirited, she said, but she knew that it could not help her. She thanked him for his gift, but she would not accept it.

Then Gaetano seized the image and rolled it in paper and put it back in its place.

And not until it was wrapped up and put away did he speak to her.

But then he asked her why she came to buy wax candles if she was not a believer. Did she mean to say that she did not believe in San Michele? Did she not know that he was the most powerful of the angels, and that it was he who had vanquished Lucifer and thrown him into Etna? Did she not believe that it was true? Did she not know that San Michele lost a wing-feather in the fight, and that it was found in Caltanisetta? Did she know it or not? Or what did she mean by San Michele not being able to help her? Did she think that none of the saints could help? And he, who was standing in his workshop all day long, carving saints!—would he do such a thing if there was no good in it? Did she believe that he was an impostor?

But as Donna Micaela was just as strong a believer as Gaetano, she thought that his speech was unjust, and it irritated her to contradiction.

“It sometimes happens that the saints do not help,” she said to him. And when Gaetano looked unbelieving, she was seized by an uncontrollable desire to convince him, and she said to him that some one had promised her in the name of the Madonna that, if she was a faithful wife to Don Ferrante, her father should enjoy an old age free of care. But now her husband wished to put her father in a brotherhood, which was as wretched as a poor-house and strict as a prison. And the Madonna had not averted it; in eight days it would happen.

Gaetano listened to her with the greatest earnestness. That was what induced her to confide the whole story to him.

“Donna Micaela,” he said, “you must turn to the black Madonna in the Cathedral.”

“So you think that I have not prayed to her?”

Gaetano flushed and said almost with anger: “You will not say that you have turned in vain to the black Madonna?”

“I have prayed to her in vain these last three weeks—prayed to her, prayed to her.”

When Donna Micaela spoke of it she could scarcely breathe. She wanted to weep over herself because she had awaited help each day, and each day been disappointed; and yet had known nothing better to do than begin again with her prayers. And it was visible on her face that her soul lived over and over again what she had suffered, when each day she had awaited an answer to her prayer, while the days slipped by.

But Gaetano was unmoved; he stood smiling, and drummed on one of the glass cases that stood on the counter.

“Have you only prayed to the Madonna?” he said.

Only prayed, only prayed! But she had also promised her to lay aside all sins. She had gone to the street where she had lived first, and nursed the sick woman with the ulcerated leg. She never passed a beggar without giving alms.

Only prayed! And she told him that if the Madonna had had the power to help her, she ought to have been satisfied with her prayers. She had spent her days in the Cathedral. And the anguish, the anguish that tortured her, should not that be counted?

He only shrugged his shoulders. Had she not tried anything else?

Anything else! But there was nothing in the world that she had not tried. She had given silver hearts and wax candles. Her rosary was never out of her hand.

Gaetano irritated her. He would not count anything that she had done; he only asked: “Nothing else? Nothing else?”

“But you ought to understand,” she said. “Don Ferrante does not give me so much money. I cannot do more. At last I have succeeded in getting some silk and cloth for an altar cloth. You ought to understand!”

But Gaetano, who had daily intercourse with the saints, and who knew the power and wildness of enthusiasm that had filled them when they had compelled God to obey their prayers, smiled scornfully at Donna Micaela, who thought she could subjugate the Madonna with wax candles and altar-cloths.

He understood very well, he answered. The whole was clear to him. It was always so with those miserable saints. Everybody called to them for help, but few understood what they ought to do to get their prayers granted. And then people said that the saints had no power. All were helped who knew how they ought to pray.

Donna Micaela looked up in eager expectation. There was such strength and conviction in Gaetano’s words that she began to believe that he would teach her the right words of salvation.

Gaetano took the candle lying in front of her on the counter and threw it down into the box again, and told her what she had to do. He forbade her to give the Madonna any gifts, or to pray to her, or to do anything for the poor. He told her that he would tear her altar-cloth to pieces if she sewed another stitch on it.

“Show her, Donna Micaela, that it means something to you,” he said, and fixed his eyes on her with compelling force. “Good Lord, you must be able to find something to do, to show her that it is serious, and not play. You must be able to show her that you will not live if you are not helped. Do you mean to continue to be faithful to Don Ferrante, if he sends your father away? I know you do. If the Madonna has no need to fear what you are going to do, why should she help you?”

Donna Micaela drew back. He came swiftly out from behind the counter and seized her coat sleeve.

“Do you understand? You shall show her that you can throw yourself away if you do not get help. You shall throw yourself into sin and death if you do not get what you want. That is the way to force the saints.”

She tore herself from him and went without a word. She hurried up the spiral street, came to the Cathedral, and threw herself down in terror before the altar of the black Madonna.

That happened one Saturday morning, and on Sunday evening Donna Micaela saw Gaetano again. For it was beautiful moonlight, and in Diamante it is the custom on moonlight nights for all to leave their homes and go out into the streets. As soon as the inhabitants of the summer palace had come outside their door they had met acquaintances. Donna Elisa had taken Cavaliere Palmeri’s arm, and the syndic Voltaro had joined Don Ferrante to discuss the elections; but Gaetano came up to Donna Micaela because he wished to hear if she had followed his advice.

“Have you stopped sewing on that altar-cloth?” he said.

But Donna Micaela answered that all day yesterday she had sewn on it.

“Then it is you who understand what you are doing, Donna Micaela.”

“Yes, now there is no help for it, Don Gaetano.”

She managed to keep them away from the others, for there was something she wished to speak to him about. And when they came to Porta Etnea, she turned out through the gate, and they went along the paths that wind under Monte Chiaro’s palm groves.

They could not have walked on the streets filled with people. Donna Micaela spoke so the people in Diamante would have stoned her if they had heard her.

She asked Gaetano if he had ever seen the black Madonna in the Cathedral. She had not seen her till yesterday. The Madonna perhaps had placed herself in such a dark corner of the Cathedral so that no one should be able to see her. She was so black, and had a railing in front of her. No one could see her.

But to-day Donna Micaela had seen her. To-day the Madonna had had a festival, and she had been moved from her niche. The floor and walls of her chapel had been covered with white almond-blossoms, and she herself had stood down on the altar, dark and high, surrounded by the white glory.

But when Donna Micaela had seen the image she had been filled with despair; for the image was no Madonna. No, she had prayed to no Madonna. Oh, a shame, a shame! It was plainly an old heathen goddess. She had a helmet, not a crown; she had no child on her arm; she had a shield. It was a Pallas Athene. It was no Madonna. Oh, no; oh, no!

It was like the people of Diamante to worship such an image. It was like them to set up such a blasphemy and worship it! Did he know what was the worst misfortune? Their Madonna was so ugly. She was disfigured, and she had never been a work of art. She was so ugly that one could not bear to look at her.

And to have been deceived by all the thousand votive offerings that hung in the chapel; to have been fooled by all the legends about her! To have wasted three weeks in praying to her! Why had she not been helped? She was no Madonna, she was no Madonna.

They walked along the path on the town wall running around Monte Chiaro. The whole world was white about them. A white mist wreathed the base of the mountain, and the almond-trees on Etna were quite white. Sometimes they passed under an almond-tree, which arched them over with its glistening branches, as thickly covered with flowers as if they had been dipped in a bath of silver. The moonlight shone so bright on the earth that everything was divested of its color, and became white. It seemed almost strange that it could not be felt, that it did not warm, that it did not dazzle the eyes.

Donna Micaela wondered if it was the moonlight that subdued Gaetano, so that he did not seize her, and throw her down into Simeto, when she cursed the black Madonna.

He walked silent and quiet at her side, but she was afraid of what he might do. In spite of her fear, she could not be silent.

What she had still to say was the most dreadful of all. She said that she had tried all day long to think of the real Madonna, and that she had recalled to her mind all the images of her she had ever seen. But it had all been in vain, because as soon as she thought of the shining queen of heaven, the old black goddess came and placed herself between them. She saw her come like a dried-up and officious old maid, and stand in front of the great queen of heaven, so that now no Madonna existed for her any longer. She believed that the latter was angry with her because she had done so much for the other, and that she hid her face and her grace from her. And, on account of the false Madonna, her father was now to suffer misfortune. Now she would never be allowed to keep him in her home. Now she would never win his forgiveness. Oh, God! oh, God!

And all this she said to Gaetano, who honored the black Madonna of Diamante more than anything else in the world.

He now came close up to Donna Micaela, and she feared that it was her last hour. She said in a faint voice, as if to excuse herself: “I am mad. Grief is driving me mad. I never sleep.”

But Gaetano’s only thought had been what a child she was, and that she did not at all understand how to meet life.

He hardly knew himself what he was doing when he gently drew her to him and kissed her, because she had gone so astray and was such a helpless child.

She was so overcome with astonishment that she did not even think of avoiding it. And she neither screamed nor ran away. She understood instantly that he had kissed her as he would a child. She only walked quickly on and began to cry. That kiss had made her feel how helpless and forsaken she was, and how much she longed for some one strong and good to take care of her.

It was terrible that, although she had both father and husband, she should be so forsaken that this stranger should need to feel sympathy for her.

When Gaetano saw her trembling with silent sobs, he felt that he too began to shake. A strong and violent emotion took possession of him.

He came close to her once more and laid his hand on her arm. And his voice, when he spoke, was not clear and loud; it was thick and choked with emotion.

“Will you go with me to Argentina if the Madonna does not help you?”

Then Donna Micaela shook him off. She felt suddenly that he no longer talked to her as to a child. She turned and went back into the town. Gaetano did not follow her; he remained standing in the path where he had kissed her, and it seemed as if never again could he leave that place.

For two days Gaetano dreamed of Donna Micaela, but on the third he came to the summer palace to speak to her.

He found her on the roof-garden, and instantly told her that she must flee with him.

He had thought it out since they parted. He had stood in his workshop and considered everything that had happened, and now it was all clear to him.

She was a rose which the strong sirocco had torn from its stem and roughly whirled through the air, that she might find so much the better rest and protection in a heart which loved her. She must understand that God and all the saints wished and desired that they should love one another, otherwise these great misfortunes would not have brought her near to him. If the Madonna refused to help her, it was because she wished to set her free from her promise of faithfulness to Don Ferrante. For all the saints knew that she was his, Gaetano’s. She was created for him; for him she had grown up; for him she was alive. When he kissed her in the path in the moonlight he had been like a lost child who had wandered long in the desert and now at last had come to the gate of his home. He possessed nothing; but she was his home and his hearth; she was the inheritance God had apportioned to him, the only thing in the world that was his.

Therefore he could not leave her behind. She must go with him; she must, she must!

He did not kneel before her. He stood and talked to her with clenched hands and blazing eyes. He did not ask her, he commanded her to go with him, because she was his.

It was no sin to take her away; it was his duty. What would become of her if he deserted her?

Donna Micaela listened to him without moving. She sat silent a long time, even after he had ceased speaking.

“When are you going?” she asked at length.

“I leave Diamante on Saturday.”

“And when does the steamer go?”

“It goes on Sunday evening from Messina.”

Donna Micaela rose and walked away towards the terrace stairs.

“My father is to go to Catania on Saturday,” she said. “I shall ask Don Ferrante to be allowed to go with him.” She went down a few steps, as if she did not mean to say anything more. Then she stopped. “If you meet me in Catania, I will go with you whither you will.”

She hurried down the steps. Gaetano did not try to detain her. A time would come when she would not run away from him. He knew that she could not help loving him.

Donna Micaela passed the whole of Friday afternoon in the Cathedral. She had come to the Madonna and thrown herself down before her in despair. “Oh, Madonna mia, Madonna mia! Shall I be to-morrow a fugitive wife? Will the world have the right to say all possible evil of me?” Everything seemed equally terrible to her. She was appalled at the thought of fleeing with Gaetano, and she did not know how she could stay with Don Ferrante. She hated the one as much as the other. Neither of them seemed able to offer her anything but unhappiness.

She saw that the Madonna would not help. And now she asked herself if it really would not be a greater misery to go with Gaetano than to remain with Don Ferrante. Was it worth while to ruin herself to be revenged on her husband?

She suffered great anguish. She had been driven on by a devouring restlessness the whole week. Worst of all, she could not sleep. She no longer thought clearly or soundly.

Time and time again she returned to her prayers. But then she thought: “The Madonna cannot help me.” And so she stopped.

Then she came to think of the days of her former sorrows, and remembered the little image that once had helped her, when she had been in despair as great as this.

She turned with passionate eagerness to the poor little child. “Help me, help me! Help my old father, and help me myself that I may not be tempted to anger and revenge!”

When she went to bed that night, she was still tormented and distressed. “If I could sleep only one hour,” she said, “I should know what I wanted.”

Gaetano was to start on his travels early the next morning. She came at last to the decision to speak to him before he left, and tell him that she could not go with him. She could not bear to be considered a fallen woman.

She had hardly decided that before she fell asleep. She did not wake till the clock struck nine the next morning. And then Gaetano was already gone. She could not tell him that she had changed her mind.

But she did not think of it either. During her sleep something new and strange had come over her. It seemed to her that in the night she had lived in heaven and was filled with bliss.

What saint is there who does more for man than San Pasquale? Does it not sometimes happen to you to stand and talk in some lonely place in the woods or plains, and either to speak ill of some one or to make plans for something foolish? Now please notice that just as you are talking and talking you hear a rustling near by, and look round in wonder to see if some one has thrown a stone. It is useless to look about long for the thrower of the stone. It comes from San Pasquale. As surely as there is justice in heaven, it was San Pasquale who heard you talking evil, and threw one of his stones in warning.

And any one who does not like to be disturbed in his evil schemes may not console himself with the thought that San Pasquale’s stones will soon come to an end. They will not come to an end at all. There are so many of them that they will hold out till the last day of the world. For when San Pasquale lived here on the earth, do you know by chance what he did, do you know what he thought about more than anything else? San Pasquale gave heed to all the little flint-stones that lay in his path, and gathered them up into his bag. You, signor, you will scarcely stoop to pick up a soldo, but San Pasquale picked up every little flint-stone, and when he died, he took them all with him up to heaven, and there he sits now, and throws them at everybody who thinks of doing anything foolish.

But that is not by any means the only use that San Pasquale is to man. It is he, also, who gives warning if any one is to be married, or if any one is to die; and he even gives the sign with something besides stones. Old Mother Saraedda at Randazzo sat by her daughter’s sick bed one night and fell asleep. The daughter lay unconscious and was about to die, and no one could summon the priest. How was the mother waked in time? How was she waked, so that she could send her husband to the priest’s house? By nothing else than a chair, which began to rock forward and back, and to crack and creak, until she awoke. And it was San Pasquale who did it. Who else but San Pasquale is there to think of such a thing?

There is one thing more to tell about San Pasquale. It was of big Cristoforo from Tre Castagni. He was not a bad man, but he had a bad habit. He could not open his mouth without swearing. He could not say two words without one of them being an oath. And do you think that it did any good for his wife and neighbors to admonish him? But over his bed he had a little picture representing San Pasquale, and the little picture succeeded in helping him. Every night it swung forward and back in its frame, swung fast or slow, as he had sworn that day. And he discovered that he could not sleep a single night until he stopped swearing.

In Diamante San Pasquale has a church, which lies outside the Porta Etnea, a little way down the mountain. It is quite small and poor, but the white walls and the red roof stand beautifully embedded in a grove of almond-trees.

Therefore, as soon as the almond-trees bloom in the spring, San Pasquale’s church becomes the most beautiful in Diamante. For the blossoming branches arch over it, thickly covered with white, glistening flowers, like the most gorgeous garment.

San Pasquale’s church is very miserable and deserted, because no service can be held there. For when the Garibaldists, who freed Sicily, came to Diamante, they camped in San Pasquale’s church and in the Franciscan monastery beside it. And in the church itself they stabled brute beasts, and led such a wild life with women and with gambling that ever since it has been considered unhallowed and unclean, and has never been opened for divine service from that time.

Therefore it is only when the almond-trees are in bloom that strangers and fine people pay attention to San Pasquale. For although the whole of the slopes of Etna are white then with almond-blossoms, still the biggest and the most luxuriant trees stand about the old, condemned church.

But the poor people of Diamante come to San Pasquale the whole year round. For although the church is always closed, people go there to get advice from the saint. There is an image of him under a big stone canopy just by the entrance, and people come to ask him about the future. No one can foretell the future better than San Pasquale.

Now it happened that the very morning when Gaetano left Diamante the clouds had come rolling down from Etna, as thick as if they had been dust from innumerable hosts, and they filled the air like dark-winged dragons, and vomited forth rain, and breathed mists and darkness. It grew so thick over Diamante that one could scarcely see across the street. The dampness dripped from everything; the floor was as wet as the roof, the doorposts and balustrades were covered with drops, the fog stood and quivered in the passage-ways and rooms, until one would have thought them full of smoke.

That very morning, at an early hour, before the rain had begun, a rich English lady started in her big travelling-carriage to make the trip round Etna. But when she had driven a few hours a terrible rain began, and everything was wrapped in mist. As she did not wish to miss seeing any of the beautiful district through which she was travelling, she determined to drive to the nearest town and to stay there until the storm was over. That town was Diamante.

The Englishwoman was a Miss Tottenham, and it was she who had moved into the Palazzo Palmeri at Catania. Among all the other things she brought with her in her trunks was the Christ image, upon which Donna Micaela had called the evening before. For that image, which was now both old and mishandled, she always carried with her, in memory of an old friend who had left her her wealth.

It seemed as if San Pasquale had known what a great miracle-worker the image was, for it was as if he wished to greet him. Just as Miss Tottenham’s travelling-carriage drove in through Porta Etnea, the bells began to ring on San Pasquale’s church.

They rang afterwards all day quite by themselves.

San Pasquale’s bells are not much bigger than those that are used on farms to call the work people home; and like them, they are hung under the roof in a little frame, and set in motion by pulling a rope that hangs down by the church wall.

It is not heavy work to make the bells ring, but nevertheless they are not so light that they can swing quite by themselves. Whoever has seen old Fra Felice from the Franciscan monastery put his foot in the loop of the rope and tread up and down to start them going, knows well enough that the bells cannot begin to ring without assistance.

But that was just what they were doing that morning. The rope was fastened to a cleat in the wall, and there was no one touching it. Nor did any one sit crouching on the roof to set them going. People plainly saw how the bells swung backwards and forwards, and how the tongues hit against the brazen throats. It could not be explained.

When Donna Micaela awoke, the bells were already ringing, and she lay quiet for a long time, and listened, and listened. She had never heard anything more beautiful. She did not know that it was a miracle, but she lay and thought how beautiful it was. She lay and wondered if real bronze bells could sound like that.

No one will ever know what the metal was that rang in San Pasquale’s bells that day.

She thought that the bells said to her that now she was to be glad; now she was to live and love; now she was to go to meet something great and beautiful; now she was never again to have regrets and never be sad.

Then her heart began to dance in a kind of stately measure, and she marched solemnly to the sound of bells into a great castle. And to whom could the castle belong, who could be lord of such a beautiful place, if not love?

It can be hidden no longer: when Donna Micaela awoke she felt that she loved Gaetano, and that she desired nothing better than to go with him.

When Donna Micaela drew back the curtain from the window and saw the gray morning, she kissed her hand to it and whispered: “You, who are morning to the day when I am going away, you are the most beautiful morning I have ever seen; and gray as you are, I will caress and kiss you.”

But she still liked the bells best.

By that you may know that her love was strong, for to all the others it was torture to hear those bells, that would not stop ringing. No one asked about them during the first half-hour. During the first half-hour people hardly heard any ringing, but during the second and the third!!!

No one need believe that San Pasquale’s little bells could not make themselves heard. They are always loud and their clang seemed now to grow and grow. It soon sounded as if the fog were filled with bells; as if the sky hung full of them, although no one could see them for the clouds.

When Donna Elisa first heard the ringing she thought that it was San Giuseppe’s little bell, and then that it was the bell of the Cathedral itself. Then she thought she heard the bell of the Dominican monastery chime in, and at last she was certain that all the bells in the town rang and rang all they could, all the bells in the five monasteries and the seven churches. She thought that she recognized them all, until finally she asked, and heard that it was only San Pasquale’s little bells that were ringing.

During the first hours, and before people generally knew that the bells were ringing all by themselves, they noticed that the raindrops fell in time to the sound of the bells, and that every one spoke with a metallic voice. People also noticed that it was impossible to play on mandolin and guitar, because the bells blended with the music and made it ear-splitting; neither could any one read, because the letters swung to and fro like bell-clappers, and the words acquired a voice, and read themselves out quite audibly.

Soon the people could not bear to see flowers on long stalks, because they thought that they swung to and fro. And they complained that sound came from them, instead of fragrance.

Others insisted that the mist floating through the air moved in time with the sound of the bells, and they said that all the pendulums conformed to it, and that every one who went by in the rain tried to do likewise.

And that was when the bells had only rung a couple of hours, and when the people still laughed at them.

But at the third hour the ringing seemed to increase even more, and then some stuffed cotton into their ears, while others buried themselves under pillows. But they felt just as distinctly how the air quivered with the strokes, and they thought that they perceived how everything moved in time. Those who fled up to the dark attic found the sound of the bells clear and ringing there, as if they came from the sky; and those who fled down into the cellar heard them as loud and deafening there as if San Pasquale’s church stood under ground.

Every one in Diamante began to be terrified except Donna Micaela, whom love protected from fear.

And now people began to think that it must mean something, because it was San Pasquale’s bells that rang. Every one began to ask himself what the saint foretold. Each had his own dread, and believed that San Pasquale gave warning to him of what he least wished. Each had a deed on his conscience to remember, and now thought that San Pasquale was ringing down a punishment for him.

Toward noon, when the bells still rang, everybody was sure that San Pasquale was ringing such a misfortune upon Diamante that they might all expect to die within the year.

Pretty Giannita came terrified and weeping to Donna Micaela, and lamented that it was San Pasquale who was ringing. “God, God, if it had been any other than San Pasquale!”

“He sees that something terrible is coming to us,” said Giannita. “The mist does not prevent him from seeing as far as he will. He sees that an enemy’s fleet is approaching in the bay! He sees that a cloud of ashes is rising out of Etna which will fall over us and bury us!”

Donna Micaela smiled, and thought that she knew of what San Pasquale was thinking. “He is tolling a passing-bell for the beautiful almond-blossoms, that are destroyed by the rain,” she said to Giannita.

She let no one frighten her, for she believed that the bells were ringing for her alone. They rocked her to dream. She sat quite still in the music-room and let joy reign in her. But in the whole world about her was fear and anxiety and restlessness.

No one could sit at his work. No one could think of anything but the great horror that San Pasquale foretold.

People began to give the beggars more gifts than they had ever had; but the beggars did not rejoice, because they did not believe they would survive the morrow. And the priests could not rejoice, although they had so many penitents that they had to sit in the confessional all day long, and although gift upon gift was piled up on the altar of the saint.

Not even Vicenzo da Lozzo, the letter-writer, was glad of the day, although people besieged his desk under the court-house loggia, and were more than willing to pay him a soldo a word, if they only might write a line of farewell on this their last day to their dear ones far away.

It was not possible to keep school that day, for the children cried the whole time. At noon the mothers came, their faces stiff with terror, and took their little ones home with them, so that they might at least be together in misfortune.

The apprentices at the tailors and shoe-makers had a holiday. But the poor boys did not dare to enjoy it; they preferred to sit in their places in the workshops, and wait.

In the afternoon the ringing still continued.

Then the old gate-keeper of the palazzo Geraci, where now no one lives but beggars, and who is himself a beggar, and goes dressed in the most miserable rags, went and put on the light-green velvet livery that he wears only on saints’ days and on the king’s birthday. And no one could see him sitting in the gateway dressed in that array without being chilled with fear, for people understood that the old man expected that no other than destruction would march in through the gate he was guarding.

It was dreadful how people frightened one another.

Poor Torino, who had once been a man of means, went from house to house and cried that now the time had come when every one who had cheated and beggared him would get his punishment. He went into all the little shops along the Corso and struck the counter with his hand, saying that now every one in the town would get his sentence, because all had connived to cheat him.

It was also terrifying to hear of the game of cards at the CafÉ Europa. There the same four had played year after year at the same table, and no one had ever thought that they could do anything else. But now they suddenly let their cards fall, and promised each other that if they survived the horror of this day they would never touch them again.

Donna Elisa’s shop was packed with people; to propitiate the saints and to avert the menace, they bought all the sacred things that she had to sell. But Donna Elisa thought only of Gaetano, who was away, and believed that San Pasquale was warning her that he would be lost during the voyage. And she took no pleasure in all the money that she was earning.

When San Pasquale’s bells went on ringing the whole afternoon people could hardly hold out.

For now they knew that it was an earthquake which they foretold, and that all Diamante would be wrecked.

In the alleys, where the very houses seemed afraid of earthquakes, and huddled together to support one another, people moved their miserable old furniture out on the street into the rain, and spread tents of bed-quilts over them. And they even carried out their little children in their cradles, and piled up boxes over them.

In spite of the rain, there was such a crowd on the Corso that it was almost impossible to pass through. For every one was trying to go out through Porta Etnea to see the bells swinging and swinging, and to convince themselves that no one was touching the rope,—that it was firmly tied. And all who came out there fell on their knees in the road, where the water ran in streams, and the mud was bottomless.

The doors to San Pasquale’s church were shut, as always, but outside the old gray-brother, Fra Felice, went about with a brass plate, among those who prayed, and received their gifts.

In their turn the frightened people went forward to the image of San Pasquale beneath the stone canopy, and kissed his hand. An old woman came carefully carrying something under a green umbrella. It was a glass with water and oil, in which floated a little wick burning with a faint flame. She placed it in front of the image and knelt before it.

Though many thought that they ought to try to tie up the bells, no one dared to propose it. For no one dared to silence God’s voice.

Nor did any one dare to say that it might be a device of old Fra Felice to collect money. Fra Felice was beloved. It would fare badly with whoever said such things as that.

Donna Micaela also came out to San Pasquale and took her father with her. She walked with her head high and quite without fear. She came to thank him for having rung a great passion into her soul. “My life begins this day,” she said to herself.

Don Ferrante did not seem to be afraid either, but he was grim and angry. For every one had to go in to him in his shop, and tell him what they thought, and hear his opinion, because he was one of the Alagonas, who had governed the town for so many years.

All day terrified, trembling people came into his shop. And they all came up to him and said: “This is a terrible ringing, Don Ferrante. What is to become of us, Don Ferrante?”

Even Ugo Favara, the splenetic advocate, came into the shop, and took a chair, and sat down behind the counter. And Don Ferrante had him sitting there all day, quite livid, quite motionless, suffering the most inconceivable anguish without uttering a word.

Every five minutes Torino-il-Martello came in and struck the counter, saying that the hour had come in which Don Ferrante was to get his punishment.

Don Ferrante was a hard man, but he could no more escape the bells than any other. And the longer he heard them, the more he began to wonder why everybody streamed into his shop. It seemed as if they meant something special. It seemed as if they wished to make him responsible for the ringing, and the evil it portended.

He had not spoken of it to any one, but his wife must have spread it about. He began to believe that everybody was thinking the same, although they did not dare to say it. He thought that the advocate was sitting and waiting for him to yield. He believed that the whole town came in to see if he would really dare to send his father-in-law away.

Donna Elisa, who had so much to do in her own shop that she could not come herself, sent old Pacifica continually to him to ask what he thought of the bell-ringing. And the priest too came to the shop for a moment and said, like all the others: “Did you ever hear such a terrible ringing, Don Ferrante?”

Don Ferrante would have liked to know if the advocate and Don Matteo and all the others came only to reproach him because he wished to send Cavaliere Palmeri away.

The blood began to throb in his temples. The room swam now and then before his eyes. People came in continually and asked: “Have you ever heard such a terrible ringing?” But one never came and asked, and that was Donna Micaela. She could not come when she felt no fear. She was merely delighted and proud that the passion which was to fill her whole life had come. “My life is to be great and glorious,” she said. And she was appalled that till now she had been only a child.

She would travel with the post-carriage that went by Diamante at ten o’clock at night. Towards four, she thought, she must tell her father everything, and begin his packing.

But that did not seem hard to her. Her father would soon come to her in Argentina. She would beg him to be patient for a few months, until they could have a home to offer him. And she was sure that he would be glad to have her leave Don Ferrante.

She moved in a delicious trance. Everything that had seemed dreadful appeared so no longer. There was no shame, no danger; no, none at all.

She only longed to hear the rattling of the post-carriage.

Then she heard many voices on the stairs leading from the court-yard to the second floor. She heard a multitude of heavy feet tramping. She saw people passing through the open portico that ran round the court-yard, and through which one had to go to come into the rooms. She saw that they were carrying something heavy between them, but she could not see what it was, because there was such a crowd.

The pale-faced advocate walked before the others. He came and said to her that Don Ferrante had wished to drive Torino out of his shop; Torino had cut him with his knife. It was nothing dangerous. He was already bandaged and would be well in a fortnight.

Don Ferrante was carried in, and his eyes wandered about the room, not in search of Donna Micaela, but of Cavaliere Palmeri. When he saw him, he let his wife know without a word, only by a few gestures, that her father never would need to leave his house; never, never.

Then she pressed her hands against her eyes. What, what! her father need not go? She was saved. A miracle had come to pass to help her!

Ah, now she must be glad, be content! But she was not. She felt the most terrible pain.

She could not go. Her father was allowed to remain, and so she must be faithful to Don Ferrante. She struggled to understand. It was so. She could not go.

She tried to change it in some way. Perhaps it was a false conclusion. She had been so confused. No, no, it was so, she could not.

Then she became tired unto death. She had travelled and travelled the whole day. She had been so long on the way. And she would never get there. She sank down. A torpor and faintness came over her. There was nothing to do but to rest after the endless journey she had made. But that she could never do. She began to weep because she would never reach her journey’s end. Her whole life long she would travel, travel, travel, and never reach the end of her journey.

VIII
TWO SONGS

It was the morning after the day when San Pasquale’s bells had rung; and Donna Elisa sat in her shop and counted her money. The day before, when everyone had been afraid, there had been an incredible sale in the shop, and the next morning, when she had come down, she had at first been almost frightened. For the whole shop was desolate and empty; the medallions were gone, the wax candles were gone, and so were all the great bunches of rosaries. All Gaetano’s beautiful images had been taken down from the shelves and sold, and it was a real grief to Donna Elisa not to see the host of holy men and women about her.

She opened the money-drawer, and it was so full that she could hardly pull it out. And while she counted her money she wept over it as if it had all been false. For what good did it do her to possess all those dirty lire and those big copper coins when she had lost Gaetano!

Alas! she thought that if he had stopped at home one day more he would not have needed to go, for now she was laden down with money.

While she was counting she heard the post-carriage stop outside her door. But she did not even look up; she did not care what happened, since Gaetano was gone. Then the door opened, and the bell rang violently. She only wept and counted. Then some one said: “Donna Elisa, Donna Elisa!” And it was Gaetano!

“But heavens! how can you be at home?” she cried.—“You have sold all your images. I had to come home to carve new ones for you.”—“But how did you find out about it?”—“I met the post-carriage at two o’clock in the night. Rosa Alfari was in it, and she told me everything.”—“What luck that you went down to the post-carriage! What luck that you happened to think of going down to the post-carriage!”—“Yes; was it not good fortune?” said Gaetano.

In less than an hour Gaetano was again standing in his workshop; and Donna Elisa, who had nothing at all to do in her empty shop, came incessantly to the door to look at him. No, was he really standing there and carving? She could not let five minutes pass without coming to look at him.

But when Donna Micaela heard that he was back she felt no joy, rather anger and despair. For she was afraid that Gaetano would come to tempt her.

She had heard that a rich Englishwoman had come to Diamante the day the bells rang. She was deeply affected when she heard that it was the lady with the Christ image. He had therefore come as soon as she had called on him. The rain and the bell-ringing were his work!

She tried to rejoice her soul with the thought that there had been a miracle for her sake. It would be more to her than all earthly happiness and love to feel that she was surrounded by God’s grace. She did not wish anything earthly to come and drag her down from that blessed rapture.

But when she met Gaetano on the street he hardly looked at her; and when she met him at Donna Elisa’s he did not take her hand and did not speak to her at all.

For the truth was that, although Gaetano had come home because it had been too hard to go without Donna Micaela, he did not wish to tempt or to persuade her. He saw that she was under the protection of the saints, and she had become so sacred to him that he scarcely dared to dream of her.

He wished to be near her, not in order to love her, but because he believed that her life would blossom with holy deeds. Gaetano longed for miracles, as a gardener longs for the first rose in the spring.

But when weeks went by and Gaetano never tried to approach Donna Micaela, she began to doubt, and to think that he had never loved her. She said to herself that he had won the promise from her to flee with him only in order to show her that the Madonna could work a miracle.

If that were true, she did not know why he had not continued his journey without turning back.

That caused her anxiety. She thought that she could conquer her love better if she knew whether Gaetano loved her. She weighed the pros and cons, and she was more and more sure that he had never loved her.

While Donna Micaela was thinking of this, she had to sit and keep Don Ferrante company. He had lain sick a long time. He had had two strokes of paralysis, and had risen from his sick-bed a broken man. All at once he had become old and dull and afraid, so that he never dared to be alone. He never worked in the shop; he was in every way a changed man.

He had been seized with a great desire to be aristocratic and fashionable. It looked as if poor Don Ferrante’s head was turned with pride.

Donna Micaela was very good to him, and sat hour after hour and chatted with him.

“Who could it be,” she used to ask, “who once stood in the market-place with plumes on his hat, and braid on his coat, and sword at his side, and who played so that people said that his music was as uplifting as Etna, and as strong as the sea? And who caught sight of a poor signorina dressed in black, who did not dare to show her face to the world, and went forward to her and offered his arm? Who could it be? Could it be Don Ferrante, who stands the whole week in his shop and wears a pointed cap and a short jacket? No; that cannot be possible. No old merchant could have done such a thing.”

Don Ferrante laughed. That was just the way he liked to have her talk to him. She would also tell him how it would be when he came to court. The king would say this, and the queen would say that. “The old Alagonas have come up again,” they would say at court. And who has brought up the race? People will wonder and wonder. The Don Ferrante, who is a Sicilian prince and Spanish grandee, is that the same man who stood in a shop in Diamante and shouted at the teamsters? No, people will say, it cannot be the same. It is impossible for it to be the same.

Don Ferrante liked that, and wished to hear her talk so day in and day out. He was never tired of listening, and Donna Micaela was very patient with him.

But one day while she was chatting, Donna Elisa came in. “Sister-in-law, if you happen to own the ‘Legend of the Holy Virgin of Pompeii,’ will you lend it to me?” she asked.—“What, are you going to begin to read?” asked Donna Micaela.—“The saints preserve us! you know very well that I cannot read. Gaetano is asking for it.”

Donna Micaela did not own the “Legend of the Holy Virgin at Pompeii.” But she did not say so to Donna Elisa; she went to her book-shelf and took a little book, a collection of Sicilian love-songs, and gave it to Donna Elisa, who carried the little book over to Gaetano.

But Donna Micaela had no sooner done so before a lively regret seized her. And she asked herself what she had meant by behaving so,—she who had been helped by the little Christchild?

She blushed with shame as she thought that she had marked one of the little songs, one that ran thus:—

She had hoped to get an answer to it. But it would serve her right if no answer came. It would serve her right if Gaetano despised her and thought her forward.

Yet she had meant no harm. The only thing she had desired had been to find out if Gaetano loved her.

Several weeks again passed and Donna Micaela still sat with Don Ferrante.

But one day Donna Elisa had tempted her out. “Come with me into my garden, sister-in-law, and see my big magnolia-tree. You have never seen anything so beautiful.”

She had gone with Donna Elisa across the street and had come into her court-yard. And Donna Elisa’s magnolia was like the shining sun, so that people were aware of it even before they saw it. At a great distance the fragrance lay and rocked in the air, and there was a murmuring of bees, and a twittering of birds.

When Donna Micaela saw the tree she could hardly breathe. It was very high and broad, with a beautifully even growth, and its large, firm leaves were of a fresh, dark green. But now it was entirely covered with great, bright flowers, that lighted and adorned it so that it looked as if dressed for a feast, and one felt an intoxicating joy streaming forth from the tree. Donna Micaela almost lost consciousness, and a new and irresistible power took possession of her. She drew down one of the stiff branches, and without breaking it spread out the flower that it bore, took a needle and began to prick letters on the flower leaf. “What are you doing, sister-in-law?” asked Donna Elisa.—“Nothing, nothing.”—“In my time young girls used to prick love-letters on the magnolia-blossoms.”—“Perhaps they do it still.”—“Take care; I shall look at what you have written when you are gone.”—“But you cannot read.”—“I have Gaetano.”—“And Luca; you had better ask Luca.”

When Donna Micaela came home, she repented of what she had done. Would Donna Elisa really show the flower to Gaetano? No, no; Donna Elisa was too sensible. But if he had seen her from the window of his workshop? Well, he would not answer. She had made herself ridiculous.

No, never, never again would she do such a thing. It was best for her not to know. It was best for her that Gaetano did not ask after her.

Nevertheless she wondered what answer she would get. But none came.

So another week passed. Then it came into Don Ferrante’s mind that he would like to go out for a drive in the afternoon.

In the carriage-house of the summer palace there was an ancient state carriage, which was certainly more than a hundred years old. It was very high; it had a small, narrow body, which swung on leather straps between the back wheels, which were as big as the water-wheels of a mill. It was painted white, with gilding; it was lined with red velvet, and had a coat of arms on its doors.

Once it had been a great honor to ride in that carriage; and when the old Alagonas had passed in it along the Corso, people had stood on their thresholds, and crowded to their doors, and hung over balconies to see them. But then it had been drawn by spirited barbs; then the coachman had worn a wig, and the footman gold braid, and it had been driven with embroidered silk reins.

Now Don Ferrante wished to harness his old horses before the gala carriage and have his old shopman take the place of coachman.

When Donna Micaela told him that it could not be, Don Ferrante began to weep. What would people think of him if he did not show himself on the Corso in the afternoon? That was the last thing a man of position denied himself. How could anyone know that he was a nobleman, if he did not drive up and down the street in the carriage of the old Alagonas?

The happiest hour Don Ferrante had enjoyed since his illness was when he drove out for the first time. He sat erect and nodded and waved very graciously to every one he met. And the people of Diamante bowed, and took off their hats, so that they swept the street. Why should they not give Don Ferrante this pleasure?

Donna Micaela was with him, for Don Ferrante did not dare to drive alone. She had not wished to go, but Don Ferrante had wept, and reminded her that he had married her when she was despised and penniless. She ought not to be ungrateful; she ought not to forget what he had done for her, and ought to come with him. Why did she not wish to drive with him in his carriage? It was the finest old carriage in Sicily.

“Why will you not come with me?” said Don Ferrante. “Remember that I am the only one who loves you. Do you not see that not even your father loves you? You must not be ungrateful.”

In this way he had forced Donna Micaela to take her place in the gala carriage.

But it was not at all as she had expected. No one laughed. The women courtesied, and the men bowed as solemnly as if the carriage had been a hundred years younger. And Donna Micaela could not detect a smile on any face.

No one in all Diamante would have wished to laugh; for every one knew how Don Ferrante treated Donna Micaela. They knew how he loved her, and how he wept if she left him for a single minute. They knew, too, that he tormented her with jealousy, and that he trampled her hats to pieces, if they became her, and never gave her money for new dresses, because no other was to find her beautiful, and love her. But all the time he told her that she was so ugly that no one but he could bear to look at her face. And because every one in Diamante knew it all, no one laughed. Laugh at her, sitting and chatting with a sick man! They are pious Christians in Diamante, and not barbarians.

So the gala-carriage in its faded glory drove up and down the Corso in Diamante during the hour between five and six. And in Diamante it drove quite alone, for there were no other fine carriages there; but people knew that at that same time all the carriages in Rome drove to Monte Pincio, all those in Naples to the Via Nazionale, and all in Florence to the Cascine, and all in Palermo to La Favorita.

But when the carriage approached the Porta Etnea for the third time, a merry sound of horns was heard from the road outside.

And through the gate swung a big, high coach in the English style.

It was meant to look old-fashioned also. The postilion riding on the off leader had leather trousers, and a wig tied in a pig-tail. The coach was like an old diligence, with the body behind the coach box and seats on the roof.

But everything was new; the horses were magnificent, powerful animals, carriage and harness shone, and the passengers were some young gentlemen and ladies from Catania, who were making an excursion up Etna. And they could not help laughing as they drove by the old gala-carriage. They leaned over from where they sat on the high roof to look at it, and their laughter sounded very loud and echoed between the high, silent houses of Diamante.

Donna Micaela was very unhappy. They were some of her old circle of friends. What would they not say when they came home? “We have seen Micaela Palmeri in Diamante.” And they would laugh and talk, laugh and talk.

Her life seemed so squalid. She was nothing but the slave of a fool. Her whole life long she would never do anything but chat with Don Ferrante.

When she came home she was quite exhausted. She was so tired and weak that she could scarcely drag herself up the steps.

And all the time Don Ferrante was rejoicing in his good fortune at having met all those fine people, and having been seen in his state. He told her that now no one would ask whether she was ugly, or whether her father had stolen. Now people knew that she was the wife of a man of rank.

After dinner Donna Micaela sat quite silent, and let her father talk to Don Ferrante. Then a mandolin began to sound quite softly in the street under the window of the summer palace. It was a single mandolin with no accompaniment of guitar or violin. Nothing could be more light and airy; nothing more captivating and affecting. No one could think that human hands were touching the strings. It was as if bees and crickets and grasshoppers were giving a concert.

“There is some one again who has fallen in love with Giannita,” said Don Ferrante. “That is a woman, Giannita. Any one can see that she is pretty. If I were young I should fall in love with Giannita. She knows how to love.”

Donna Micaela started. He was right, she thought. The mandolin-player meant Giannita. That evening Giannita was at home with her mother, but otherwise she always lived at the summer palace. Donna Micaela had arranged it so since Don Ferrante had been ill.

But Donna Micaela liked the mandolin playing, for whomever it might be meant. It came sweet, and soft, and comforting. She went gently into her room to listen better in the dark and loneliness.

A sweet, strong fragrance met her there. What was it? Her hands began to tremble before she found a candle and a match. On her work-table lay a big, widely opened magnolia-blossom.

On one of the flower petals was pricked: “Who loves me?” And now stood under it: “Gaetano.”

Beside the flower lay a little white book full of love-songs. And there was a mark against one of the little verses:—

The mandolin continued to play. There is something of open air and sunlight in a mandolin; something soothing and calming; something of the cheering carelessness of beautiful nature.

IX
FLIGHT

At that time the little image from Aracoeli was still in Diamante.

The Englishwoman who owned it had been fascinated by Diamante. She had not been able to bring herself to leave it.

She had hired the whole first floor of the hotel, and had established herself there as in a home. She bought for large sums everything she could find in the way of old pots and old coins. She bought mosaics, and altar-pictures, and holy images. She thought that she would like to make a collection of all the saints of the church.

She heard of Gaetano, and sent him a message to come to her at the hotel.

Gaetano collected what he had carved during the last few days and took them with him to Miss Tottenham. She was much pleased with his little images, and wished to buy them all.

But the rich Englishwoman’s rooms were like the lumber-rooms of a museum. They were filled with every conceivable thing, and there was confusion and disorder everywhere. Here stood half-empty trunks; there hung cloaks and hats; here lay paintings and engravings; there were guide-books, railway time-tables, tea-sets, and alcohol lamps; elsewhere halberds, prayer-books, mandolins, and escutcheons.

And that opened Gaetano’s eyes. He flushed suddenly, bit his lips, and began to repack his images.

He had caught sight of an image of the Christchild. It was the outcast, who was standing there in the midst of all the disorder, with his wretched crown on his head and brass shoes on his feet. The color was worn off his face; the rings and ornaments hanging on him were tarnished, and his dress was yellowed with age.

When Gaetano saw that, he would not sell his images to Miss Tottenham; he meant simply to go his way.

When she asked him what was the matter with him he stormed at her, and scolded her.

Did she know that many of the things she had about her were sacred?

Did she know, or did she not know, that that was the holy Christchild himself? And she had let him lose three fingers on one hand, and let the jewels fall out of his crown, and let him lie dirty, and tarnished, and dishonored! And if she had so treated the image of God’s own son, how would she let everything else fare? He would not sell anything to her.

When Gaetano burst out at her in that way Miss Tottenham was enraptured, enchanted.

Here was the true faith and the righteous, holy wrath. This young man must become an artist. To England, he should go to England! She wished to send him to the great master, her friend, who was trying to reform art; to him who wished to teach people to make beautiful house-furnishings, beautiful church-fittings, who wished to create a whole beautiful world.

She decided and arranged, and Gaetano let her go on, because he would rather now go away from Diamante.

He saw that he could no longer endure to live there. He believed that it was God leading him out of temptation.

He went away quite unobserved. Donna Micaela scarcely knew anything of it until he was gone. He had not dared to come and bid her good-bye.

X
THE SIROCCO

After that two years passed quietly. The only thing that happened at Diamante and in all Sicily was that the people grew ever poorer and poorer.

Then there came an autumn, and it was about the time when the wine was to be harvested.

At that time songs generally rise full-fledged to the lips; at that time new and beautiful melodies stream from the mandolins.

Then crowds of young people go out to the vineyards, and there is work and laughter all day, dance and laughter all night, and no one knows what sleep is.

Then the bright ocean of air over the mountain is more beautiful than at any other time. Then the air is full of wit; sparkling glances flash through it; it gets warmth not only from the sun, but also from the glowing faces of the young women of Etna.

But that autumn all the vineyards were devastated by the phylloxera. No grape-pickers pushed their way between the vines; no long lines of women carrying heaped-up baskets on their heads wound up to the presses, and at night there was no dancing on the flat roofs.

That autumn no clear, light October air lay over the Etna region. As if it had been in league with the famine, the heavy, weakening wind from the Sahara came over from Africa, and brought with it dust and exhalations that darkened the sky.

Never, as long as that autumn lasted, was there a fresh mountain breeze. The baleful Sirocco blew incessantly.

Sometimes it came dry and heavy with sand, and so hot that they had to shut doors and windows, and keep in their rooms, not to faint away.

But oftener it came warm and damp and enervating. And the people felt no rest; trouble left them neither by day nor by night, and cares piled upon them like snow-drifts on the high mountains.

And the restlessness reached Donna Micaela as she sat and watched with her old husband, Don Ferrante.

During that autumn she never heard any one laugh, nor heard a song. People crept by one another, so full of anger and despair that they were almost choked. And she said to herself that they were certainly dreaming of an insurrection. She saw that they had to revolt. It would help no one, but they had no other resource.

In the beginning of the autumn, sitting on her balcony, she heard the people talk in the street. They always talked of the famine: We have blight in wheat and wine; there is a crisis in sulphur and oranges; all Sicily’s yellow gold has failed. How shall we live?

And Donna Micaela understood that it was terrible. Wheat, wine, oranges, and sulphur, all their yellow gold!

She began to understand, too, that the misery was greater than men could bear long, and she grieved that life should be made so hard. She asked why the people should be forced to bear such enormous taxes. Why should the salt tax exist, so that a poor woman could not go down to the shore and get a pail of salt water, but must buy costly salt in the government shops? Why should there be a tax on palm-trees? The peasants, with anger in their hearts, were felling the old trees that had waved so long over the noble isle. And why should a tax be put on windows? What did they want? Was it that the poor should take away their windows, move out of their rooms, and live in cellars?

In the sulphur-mines there were strikes and turbulence, and the government was sending troops to force the people back to work. Donna Micaela wondered if the government did not know that there was no machinery in those mines. Perhaps it had never heard that children dragged the ore up from the deep shafts. It did not know that these children were slaves; it could not imagine that parents had sold them to overseers. Or if the government did know it, why did it wish to help the mine-owners?

At one time she heard of a terrible number of crimes. And she began again with her questions. Why did they let the people become so criminal? And why did they let them be so poor and so ragged? Why must they all be so ragged? She knew that any one living in Palermo or Catania did not need to ask. But he who lived in Diamante could not help fearing and asking. Why did they let the people be so poor that they died of hunger?

As yet the summer was hardly over; it was no later in the autumn than the end of October, and already Donna Micaela began to see the day when the insurrection would break out. She saw the starved people come rushing along the street. They would plunder the shops and they would plunder the few rich men there were in the town. Outside the summer palace the wild horde would stop, and they would climb up to the balcony and the glass doors. “Bring out the jewels of the old Alagonas; bring out Don Ferrante’s millions!” That was their dream,—the summer palace! They believed that it was as full of gold as a fairy palace.

But when they found nothing, they would put a dagger to her throat, to make her give up the treasures that she had never possessed, and she would be killed by the bloodthirsty crowds.

Why could not the great land-owners stop at home? Why must they irritate the poor by living in grand style in Rome and Paris? The people would not be so bitter against them if they stayed at home; they would not swear such a solemn and sacred oath to kill all the rich when the time should come.

Donna Micaela wished that she could have escaped to one of the big towns. But both her father and Don Ferrante fell ill that autumn, and for their sakes she was forced to remain where she was. And she knew that she would be killed as an atonement for the sins of the rich against the poor.

For many years misfortunes had been gathering over Sicily, and now they could no longer be held back. Etna itself began to menace an eruption. At night sulphurous smoke floated red as fire, and rumblings were heard as far away as Diamante. The end of everything was coming. Everything was to be destroyed at once.

Did not the government know of the discontent? Ah, the government had at last heard of it, and it had appointed a committee. It was a great comfort to see the members of the committee come driving one fine day along the Corso in Diamante. If only the people had understood that they wished them well! If the women had not stood in their doorways and spat at the fine gentlemen from the mainland; if the children had not run beside the carriages and cried: “Thief, thief!”

Everything they did only stirred up the revolt, and there was no one who could control the people and quiet them. They trusted no officials. They despised those least who only took bribes. But people said that many belonged to the society of Mafia; they said that their one thought was to extort money and acquire power.

As time went on, several signs showed that something terrible was impending. In the papers they wrote that crowds of working-men were gathering in the larger towns and wandering about the streets. People read also in the papers how the socialist leaders were going through the country, and making seditious speeches. All at once it became clear to Donna Micaela whence all the trouble came. The socialists were inciting the revolt. It was their firebrand speeches that set the blood of the people boiling. How could they let them do it? Who was king in Sicily? Was his name Don Felice, or Umberto?

Donna Micaela felt a horror which she could not shake off. It was as if they had conspired especially against her. And the more she heard of the socialists, the more she feared them.

Giannita tried to calm her. “We have not a single socialist in Diamante,” she said. “In Diamante no one is thinking of revolt.” Donna Micaela asked her if she did not know what it meant when the old distaff spinners sat in their dark corners, and told of the great brigands and of the famous Palermo fisherman, Giuseppe Alesi, whom they called the Masaniello of Sicily.

If the socialists could once get the revolt started, Diamante would also join in. All Diamante knew already that something dreadful was impending. They had seen the ghost of the big, black monk on the balcony of the Palazzo Geraci; they heard the owls scream through the night, and some declared that the cocks crowed at sunset, and were silent at daybreak.

One day in November Diamante was suddenly filled with terrible people. They were men with the faces of wild beasts, with bushy beards, and with big hands set on enormously long arms. Several of them wore wide, fluttering linen garments, and the people thought that they recognized in them famous bandits and newly freed galley-slaves.

Giannita related that all these wild people lived in the mountain wastes inland and had crossed Simeto and come to Diamante, because a rumor had gone about that revolt had already broken out. But when they had found everything quiet, and the barracks full of soldiers, they had gone away.

Donna Micaela thought incessantly of those people, and expected them to be her murderers. She saw before her their fluttering linen garments and their brute faces. She knew that they were lurking in their mountain holes, and waiting for the day when they should hear shots and the noise of an outbreak in Diamante. Then they would fall upon the town with fire and murder, and march at the head of all the starving people as the generals and leaders in the plundering.

All that autumn Donna Micaela had to nurse both her father and Don Ferrante; for they lay sick month after month. People had told her, however, that their lives were in no danger.

She was very glad to be able to keep Don Ferrante alive, for it was her only hope that at the last the people would spare him, who was of such an old and venerated race.

As she sat by their sick-beds, her thoughts went often in longing to Gaetano, and many were the times when she wished that he were at home. She would not feel such terror and fear of death if he stood once more in his workshop. Then she would have felt nothing but security and peace.

Even now, when he was so far away, it was to him her thoughts turned when fear was driving her mad. Not a single letter had come from him since he had gone away, so that sometimes she believed that he had forgotten her entirely. At other times she was quite sure that he loved her, for she felt herself compelled to think of him, and knew that he was near her in thought, and was calling to her.

That autumn she at last received a letter from Gaetano. Alas, such a letter! Donna Micaela’s first thought was to burn it.

She had gone up to the roof-garden in order to be alone when she read the letter. She had once heard Gaetano’s declaration of love there. That had not moved her. It had neither warmed her nor frightened her.

But this letter was different. He prayed that she would come to him, be his, give him her life. When she read it she was frightened at herself. She felt how she longed to cry out into the air, “I am coming, I am coming,” and set out. It drew her, carried her away.

“Let us be happy!” he wrote. “We are losing time; the years are passing. Let us be happy!”

He described to her how they would live. He told her of other women who had obeyed love and been happy. He wrote as temptingly as convincingly.

But it was not the contents; it was the love that glowed and burned in the letter which overcame her. It rose from the paper like an intoxicating incense, and she felt it penetrate her. It was burning, longing, speaking, in every word.

Now she was no longer a saint to him, as she had been before. It came so unexpectedly, after two years’ silence, that she was stunned. And she was troubled because it delighted her.

She had never thought that love was like this. Should she really like it? She found with dismay that she did like it.

And so she punished both herself and him by writing a severe reply. It was moral, moral; it was nothing but moral! She was proud when she had written it. She did not deny that she loved him, but perhaps Gaetano would not be able to find the words of love, they were so buried in admonitions. He could not have found them, for he wrote no more letters.

But now Donna Micaela could no longer think of Gaetano as a shelter and a support. Now he was more dangerous than the men from the mountains.

Every day graver news came to Diamante. Everybody began to get out their weapons. And although it was forbidden, they were carried secretly by every one.

All travellers left the island, and in their place one regiment after another was sent over from Italy.

The socialists talked and talked. They were possessed by evil spirits; they could not rest until they had brought on the disaster!

At last the ringleaders had decided on the day on which the storm was to break loose. All Sicily, all Italy, was to rise. It was no longer menace; it was reality.

More and more troops came from the mainland. Most of them were Neapolitans, who live in constant feud with the Sicilians. And now the news came that the island had been declared in a state of siege. There were to be no more courts of justice; only court-martials. And the people said that the soldiers would be free to plunder and murder as they pleased.

No one knew what was to happen. Terror seemed to make every one mad. The peasants raised ramparts in the hills. In Diamante men stood in great groups on the market-place, stood there day after day, without going to their work. There was something terrible in those groups of men dressed in dark cloaks and slouch hats. They were all probably dreaming of the hour when they should plunder the summer palace.

The nearer the day approached when the insurrection was to break out, the sicker Don Ferrante became; and Donna Micaela began to fear that he would die.

It seemed to her a sign that she was predestined to destruction, that she was also losing Don Ferrante. Who would have any regard for her when he was no longer alive?

She watched over him. She and all the women of the quarter sat in silent prayer about his bed.

One morning, towards six o’clock, Don Ferrante died. And Donna Micaela mourned him, because he had been her only protector, and the only one who could have saved her from destruction; and she wished to honor the dead, as is still the custom in Diamante.

She had them drape the room where the body was lying with black, and close all the shutters, so that the glad sunlight should not enter. She had all the fires put out on the hearths, and sent for a blind singer to come to the palace every day and sing dirges.

She let Giannita care for Cavaliere Palmeri, so that she herself might sit quiet in the death-room, among the other women.

It was evening on the day of death before all preparations were completed, and they were waiting only for the White Brotherhood to come and take away the corpse. In the death-chamber there was the silence of the grave. All the women of the quarter sat there motionless with dismal faces.

Donna Micaela sat pale with her great fear, and stared involuntarily at the pall that was spread over the body. It was a pall which belonged to the family; their coat of arms was heavily and gorgeously embroidered on the centre, and it had silver fringes and thick tassels. The pall had never been spread over any one but an Alagona. It seemed to lie there so that Donna Micaela should not for a moment forget that her last support had fallen, and that she was now alone, and without protection from the infuriated people.

Some one came in and announced that old Assunta had come. Old Assunta; what did old Assunta want? Yes, it was she who came to sing the praises of the dead.

Donna Micaela let Assunta come into the room. She appeared just as she looked every day, when she sat and begged on the Cathedral steps; the same patched dress, the same faded headcloth, and the same crutch.

Little and bent, she limped forward to the coffin. She had a shrivelled face, a sunken mouth, and dull eyes. Donna Micaela said to herself that it was incarnate helplessness and feebleness who had come into the room.

The old woman raised her voice and began to speak in the wife’s name.

“My lord is dead, and I am alone! He who raised me to his side is dead! Is it not terrible that my home has lost its master?—Why are the shutters of your windows closed? say the passers-by.—I answer, I cannot bear to see the light, because my sorrow is so great; my grief is three-fold.—What, are so many of your race carried away by the White Brethren?—No, none of my race is dead, but I have lost my husband, my husband, my husband!”

Old Assunta needed to say no more. Donna Micaela burst into lamentations. The whole room was filled with the sound of weeping from the sympathetic women; for there is no grief like losing a husband. Those who were widows thought of what they had lost, and those who were not as yet widows thought of the time when they would not be able to go on the street, because no husband would be with them; when they would be left to loneliness, poverty, oblivion; when they would be nothing, mean nothing; when they would be the world’s outcast children because they no longer had a husband; because nothing any longer gave them the right to live.

It was late in December, the days between Christmas and the New Year.

There was still the same danger of insurrection, and people still heard terrifying rumors. It was said that Falco Falcone had gathered together a band of brigands in the quarries, and that he was only waiting for the appointed day to break into Diamante and plunder it.

It was also whispered that the people in several of the small mountain towns had risen, torn down the custom’s offices at the town-gates, and driven away the officials.

People said too that troops were passing from town to town, arresting all suspicious people, and shooting them down by hundreds.

Every one said that they must fight. They could not let themselves be murdered by those Italians without trying to make some resistance.

During all this, Donna Micaela sat tied to her father’s sick-bed, just as she had sat before by Don Ferrante’s. She could not escape from Diamante, and terror so grew within her that she was nothing but one trembling fear.

The last and worst of all the messages of terror that reached her had been about Gaetano.

For when Don Ferrante had been dead a week Gaetano had come home. And that had not caused her dismay; it had only made her glad. She had rejoiced in at last having some one near her who could protect her.

At the same time she decided that she could not receive Gaetano if he came to see her. She felt that she still belonged to the dead. She would rather not see Gaetano until after a year.

But when Gaetano had been at home a week without coming to the summer palace, she asked Giannita about him. “Where is Gaetano? Has he perhaps gone away again, since no one speaks of him?”

“Alas, Micaela,” answered Giannita, “the less people speak of Gaetano, the better for him.”

She told Donna Micaela, as if she was telling of a great shame, that Gaetano had become a socialist.

“He has been quite transformed over there, in England,” she said. “He no longer worships either God or the saints. He does not kiss the priest’s hand when he meets him. He says to every one that they shall pay no more duties at the town-gates. He encourages the peasants not to pay their rent. He carries weapons. He has come home to start a rebellion, to help the bandits.”

She needed to say no more to chill Donna Micaela with a greater terror than she had ever felt before.

It was this that the sultry days of the autumn had portended. It would be he who would shake the bolt from the clouds. Why had she not understood it long ago?

It was a punishment and a revenge. It would be he who would bring the misfortune!

During those last days she had been calmer. She had heard that all the socialists on the island had been put in prison, and all the little insurrection fires lighted in the mountain towns had been quickly choked. It looked almost as if the rebellion would come to nothing!

But now the last Alagona was come, and him the people would follow. Life would enter into those black groups on the market-place. The men in the linen garments would climb up out of the quarries.

The next evening Gaetano spoke in the market-place. He had sat by the fountain, and had seen how the people came to get water. For two years he had foregone the pleasure of seeing the slender girls lift the heavy water-jars to their heads and walk away with firm, slow step.

But it was not only the young girls who came to the fountain; there were people of all ages. And when he saw how poor and unhappy most of them were, he began to talk to them of the future.

He promised them better times soon. He said to old Assunta that she hereafter should get her daily bread without needing to ask alms of any one. And when she said that she did not understand how that could be, he asked her almost with anger if she did not know that now the time had come when no old people and no children should be without care and shelter.

He pointed to the old chair-maker, who was as poor as Assunta, and moreover very sick, and he asked if she believed that the people would endure much longer having no support for the poor, and no hospitals. Could she not understand that it was impossible for such things to continue? Could they not all understand that hereafter the old and the sick should be cared for?

He also saw some children who, as he knew, lived on cresses and sorrel, which they gathered on the river-banks and by the roadside, and he promised that henceforward no one should need to starve. He laid his hand on the children’s heads, and swore as solemnly as if he were prince of Diamante, that they should never again want for bread.

They knew nothing in Diamante, he said; they were ignorant; they did not understand that a new and blessed time had come; they believed that this old misery would continue forever.

While he was thus consoling the poor, more and more had gathered about him, and he suddenly sprang up, placed himself on the steps of the fountain, and began to speak.

How could they, he said, be so foolish as to believe that nothing better would come? Should the people, who possessed the whole earth, be content to let their parents starve, and their children grow up to be good-for-nothings and criminals?

Did they not know that there were treasures in the mountains, and in the sea, and in the ground? Had they never heard that the earth was rich? Did they think that it could not feed its children?

They should not murmur among themselves, and say that it was impossible to arrange matters differently. They should not think that there must be rich and poor. Alas, they understood nothing! They did not know their Mother Earth. Did they think that she hated any of them? They had lain down on the ground and heard the earth speak? Perhaps they had seen her make laws? They had heard her pass sentence? She had commanded some to starve, and some to die of luxury?

Why did they not open their ears and listen to the new teachings pouring through the world? Would they not like to have a better life? Did they like their rags? Were they satisfied with sorrel and cresses? Did they not wish to possess a roof over their heads?

And he told them that it made no difference, no difference, if they refused to believe in the new times that were coming. They would come in spite of it. They did not need to lift the sun up from the sea in the morning. The new times would come to them as the sun came, but why would they not be ready to meet them? Why did they shut themselves in, and fear the new light?

He spoke long in the same strain, and more and more of the poor people of Diamante gathered about him.

The longer he continued, the more beautiful became his speech and the clearer grew his voice.

His eyes were full of fire, and to the people looking up at him, he seemed as beautiful as a young prince.

He was one of the race of once powerful lords, who had possessed means to shower happiness and gold on everybody within their wide lands. They believed him when he said that he had happiness to give them. They felt comforted, and rejoiced that their young lord loved them.

When he had finished speaking they began to shout, and call to him that they wished to follow him and do what he commanded.

He had gained ascendency over them in a moment. He was so beautiful and so glorious that they could not resist him. And his faith seized and subdued.

That night there was not one poor person in Diamante who did not believe that Gaetano would give him happy days, free from care. That night they called down blessings on him, all those who lived in sheds and out-houses. That night the hungry lay down with the sure belief that the next day tables groaning under many dishes would stand spread for them when they awoke.

For when Gaetano spoke, his power was so great that he could convince an old man that he was young, and a freezing man that he was warm. And people felt that what he promised must come.

He was the prince of the coming times. His hands were generous, and miracles and blessings would stream down over Diamante, now that he had come again.

The next day, towards sunset, Giannita came into the sick-room and whispered to Donna Micaela: “There is an insurrection in PaternÓ. They have been shooting for several hours, and you can hear them as far away as here. Orders for troops have already gone to Catania. And Gaetano says that it will break out here, too. He says that it will break out in all the towns of Etna at one time.”

Donna Micaela made a sign to Giannita to stay with her father, and she herself went across the street and into Donna Elisa’s shop.

Donna Elisa sat behind the counter with her frame, but she was not working. The tears fell so heavy and fast that she had ceased to embroider.

“Where is Gaetano?” said Donna Micaela, without any preamble. “I must speak to him.”

“God give you strength to talk to him,” answered Donna Elisa. “He is in the garden.”

She went out across the court-yard and into the walled garden.

In the garden there were many narrow paths winding from terrace to terrace. There was also a number of arbors and grottos and benches. And it was so thick with stiff agaves, and close-growing dwarf palms, and thick-leaved rubber-plants, and rhododendrons, that it was impossible to see two feet in front of one. Donna Micaela walked for a long time on those innumerable paths before she could find Gaetano. The longer she walked, the more impatient she became.

At last she found him at the farther end of the garden. She caught sight of him on the lowest terrace, built out on one of the bastions of the wall of the town. There sat Gaetano at ease, and worked with chisel and hammer on a statuette. When he saw Donna Micaela, he came towards her with outstretched hands.

She hardly gave herself time to greet him. “Is it true,” she said, “that you have come home to be our ruin?” He began to laugh. “The syndic has been here,” he said. “The priest has been here. Are you coming too?”

It wounded her that he laughed, and that he spoke of the priest and the syndic. It was something different, and more, that she came.

“Tell me,” she said, stiffly, “if it is true that we are to have an uprising this evening.”—“Oh, no,” he answered; “we shall have no uprising.” And he said it in such a voice that it almost made her sorry for him.

“You cause Donna Elisa great grief,” she burst out.—“And you too, do I not?” he said, with a slight sneer. “I cause you all sorrow. I am the lost son; I am Judas. I am the angel of justice who is driving you from that paradise where people eat grass.”

She answered: “Perhaps we think that what we have is better than being shot by the soldiers.”—“Yes, of course; it is better to starve to death. We are used to that.”—“Nor is it pleasant to be murdered by bandits.”—“But why for Heaven’s sake have any bandits, if you do not want to be murdered by them?”—“Yes, I know,” she said, more passionately, “that you want all the rich to perish.”

He did not answer immediately; he stood and bit his lips, so as not to lose his temper. “Let me talk with you, Donna Micaela!” he said at last. “Let me explain it to you!”

At the same time he put on a patient expression. He talked socialism with her, so clear and simple that a child could have understood.

But she was far from being able to follow it. Perhaps she could have, but she did not wish to. She did not wish just then to hear of socialism.

It had been so wonderful to her to see him. The ground had rocked under her; and something glorious and blessed had passed through and quite overcome her. “God, it is he whom I love!” she said to herself. “It is really he.”

Before she had seen him she had known very well what she would say to him. She would have led him back to the faith of his childhood. She would have shown him that those new teachings were detestable and dangerous. But then love came. It made her confused and stupid. She could not answer him. She only sat and wondered that he could talk.

She wondered if he was much handsomer now than formerly. Formerly she had not been confused at all when she saw him. She had never been attracted to that extent. Or was it that he had become a free, strong man? She was frightened when she felt how he subdued her.

She dared not contradict him. She dared not even speak, for fear of bursting into tears. Had she dared to speak, she would not have talked of public affairs. She would have told him what she had felt the day the bells rang. Or she would have prayed to be allowed to kiss his hand. She would have told him how she had dreamed of him. She would have said that if she had not had him to dream of she could not have borne her life. She would have begged to be allowed to kiss his hand in gratitude, because he had given her life all these years.

If there was to be no uprising, why did he talk socialism? What had socialism to do with them, sitting alone in Donna Elisa’s garden? She sat and looked along one of the paths. Luca had put up wooden arches on both sides of it, and up these climbed garlands of light rose-shoots, full of little buds and flowers. One always wondered whither one was coming when one went along that path. And one came to a little weather-beaten cupid. Old Luca understood things better than Gaetano.

While they sat there the sun set, and Etna grew rosy-red. It was as if Etna flushed with anger at what was going on in Donna Elisa’s garden. It was at sunset, when Etna glowed red, that she had always thought of Gaetano. It seemed as if they both had been waiting for it. And they had both arranged how it would be when Gaetano came. She had only feared that he would be too fiery, and too passionately wild. And he talked only of those dreadful Socialists, whom she detested and feared.

He talked a long time. She saw Etna grow pale and become bronze-brown, and then the darkness came. She knew that there would be moonlight. There she sat quite still, and hoped for help from the moonlight. She herself could do nothing. She was entirely in his power. But when the moonlight came, it did not help either. He continued to talk of capitalists and working-men.

Then it seemed to her as if there could be but one explanation for all this. He must have ceased to love her.

Suddenly she remembered something. It was a week ago. It was the same day that Gaetano had come home. She had come into Giannita’s room, but she had walked so softly that Giannita had not heard her. She had seen Giannita stand as if in ecstasy, with up-stretched arms and up-turned face. And in her hands she held a picture. First she carried it to her lips and kissed it, then she lifted it up over her head and looked up to it in rapture. And the picture had been of Gaetano.

When Donna Micaela had seen that, she had gone away as silently as she had come. She had only thought then that Giannita was to be pitied if she loved Gaetano. But now, when Gaetano only talked socialism, now she remembered it.

Now she began to think that Gaetano also loved Giannita. She remembered that they were friends from childhood. He had perhaps loved her a long time. Perhaps he had come home to marry her. Donna Micaela could say nothing; she had nothing to complain of. It was scarcely a month since she wrote to Gaetano that it was not right of him to love her.

He now leaned towards her, enchained her glance, and actually compelled her to listen to what he was saying.

“You shall understand; you shall see and understand, Donna Micaela! What we need here in the South is a regeneration, a pulling up by the roots, such as Christianity was in its time. Up with the slaves; down with the masters! A plow which turns up new social furrows! We must sow in new earth; the old earth is impoverished. The old surface furrows bear only weak, miserable growth. Let the deep earth come up to the light, and we shall see something different!

“See, Donna Micaela, why does socialism live; why has it not gone under? Because it comes with a new word. ‘Think of the earth,’ it says, just as Christianity came with the word, ‘Think of heaven.’ Look about you! Look at the earth; is it not all that we possess? Let us therefore establish ourselves here so that we shall be happy. Why, why, has no one thought of it before? Because we have been so busy with that Hereafter. Let us leave the Hereafter! The earth, the earth, Donna Micaela! Ah, we socialists, we love her! We worship the sacred earth,—the poor, despised mother, who wears mourning because her children yearn for heaven.

“Believe me, Donna Micaela,” he said, “it will be accomplished in less than seven years. In the year nineteen hundred it will be ready. Then martyrs will have bled; then apostles will have spoken; then shall crowds upon crowds have been won over! We, the rightful sons of the earth, shall have the victory! And she shall lie before us in all her loveliness; she shall bring us beauty, bring us pleasure, bring us knowledge, bring us health!”

Gaetano’s voice began to tremble, and tears quivered in his eyes. He went forward to the edge of the terrace, and he stretched out his arms as if to embrace the moonlit earth. “You are so dazzlingly beautiful,” he said, “so dazzlingly beautiful!”

And Donna Micaela for a moment thought she felt his grief over all the sorrow that lay under the surface of beauty. She saw life full of vice and suffering, like a dirty river filled with the stench of uncleanliness, wind through the glistening world of beauty.

“And no one can enjoy you,” said Gaetano; “no one can dare to enjoy you. You are untamed, and full of whims and anger. You are uncertainty and peril; you are sorrow and pain; you are want and shame; you are the force that grinds; you are everything terrible that can be named, because the people have not wished to make you better.

“But your day will come,” he said, triumphantly. “Some day they will turn to you with all their love; they will not turn to a dream, which gives nothing and is good for nothing.”

She interrupted him roughly. She began to fear him more and more.

“So it is true that you have had no success in England?”

“What do you mean?”

“People say that the great master, to whom Miss Tottenham sent you, has said that you—”

“What has he said?”

“That you and your images suited Diamante, but nowhere else.”

“Who says such things?”

“People think so, because you are so changed.”

“Since I am a socialist.”

“Why should you be one if you had been successful?”

“Ah, why—? You do not know,” he continued, with a laugh, “that my master in England himself was a socialist. You do not know that it was he who taught me these opinions—”

He paused, and did not go on with the controversy. He went over to the bench where he had been sitting when she came, and brought back a statuette. He handed it to Donna Micaela. He seemed to wish to say: “See for yourself if you are right.”

She took it, and held it up in the moonlight. It was a Mater Dolorosa in black marble. She could see it quite plainly.

She could also recognize it. The image had her own features. It intoxicated her for a moment. In the next she was filled with horror. He, a socialist; he, an unbeliever; he dared to create a Madonna! And he had given the image her features! He entangled her in his sin!

“I have done it for you, Donna Micaela,” he said.

Ah, since it was hers! She threw it out over the balustrade. It struck against the steep mountain side; fell deeper and deeper; broke loose stones, and certainly shattered itself to pieces. At last a splash was heard down in Simeto.

“What right have you to carve Madonnas?” she asked Gaetano.

He stood silent. He had never seen Donna Micaela thus.

In the moment when she rose up before him she had become tall and stately. The beauty that always came and went in her, like an uneasy guest, was enthroned in her face. She looked cold and inflexible; a woman to win and conquer.

“Then you still believe in God, since you carve Madonnas?” she said.

He breathed hurriedly. Now it was he who was paralyzed. He had been a believer himself. He knew how he had wounded her. He saw that he had forfeited her love. He had made a terrible, infinite chasm between them.

He must speak, must win her over to his side.

He began again, but feebly and falteringly.

She listened quietly for a while. Then she interrupted him almost compassionately.

“How did you become so?”

“I thought of Sicily,” he said submissively.

“You thought of Sicily,” she repeated thoughtfully. “And why did you come home?”

“I came home to cause an insurrection.”

It was as if they had spoken of an illness, a chill, that he had contracted, and that could quite easily be cured.

“You came home to be our ruin,” she said, sternly.

“As you will; as you will,” he said, complying. “You can call it so. As everything is going now, you are certainly right to call it so. Ah, if they had not given me false information; if I had not come a week too late! Is it not like us Sicilians to let the government anticipate us? When I came the leaders were already arrested, the island garrisoned with forty thousand men. Everything lost!”

It sounded strangely blank when he said that “everything lost.” And for that which never could be anything, he had lost happiness. His opinions and principles seemed to him now to be dry cobwebs, which had captured him. He wished to tear himself away to come to her. She was the only reality, the only thing that was his. So he had felt before. It came back now. She was the only thing in the world.

“They are, however, fighting to-day in PaternÓ.”

“There has been a disagreement by the town-gate,” he said. “It is nothing. If I had been able to inflame all Etna, the whole circle of towns round about Etna! Then they would have understood us! they would have listened to us! Now they are shooting down a few hungry peasants to make a few hungry mouths the less. They do not yield an inch to us.”

He strove to break through his cobwebs. Could he venture to go up to her, to tell her that all that was of no importance? He did not need to think of politics. He was an artist; he was free! And he wanted to possess her!

Suddenly it seemed as if the air trembled. A shot echoed through the night, then another and another.

She came forward to him and grasped his wrist. “Is that the uprising?” she asked.

Shot upon shot came thundering. Then were heard the cries and din of a crowd rushing down the street.

“It is the uprising; it must be the uprising! Ah, long live socialism!”

He was filled with joy. Entire faith in his belief came back to him. He would win her too. Women have never refused to belong to the victor.

They both hurried without another word through the garden to the door. There Gaetano began to swear and call. He could not get out. There was no key in the lock. He was shut into the garden.

He looked about. There were high walls on three sides, and on the fourth an abyss. There was no way out for him. But from the town came a terrible noise. The people were rushing up and down; there were shots and cries. And they heard them yell: “Long live freedom! Long live socialism!” He threw himself against the door, and almost shrieked. He was imprisoned; he could not take part.

Donna Micaela came up to him as quickly as she could. Now, since she had heard him, she no longer thought of keeping him back.

“Wait, wait!” she said. “I took the key.”

“You, you!” he said.

“I took it when I came. It occurred to me that I could keep you shut in here if you should want to cause an uprising. I wished to save you.”

“What folly!” he said, and snatched the key from her.

While he stood and fumbled to find the key-hole, he still had time to say something.

“Why do you not want to save me now?”

She did not answer.

“Perhaps so that your God may have a chance to destroy me.”

She was still silent.

“Do you not dare to save me from His wrath?”

“No, I do not dare,” she said quietly.

“You believers are terrible!” he said.

He felt that she threw him aside. It froze him, and took away his courage, that she did not make a single attempt to persuade him to stay. He turned the key forward and back without being able to open the door, paralyzed by her standing there pale and cold behind him.

Then he suddenly felt her arms about his neck and her lips seeking his.

At the same moment the door flew open and he rushed away. He would not have her kisses, which only consecrated him to death. She was as terrible as a spectre to him with her ancient faith. He rushed away like a fugitive.

XI
THE FEAST OF SAN SEBASTIANO

When Gaetano rushed away, Donna Micaela stood for a long time in Donna Elisa’s garden. She stood there as if turned to stone, and could neither feel nor think.

Then suddenly the thought came that Gaetano and she were not alone in the world. She remembered her father lying sick, whom she had forgotten for so many hours.

She went through the gate of the court-yard out to the Corso, which lay deserted and empty. Tumult and shots were still audible far away, and she said to herself that they must be fighting down by Porta Etnea.

The moon shed its clear light on the faÇade of the summer-palace, and it amazed her that at such an hour, and on such a night, the balcony doors stood open, and the window shutters were not closed. She was still more surprised that the gate was standing ajar, and that the shop-door was wide open.

As she went in through the gate, she did not see the old gate-keeper, Piero, there. The lanterns in the court-yard were not lighted, and there was not a soul to be seen anywhere.

She went up the steps to the gallery, and her foot struck against something hard. It was a little bronze vase, which belonged in the music-room. A few steps higher up she found a knife. It was a sheath-knife, with a long, dagger-like blade. When she lifted it up a couple of dark drops rolled down from its edge. She knew that it must be blood.

And she understood too that what she had feared all the autumn had now happened. Bandits had been in the summer-palace for plunder. And everyone who could run away had run away; but her father, who could not leave his bed, must be murdered.

She could not tell whether the brigands were not still in the house. But now, in the midst of danger, her fears vanished; and she hurried on, unheeding that she was alone and defenceless.

She went along the gallery into the music-room. Broad rays of moonlight fell upon the floor, and in one of those rays lay a human form stretched motionless.

Donna Micaela bent down over that motionless body. It was Giannita. She was murdered; she had a deep, gaping wound in her neck.

Donna Micaela laid the body straight, crossed the hands over the breast, and closed the eyes. In so doing, her hands were wet with the blood; and when she felt that warm, sticky blood, she began to weep. “Alas, my dear, beloved sister,” she said aloud, “it is your young life that has ebbed away with this blood. All your life you have loved me, and now you have shed your blood defending my house. Is it to punish my hardness that God has taken you from me? Is it because I did not allow you to love him whom I loved that you have gone from me? Alas, sister, sister, could you not have punished me less severely?”

She bent down and kissed the dead girl’s forehead. “You do not believe it,” she said. “You know that I have always been faithful to you. You know that I have loved you.”

She remembered that the dead was severed from everything earthly, that it was not grief and assurances of friendship she needed. She said a prayer over the body, since the only thing she could do for her sister was to support with pious thoughts the flight of the soul soaring up to God.

Then she went on, no longer afraid of anything that could happen to herself, but in inexpressible terror of what might have happened to her father.

When she had at last passed through the long halls in the state apartment and stood by the door to the sick-room, her hands groped a long time for the latch; and when she had found it, she had not the strength to turn the key.

Then her father called from his room and asked who was there. When she heard his voice and knew that he was alive, everything in her trembled, and burst, and lost its power to serve her. Brain and heart failed her at once, and her muscles could no longer hold her upright. She had still time to think that she had been living in terrible suspense. And with a feeling of relief, she sank down in a long swoon.

Donna Micaela regained consciousness towards morning. In the meantime much had happened. The servants had come out of their hiding-places, and had gone for Donna Elisa. She had taken charge of the deserted palace, had summoned the police, and sent a message to the White Brotherhood. And the latter had carried Giannita’s body to her mother’s house.

When Donna Micaela awoke, she found herself lying on the sofa in a room next her father’s. No one was with her, but in her father’s room she heard Donna Elisa talking.

“My son and my daughter,” said Donna Elisa, sobbing; “I have lost both my son and my daughter.”

Donna Micaela tried to raise herself, but she could not. Her body still lay in a stupor, although her soul was awake.

“Cavaliere, Cavaliere,” said Donna Elisa, “can you understand? The bandits come here from Etna, creeping down to Diamante. The bandits attack the custom-house and shout: ‘Long live Socialism!’ They do it only to frighten people away from the streets and to draw the Carabiniere down to Porta Etnea. There is not a single man from Diamante who has anything to do with it. It is the bandits who arrange it all, to be able to plunder Miss Tottenham and Donna Micaela, two women, Cavaliere! What did those officers think at the court-martial? Did they believe that Gaetano was in league with the bandits? Did they not see that he was a nobleman, a true Alagona, an artist? How could they have sentenced him?”

Donna Micaela listened with horror, but she tried to imagine that she was still dreaming. She thought she heard Gaetano ask if she was sacrificing him to God. She thought she answered that she did. Now she was dreaming of how it would be in case he really had been captured. It could be nothing else.

“What a night of misfortune!” said Donna Elisa. “What is flying about in the air, and making people mad and confused? You have seen Gaetano, Cavaliere. He has always been passionate and fiery, but it has not been without intelligence; he has not been without sense and judgment. But to-night he throws himself right into the arms of the troops. You know that he wanted to cause an uprising; you know that he came home for that. And when he hears the shooting, and some one shouting, ‘Long live Socialism!’ he becomes wild, and beside himself. He says to himself, ‘That is the insurrection!’ and he rushes down the street to join it. And he shouts the whole time, ‘Long live Socialism!’ as loud as he can. And so he meets a great crowd of soldiers, a whole host. For they were on their way to PaternÓ, and heard the shooting as they passed by, and marched in to see what was going on. And Gaetano can no longer recognize a soldier’s cap. He thinks that they are the rebels; he thinks that they are angels from heaven, and he rushes in among them and lets them capture him. And they, who have already caught all the bandits sneaking away with their booty, now lay hands on Gaetano too. They go through the town and find everything quiet; but before they leave, they pass sentence on their prisoners. And they condemn Gaetano like the others, condemn him like those who have broken in and murdered women. Have they not lost their senses, Cavaliere?”

Donna Micaela could not hear what her father answered. She wished to ask a thousand questions, but she was still paralyzed and could not move. She wondered if Gaetano had been shot.

“What do they mean by sentencing him to twenty-nine years’ imprisonment?” said Donna Elisa. “Do you think that he can live so long, or that any one who loves him can live so long? He is dead, Cavaliere; as dead for me as Giannita.”

Donna Micaela felt as if strong fetters bound her beyond escape. It was worse, she thought, than to be tied to a pillory and whipped.

“All the joy of my old age is taken from me,” said Donna Elisa. “Both Giannita and Gaetano! I have always expected them to marry each other. It would have been so suitable, because they were both my children, and loved me. For what shall I live now, when I have no young people about me? I was often poor when Gaetano first came to me, and people said to me that I should have been better off alone. But I answered: ‘It makes no difference, none, if only I have young people about me.’ And I thought that when he grew up he would find a young wife, and then they would have little children, and I would never need to sit a lonely and useless old woman.”

Donna Micaela lay thinking that she could have saved Gaetano, but had not wished to do so. But why had she not wished? It seemed to her quite incomprehensible. She began to count up to herself all her reasons for permitting him to rush to destruction. He was an atheist; a socialist; he wished to cause a revolt. That had outweighed everything else when she opened the garden gate for him. It had crushed her love also. She could not now understand it. It was as if a scale full of feathers had weighed down a scale full of gold.

“My beautiful boy!” said Donna Elisa, “my beautiful boy! He was already a great man over there in England, and he came home to help us poor Sicilians. And now they have sentenced him like a bandit. People say that they were ready to shoot him, as they shot the others. Perhaps it would have been better if they had done so, Cavaliere. It had been better to have laid him in the church-yard than to know that he was in prison. How will he be able to endure all his suffering? He will not be able to bear it; he will fall ill; he will soon be dead.”

At these words, Donna Micaela roused herself from her stupor, and got up from the sofa. She staggered across the room and came in to her father and Donna Elisa, as pale as poor murdered Giannita. She was so weak that she did not dare to cross the floor; she stood at the door and leaned against the door-post.

“It is I,” she said; “Donna Elisa, it is I—”

The words would not come to her lips. She wrung her hands in despair that she could not speak.

Donna Elisa was instantly at her side. She put her arm about her to support her, without paying any attention to Donna Micaela’s attempt to push her away.

“You must forgive me, Donna Elisa,” she said, with an almost inaudible voice. “I did it.”

Donna Elisa did not heed much what she was saying. She saw that she had fever, and thought that she was delirious.

Donna Micaela’s lips worked; she plainly wished to say something, but only a few words were audible. It was impossible to understand what she meant. “Against him, as against my father,” she said, over and over. And then she said something about bringing misfortune on all who loved her.

Donna Elisa had got her down on a chair, and Donna Micaela sat there and kissed her old, wrinkled hands, and asked her to forgive her what she had done.

Yes, of course, of course, Donna Elisa forgave her.

Donna Micaela looked her sharply in the face with great, feverish eyes, and asked if it were true.

It was really true.

Then she laid her head on Donna Elisa’s shoulder and sobbed, thanked her, and said that she could not live if she did not obtain her forgiveness. She had sinned against no one so much as against her. Could she forgive her?

“Yes, yes,” said Donna Elisa again and again, and thought that the other was out of her head from fever and fright.

“There is something I ought to tell you,” said Donna Micaela. “I know it, but you do not know it. You will not forgive me if you hear it.”

“Yes, of course I forgive you,” said Donna Elisa.

They talked in that way for a long time without understanding each other; but it was good for old Donna Elisa to have some one that night to put to bed, comforted and dosed with strengthening herbs and drops. It was good for her to still have some one to come and lay her head on her shoulder and cry away her grief.

Donna Micaela, who had loved Gaetano for nearly three years without a thought that they could ever belong to each other, had accustomed herself to a strange kind of love. It was enough for her to know that Gaetano loved her. When she thought of it, a tender feeling of security and happiness stole through her. “What does it matter; what does it matter?” she said, when she suffered adversity. “Gaetano loves me.” He was always with her, cheering and comforting her. He took part in all her thoughts and undertakings. He was the soul of her life.

As soon as Donna Micaela could get his address, she wrote to him. She acknowledged to him that she had firmly believed that he had gone to misfortune. But she had been so much afraid of what he proposed to accomplish in the world that she had not dared to save him.

She also wrote how she detested his teachings. She did not dissemble at all to him. She said that even if he were free she could not be his.

She feared him. He had such power over her that, if they were united, he would make her a socialist and an atheist. Therefore she must always live apart from him, for the salvation of her soul.

But she begged and prayed that in spite of everything he would not cease to love her. He must not; he must not! He might punish her in any way he pleased, if only he did not cease to love her.

He must not do as her father had. He had perhaps reason to close his heart to her now, but he must not. He must be merciful.

If he knew how she loved him! If he knew how she dreamed of him!

She told him that he was nothing less than life itself to her.

“Must I die, Gaetano?” she asked.

“Is it not enough that those opinions and teachings part us? Is it not enough that they have carried you to prison? Will you also cease to love me, because we do not think alike?

“Ah, Gaetano, love me! It leads to nothing; there is no hope in your love, but love me; I die if you do not love me.”

Donna Micaela had hardly sent off the letter before she began to wait for the answer. She expected a stormy and angry reply, but she hoped that there would be one single word to show her that he still loved her.

But she waited several weeks without receiving any letter from Gaetano.

It did not help her to stand and wait every morning for the letter-carrier out on the gallery, and almost break his heart because he was always obliged to say that he did not have anything for her.

One day she went herself to the post-office, and asked them, with the most beseeching eyes, to give her the letter she was expecting. It must be there, she said. But perhaps they had not been able to read the address; perhaps it had been put into the wrong box? And her soft, imploring eyes so touched the postmaster that she was allowed to look through piles of old, unclaimed letters, and to turn all the drawers in the post-office upside down. But it was all in vain.

She wrote new letters to Gaetano; but no answer came.

Then she tried to believe what seemed impossible. She tried to make her soul realize that Gaetano had ceased to love her.

As her conviction increased, she began to shut herself into her room. She was afraid of people, and preferred to sit alone.

Day by day she became more feeble. She walked deeply bent, and even her beautiful eyes seemed to lose their life and light.

After a few weeks she was so weak that she could no longer keep up, but lay all day on her sofa. She was prey to a suffering that gradually deprived her of all vital power. She knew that she was failing, and she was afraid to die. But she could do nothing. There was only one remedy for her, but that never came. While Donna Micaela seemed to be thus quietly gliding out of life, the people of Diamante were preparing to celebrate the feast of San Sebastiano, that comes at the end of January.

It was the greatest festival of Diamante, but in the last few years it had not been kept with customary splendor, because want and gloom had weighed too heavily on their souls.

But this year, just after the revolt had failed, and while Sicily was still filled with troops, and while the beloved heroes of the people languished in prison, they determined to celebrate the festival with all the old-time pomp; for now, they said, was not the time to neglect the saint.

And the pious people of Diamante determined that the festival should be held for a week, and that San Sebastiano should be honored with flags and decorations, and with races and biblical processions, illuminations, and singing contests.

The people bestirred themselves with great haste and eagerness. There was polishing and scrubbing in every house. They brought out the old costumes, and they prepared to receive strangers from all Etna.

The summer-palace was the only house in Diamante where no preparations were made. Donna Elisa was deeply grieved at it, but she could not induce Donna Micaela to have her house decorated. “How can you ask me to trim a house of mourning with flowers and leaves?” she said. “The roses would shed their petals if I tried to use them to mask the misery that reigns here.”

But Donna Elisa was very eager for the festival, and expected much good to result from honoring the saint as in the old days. She could talk of nothing but of how the priests had decorated the faÇade of the Cathedral in the old Sicilian way, with silver flowers and mirrors. And she described the procession: how many riders there were to be, and what high plumes they were to have in their hats, and what long, garlanded staves, with wax candles at the end, they were to carry in their hands.

When the first festival day came, Donna Elisa’s house was the most gorgeously decorated. The green, red, and white standard of Italy waved from the roof, and red cloths, fringed with gold, bearing the saint’s initials, were spread over the window-sills and balcony railings. Up and down the wall ran garlands of holly, shaped into stars and arches, and round the windows crept wreaths made of the little pink roses from Donna Elisa’s garden. Just over the entrance stood the saint’s image, framed in lilies, and on the threshold lay cypress-branches. And if one had entered the house, one would have found it as much adorned on the inside as on the outside. From the cellar to the attic it was scoured and covered with flowers, and on the shelves in the shop no saint was too small or insignificant to have an everlasting or a harebell in his hand. Like Donna Elisa, every one in penniless Diamante had decorated along the whole street. In the street above the house of the little Moor there was such an array of flags that it looked like clothes hung out to dry from the earth to the sky. Every house and every arch carried flags, and across the streets were hung ropes, from which fluttered pennant after pennant.

At every tenth step the people of Diamante had raised triumphal arches over the street. And over every door stood the image of the saint, framed in wreaths of yellow everlastings. The balconies were covered with red quilts and bright-colored table-cloths, and stiff garlands wound up the walls.

There were so many flowers and leaves that no one could understand how they had been able to get them all in January. Everything was crowned and wreathed with flowers. The brooms had crowns of crocuses, and each door-knocker a bunch of hyacinths. In windows stood pictures with monograms, and inscriptions of blood-red anemones.

And between those decorated houses the stream of people rolled as mighty as a rising river. It was not the inhabitants of Diamante alone who were honoring San Sebastiano. From all Etna came yellow carts, beautifully ornamented and painted, drawn by horses in shining harness, and loaded down with people. The sick, the beggars, the blind singers came in great crowds. There were whole trains of pilgrims, unhappy people, who now, after their misfortunes, had some one to pray to.

Such numbers came that the people wondered how they all would ever find room within the town walls. There were people in the streets, people in the windows, people on the balconies. On the high stone steps sat people, and the shops were full of them. The big street-doors were thrown wide, and in the openings chairs were arranged in a half-circle, as in a theatre. There the house-owners sat with their guests and looked at the passers-by.

The whole street was filled with an intoxicating noise. It was not only the talking and laughter of the people. There were also organ-grinders standing and turning hand-organs big as pianos. There were street-singers, and there were men and women who declaimed Tasso in cracked, worn-out voices. There were all kinds of criers, the sound of organs streamed from all the churches, and in the square on the summit of the mountain the town band played so that it could be heard over all Diamante.

The joyous noise, and the fragrance of the flowers, and the flapping of the flags outside Donna Micaela’s window had power to wake her from her stupor. She rose up, as if life had sent for her. “I will not die,” she said to herself. “I will try to live.”

She took her father’s arm and went out into the street. She hoped that the life there would mount to her head so that she might forget her sorrow. “If I do not succeed,” she thought, “if I can find no distraction, I must die.”

Now in Diamante there was a poor old stone-cutter, who had thought of earning a few soldi during the festival. He had made a couple of small busts out of lava, of San Sebastiano and of Pope Leo XIII. And as he knew that many in Diamante loved Gaetano, and grieved over his fate, he also made a few portraits of him.

Just as Donna Micaela came out into the street she met the man, and he offered her his wretched little images.

“Buy Don Gaetano Alagona, Donna Micaela,” said the man; “buy Don Gaetano, whom the government has put in prison because he wished to help Sicily.”

Donna Micaela pressed her father’s arm hard and went hurriedly on.

In the CafÉ Europa the son of the innkeeper stood and sang canzoni. He had composed a few new ones for the festival, and among others some about Gaetano. For he could not know that people did not care to hear of him.

When Donna Micaela passed by the cafÉ and heard the singing, she stopped and listened.

“Alas, Gaetano Alagona!” sang the young man. “Songs are mighty. I shall sing you free with my songs. First I will send you the slender canzone. He shall glide in between your prison-gratings, and break them. Then I will send you the sonnet, that is fair as a woman, and which will corrupt your guards. I will compose a glorious ode to you, which will shake the walls of your prison with its lofty rhythms. But if none of these help you, I will burst out in the glorious epos, that has hosts of words. Oh, Gaetano, mighty as an army it marches on! All the legions of ancient Rome would not have had the strength to stop it!”

Donna Micaela hung convulsively on her father’s arm, but she did not speak, and went on.

Then Cavaliere Palmeri began to speak of Gaetano. “I did not know that he was so beloved,” he said.

“Nor I,” murmured Donna Micaela.

“To-day I saw some strangers coming into Donna Elisa’s shop, and begging her to be allowed to buy something that he had carved. She had left only a couple of old rosaries, and I saw her break them to pieces and give them out bead by bead.”

Donna Micaela looked at her father like a beseeching child. But he did not know whether she wished him to be silent or to go on speaking.

“Donna Elisa’s old friends go about in the garden with Luca,” he said, “and Luca shows them Gaetano’s favorite places and the garden beds that he used to plant. And Pacifica sits in the workshop beside the joiner’s-bench, and relates all sorts of things about him, ever since he was—so big.”

He could tell no more; the crush and the noise became so great about him that he had to stop.

They meant to go to the Cathedral. On the Cathedral steps sat old Assunta, as usual. She held a rosary in her hands and mumbled the same prayer round the whole rosary. She asked the saint that Gaetano, who had promised to help all the poor, might come back to Diamante.

As Donna Micaela walked by her, she distinctly heard: “San Sebastiano, give us Gaetano! Ah, in your mercy; ah, in our misery, San Sebastiano, give us Gaetano!”

Donna Micaela had meant to go into the church, but she turned on the steps.

“There is such a crowd there,” she said, “I do not dare to go in.”

She went home again. But while she had been away, Donna Elisa had watched her opportunity. She had hoisted a flag on the roof of the summer-palace; she had spread draperies on the balconies, and as Donna Micaela came home, she was fastening up a garland in the gateway. For Donna Elisa could not bear to have the summer-palace underrated. She wished no honor to San Sebastiano omitted at this time. And she feared that the saint would not help Diamante and Gaetano if the palace of the old Alagonas did not honor him.

Donna Micaela was pale as if she had received her death warrant, and bent like an old woman of eighty years.

She murmured to herself: “I make no busts of him; I sing no songs about him; I dare not pray to God for him; I buy none of his beads. How can he believe that I love him? He must love all these others, who worship him, but not me. I do not belong to his world, he can love me no longer.”

And when she saw that they wished to adorn her house with flowers, it seemed to her so piteously cruel that she snatched the wreath from Donna Elisa and threw it at her feet, asking if she wished to kill her.

Then she went past her up the stairs to her room. She threw herself on the sofa and buried her face in the cushions.

She now first understood how far apart she and Gaetano were. The idol of the people could not love her.

She felt as if she had prevented him from helping all those poor people.

How he must detest her; how he must hate her!

Then her illness came creeping back over her. That illness which consisted of not being loved! It would kill her. She thought, as she lay there, that it was all over.

While she lay there, suddenly the little Christchild stood before her inward eye. He seemed to have entered the room in all his wretched splendor. She saw him plainly.

Donna Micaela began to call on the Christchild for help. And she was amazed at herself for not having turned before to that good helper. It was probably because the image did not stand in a church, but was carried about as a museum-piece by Miss Tottenham, that she remembered him only in her deepest need.

It was late in the evening of the same day. After dinner Donna Micaela had given all her servants permission to go to the festival, so that she and her father were alone in the big house. But towards ten o’clock her father rose and said he wished to hear the singing-contest in the square. And as Donna Micaela did not dare to sit alone, she was obliged to go with him.

When they came to the square they saw that it was turned into a theatre, with lines upon lines of chairs. Every corner was filled with people, and it was with difficulty that they found places.

“Diamante is glorious this evening, Micaela,” said Cavaliere Palmeri. The charm of the night seemed to have softened him. He spoke more simply and tenderly to his daughter than he had done for a long time.

Donna Micaela felt instantly that he spoke the truth. She felt as she had done when she first came to Diamante. It was a town of miracles, a town of beauty, a little sanctuary of God.

Directly in front of her stood a high and stately building made of shining diamonds. She had to think for a moment before she could understand what it was.

Yet it was nothing but the front of the Cathedral, covered with flowers of stiff silver and gold paper and with thousands of little mirrors stuck in between the flowers. And in every flower was hung a little lamp with a flame as big as a fire-fly. It was the most enchanting illumination that Donna Micaela had ever seen.

There was no other light in the market-place, nor was any needed. That great wall of diamonds shone quite sufficiently. The black Palazzo Geraci was flaming red, as if it had been lighted by a conflagration.

Nothing of the world outside of the square was visible. Everything below it was in the deepest darkness, and that made her think again that she saw the old enchanted Diamante that was not of the earth, but was a holy city on one of the mounts of heaven. The town-hall with its heavy balconies and high steps, the long convent and the Roman gate were again glorious and wonderful. And she could hardly believe it was in that town that she had suffered such terrible pain.

In the midst of the great crowd of people, no chill was felt. The winter night was mild as a spring morning; and Donna Micaela began to feel something of spring in her. It began to stir and tremble in her in a way which was both sweet and terrible. It must feel so in the snow-masses on Etna when the sun melts them into sparkling brooks.

She looked at the people who filled the market-place, and was amazed at herself that she had been so tortured by them in the forenoon. She was glad that they loved Gaetano. Alas, if he had only continued to love her, she would have been unspeakably proud and happy in their love. Then she could have kissed those old callous hands that made images of him and were clasped in prayers for him.

As she was thinking this, the church-door was thrown open and a big, flat wagon rolled out of the church. Highest on the red-covered wagon stood San Sebastiano by his stake, and below the image sat the four singers, who were to contest.

There was an old blind man from Nicolosi; a cooper from Catania, who was considered to be the best improvisatore in all Sicily; a smith from Termini, and little Gandolfo, who was son to the watchman in the town-hall of Diamante.

Everybody was surprised that Gandolfo dared to appear in such a difficult contest. Did he do it perhaps to please his betrothed, little Rosalia? No one had ever heard that he could improvise. He had never done anything in his whole life but eat mandarins and stare at Etna.

The first thing was to draw lots among the competitors, and the lots fell so that the cooper should come first and Gandolfo last. When it fell so Gandolfo turned pale. It was terrible to come last, when they all were to speak on the same subject.

The cooper elected to speak of San Sebastiano, when he was a soldier of the legion in ancient Rome, and for his faith’s sake was bound to a stake and used as a target for his comrades. After him came the blind man, who told how a pious Roman matron found the martyr bleeding and pierced with arrows, and succeeded in bringing him back to life. Then came the smith, who related all the miracles San Sebastiano had worked in Sicily during the pest in the fifteenth century. They were all much applauded. They spoke many strong words of blood and death, and the people rejoiced in them. But every one from Diamante was anxious for little Gandolfo.

“The smith takes all the words from him. He must fail,” they said.

“Ah,” said others, “little Rosalia will not take the engagement ribbon out of her hair for that.”

Gandolfo shrunk together in his corner of the wagon. He grew smaller and smaller. Those sitting near could hear how his teeth chattered with fright.

When his turn came at last, and he rose and began to improvise, he was very bad. He was worse than any one had expected. He faltered out a couple of verses, but they were only a repetition of what the others had said.

Then he suddenly stopped and gasped for breath. In that moment the strength of despair came to him. He straightened himself up, and a slight flush rose to his cheeks.

“Oh, signori,” said little Gandolfo, “let me speak of that of which I am always thinking! Let me speak of what I always see before me!”

And he began unopposed and with wonderful power to tell what he himself had seen.

He told how he who was son to the watchman of the town-hall had crept through dark attics and had lain hidden in one of the galleries of the court-room the night the court-martial had been held to pass sentence on the insurgents in Diamante.

Then he had seen Don Gaetano Alagona on the bench of the accused with a lot of wild fellows who were worse than brutes.

He told how beautiful Gaetano had been. He had seemed like a god to little Gandolfo beside those terrible people about him. And he described those bandits with their wild-beast faces, their coarse hair, their clumsy limbs. He said that no one could look into their eyes without a quiver of the heart.

Yet, in all his beauty, Don Gaetano was more terrible than those people. Gandolfo did not know how they dared to sit beside him on the bench. Under his frowning brows his eyes flashed at his fellow-prisoners with a look which would have killed their souls, if they like others had possessed such a thing.

“‘Who are you,’ he seemed to ask, ‘who dare to turn to plundering and murder while you call on sacred liberty? Do you know what you have done? Do you know that on account of your devices I am now a prisoner? And it was I who would have saved Sicily!’” And every glance he cast at them was a death warrant.

His eyes fell on all the things that the bandits had stolen and that were now piled up on a table. He recognized them. Could he help knowing the clocks and the silver dishes from the summer-palace? could he help knowing the relics and coins that had been stolen from his English patroness? And when he had recognized the things, he turned to his fellow-prisoners with a terrible smile. “‘You heroes! you heroes!’ said the smile; ‘you have stolen from two women!’”

His noble face was constantly changing. Once Gandolfo had seen it contracted by a sudden terror. It was when the man sitting nearest to him stretched out a hand covered with blood. Had he perhaps had a sudden idea of the truth? Did he think that those men had broken into the house where his beloved lived?

Gandolfo told how the officers who were to be the judges had come in, silent and grave, and sat down in their places. But he said when he had seen those noble gentlemen his anxiety had diminished. He had said to himself that they knew that Gaetano was of good birth, and that they would not sentence him. They would not mix him up with the bandits. No one could possibly believe that he had wished to rob two women.

And see, when the judge called up Gaetano Alagona his voice was without hardness. He spoke to him as to an equal.

“But,” said Gandolfo, “when Don Gaetano rose, he stood so that he could see out over the square. And through the square, through this same square, where now so many people are sitting in happiness and pleasure, a funeral procession was passing.

“It was the White Brotherhood carrying the body of the murdered Giannita to her mother’s house. They walked with torches, and the bier, carried on the bearers’ shoulders, was plainly visible. As the procession passed slowly across the market-place, one could recognize the pall spread over the corpse. It was the pall of the Alagonas adorned with a gorgeous coat of arms and rich silver fringes. When Gaetano saw it, he understood that the corpse was of the house of Alagona. His face became ashy gray, and he reeled as if he were going to fall.

“At that moment the judge asked him: ‘Do you know the murdered woman?’ And he answered: ‘Yes.’ Then the judge, who was a merciful man, continued: ‘Was she near to you?’ And then Don Gaetano answered: ‘I love her.’”

When Gandolfo had come so far in his story, people saw Donna Micaela suddenly rise, as if she had wished to contradict him, but Cavaliere Palmeri drew her quickly down beside him.

“Be quiet, be quiet,” he said to her.

And she sat quiet with her face hidden in her hands. Now and then her body rocked and she wailed softly.

Gandolfo told how the judge, when Gaetano had acknowledged that, had shown him his fellow-prisoners and asked him: “‘If you loved that woman, how can you have anything in common with the men who have murdered her?’”

Then Don Gaetano had turned towards the bandits. He had raised his clenched hand and shaken it at them. And he had looked as if he had longed for a dagger, to be able to strike them down one after another.

“‘With those!’” he had shouted. “‘Should I have anything in common with those?’”

And he had certainly meant to say that he had nothing to do with robbers and murderers. The judge had smiled kindly at him, as if he had only waited for that answer to set him free.

But then a divine miracle had happened.

And Gandolfo told, how among all the stolen things that lay on the table, there had also been a little Christ image. It was a yard high, richly covered with jewels and adorned with a gold crown and gold shoes. Just at that moment one of the officers bent down to draw the image to him; and as he did so, the crown fell to the floor and rolled all the way to Don Gaetano.

Don Gaetano picked up the Christ-crown, held it a moment in his hands and looked at it carefully. It seemed as if he had read something in it.

He did not hold it more than one minute. In the next the guard took it from him.

Donna Micaela looked up almost frightened. The Christ image! He was there already! Should she so soon get an answer to her prayer?

Gandolfo continued: “But when Don Gaetano looked up, every one trembled as at a miracle, for the man was transformed.

“Ah, signori, he was so white that his face seemed to shine, and his eyes were calm and tender. And there was no more anger in him.

“And he began to pray for his fellow-prisoners; he began to pray for their lives.

“He prayed that they should not kill those poor fellow-creatures. He prayed that the noble judges should do something for them that they might some day live like others. ‘We have only this life to live,’ he said. ‘Our kingdom is only of this world.’

“He began to tell how those men had lived. He spoke as if he could read their souls. He pictured their life, gloomy and unhappy as it had been. He spoke so that several of the judges wept.

“The words came strong and commanding, so that it sounded as if Don Gaetano had been judge and the judges the criminals. ‘See,’ he said, ‘whose fault is it that these poor men have gone to destruction? Is it not you who have the power who ought to have taken care of them?’

“And they were all dismayed at the responsibility he forced upon them.

“But suddenly the judge had interrupted him.

“‘Speak in your own defence, Gaetano Alagona,’ he said; ‘do not speak in that of others!’

“Then Don Gaetano had smiled. ‘Signor,’ he said, ‘I have not much more than you with which to defend myself. But still I have something. I have left my career in England to make a revolt in Sicily. I have brought over weapons. I have made seditious speeches. I have something, although not much.’

“The judge had almost begged him. ‘Do not speak so, Don Gaetano,’ he had said. ‘Think of what you are saying!’

“But he had made confessions that compelled them to sentence him.

“When they told him that he was to sit for twenty-nine years in prison, he had cried out: ‘Now may her will be done, who was just carried by. May I be as she wished!’

“And I saw no more of him,” said little Gandolfo, “for the guards placed him between them and led him away.

“But I, who heard him pray for those who had murdered his beloved, made a vow that I would do something for him.

“I vowed to recite a beautiful improvisation to San Sebastiano to induce him to help him. But I have not succeeded. I am no improvisatore; I could not.”

Here he broke off and threw himself down, weeping aloud before the image. “Forgive me that I could not,” he cried, “and help him in spite of it. You know that when they sentenced him I promised to do it for his sake that you might save him. But now I have not been able to speak of you, and you will not help him.”

Donna Micaela hardly knew how it happened, but she and little Rosalia, who loved Gandolfo, were beside him at almost the same moment. They drew him to them, and both kissed him, and said that no one had spoken like him; no one, no one. Did he not see that they were weeping? San Sebastiano was pleased with him. Donna Micaela put a ring on the boy’s finger and round about him the people were waving many-colored silk handkerchiefs, that glistened like waves of the sea in the strong light from the Cathedral.

“Viva Gaetano! viva Gandolfo!” cried the people.

And flowers and fruits and silk handkerchiefs and jewels came raining down about little Gandolfo. Donna Micaela was crowded away from him almost with violence. But it never occurred to her to be frightened. She stood among the surging people and wept. The tears streamed down her face, and she wept for joy that she could weep. That was the greatest blessing.

She wished to force her way to Gandolfo; she could not thank him enough. He had told her that Gaetano loved her. When he had quoted the words, “Now may her will be done who was just carried by,” she had suddenly understood that Gaetano had believed that it was she lying under the pall of the Alagonas.

And of that dead woman he had said: “I love her.”

The blood flowed once more in her veins; her heart beat again; her tears fell. “It is life, life,” she said to herself, while she let herself be carried to and fro by the crowd. “Life has come again to me. I shall not die.”

They all had to come up to little Gandolfo to thank him, because he had given them some one to love, to trust in, to long for in those days of dejection, when everything seemed lost.