“Antichrist shall go from land to land and give bread to the poor”
I
A GREAT MAN’S WIFE
It was in February, and the almond-trees were beginning to blossom on the black lava about Diamante.
Cavaliere Palmeri had taken a walk up Etna and had brought home a big almond branch, full of buds and flowers and put it in a vase in the music-room.
Donna Micaela started when she saw it. So they had already come, the almond-blossoms. And for a whole month, for six long weeks, they would be everywhere.
They would stand on the altar in the church; they would lie on the graves, and they would be worn on the breast, on the hat, in the hair. They would blossom over the roads, in the heaps of ruins, on the black lava. And every almond-flower would remind her of the day when the bells rang, when Gaetano was free and happy, and when she dreamed of passing her whole life with him.
It seemed to her as if she never before fully understood what it meant that he was shut in and gone, that she should never see him again.
She had to sit down in order not to fall; her heart seemed to stop, and she shut her eyes.
While she was sitting thus she had a strange experience.
She is all at once at home in the palace in Catania. She is sitting in the lofty hall reading, and she is a happy young girl, Signorina Palmeri. A servant brings in a wandering salesman to her. He is a handsome young fellow with a sprig of almond-blossoms in his button-hole; on his head he carries a board full of little images of the saints, carved in wood.
She buys some of the images, while the young man’s eyes drink in all the works of art in the hall. She asks him if he would like to see their collections. Yes, that he would. And she herself goes with him and shows him.
He is so delighted with what he sees that she thinks that he must be a real artist, and she says to herself that she will not forget him. She asks where his home is. He answers: “In Diamante.”—“Is that far away?”—“Four hours in the post-carriage.”—“And with the railway?”—“There is no railway to Diamante, signorina.”—“You must build one.”—“We! we are too poor. Ask the rich men in Catania to build us a railway!”
When he has said that he starts to go, but he turns at the door and comes and gives her his almond-blossoms. It is in gratitude for all the beautiful things she has let him see.
When Donna Micaela opened her eyes she did not know whether she had been dreaming or whether perhaps once some such thing had really happened. Gaetano could really have been some time in the Palazzo Palmeri to sell his images, although she had forgotten it; but now the almond-blossoms had recalled it.
But it was no matter, no matter. The important thing was that the young wood-carver was Gaetano. She felt as if she had been talking to him. She thought she heard the door close behind him.
And it was after that that it occurred to her to build a railway between Catania and Diamante.
Gaetano had surely come to her to ask her to do it. It was a command from him, and she felt that she must obey.
She made no attempt to struggle against it. She was certain that Diamante needed a railway more than anything else. She had once heard Gaetano say that if Diamante only possessed a railway, so that it could easily send away its oranges and its wine and its honey and its almonds, and so that travellers could come there conveniently, it would soon be a rich town.
She was also quite certain that she could succeed with the railway. She must try at all events. It never occurred to her not to. When Gaetano wished it, she must obey.
She began to think how much money she herself could give. It would not go very far. She must get more money. That was the first thing she had to do.
Within the hour she was at Donna Elisa’s, and begged her to help her arrange a bazaar. Donna Elisa lifted her eyes from her embroidery. “Why do you want to arrange a bazaar?”—“I mean to collect money for a railway.”—“That is like you, Donna Micaela; no one else would have thought of such a thing.”—“What, Donna Elisa? What do you mean?”—“Oh, nothing.”
And Donna Elisa went on embroidering.
“You will not help me, then, with my bazaar?”—“No, I will not.”—“And you will not give a little contribution towards it?”—“One who has so lately lost her husband,” answered Donna Elisa, “ought not to trifle.”
Donna Micaela saw that Donna Elisa was angry with her for some reason or other, and that she therefore would not help her. But there must be others who would understand; and it was a beautiful plan, which would save Diamante.
But Donna Micaela wandered in vain from door to door. However much she talked and begged, she gained no partisans.
She tried to explain, she used all her eloquence to persuade. No one was interested in her plans.
Wherever she came, people answered her that they were too poor, too poor.
The syndic’s wife answered no. Her daughters were not allowed to sell at the bazaar. Don Antonio Greco, who had the marionette theatre, would not come with his dolls. The town-band would not play. None of the shop-keepers would give any of their wares. When Donna Micaela was gone they laughed at her.
A railroad, a railroad! She did not know what she was thinking of. There would have to be a company, shares, statutes, concessions. How should a woman manage such things?
While some were content to laugh at Donna Micaela, some were angry with her.
She went to the cellar-like shop near the old Benedictine monastery, where Master Pamphilio related romances of chivalry. She came to ask him if he would come to her bazaar and entertain the public with Charlemagne and his paladins; but as he was in the midst of a story, she had to sit down on a bench and wait.
Then she noticed Donna Concetta, Master Pamphilio’s wife, who was sitting on the platform at his feet knitting a stocking. As long as Master Pamphilio was speaking, Donna Concetta’s lips moved. She had heard his romances so many times that she knew them by heart, and said the words before they had passed Master Pamphilio’s lips. But it was always the same pleasure to her to hear him, and she wept, and she laughed, as she had done when she heard him for the first time.
Master Pamphilio was an old man, who had spoken much in his day, so that his voice sometimes failed him in the big battle-scenes, when he had to speak loud and fast. But Donna Concetta, who knew it all by heart, never took the word from Master Pamphilio. She only made a sign to the audience to wait until his voice came back. But if his memory failed him, Donna Concetta pretended that she had dropped a stitch, raised the stocking to her eyes, and threw him the word behind it, so that no one noticed it. And every one knew that although Donna Concetta perhaps could have told the romances better than Master Pamphilio, she would never have been willing to do such a thing, not only because it was not fitting for a woman, but also because it would not give her half so much pleasure as to listen to dear Master Pamphilio.
When Donna Micaela saw Donna Concetta, she fell to dreaming. Oh, to sit so on the platform, where her beloved was speaking; to sit so day in and day out and worship. She knew whom that would have suited.
When Master Pamphilio had finished speaking Donna Micaela went forward and asked him to help her. It was hard for him to say no, on account of the thousand prayers that were written in her eyes. But Donna Concetta came to his rescue. “Master Pamphilio,” she said, “tell Donna Micaela of Guglielmo the Wicked.” And Master Pamphilio began.
“Donna Micaela,” he said, “do you know that once there was a king in Sicily whose name was Guglielmo the Wicked? He was so covetous that he took all his subjects’ money. He commanded that every one possessing gold coins should give them to him. And he was so severe and so cruel that they all had to obey him.
“Well, Donna Micaela, Guglielmo the Wicked wished to know if any one had gold hidden in his house. Therefore he sent one of his servants along the Corso in Palermo with a beautiful horse. And the man offered the horse for sale, and cried loudly: ‘Will be sold for a piece of gold; will be sold for a piece of gold!’ But there was no one who could buy the horse.
“Yet it was a very beautiful horse, and a young nobleman, the Duke of Montefiascone, was much taken by him. ‘There is no joy for me if I cannot buy the horse,’ said he to his steward. ‘Signor Duca,’ answered his steward, ‘I can tell you where you can find a piece of gold. When your noble father died and was carried away by the Capucins, according to the ancient custom I put a piece of gold in his mouth. You can take that, signor.’
“For you must know, Donna Micaela, that in Palermo they do not bury the dead in the ground. They carry them to the monastery of the Capucins, and the monks hang them up in their vaults. Ah, there are so many hanging in those vaults!—so many ladies, dressed in silk and cloth of silver; so many noble gentlemen, with orders on their breasts; and so many priests, with cloak and cap over skeleton and skull.
“The young duke followed his advice. He went to the Capucin monastery, took the piece of gold from his father’s mouth and bought the horse with it.
“But you understand that the king had only sent his servant with the horse in order to find out if any one still had any money. And now the duke was taken before the king. ‘How does it happen that you still have gold pieces?’ said Guglielmo the Wicked.—‘Sire, it was not mine; it was my father’s.’ And he told how he had got the piece of gold. ‘It is true,’ said the king. ‘I had forgotten that the dead still had money.’ And he sent his servants to the Capucins and had them take all the gold pieces out of the mouths of the dead.”
Here old Master Pamphilio finished his story. And now Donna Concetta turned to Donna Micaela with wrathful eyes. “It is you who are out with the horse,” she said.
“Am I? am I?”
“You, you, Donna Micaela! The government will say: ‘They are building a railway in Diamante. They must be rich.’ And they will increase our taxes. And God knows that we cannot pay the tax with which we are already loaded down, even if we should go and plunder our ancestors.”
Donna Micaela tried to calm her.
“They have sent you out to find out if we still have any money. You are spying for the rich; you are in league with the government. Those bloodsuckers in Rome have paid you.”
Donna Micaela turned away from her.
“I came to talk to you, Master Pamphilio,” she said to the old man.
“But I shall answer you,” replied Donna Concetta; “for this is a disagreeable matter, and such things are my affair. I know what is the duty of the wife of a great man, Donna Micaela.”
Donna Concetta became silent, for the fine lady gave her a look which was so full of jealous longing that it made her sorry for her. Heavens, yes, there had been a difference in their husbands; Don Ferrante and Master Pamphilio!
II
PANEM ET CIRCENSES
In Diamante travellers are often shown two palaces that are falling into ruins without ever having been completed. They have big window-openings without frames, high walls without a roof, and wide doors closed with boards and straw. The two palaces stand opposite each other on the street, both equally unfinished and equally in ruins. There are no scaffoldings about them, and no one can enter them. They seem to be only built for the doves.
Listen to what is told of them.
What is a woman, O signore? Her foot is so little that she goes through the world without leaving a trace behind her. For man she is like his shadow. She has followed him through his whole life without his having noticed her.
Not much can be expected of a woman. She has to sit all day shut in like a prisoner. She cannot even learn to spell a love-letter correctly. She cannot do anything of permanence. When she is dead there is nothing to write on her tombstone. All women are of the same height.
But once a woman came to Diamante who was as much above all other women as the century-old palm is above the grass. She possessed lire by thousands, and could give them away or keep them, as she pleased. She turned aside for no one. She was not afraid of being hated. She was the greatest marvel that had ever been seen.
Of course she was not a Sicilian. She was an Englishwoman. And the first thing she did when she came was to take the whole first floor of the hotel for herself alone. What was that for her? All Diamante would not have been enough for her.
No, all Diamante was not enough for her. But as soon as she had come she began to govern the town like a queen. The syndic had to obey her. Was it not she who made him put stone benches in the square? Was it not at her command that the streets were swept every day?
When she woke in the morning all the young men of Diamante stood waiting outside her door, to be allowed to accompany her on some excursion. They had left shoemaker’s awl and stone-cutter’s chisel to act as guides to her. Each had sold his mother’s silk dress to buy a side-saddle for his donkey, so that she might ride on it to the castle or to Tre Castagni. They had divested themselves of house and home in order to buy a horse and carriage to drive her to Randazzo and Nicolosi.
We were all her slaves. The children began to beg in English, and the old blind women at the hotel door, Donna Pepa and Donna Tura, draped themselves in dazzlingly white veils to please her.
Everything moved round her; industries and trades grew up about her. Those who could do nothing else dug in the earth for coins and pottery to offer her. Photographers moved to the town and began to work for her. Coral merchants and hawkers of tortoise-shell grew out of the earth about her. The priests of Santa Agnese dug up the old Dionysius theatre, that lay hidden behind their church, for her sake; and every one who owned a ruined villa unearthed in the darkness of the cellar remains of mosaic floors and invited her by big posters to come and see.
There had been foreigners before in Diamante, but they had come and gone, and no one had enjoyed such power. There was soon not a man in the town who did not put all his trust in the English signorina. She even succeeded in putting a little life into Ugo Favara. You know Ugo Favara, the advocate, who was to have been a great man, but had reverses and came home quite broken. She employed him to take care of her affairs. She needed him, and she took him.
There has never been a woman in Diamante who has done so much business as she. She spread out like green-weed in the spring. One day no one knows that there is any, and the next it is a great clump. Soon it was impossible to go anywhere in Diamante without coming on her traces. She bought country houses and town houses; she bought almond-groves and lava-streams. The best places on Etna to see the view were hers as well as the thirsting earth on the plain. And in town she began to build two big palaces. She was to live in them and rule her kingdom.
We shall never see a woman like her again. She was not content with all that. She wished also to fight the fight with poverty, O signore, with Sicilian poverty! How much she gave out each day, and how much she gave away on feast-days! Wagons, drawn by two pairs of oxen, went down to Catania and came back piled up with all sorts of clothing. She was determined that they should have whole clothes in the town where she reigned.
But listen to what happened to her; how the struggle with poverty ended and what became of the kingdom and the palace.
She gave a banquet for the poor people of Diamante, and after the banquet an entertainment in the Grecian theatre. It was what an old emperor might have done. But who has ever before heard of a woman doing such a thing?
She invited all the poor people. There were the two blind women from the hotel-door, and old Assunta from the Cathedral steps. There was the man from the post-house, who had his chin bound up in a red cloth on account of cancer of the face; and there was the idiot who opens the iron doors of the Grecian theatre. All the donkey-boys were there, and the handless brothers, who exploded a bomb in their childhood and lost their fingers; and the man with the wooden leg, and the old chair-maker who had grown too old to work, both were there.
It was strange to see them creep out of their holes, all the poor in Diamante. The old women who sit and spin with distaffs in the dark alleys were there, and the organ-grinder, who has an instrument as big as a church-organ, a wandering young mandolinist from Naples with a body full of all possible deviltries. All those with diseased eyes and all the decrepit; those without a roof over their heads; those who used to collect sorrel by the roadside for dinner; the stone-cutter, who earned one lira a day and had six children to provide for,—they had all been invited and were present at the feast.
It was poverty marshalling its troops for the English signorina. Who has such an army as poverty? But for once the English signorina could conquer it.
She had something to fight with too and to conquer with. She filled the whole square with loaded tables. She had wine-skins arranged along the stone bench that lines the wall of the Cathedral. She had turned the deserted convent into a larder and kitchen. She had all the foreign colony in Diamante dressed in white aprons, to serve the courses. She had all of Diamante who are used to eating their fill, wandering to and fro as spectators.
Ah, spectators, what did she not have for spectators? She had great Etna and the dazzling sun. She had the red peaks of the inland mountains and the old temple of Vulcan, that was now consecrated to San Pasquale. And none of them had ever seen a satisfied Diamante. None of them had ever before happened to think how much more beautiful they themselves would be if the people could look at them without hunger hissing in their ears and trampling on their heels.
But mark one thing! Although that signorina was so wonderful and so great, she was not beautiful. And in spite of all her power, she was neither charming nor attractive. She did not rule with jests, and she did not reward with smiles. She had a heavy, clumsy body, and a heavy, clumsy disposition.
The day she gave food to the poor she became a different person. A chivalrous people live in our noble island. Among all those poor people there was not one who let her feel that she was exercising charity. They worshipped her, but they worshipped her as a woman. They sat down at the table as with an equal. They behaved to her as guests to their hostess. “To-day I do you the honor to come to you; to-morrow you do me the honor to come to me. So and not otherwise.” She stood on the high steps of the town-hall and looked down at all the tables. And when the old chair-maker, who sat at the head of the table, had got his glass filled, he rose, bowed to her and said: “I drink to your prosperity, signorina.”
So did they all. They laid their hands on their hearts and bowed to her. It would have perhaps been good for her if she had met with such chivalry earlier in life. Why had the men in her native land let her forget that women exist to be worshipped?
Here they all looked as if they were burning with a quiet adoration. Thus are women treated in our noble island. What did they not give in return for the food and the wine that she had offered them? They gave youth and light-heartedness and all the dignity of being worth coveting. They made speeches for her. “Noble-hearted signorina, you who have come to us from over the sea, you who love Sicily,” and so on, and so on. She showed that she could blush. She no longer hid her power to smile. When they had finished speaking, the lips of the English signorina began to tremble. She became twenty years younger. It was what she needed.
The donkey-boy was there, who carries the English ladies up to Tre Castagni, and who always falls in love with them before he parts from them. Now his eyes were suddenly opened to the great benefactress. It is not only a slender, delicate body and a soft cheek that are worthy to be adored, but also strength and force. The donkey-boy suddenly dropped knife and fork, leaned his elbows on the table, and sat and looked at her. And all the other donkey-boys did the same. It spread like a contagion. It grew hot with burning glances about the English signorina.
It was not only the poor people who adored her. The advocate, Ugo Favara, came and whispered to her that she had come as a providence to his poor land and to him. “If only I had met such a woman as you before,” he said.
Fancy an old bird which has sat in a cage for many years and become rough and lost all the gloss of his feathers. And then some one comes and straightens them out and smooths them back. Think of it, signore!
There was that boy from Naples. He took his mandolin and began to sing his very best. You know how he sings; he pouts with his big mouth and says ugly words. He usually is like a grinning mask. But have you seen the angel in his eyes? An angel which seems to weep over his fall and is filled with a holy frenzy. That evening he was only an angel. He raised his head like one inspired by God, and his drooping body became elastic and full of proud vitality. Color came into his livid cheeks. And he sang; he sang so that the notes seemed to fly like fireflies from his lips and fill the air with joy and dance.
When it grew dark they all went over to the Grecian theatre. That was the finishing touch to the entertainment. What did she not have to offer there!
She had the Russian singer and the German variÉtÉ artists. She had the English wrestlers and the American magician. But what was that compared to all the rest: the silvery moonlight and the place and its memories? Those poor people seemed to feel like the Greeks and leaders of fashion when they once more took their places on the stone-benches of their own old theatre and from between the tottering pillars looked out at the most beautiful panorama.
Those poor people did not stint; they shared all the pleasure they received. They did not spare jubilation; there was no stopping their hand-clapping. The performers left the platform with a wealth of praise.
Some one begged the English signorina to appear. All the adoration was meant for her. She ought to stand face to face with it and feel it. And they told her how intoxicating it was, how elevating, how inflaming.
She liked the proposal. She immediately agreed. She had sung in her youth, and the English never seem to be afraid to sing. She would not have done it if she had not been in a good mood, and she wished to sing for those who loved her.
She came as the last number. Fancy what it was to stand on such an old stage! It was where Antigone had been buried alive and Iphigenia had been sacrificed. The English signorina stepped forward there to receive every conceivable honor.
It stormed to meet her as soon as she showed herself. They seemed to wish to stamp the earth to pieces to honor her.
It was a proud moment. She stood there with Etna as a background and the Mediterranean as wings. Before her on the grass-grown benches was sitting conquered poverty, and she felt that she had all Diamante at her feet.
She chose “Bellini,” our own “Bellini.” She too wished to be amiable and so she sang “Bellini,” who was born here under Etna; “Bellini” whom we know by heart, note for note.
Of course, O signore, of course she could not sing. She had mounted the tribune only to receive homage. She had come in order to let the love of the people find an outlet. And now she sang false and feebly. And the people knew every note.
It was that mandolinista from Naples. He was the first to grimace and to take a note as false as that of the English signorina. Then it was the man with the cancer, who laughed till he laughed his neckcloth off. Then it was the donkey-boy, who began to clap his hands.
Then they all began. It was madness, but that they did not understand. It is not in the land of the old Greeks that people can bear barbarians who sing false. Donna Pepa and Donna Tura laughed as they had never done before in their lives. “Not one true note! By the Madonna and San Pasquale, not one true note!”
They had eaten their fill for once in their lives. It was natural that intoxication and madness should take hold of them. And why should they not laugh? She had not given them food in order to torture their ears with files and saws. Why should they not defend themselves by laughing? Why should they not mimic and hiss and scream? Why should they not lean backward and split their sides with laughter? They were not the English signorina’s slaves, I suppose.
It was a terrible blow to her. It was too great a blow for her to understand. Were they hissing her? It must be something happening among them; something that she could not see. She sang the aria to its end. She was convinced that the laughter was for something with which she had nothing to do.
When she had finished a sort of storm of applause roared over her. At last she understood. Torches and the moonlight made the night so bright that she could see the rows of people twisting with laughter. She heard the scoffs and the jests now, when she was not singing. They were for her. Then she fled from the stage. It seemed to her that Etna itself heaved with laughter, and that the sea sparkled with merriment.
But it grew worse and worse. They had had such a good time, those poor people; they had never had such a good time before, and they wished to hear her once again. They called for her; they cried: “Bravo! Bis! Da capo!” They could not lose such a pleasure. She, she was almost unconscious. There was a storm about her. They screamed; they roared to get her in. She saw them lift their arms and threaten her to get her in. All at once it was all turned into an old circus. She had to go in to be devoured by monsters.
It went on; it went on; it became wilder and wilder. The other performers were frightened and begged her to yield. And she herself was frightened. It looked as if they would have killed her if she did not do what they wished.
She dragged herself on the stage and stood face to face with the crowd. There was no pity. She sang because they all wished to be amused. That was the worst. She sang because she was afraid of them and did not dare not to. She was a foreigner and alone, and she had no one to protect her, and she was afraid. And they laughed and laughed.
Screams and cries, crowing and whistling accompanied the whole aria. No one had mercy on her. For the first time in her life she felt the need of mercy.
Well, the next day she resolved to depart. She could not endure Diamante any longer. But when she told the advocate, Favara, he implored her to stay for his sake and made her an offer of marriage.
He had chosen his time well. She said yes, and was married to him. But after that time she built no more on her palaces; she made no struggle against poverty; she cared nothing to be queen in Diamante. Would you believe it? She never showed herself on the street; she lived indoors like a Sicilian.
Her little house stood hidden away behind a big building, and of herself no one knew anything. They only knew that she was quite changed. No one knew whether she was happy or unhappy; whether she shut herself in because she hated the people, or because she wished to be as a Sicilian wife ought to be.
Does it not always end so with a woman? When they build their palaces they are never finished. Women can do nothing that has permanence.
III
THE OUTCAST
When Donna Micaela heard how the poor people had hooted Miss Tottenham out, she hurried to the hotel to express her condolence. She wished to beg her not to judge those poor creatures by what they had done when they had been put out of their heads with pleasure and wine. She would beg her not to take her hand from Diamante. She herself did not care very much for Miss Tottenham, but for the sake of the poor—She would say anything to pacify her.
When she came to the hotel Etna, she saw the whole street filled with baggage-wagons. So there was no hope. The great benefactress was going away.
Outside the hotel there was much sorrow and despair. The two old blind women, Donna Pepa and Donna Tura, who had always sat in the hotel court-yard, were now shut out, and they were kneeling before the door. The young donkey-driver, who loved all young English ladies, stood with his face pressed against the wall and wept.
Inside the hotel the landlord walked up and down the long corridor, raging at Providence for sending him this misfortune. “Signor Dio,” he mumbled, “I am beggared. If you let this happen, I will take my wife by the hand and my children in my arms and throw myself with them down into Etna.”
The landlady was very pale and humble. She scarcely dared to lift her eyes from the ground. She would have liked to creep about on her knees to prevail upon the rich signorina to remain.
“Do you dare to speak to her, Donna Micaela?” she said. “May God help you to speak to her! Alas! tell her that the Neapolitan boy, who was the cause of the whole misfortune, has been turned out of the town. Tell her that they all wish to make amends. Speak to her, signora!”
The landlady took Donna Micaela to the Englishwoman’s drawing-room and went in with her card. She came back immediately and asked her to wait a few minutes. Signorina Tottenham was having a business talk with Signor Favara.
It was the very moment when the advocate Favara asked Miss Tottenham’s hand in marriage; and while Donna Micaela waited she heard him say quite loud: “You must not go away, signorina! What will become of me if you go away? I love you; I cannot let you go. I should not have dared to speak if you had not threatened to go away. But now—”
He lowered his voice again, but Donna Micaela would hear no more and went away. She saw that she was superfluous. If Signor Favara could not succeed in keeping the great benefactress, no one could.
When she went out again through the gateway the landlord was standing there quarrelling with the old Franciscan, Fra Felice. He was so irritated that he not only quarrelled with Fra Felice, he also drove him from his house.
“Fra Felice,” he cried, “you come to make more trouble with our great benefactress. You will only make her more angry. Go away, I tell you! You wolf, you man-eater, go away!”
Fra Felice was quite as enraged as the landlord, and tried to force his way past him. But then the latter took him by the arm, and without further notice marched him down the steps.
Fra Felice was a man who had received a great gift from his Creator. In Sicily, where everybody plays in the lottery, there are people who have the power to foretell what numbers will win at the next drawing. He who has such second sight is called “polacco,” and is most often found in some old begging monk. Fra Felice was such a monk. He was the greatest polacco in the neighborhood of Etna.
As every one wished him to tell them a winning tern or quartern, he was always treated with great consideration. He was not used to be taken by the arm and be thrown into the street, Fra Felice.
He was nearly eighty years old and quite dried-up and infirm. As he staggered away between the wagons, he stumbled, trod on his cloak, and almost fell. But none of the porters and drivers that stood by the door talking and lamenting had time that day to think of Fra Felice.
The old man tottered along in his heavy homespun cloak. He was so thin and dry that there seemed to be more stiffness in the cloak than in the monk. It seemed to be the old cloak that held him up.
Donna Micaela caught up with him and gently drew the old man’s arm through her own. She could not bear to see how he struck against the lamp-posts and fell over steps. But Fra Felice never noticed that she was looking after him. He walked and mumbled and cursed, and did not know but that he was as much alone as if he sat in his cell.
Donna Micaela wondered why Fra Felice was so angry with Miss Tottenham. Had she been out to his monastery and taken down frescos from the walls, or what had she done?
Fra Felice had lived for sixty years in the big Franciscan monastery outside the Porta Etnea, wall to wall with the old church San Pasquale.
Fra Felice had been monk there for thirty years, when the monastery was given up and sold to a layman. The other monks moved away, but Fra Felice remained because he could not understand what selling the house of San Francisco could mean.
If laymen were to come there, it seemed to Fra Felice almost more essential that at least one monk should remain. Who else would attend to the bell-ringing, or prepare medicines for the peasant women, or give bread to the poor of the monastery? And Fra Felice chose a cell in a retired corner of the monastery, and continued to go in and out as he had always done.
The merchant who owned the monastery never visited it. He did not care about the old building; he only wanted the vineyards belonging to it. So Fra Felice still reigned in the old monastery, and fastened up the fallen cornices and whitewashed the walls. As many poor people as had received food at the monastery in former days, still received it. For his gift of prophecy Fra Felice got such large alms as he wandered through the towns of Etna that he could have been a rich man; but every bit of it went to the monastery.
Fra Felice had suffered an even greater grief than for the monastery on account of the monastery church. It had been desecrated during war, with bloody fights and other atrocities, so that mass could never be held there. But that he could not understand either. The church, where he had made his vows, was always holy to Fra Felice.
It was his greatest sorrow that his church had fallen entirely into ruin. He had looked on when Englishmen had come and bought pulpit and lectern and choir chairs. He had not been able to prevent collectors from Palermo coming and taking the chandeliers and pictures and brass hooks. However much he had wished it, he had not been able to do anything to save his church. But he hated those church-pillagers; and when Donna Micaela saw him so angry, she thought that Miss Tottenham had wished to take some of his treasures from him.
But the fact was that now, when Fra Felice’s church was emptied, and no one came any more to plunder there, he had begun to think of doing something to embellish it once more, and he had had his eye on the collection of images of the saints in the possession of the rich English lady. At her entertainment, when she had been kind and gentle towards every one, he had dared to ask her for her beautiful Madonna, who had a dress of velvet and eyes like the sky. And his request had been granted.
That morning Fra Felice had swept and dusted the church, and put flowers on the altar, before he went to fetch the image. But when he came to the hotel, the Englishwoman had changed her mind; she had not been at all willing to give him the valuable Madonna. In its stead she had given him a little ragged, dirty image of the Christchild, which she thought she could spare without regret.
Ah, what joy and expectation old Fra Felice had felt, and then had been so disappointed! He could not be satisfied; he came back time after time to beg for the other image. It was such a valuable image that he could not have bought it with all that he begged in a whole year. At last the great benefactress had dismissed him; and it was then that Donna Micaela had found him.
As they went along the street, she began to talk to the old man and won his story from him. He had the image with him, and right in the street he stopped, showed it to her, and asked her if she had ever seen a more miserable object.
Donna Micaela looked at the image for a moment with stupefaction. Then she smiled and said: “Lend me the image for a few days, Fra Felice!”
“You can take it and keep it,” said the old man. “May it never come before my eyes again!”
Donna Micaela took the image home and worked on it for two days. When she then sent it to Fra Felice it shone with newly polished shoes; it had a fresh, clean dress; it was painted, and in its crown shone bright stones of many colors.
He was so beautiful, the outcast, that Fra Felice placed him on the empty altar in his church.
It was very early one morning. The sun had not risen, and the broad sea was scarcely visible. It was really very early. The cats were still roaming about the roofs; no smoke rose from the chimneys; and the mists lay and rolled about in the low valley round the steep Monte Chiaro.
Old Fra Felice came running towards the town. He ran so fast that he thought he felt the mountain tremble beneath him. He ran so fast that the blades of grass by the roadside had no time to sprinkle his cloak with dew; so fast that the scorpions had no time to lift their tails and sting him.
As the old man ran, his cloak flapped unfastened about him, and his rope swung unknotted behind. His wide sleeves waved like wings, and his heavy hood pounded up and down on his back, as if it wished to urge him on.
The man in the custom-office, who was still asleep, woke and rubbed his eyes as Fra Felice rushed by, but he had no time to recognize him. The pavements were slippery with dampness; beggars lay and slept by the high stone steps with their legs heedlessly stretched out into the street; exhausted domino-players were going home from the CafÉ reeling with sleep. But Fra Felice hastened onward regardless of all obstructions.
Houses and gateways, squares and arched-over alleys disappeared behind old Fra Felice. He ran half-way up the Corso before he stopped.
He stopped in front of a big house with many heavy balconies. He seized the door-knocker and pounded until a servant awoke. He would not be quiet till the servant called up a maid, and the maid waked the signora.
“Donna Micaela, Fra Felice is downstairs. He insists on speaking to you.”
When Donna Micaela at last came down to Fra Felice, he was still panting and breathless, but there was a fire in his eyes, and little pale roses in his cheeks.
It was the image, the image. When Fra Felice had rung the four-o’clock matins that morning he had gone into the church to look at him.
Then he had discovered that big stones had loosened from the dome just over the image. They had fallen on the altar and broken it to pieces, but the image had stood untouched. And none of the plaster and dust that had tumbled down had fallen on the image; it was quite uninjured.
Fra Felice took Donna Micaela’s hand and told her that she must go with him to the church and see the miracle. She should see it before any one, because she had taken care of the image.
And Donna Micaela went with him through the gray, chilly morning to his monastery, while her heart throbbed with eagerness and expectation.
When she arrived and saw that Fra Felice had told the truth, she said to him that she had recognized the image as soon as she had caught sight of it, and that she knew that it could work miracles. “He is the greatest and gentlest of miracle-workers,” she said.
Fra Felice went up to the image and looked into its eyes. For there is a great difference in images, and the wisdom of an old monk is needed to understand which has power and which has not. Now Fra Felice saw that this image’s eyes were deep and glowing, as if they had life; and that on its lips hovered a mysterious smile.
Then old Fra Felice fell on his knees and stretched his clasped hands towards the image, and his old shrivelled face was lighted by a great joy.
It seemed to Fra Felice all at once as if the walls of his church were covered with pictures and purple hangings; candles shone on the altar; song sounded from the gallery; and the whole floor was covered with kneeling, praying people.
All imaginary glory would fall to the lot of his poor old church, now that it possessed one of the great miracle-working images.
IV
THE OLD MARTYRDOM
From the summer-palace in Diamante many letters were sent during that time to Gaetano Alagona, who was in prison in Como. But the letter-carrier never had a letter in his bag from Gaetano addressed to the summer-palace.
For Gaetano had gone into his life-long imprisonment as if it had been a grave. The only thing he asked or desired was that it should give him the grave’s forgetfulness and peace.
He felt as if he were dead; and he said to himself that he did not wish to hear the laments and wails of the survivors. Nor did he wish to be deceived with hopes, or be tempted by tender words to long for family and friends. Nor did he wish to hear anything of what was happening in the world, when he had no power to take part and to lead.
He found work in the prison, and carved beautiful works of art, as he had always done. But he never would receive a letter, nor a visitor. He thought that in that way he could cease to feel the bitterness of his misfortunes. He believed that he would be able to teach himself to live a whole life within four narrow walls.
And for that reason Donna Micaela never had a word of answer from him.
Finally she wrote to the director of the prison and asked if Gaetano was still alive. He answered that the prisoner she asked about never read a letter. He had asked to be spared all communications from the outside world.
So she wrote no more. Instead she continued to work for her railway. She hardly dared to speak of it in Diamante, but nevertheless she thought of nothing else. She herself sewed and embroidered, and she had all her servants make little cheap things that she could sell at her bazaar. In the shop she looked up old wares for the tombola. She had Piero, the gate-keeper, prepare colored lanterns; she persuaded her father to paint signs and placards; and she had her maid, Lucia, who was from Capri, arrange coral necklaces and shell boxes.
She was not at all sure that even one person would come to her entertainment. Every one was against her; no one would help her. They did not even like her to show herself on the streets or to talk business. It was not fitting for a well-born lady.
Old Fra Felice tried to assist her, for he loved her because she had helped him with the image.
One day, when Donna Micaela was lamenting that she could not persuade any one that the people ought to build the railway, he lifted his cap from his head and pointed to his bald temples.
“Look at me, Donna Micaela,” he said. “So bald will that railway make your head if you go on as you have begun.”
“What do you mean, Fra Felice?”
“Donna Micaela,” said the old man, “would it not be folly to start on a dangerous undertaking without having a friend and helper?”
“I have tried enough to find friends, Fra Felice.”
“Yes, men!” said the old man. “But how do men help? If any one is going fishing, Donna Micaela, he knows that he must call on San Pietro; if any one wishes to buy a horse, he can ask help of San Antonio Abbate. But if I want to pray for your railway, I do not know to whom I shall turn.”
Fra Felice meant that the trouble was that she had chosen no patron saint for her railway. He wished her to choose the crowned child that stood out in his old church as its first friend and promoter. He told her that if she only did that she would certainly be helped.
She was so touched that any one was willing to stand by her that she instantly promised to pray for her railway to the child at San Pasquale.
Fra Felice got a big collection-box and painted on it in bright, distinct letters: “Gifts for the Etna Railway,” and he hung it in his church beside the altar.
It was not more than a day after that that Don Antonio Greco’s wife, Donna Emilia, came out to the old, deserted church to consult San Pasquale, who is the wisest of all the saints.
During the autumn Don Antonio’s theatre had begun to fare ill, as was to be expected when no one had any money.
Don Antonio thought to run the theatre with less expense than before. He had cut off a couple of lamps and did not have such big and gorgeously painted play-bills.
But that had been great folly. It is not at the moment when people are losing their desire to go to the theatre that it will answer to shorten the princesses’ silk trains and economize on the gilding of the king’s crowns.
Perhaps it is not so dangerous at another theatre, but at a marionette theatre it is a risk to make any changes, because it is chiefly half-grown boys who go to the marionette theatre. Big people can understand that sometimes it is necessary to economize, but children always wish to have things in the same way.
Fewer and fewer spectators came to Don Antonio, and he went on economizing and saving. Then it occurred to him that he could dispense with the two blind violin-players, Father Elia and Brother Tommaso, who also used to play during the interludes and in the battle-scenes.
Those blind men, who earned so much by singing in houses of mourning, and who took in vast sums on feast-days, were expensive. Don Antonio dismissed them and got a hand-organ.
That caused his ruin. All the apprentices and shop-boys in Diamante ceased to go to the theatre. They would not sit and listen to a hand-organ. They promised one another not to go to the theatre till Don Antonio had taken back the fiddlers, and they kept their promise. Don Antonio’s dolls had to perform to empty walls.
The young boys who otherwise would rather go without their supper than the theatre, stayed away night after night. They were convinced that they could force Don Antonio to arrange everything as before.
But Don Antonio comes of a family of artists. His father and his brother have marionette theatres; his brothers-in-law, all his relations are of the profession. And Don Antonio understands his art. He can change his voice indefinitely; he can manoeuvre at the same time a whole army of dolls; and he knows by heart the whole cycle of plays founded on the chronicles of Charlemagne.
And now Don Antonio’s artistic feelings were hurt. He would not be forced to take back the blind men. He wished to have the people come to his theatre for his sake, and not for that of the musicians.
He changed his tactics and began to play big dramas with elaborate mountings. But it was futile.
There is a play called “The Death of the Paladin,” which treats of Roland’s fight at Ronceval. It requires so much machinery that a puppet theatre has to be kept shut for two days for it to be set up. It is so dear to the public that it is generally played for double price and to full houses for a whole month. Don Antonio now had that play mounted, but he did not need to play it; he had no spectators.
After that his spirit was broken. He tried to get Father Elia and Brother Tommaso back, but they now knew what their value was to him.
They demanded such a price that it would have been ruin to pay them. It was impossible to come to any agreement.
In the small rooms back of the marionette theatre they lived as in a besieged fortress. They had nothing else to do but to starve.
Donna Emilia and Don Antonio were both gay young people, but now they never laughed. They were in great want, but Don Antonio was a proud man, and he could not bear to think that his art no longer had the power to draw.
So, as I said, Donna Emilia went down to the church of San Pasquale to ask the saint for good advice. It had been her intention to repeat nine prayers to the great stone-image standing outside of the church, and then to go; but before she had begun to pray she had noticed that the church-door stood open. “Why is San Pasquale’s church-door open?” said Donna Emilia. “That has never happened in my time,”—and she went into the church.
The only thing to be seen there was Fra Felice’s beloved image and the big collection-box. The image looked so beautiful in his crown and his rings that Donna Emilia was tempted forward to him, but when she came near enough to look into his eyes, he seemed to her so tender and so cheering that she knelt down before him and prayed. She promised that if he would help her and Don Antonio in their need, she would put the receipts of a whole evening in the big box that hung beside him.
After her prayers were over, Donna Emilia concealed herself behind the church-door, and tried to catch what the passers-by were saying. For if the image was willing to help her, he would let her hear a word which would tell her what to do.
She had not stood there two minutes before old Assunta of the Cathedral steps passed by with Donna Pepa and Donna Tura. And she heard Assunta say in her solemn voice: “That was the year when I heard ‘The Old Martyrdom’ for the first time.” Donna Emilia heard quite distinctly. Assunta really said “The Old Martyrdom.”
Donna Emilia thought that she would never reach her home. It was as if her legs could not carry her fast enough, and the distance increased as she ran. When she finally saw the corner of the theatre with the red lanterns under the roof and the big illustrated play-bills, she felt as if she had gone many miles.
When she came in to Don Antonio, he sat with his big head leaning on his hand and stared at the table. It was terrible to see Don Antonio. In those last weeks he had begun to lose his hair; on the very top of his head it was so thin that the skin shone through. Was it strange, when he was in such trouble? While she had been away he had taken all his puppets out and inspected them. He did that now every day. He used to sit and look at the puppet that played Armida. Was she no longer beautiful and beguiling? he would ask. And he tried to polish up Roland’s sword and Charlemagne’s crown. Donna Emilia saw that he had gilded the emperor’s crown again; it was for at least the fifth time. But then he had stopped in the midst of his work and had sat down to brood. He had noticed it himself. It was not gilding that was lacking; it was an idea.
As Donna Emilia came into the room, she stretched out her hands to her husband.
“Look at me, Don Antonio Greco,” she said. “I bear in my hands golden bowls full of ripe figs!”
And she told how she had prayed, and what she had vowed, and what she had been advised.
When she said that to Don Antonio, he sprang up. His arms fell stiffly beside his body, and his hair raised itself from his head. He was seized with an unspeakable terror. “‘The Old Martyrdom’!” he screamed, “‘The Old Martyrdom’!”
For “The Old Martyrdom” is a miracle-play, which in its time was given in all Sicily. It drove out all other oratorios and mysteries, and was played every year in every town for two centuries. It was the greatest day of the year, when “The Old Martyrdom” was performed. But now it is never played; now it only lives in the people’s memory as a legend.
In the old days it was also played in the marionette theatres. But now it has come to be considered old-fashioned and out-of-date. It has probably not been played for thirty years.
Don Antonio began to roar and scream at Donna Emilia, because she tortured him with such folly. He struggled with her as with a demon, who had come to seize him. It was amazing; it was heartrending, he said. How could she get hold of such a word? But Donna Emilia stood quiet and let him rave. She only said that what she had heard was God’s will.
Soon Don Antonio began to be uncertain. The great idea gradually took possession of him. Nothing had ever been so loved and played in Sicily, and did not the same people still live on the noble isle? Did they not love the same earth, the same mountains, the same skies as their forefathers had loved? Why should they not also love “The Old Martyrdom”?
He resisted as long as he could. He said to Donna Emilia that it would cost too much. Where could he get apostles with long hair and beards? He had no table for the Last Supper; he had none of the machinery required for the entry, and carrying of the cross.
But Donna Emilia saw that he was going to give in, and before night he actually went to Fra Felice and renewed her vow to put the receipts of one evening in the box of the little image, if it proved to be good advice.
Fra Felice told Donna Micaela about the vow, and she was glad, and at the same time anxious how it would turn out.
Through all the town it was known that Don Antonio was mounting “The Old Martyrdom,” and every one laughed at him. Don Antonio had lost his mind.
The people would have liked well enough to see “The Old Martyrdom,” if they could have seen it as it was played in former days. They would have liked to see it given as in Aci, where the noblemen of the town played the kings and the servants, and the artisans took the parts of the Jews and the apostles; and where so many scenes from the Old Testament were added that the spectacle lasted the whole day.
They would have also liked to see those wonderful days in Castelbuoco, when the whole town was transformed into Jerusalem. There the mystery was given so that Jesus came riding to the town, and was met with palms at the town-gate. There the church represented the temple at Jerusalem and the town-hall Pilate’s palace. There Peter warmed himself at a fire in the priest’s court-yard; the crucifixion took place on a mountain above the town; and Mary looked for the body of her son in the grottoes of the syndic’s garden.
When the people had such things in their memory how could they be content to see the great mystery in Don Antonio’s theatre?
But in spite of everything, Don Antonio worked with the greatest eagerness to prepare the actors and to arrange the elaborate machinery.
And behold, in a few days came Master Battista, who painted placards, and presented him with a play-bill. He had been glad to hear that Don Antonio was going to play “The Old Martyrdom;” he had seen it in his youth, and had great pleasure in it.
So there now stood in large letters on the corner of the theatre: “‘The Old Martyrdom’ or ‘The Resurrected Adam,’ tragedy in three acts by Cavaliere Filippo Orioles.”
Don Antonio wondered and wondered what the people’s mood would be. The donkey-boys and apprentices who passed by his theatre read the notice with scoffs and derision. It looked very black for Don Antonio, but in spite of it he went on faithfully with his work.
When the appointed evening came, and the “Martyrdom” was to be played, no one was more anxious than Donna Micaela. “Is the little image going to help me?” she asked herself incessantly.
She sent out her maid, Lucia, to look about. Were there any groups of boys in front of the theatre? Did it look as if there were going to be a crowd? Lucia might go to Donna Emilia, sitting in the ticket-office, and ask her if it looked hopeful.
But when Lucia came back she had not the slightest hope to offer. There was no crowd outside the theatre. The boys had resolved to crush Don Antonio.
Towards eight o’clock Donna Micaela could no longer endure sitting at home and waiting. She persuaded her father to go with her to the theatre. She knew well that a signora had never set her foot in Don Antonio’s theatre, but she needed to see how it was going to be. It would be such a dizzily great success for her railway if Don Antonio succeeded.
When Donna Micaela came to the theatre it was a few minutes before eight, and Donna Emilia had not sold a ticket.
But she was not depressed; “Go in, Donna Micaela!” she said; “we shall play at any rate, it is so beautiful. Don Antonio will play it for you and your father and me. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever performed.”
Donna Micaela came into the little hall. It was hung with black, as the big theatres always were in the old days when “The Old Martyrdom” was given. There were dark, silver-fringed curtains on the stage, and the little benches were covered with black.
Immediately after Donna Micaela came in, Don Antonio’s bushy eyebrows appeared in a little hole in the curtain. “Donna Micaela,” he cried, as Donna Emilia had done, “we shall play at any rate. It is so beautiful, it needs no spectators.”
Just then came Donna Emilia herself, and opened the door, and courtesying, held it back. It was the priest, Don Matteo, who entered.
“What do you say to me, Donna Micaela?” he said, laughing. “But you understand; it is ‘The Old Martyrdom.’ I saw it in my youth at the big opera in Palermo; and I believe that it was that old play that made me become a priest.”
The next time the door opened it was Father Elia and Brother Tommaso, who came with their violins under their arms and felt their way to their usual places, as quietly as if they had never had any disagreement with Don Antonio.
The door opened again. It was an old woman from the alley above the house of the little Moor. She was dressed in black, and made the sign of the cross as she came in.
After her came four, five other old women; and Donna Micaela looked at them almost resentfully, as they gradually filled the theatre. She knew that Don Antonio would not be satisfied till he had his own public back again,—till he had his self-willed, beloved boys to play for.
Suddenly she heard a hurricane or thunder. The doors flew open,—all at the same time! It was the boys. They threw themselves down in their usual places, as if they had come back to their home.
They looked at one another, a little ashamed. But it had been impossible for them to see one old woman after another go into their theatre to see what was being played for them. It had been quite impossible to see the whole street full of old distaff-spinners in slow procession toward the theatre, and so they had rushed in.
But hardly had the gay young people reached their places before they noticed that they had come under a severe master. Ah, “The Old Martyrdom,” “The Old Martyrdom!”
It was not given as in Aci and in Castelbuoco; it was not played as at the opera in Palermo; it was only played with miserable marionettes with immovable faces and stiff bodies; but the old play had not lost its power.
Donna Micaela noticed it already in the second act during the Last Supper. The boys began to hate Judas. They shouted threats and insults at him.
As the story of the Passion went on, they laid aside their hats and clasped their hands. They sat quite still, with their beautiful brown eyes turned towards the stage. Now and then a few tears dropped. Now and then a fist was clenched in indignation.
Don Antonio spoke with tears in his voice; Donna Emilia was on her knees at the entrance. Don Matteo looked with a gentle smile at the little puppets and remembered the wonderful spectacle in Palermo that had made him a priest.
But when Jesus was cast into prison and tortured, the young people were ashamed of themselves. They too had hated and persecuted. They were like those pharisees, like those Romans. It was a shame to think of it. Could Don Antonio forgive them?
V
THE LADY WITH THE IRON RING
Donna Micaela often thought of a poor little dressmaker whom she had seen in her youth in Catania. She dwelt in the house next to the Palazzo Palmeri, sitting always in the gateway with her work, so that Donna Micaela had seen her a thousand times. She always sat and sang, and she had certainly only known a single canzone. Always, always she sang the same song.
“I have cut a curl from my black hair,” she had sung. “I have unfastened my black, shining braids, and cut a curl from my hair. I have done it to gladden my friend, who is in trouble. Alas, my beloved is sitting in prison; my beloved will never again twine my hair about his fingers. I have sent him a lock of my hair to remind him of the silken chains that never more will bind him.”
Donna Micaela remembered the song well. It seemed as if it had sounded through all her childhood to warn her of the suffering that awaited her.
Donna Micaela often sat at that time on the stone steps of the church of San Pasquale. She saw wonderful events take place far off on that Etna so rich in legends.
Over the black lava glided a railway train on newly laid shining rails. It was a festival train; flags waved along the road; there were wreaths on the carriages; the seats were covered with purple cushions. At the stations the people stood and shouted: “Long live the king! long live the queen! long live the new railway!”
She heard it so well; she herself was on the train. Ah, how honored, how honored she was! She was summoned before the king and queen; and they thanked her for the new railway. “Ask a favor of us, princess!” said the king, giving her the title that the ladies of the race of Alagona had formerly borne.
“Sire,” she answered, as people answer in stories, “give freedom to the last Alagona!”
And it was granted to her. The king could not say no to a prayer from her who had built that fine railway, which was to give riches to all Etna.
When Donna Micaela lifted her arm so that her dress-sleeve slid up, one saw that she wore as a bracelet a ring of rusty iron. She had found it in the street, forced it over her hand, and now she always wore it. Whenever she happened to see or touch it, she grew pale, and her eyes no longer saw anything of the world about her. She saw a prison like that of Foscari in the doge’s palace in Venice. It was a dark, narrow, cellar-like hole; light filtered in through a grated aperture; and from the wall hung a great bunch of chains, which wound like serpents round the prisoner’s legs and arms and neck.
May the saint work a miracle! May the people work! May she herself soon have such praise that she can beg freedom for her prisoner! He will die if she does not hurry. May the iron ring eat incessantly into her arm, so that she shall not forget him for a second.
VI
FRA FELICE’S LEGACY
When Donna Emilia opened the ticket-office to sell tickets for the second performance of “The Old Martyrdom,” the people stood in line to get places; the second evening the theatre was so overcrowded that people fainted in the crush, and the third evening people came from both AdernÓ and PaternÓ to see the beloved tragedy. Don Antonio foresaw that he would be able to play it a whole month for double price, and with two performances every evening.
How happy they were, he and Donna Emilia, and with what joy and gratitude they laid twenty-five lire in the collection-box of the little image!
In Diamante the incident caused great surprise, and many came to Donna Elisa to find out if she believed that the saint wished them to support Donna Micaela.
“Have you heard, Donna Elisa,” they said, “that Don Antonio Greco has been helped by the Christchild in San Pasquale, because he promised to give the receipts of one evening to Donna Micaela’s railway?”
But when they asked Donna Elisa about it, she shut her mouth and looked as if she could not think of anything but her embroidery.
Fra Felice himself came in and told her of the two miracles the image had already worked.
“Signorina Tottenham was very stupid to let the image go, if it is such a miracle-worker,” said Donna Elisa.
So they all thought. Signorina Tottenham had owned the image many years, and she had not noticed anything. It probably could not work miracles; it was only a coincidence.
It was unfortunate that Donna Elisa would not believe. She was the only one of the old Alagonas left in Diamante, and the people followed her, more than they themselves knew. If Donna Elisa had believed, the whole town would have helped Donna Micaela.
But Donna Elisa could not believe that God and the saints wished to aid her sister-in-law.
She had watched her since the festival of San Sebastiano. Whenever any one spoke of Gaetano, she turned pale, and looked very troubled. Her features became like those of a sinful man, when he is racked with the pangs of conscience.
Donna Elisa sat and thought of it one morning, and it was so engrossing that she let her needle rest. “Donna Micaela is no Etna woman,” she said to herself. “She is on the side of the government; she is glad that Gaetano is in prison.”
Out in the street at that same moment people came carrying a great stretcher. On it lay heaped up a mass of church ornaments; chandeliers and shrines and reliquaries. Donna Elisa looked up for a moment, then returned to her thoughts.
“She would not let me adorn the house of the Alagonas on the festival of San Sebastiano,” she thought. “She did not wish the saint to help Gaetano.”
Two men came by dragging a rattling dray on which lay a mountain of red hangings, richly embroidered stoles, and altar pictures in broad, gilded frames.
Donna Elisa struck out with her hand as if to push away all doubts. It could not be an actual miracle which had happened. The saint must know that Diamante could not afford to build a railway.
People now came past driving a yellow cart, packed full of music-stands, prayer-books, praying-desks and confessionals.
Donna Elisa woke up. She looked out between the rosaries that hung in garlands over the window panes. That was the third load of church furnishings that had passed. Was Diamante being plundered? Had the Saracens come to the town?
She went to the door to see better. Again came a stretcher, and on it lay mourning-wreaths of tin, tablets with long inscriptions, and coats of arms, such as are hung up in churches in memory of the dead.
Donna Elisa asked the bearers, and learned what was happening. They were clearing out the church of Santa Lucia in GesÙ. The syndic and the town council had ordered it turned into a theatre.
After the uprising there had been a new syndic in Diamante. He was a young man from Rome, who did not know the town, but nevertheless wished to do something for it. He had proposed to the town-council that Diamante should have a theatre like Taormina and other towns. They could quite easily fit up one of the churches as a play-house. They certainly had more than enough, with five town churches and seven monastery churches; they could easily spare one of them.
There was for instance the Jesuits’ church, Santa Lucia in GesÙ. The monastery surrounding it was already changed to a barracks, and the church was practically deserted. It would make an excellent theatre.
That was what the new syndic had proposed, and the town-council had agreed to it.
When Donna Elisa heard what was going on she threw on her mantilla and veil, and hurried to the Lucia church, with the same haste with which one hurries to the house where one knows that some one is dying.
“What will become of the blind?” thought Donna Elisa. “How can they live without Santa Lucia in GesÙ?”
When Donna Elisa reached the silent little square, round which the Jesuits’ long, ugly monastery is built, she saw on the broad stone steps that extend the whole length of the church front, a row of ragged children and rough-haired dogs. All of them were leaders of the blind, and they cried and whined as loud as they could.
“What is the matter with you all?” asked Donna Elisa. “They want to take our church away from us,” wailed the children. And thereupon all the dogs howled more piteously than ever, for the dogs of the blind are almost human.
At the church-door Donna Elisa met Master Pamphilio’s wife, Donna Concetta. “Ah, Donna Elisa,” she said, “never in all your life have you seen anything so terrible. You had better not go in.”
But Donna Elisa went on.
In the church at first she saw nothing but a white cloud of dust. But hammer-strokes thundered through the cloud, for some workmen were busy breaking away a big stone knight, lying in a window niche.
“Lord God!” said Donna Elisa, and clasped her hands together; “they are tearing down Sor Arrigo!” And she thought how tranquilly he had lain in his niche. Every time she had seen him she had wished that she might be as remote from disturbance and change as old Sor Arrigo.
In the church of Lucia there was still another big monument. It represented an old Jesuit, lying on a black marble sarcophagus with a scourge in his hand and his cap drawn far down over his forehead. He was called Father Succi, and the people used to frighten their children with him in Diamante.
“Would they also dare to touch Father Succi?” thought Donna Elisa. She felt her way through the plaster dust to the choir, where the sarcophagus stood, in order to see if they had dared to move the old Jesuit.
Father Succi still lay on his stone bed. He lay there dark and hard, as he had been in life; and one could almost believe that he was still alive. Had there been doctors and tables with medicine-bottles and burning candles beside the bed, one would have believed that Father Succi lay sick in the choir of his church, waiting for his last hour.
The blind sat round about him, like members of the family who gather round a dying man, and rocked their bodies in silent grief. There were both the women from the hotel court-yard, Donna Pepa and Donna Tura; there was old Mother Saraedda, who ate the bread of charity at the house of the Syndic Voltaro; there were blind beggars, blind singers, blind of all ages and conditions. All the blind of Diamante were there, and in Diamante there is an incredible number who no longer see the light of the sun.
They all sat silent most of the time, but every now and then one of them burst into a wail. Sometimes one of them felt his way forward to the monk, Father Succi, and threw himself weeping aloud across him.
It made it all the more like a death-bed that the priest and Father Rossi from the Franciscan monastery were there and were trying to comfort the despairing people.
Donna Elisa was much moved. Ah, so often she had seen those people happy in her garden, and now to meet them in such misery! They had won pleasant tears from her when they had sung mourning-songs over her husband, Signor Antonelli, and over her brother, Don Ferrante. She could not bear to see them in such need.
Old Mother Saraedda began to speak to Donna Elisa.
“I knew nothing when I came, Donna Elisa,” said the old woman. “I left my dog outside on the steps and went in through the church door. Then I stretched out my arm to push aside the curtain over the door, but the curtain was gone. I put my foot down as if there were a step to mount before the threshold, but there was no step. I stretched out my hand to take the holy water; I courtesied as I went by the high altar; and I listened for the little bell that always rings when Father Rossi comes to the mass. Donna Elisa, there was no holy water, no altar, no bell; there was nothing!”
“Poor thing, poor thing,” said Donna Elisa.
“Then I hear how they are hammering and pounding up in a window. ‘What are you doing with Sor Arrigo?’ I cry, for I hear instantly that it is in Sor Arrigo’s window.
“‘We are going to carry him away,’ they answer me.
“Just then the priest, Don Matteo, comes to me, takes me by the hand, and explains everything. And I am almost angry with the priest when he says that it is for a theatre. They want our church for a theatre!
“‘Where is Father Succi?’ I say instantly. ‘Is Father Succi still here?’ And he leads me to Father Succi. He has to lead me, for I cannot find my way. Since they have taken away all the chairs and praying-desks and carpets and platforms and folding steps, I cannot find my way. Before, I found my way about here as well as you.”
“The priest will find you another church,” said Donna Elisa. “Donna Elisa,” said the old woman, “what are you saying? You might as well say that the priest can give us sight. Can Don Matteo give us a church where we see, as we saw in this? None of us needed a guide here. There, Donna Elisa, stood an altar; the flowers on it were red as Etna at sunset, and we saw it. We counted sixteen wax-lights over the high altar on Sundays, and thirty on festival days. We could see when Father Rossi held the mass here. What shall we do in another church, Donna Elisa? There we shall not be able to see anything. They have extinguished the light of our eyes anew.”
Donna Elisa’s heart grew as warm as if molten lava had run over it. It was certainly a great wrong they were doing to those blind unfortunates.
So Donna Elisa went over to Don Matteo.
“Your Reverence,” she said, “have you spoken to the syndic?”
“Alas, alas, Donna Elisa,” said Don Matteo, “it is better for you to try to talk to him than for me.”
“Your Reverence, the syndic is a stranger; perhaps he has not heard of the blind.”
“Signor Voltaro has been to him; Father Rossi has been to him; and I too, I too. He answers nothing but that he cannot change what is decided in the town Junta. We all know, Donna Elisa, that the town Junta cannot take back anything. If it has decided that your cat shall hold mass in the Cathedral, it cannot change it.”
Suddenly there was a movement in the church. A large blind man came in. “Father Elia!” the people whispered, “Father Elia!”
Father Elia was the head man of the company of blind singers, who always collected there. He had long white hair and beard, and was beautiful as one of the holy patriarchs.
He, like all the others, went forward to Father Succi. He sat down beside him, and leaned his head against the coffin.
Donna Elisa went up to Father Elia and spoke to him. “Father Elia,” she said, “you ought to go to the syndic.”
The old man recognized Donna Elisa’s voice, and he answered her, in his thick, old-man’s tones:—
“Do you suppose that I have waited to have you say that to me? Don’t you know that my first thought was to go to the syndic?”
He spoke with such a hard and distinct voice that the workmen stopped hammering and listened, thinking some one had begun to preach.
“I told him that we blind singers are a company, and that the Jesuits opened their church for us more than three hundred years ago, and gave us the right to gather here to select new members and try new songs.
“And I said to him that there are thirty of us in the company; and that the holy Lucia is our patroness; and that we never sing in the streets, only in courts and in rooms; and that we sing legends of the saints and mourning-songs, but never a wanton song; and that the Jesuit, Father Succi, opened the church for us, because the blind are Our Lord’s singers.
“I told him that some of us are recitatori, who can sing the old songs, but others are trovatori, who compose new ones. I said to him that we give pleasure to many on the noble isle. I asked him why he wished to deprive us of life. For the homeless cannot live.
“I said to him that we wander from town to town through all Etna, but the church of Lucia is our home, and mass is held here for us every morning. Why should he refuse us the comfort of God’s word?
“I told him that the Jesuits once changed their attitude towards us and wished to drive us away from their church, but they did not succeed. We received a letter from the Viceroy that we might hold our meetings in perpetuity in Santa Lucia in GesÙ. And I showed him the letter.”
“What did he answer?”
“He laughed at me.”
“Can none of the other gentlemen help you?”
“I have been to them, Donna Elisa. All the morning I have been sent from Herod to Pilatus.”
“Father Elia,” said Donna Elisa with lowered voice, “have you forgotten to call on the saints?”
“I have called on both the black Madonna and San Sebastiano and Santa Lucia. I have prayed to as many as I could name.”
“Do you think, Father Elia,” said Donna Elisa, and lowered her voice still more, “that Don Antonio Greco was helped, because he promised money to Donna Micaela’s railway?”
“I have no money to give,” said the old man, disconsolately.
“Still, you ought to think of it, Father Elia,” said Donna Elisa, “since you are in such straits. You ought to try if, by promising the Christ-image that you yourself and all who belong to your company will speak and sing of the railway, and persuade people to give contributions to it, you may keep your church. We do not know if it can help, but one ought to try every possible thing, Father Elia. It costs nothing to promise.”
“I will promise anything for your sake,” said the old man.
He laid his old blind head again against the black coffin, and Donna Elisa understood that he had given the promise in his desire to be left in peace with his sorrow.
“Shall I present your vow to the Christ-image?” she said.
“Do as you will, Donna Elisa,” said the old man.
That same day old Fra Felice had risen at five o’clock in the morning and begun to sweep out his church. He felt quite active and well; but while he was working it seemed as if San Pasquale, sitting with his bag of stones outside the church-door, had something to say to him. He went out, but there was nothing the matter with San Pasquale; quite the contrary. Just then the sun glided up from behind Etna, and down the dark mountain-sides the rays came hurrying, many-colored as harp-strings. When the rays reached Fra Felice’s old church they turned it rosy red; rosy red were also the old barbaric pillars that held up the canopy over the image, and San Pasquale with his bag of stones, and Fra Felice himself. “We look like young boys,” thought the old man; “we have still long years to live.”
But as he was going back into the church, he felt a sharp pressure at his heart, and it came into his mind that San Pasquale had called him out to say farewell. At the same time his legs became so heavy that he could hardly move them. He felt no pain, but a weariness which could mean nothing but death. He was scarcely able to put his broom away behind the door of the sacristy; then he dragged himself up the choir, lay down on the platform in front of the high altar, and wrapped his cloak about him.
The Christ-image seemed to nod to him and say: “Now I need you, Fra Felice.” He lay and nodded back: “I am ready; I shall not fail you.”
It was only to lie and wait; and it was beautiful, Fra Felice thought. He had never before in all his life had time to feel how tired he was. Now at last he might rest. The image would keep up the church and the monastery without him.
He lay and smiled at the thought that old San Pasquale had called him out to say good-morning to him.
Fra Felice lay thus till late in the day, and dozed most of the time. No one was with him, and a feeling came over him that it would not do to creep in this way out of life. It was as if he had cheated somebody of something. That woke him time after time. He ought of course to get the priests, but he had no one to send for them.
While he lay there he thought that he shrank together more and more. Every time he awoke he thought that he had grown smaller. He felt as if he were quite disappearing. Now he could certainly wind his cloak four times about him.
He would have died quite by himself if Donna Elisa had not come to ask help for the blind of the little image. She was in a strange mood when she came, for she wished of course to get help for the blind, but yet she did not wish Donna Micaela’s plans to be promoted.
When she came into the church she saw Fra Felice lying on the platform under the altar, and she went forward and knelt beside him.
Fra Felice turned his eyes towards her and smiled quietly. “I am going to die,” he said, hoarsely; but he corrected himself and said: “I am permitted to die.”
Donna Elisa asked what the matter was, and said that she would fetch help.
“Sit down here,” he said, and made a feeble attempt to wipe away the dust on the platform with his sleeve.
Donna Elisa said that she wished to fetch the priests and sisters of charity.
He seized her skirt and held her back.
“I want to speak to you first, Donna Elisa.”
It was hard for him to talk, and he breathed heavily after each word. Donna Elisa sat down beside him and waited.
He lay for a while and panted; then a flush rose to his cheeks; his eyes began to shine, and he spoke with ease and eagerness.
“Donna Elisa,” said Fra Felice, “I have a legacy to give away. It has troubled me all day. I do not know to whom I shall give it.”
“Fra Felice,” said Donna Elisa, “do not concern yourself with such a thing. There is no one who does not need a good gift.”
But now when Fra Felice’s strength had returned, he wished, before he made up his mind about the legacy, to tell Donna Elisa how good God had been to him.
“Has not God been great in his grace to make me a polacco?” he said.
“Yes, it is a great gift,” said Donna Elisa.
“Only to be a little, little polacco is a great gift,” said Fra Felice; “it is especially useful since the monastery has been given up, and when my comrades are gone or dead. It means having a bag full of bread before one even stretches out one’s hand to beg. It means always seeing bright faces, and being greeted with deep reverences. I know no greater gift for a poor monk, Donna Elisa.”
Donna Elisa thought how revered and loved Fra Felice had been, because he had been able to predict what numbers would come out in the lottery. And she could not help agreeing with him.
“If I came wandering along the road in the heat,” said Fra Felice, “the shepherd came to me and went with me a long way, and held his umbrella over me as shelter against the sun. And when I came to the laborers in the cool stone-quarries, they shared their bread and their bean-soup with me. I have never been afraid of brigands nor of carabinieri. The official at the custom-house has shut his eyes when I went by with my bag. It has been a good gift, Donna Elisa.”
“True, true,” said Donna Elisa.
“It has not been an arduous profession,” said Fra Felice. “They spoke to me, and I answered them; that was all. They knew that every word has its number, and they noticed what I said and played accordingly. I never knew how it happened, Donna Elisa; it was a gift from God.”
“You will be a great loss to the poor people, Fra Felice,” said Donna Elisa.
Fra Felice smiled. “They care nothing for me on Sunday and Monday, when there has just been a drawing,” he said. “But they come on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday morning, because there is a drawing every Saturday.”
Donna Elisa began to be anxious, because the dying man thought of nothing but that. Suddenly there flashed across her memory thoughts of one and another who had lost in the lottery, and she remembered several who had played away all their prosperity. She wished to turn his thoughts from that sinful lottery business.
“You said that you wished to speak of your will, Fra Felice.”
“But it is because I have so many friends that it is hard for me to know to whom I shall give the legacy. Shall I give it to those who have baked sweet cakes for me, or to those who have offered me artichokes, browned in sweet oil? Or shall I bequeath it to the sisters of charity who nursed me when I was ill?”
“Have you much to give away, Fra Felice?”
“It will do, Donna Elisa. It will do.”
Fra Felice seemed to be worse again; he lay silent with panting breast.
“I had also wished to give it to all poor, homeless monks, who had lost their monasteries,” he whispered.
And then after thinking for a while: “I should also have liked to give it to the good old man in Rome. He, you know, who watches over us all.”
“Are you so rich, Fra Felice?” said Donna Elisa.
“I have enough, Donna Elisa; I have enough.”
He closed his eyes, and rested for a while; then he said:—
“I want to give it to everybody, Donna Elisa.”
He acquired new strength at the thought; a slight flush was again visible in his cheeks, and he raised himself on his elbow.
“See here, Donna Elisa,” he said, while he thrust his hand into his cloak and drew out a sealed envelope, which he handed to her, “you shall go and give this to the syndic, to the syndic of Diamante.
“Here, Donna Elisa,” said Fra Felice, “here are the five numbers that win next Saturday. They have been revealed to me, and I have written them down. And the syndic shall take these numbers and have them fastened up on the Roman Gate, where everything of importance is published. And he shall let the people know that it is my testament. I bequeath it to the people. Five winning numbers, a whole quintern, Donna Elisa!”
Donna Elisa took the envelope and promised to give it to the syndic. She could do nothing else, for poor Fra Felice had not many minutes left to live.
“When Saturday comes,” said Fra Felice, “there will be many who will think of Fra Felice. ‘Can old Fra Felice have deceived us?’ they will ask themselves. ‘Can it be possible for us to win the whole quintern?’
“On Saturday evening there is a drawing on the balcony of the town-hall in Catania, Donna Elisa. Then they carry out the lottery-wheel and table, and the managers of the lottery are there, and the pretty little poor-house child. And one number after another is put into the lucky wheel until they are all there, the whole hundred.
“All the people stand below and tremble in expectation, as the sea trembles before the storm-wind.
“Everybody from Diamante will be there, and they will stand quite pale and hardly daring to look one another in the face. Before, they have believed, but not now. Now they think that old Fra Felice has deceived them. No one dares to cherish the smallest hope.
“Then the first number is drawn, and I was right. Ah, Donna Elisa, they will be so astonished they will scarcely be able to rejoice. For they have all expected disappointment. When the second number comes out, there is the silence of death. Then comes the third. The lottery managers will be astonished that everything is so quiet. ‘To-day they are not winning anything,’ they will say. ‘To-day the state has all the prizes.’ Then comes the fourth number. The poor-house child takes the roll from the wheel; and the marker opens the roll, and shows the number. Down among the people it is almost terrible; no one is able to say a word for joy. Then the last number comes. Donna Elisa, the people scream, they cry, they fall into one another’s arms and sob. They are rich. All Diamante is rich—”
Donna Elisa had kept her arm under Fra Felice’s head and supported him while he had panted out all this. Suddenly his head fell heavily back. Old Fra Felice was dead.
While Donna Elisa was with old Fra Felice, many people in Diamante had begun to trouble themselves about the blind. Not the men; most of the men were in the fields at work; but the women. They had come in crowds to Santa Lucia to console the blind, and finally, when about four hundred women had gathered together, it occurred to them to go and speak to the syndic.
They had gone up to the square and called for the syndic. He had come out on the balcony of the town-hall, and they had prayed for the blind. The syndic was a kind and handsome man. He had answered them pleasantly, but had not been willing to yield. He could not repeal what had been decided in the town Junta. But the women were determined that it should be repealed, and they remained in the square. The syndic went into the town-hall again, but they stayed in the square and called and prayed. They did not intend to go away till he yielded.
While this was going on, Donna Elisa came to give the syndic Fra Felice’s testament. She was grieved unto death at all the misery, but at the same time she felt a bitter satisfaction, because she had received no help from the Christchild. She had always believed that the saints did not wish to help Donna Micaela.
It was a fine gift she had received in San Pasquale’s church. Not only could it not help the blind, but it was in a fair way to ruin the whole town. Now what little the people still possessed would go to the lottery collector. There would be a borrowing and a pawning.
The syndic admitted Donna Elisa immediately, and was as calm and polite as always, although the women were calling in the square, the blind were bemoaning themselves in the waiting-room, and people had run in and out of his room all day.
“How can I be at your service, Signora Antonelli?” he said. Donna Elisa first looked about and wondered to whom he was speaking. Then she told about the testament.
The syndic was neither frightened nor surprised. “That is very interesting,” he said, and stretched out his hand for the paper.
But Donna Elisa held the envelope fast and asked: “Signor Sindaco, what do you intend to do with it? Do you intend to fasten it to the Roman Gate?”
“Yes; what else can I do, signora? It is a dead man’s last wish.”
Donna Elisa would have liked to tell him what a terrible testament it was, but she checked herself to speak of the blind.
“Padre Succi, who directed that the blind should always be allowed in his church, is also a dead man,” she interposed.
“Signora Antonelli, are you beginning with that too?” said the syndic, quite kindly. “It was a mistake; but why did no one tell me that the blind frequent the church of Lucia? Now, since it is decided, I cannot annul the decision; I cannot.”
“But their rights and patents, Signor Sindaco?”
“Their rights are worth nothing. They have to do with the Jesuits’ monastery, but there is no longer such a monastery. And tell me, Signora Antonelli, what will become of me if I yield?”
“The people will love you as a good man.”
“Signora, people will believe that I am a weak man, and every day I shall have four hundred laborers’ wives outside the town-hall, begging now for one thing, now for another. It is only to hold out for one day. To-morrow it will be forgotten.”
“To-morrow!” said Donna Elisa; “we shall never forget it.”
The syndic smiled, and Donna Elisa saw that he thought that he knew the people of Diamante much better than she.
“You think that their hearts are in it?” he said.
“I think so, Signor Sindaco.”
Then the syndic laughed softly. “Give me that envelope, Signora.”
He took it and went out on the balcony.
He began to speak to the women. “I wish to tell you,” he said, “that I have just now heard that old Fra Felice is dead, and that he has left a legacy to you all. He has written down five numbers that are supposed to win in the lottery next Saturday, and he bequeaths them to you. No one has seen them yet. They are lying here in this envelope, and it is unopened.”
He was silent a moment to let the women have time to think over what he had said.
Instantly they began to cry: “The numbers, the numbers!”
The syndic signed to them to be silent.
“You must remember,” he said, “that it was impossible for Fra Felice to know what numbers will be drawn next Saturday. If you play on these numbers, you may all lose. And we cannot afford to be poorer than we are already here in Diamante. I ask you therefore to let me destroy the testament without any one seeing it.”
“The numbers,” cried the women, “give us the numbers!”
“If I am permitted to destroy the testament,” said the syndic, “I promise you that the blind shall have their church again.”
There was silence in the square. Donna Elisa rose from her seat in the hall of the court-house and seized the back of her chair with both hands.
“I leave it to you to choose between the church and the numbers,” said the syndic.
“God in heaven!” sighed Donna Elisa, “is he a devil to tempt poor people in such a way?”
“We have been poor before,” cried one of the women, “we can still be poor.”
“We will not choose Barabbas instead of Christ,” cried another.
The syndic took a match-box from his pocket, lighted a match, and brought it slowly up to the testament.
The women stood quiet and let Fra Felice’s five numbers be destroyed. The blind people’s church was saved.
“It is a miracle,” whispered old Donna Elisa; “they all believe in Fra Felice, and they let his numbers burn. It is a miracle.”
Later in the afternoon Donna Elisa again sat in her shop with her embroidery frame. She looked old as she sat there, and there was something shaken and broken about her. It was not the usual Donna Elisa; it was a poor, elderly, forsaken woman.
She drew the needle slowly through the cloth, and when she wished to take another stitch she was uncertain and at a loss. It was hard for her to keep the tears from falling on her embroidery and spoiling it.
Donna Elisa was in such great grief for to-day she had lost Gaetano forever. There was no more hope of getting him back.
The saints had gone over to the side of the opponent, and worked miracles in order to help Donna Micaela. No one could doubt that a miracle had happened. The poor women of Diamante would never have been able to stand still while Fra Felice’s numbers burned if they had not been bound by a miracle.
It made a poor soul so old and cross to have the good saints help Donna Micaela, who did not like Gaetano.
The door-bell jingled violently, and Donna Elisa rose from old habit. It was Donna Micaela. She was joyful, and came toward Donna Elisa with outstretched hands. But Donna Elisa turned away, and could not press her hand.
Donna Micaela was in raptures. “Ah, Donna Elisa, you have helped my railway. What can I say? How shall I thank you?”
“Never mind about thanking me, sister-in-law!”
“Donna Elisa!”
“If the saints wish to give us a railway, it must be because Diamante needs it, and not because they love you.”
Donna Micaela shrank back. At last she thought she understood why Donna Elisa was angry with her. “If Gaetano were at home,” she said. She stood and pressed her hand to her heart and moaned. “If Gaetano were at home he would not allow you to be so cruel to me.”
“Gaetano?—would not Gaetano?”
“No, he would not. Even if you are angry with me because I loved him while my husband was alive, you would not dare to upbraid me for it if he were at home.”
Donna Elisa lifted her eyebrows a little. “You think that he could prevail upon me to be silent about such a thing,” she said, and her voice was very strange.
“But, Donna Elisa,” Donna Micaela whispered in her ear, “it is impossible, quite impossible not to love him. He is beautiful; don’t you know it? And he subjugates me, and I am afraid of him. You must let me love him.”
“Must I?” Donna Elisa kept her eyes down and spoke quite shortly and harshly.
Donna Micaela was beside herself. “It is I whom he loves,” she said. “It is not Giannita, but me, and you ought to consider me as a daughter; you ought to help me; you ought to be kind to me. And instead you stand against me; you are cruel to me. You do not let me come to you and talk of him. However much I long, and however much I work, I may not tell you of it.”
Donna Elisa could hold out no longer. Donna Micaela was nothing but a child, young and foolish and quivering like a bird’s heart,—just one to be taken care of. She had to throw her arms about her.
“I never knew it, you poor, foolish child,” she said.
The blind singers had a meeting in the church of Lucia. Highest up in the choir behind the altar sat thirty old, blind, men on the carved chairs of the Jesuit fathers. They were poor, most of them; most of them had a beggar’s wallet and a crutch beside them.
They were all very earnest and solemn; they knew what it meant to be members of that holy band of singers, of that glorious old Academy.
Now and then below in the church a subdued noise was audible. The blind men’s guides were sitting there, children, dogs, and old women, waiting. Sometimes the children began to romp with one another and with the dogs, but it was instantly suppressed and silenced.
Those of the blind who were trovatori stood up one after another and spoke new verses.
“You people who live on holy Etna,” one of them recited, “men who live on the mountain of wonders, rise up, give your mistress a new glory! She longs for two ribbons to heighten her beauty, two long, narrow bands of steel to fasten her mantle. Give them to your mistress, and she will reward you with riches; she will give gold for steel. Countless are the treasures that she in her might will give them who assist her.”
“A gentle worker of miracles has come among us,” said another. “He stands poor and unnoticed in the bare old church, and his crown is of tin, and his diamonds of glass. ‘Make no sacrifices to me, O ye poor,’ he says; ‘build me no temple, all ye who suffer. I will work for your happiness. If prosperity shines from your houses, I shall shine with precious stones; if want flees from the land, my feet will be clothed in golden shoes embroidered with pearls.’”
As each new verse was recited, it was accepted or rejected. The blind men judged with great severity.
The next day they wandered out over Etna, and sang the railway into the people’s hearts.
After the miracle of Fra Felice’s legacy, people began to give contributions to the railway. Donna Micaela soon had collected about a hundred lire. Then she and Donna Elisa made the journey to Messina to look at the steam-tram that runs between Messina and Pharo. They had no greater ambition; they would be satisfied with a steam-tram.
“Why does a railway need to be so expensive?” said Donna Elisa. “It is just an ordinary road, although people do lay down two steel rails on it. It is the engineer and the fine gentlemen who make a railway expensive. Don’t trouble yourself about engineers, Micaela! Let our good road-builders, Giovanni and Carmelo, build your railway.”
They carefully inspected the steam-tramway to Pharo and brought back all the knowledge they could. They measured how wide it ought to be between the rails, and Donna Micaela drew on a piece of paper the way the rails ran by one another at the stations. It was not so difficult; they were sure they would come out well.
That day there seemed to be no difficulties. It was as easy to build a station as an ordinary house, they said. Besides, more than two stations were not needed; a little sentry-box was sufficient at most of the stopping-places.
If they could only avoid forming a company, taking fine gentlemen into their service, and doing things that cost money, their plan of the railway would be realized. It would not cost so much. The ground they could certainly get free. The noble gentlemen who owned the land on Etna would of course understand how much use of the railway they would have, and would let it pass free of charge over their ground.
They did not trouble themselves to stake out the line beforehand. They were going to begin at Diamante and gradually build their way to Catania. They only needed to begin and lay a little piece every day. It was not so difficult.
After that journey they began the attempt to build the road at their own risk. Don Ferrante had not left a large inheritance to Donna Micaela, but one good thing that he had bequeathed her was a long stretch of lava-covered waste land off on Etna. Here Giovanni and Carmelo began to break ground for the new railway.
When the work began, the builders of the railway possessed only one hundred lire. It was the miracle of the legacy that had filled them with holy frenzy.
What a railway it would be, what a railway!
The blind singers were the share-collectors, the Christ-image gave the concession, and the old shop woman, Donna Elisa, was the engineer.
VIII
A JETTATORE
In Catania there was once a man with “the evil eye,” a jettatore. He was almost the most terrible jettatore who had ever lived in Sicily. As soon as he showed himself on the street people hastened to bend their fingers to the protecting sign. Often it did not help at all; whoever met him could prepare himself for a miserable day; he would find his dinner burned, and the beautiful old jelly-bowl broken. He would hear that his banker had suspended payments, and that the little note that he had written to his friend’s wife had come into the wrong hands.
Most often a jettatore is a tall, thin man, with pale, shy eyes and a long nose, which overhangs and hacks his upper lip. God has set the mark of a parrot’s beak upon the jettatore. Yet all things are variable; nothing is absolutely constant. This jettatore was a little fellow with a nose like a San Michele.
Thereby he did much more harm than an ordinary jettatore. How much oftener is one pricked by a rose than burned by a nettle!
A jettatore ought never to grow up. He is well off only when he is a child. Then he still has his little mamma, and she never sees the evil eye; she never understands why she sticks the needle into her finger every time he comes to her work-table. She will never be afraid to kiss him. Although she has sickness constantly in the house, and the servants leave, and her friends draw away, she never notices anything.
But after the jettatore has come out into the world, he often has a hard time enough. Every one must first of all think of himself; no one can ruin his life by being kind to a jettatore.
There are several priests who are jettatori. There is nothing strange in that; the wolf is happy if he can tear to pieces many sheep. They could not very well do more harm than by being priests. One need only ask what happens to the children whom he baptizes, and the couples whom he marries.
The jettatore in question was an engineer and wished to build railways. He had also a position in one of the state railway buildings. The state could not know that he was a jettatore. Ah, but what misery, what misery! As soon as he obtained a place on the railway a number of accidents occurred. When they tunnelled through a hill, one cave-in after another; when they tried to lay a bridge, breach upon breach; when they exploded a blast, the workmen were killed by the flying fragments.
The only one who was never injured was the engineer, the jettatore.
The poor fellows working under him! They counted their fingers and limbs every evening. “To-morrow perhaps we will have lost you,” they said.
They informed the chief engineer; they informed the minister. Neither of them would listen to the complaint. They were too sensible and too learned to believe in the evil eye. The workmen ought to mind better what they were about. It was their own fault that they met with accidents.
And the gravel-cars tipped over; the locomotive exploded.
One morning there was a rumor that the engineer was gone. He had disappeared; no one knew what had become of him. Had some one perhaps stabbed him? Oh, no; oh, no! would any one have dared to kill a jettatore?
But he was really gone; no one ever saw him again.
It was a few years later that Donna Micaela began to think of building her railway. And in order to get money for it, she wished to hold a bazaar in the great Franciscan monastery outside Diamante.
There was a cloister garden there, surrounded by splendid old pillars. Donna Micaela arranged little booths, little lotteries, and little places of diversion under the arcades. She hung festoons of Venetian lanterns from pillar to pillar. She piled up great kegs of Etna wine around the cloister fountain.
While Donna Micaela worked there she often conversed with little Gandolfo, who had been made watchman at the monastery since Fra Felice’s death.
One day she made Gandolfo show her the whole monastery. She went through it all from attic to cellar, and when she saw those countless little cells with their grated windows and whitewashed walls and hard wooden seats, she had an idea.
She asked Gandolfo to shut her in in one of the cells and to leave her there for the space of five minutes.
“Now I am a prisoner,” she said, when she was left alone. She tried the door; she tried the window. She was securely shut in.
So that was what it was to be a prisoner! Four empty walls about one, the silence of the grave, and the chill.
“Now I can feel as a prisoner feels,” she thought.
Then she forgot everything else in the thought that possibly Gandolfo might not come to let her out. He could be called away; he could be taken suddenly ill; he could fall and kill himself in some of the dark passage-ways. Many things could happen to prevent him from coming.
No one knew where she was; no one would think of looking for her in that out-of-the-way cell. If she were left there for even an hour she would go mad with terror.
She saw before her starvation, slow starvation. She struggled through interminable hours of anguish. Ah, how she would listen for a step; how she would call!
She would shake the door; she would scrape the masonry of the walls with her nails; she would bite the grating with her teeth.
When they finally found her she would be lying dead on the floor, and they would find everywhere traces of how she had tried to break her way out.
Why did not Gandolfo come? Now she must have been there a quarter of an hour, a half-hour. Why did he not come?
She was sure that she had been shut in a whole hour when Gandolfo came. Where had he been such a long time?
He had not been long at all. He had only been away five minutes.
“God! God! so that is being a prisoner; that is Gaetano’s life!” She burst into tears when she saw the open sky once more above her.
A while later, as they stood out on an open loggia, Gandolfo showed her a couple of windows with shutters and green shades.
“Does any one live there?” she asked.
“Yes, Donna Micaela, some one does.”
Gandolfo told her that a man lived there who never went out except at night,—a man who never spoke to any one.
“Is he crazy?” asked Donna Micaela.
“No, no; he is as much in his right mind as you or I. But people say that he has to conceal himself. He is afraid of the government.”
Donna Micaela was much interested in the man. “What is his name?” she said.
“I call him Signor Alfredo.”
“How does he get any food?” she asked.
“I prepare it for him,” said Gandolfo.
“And clothes?”
“I get them for him. I bring him books and newspapers, too.”
Donna Micaela was silent for a while. “Gandolfo,” she said, and gave him a rose which she held in her hand, “lay this on the tray the next time you take food to your poor prisoner.”
After that Donna Micaela sent some little thing almost every day to the man in the monastery. It might be a flower, a book or some fruit. It was her greatest pleasure. She amused herself with her fancies. She almost succeeded in imagining that she was sending all these things to Gaetano.
When the day for the bazaar came, Donna Micaela was in the cloister early in the morning. “Gandolfo,” she said, “you must go up to your prisoner and ask him if he will come to the entertainment this evening.”
Gandolfo soon came back with the answer. “He thanks you very much, Donna Micaela,” said the boy. “He will come.”
She was surprised, for she had not believed that he would venture out. She had only wished to show him a kindness.
Something made Donna Micaela look up. She was standing in the cloister garden, and a window was thrown open in one of the buildings above her. Donna Micaela saw a middle-aged man of an attractive appearance standing up there and looking down at her.
“There he is, Donna Micaela,” said Gandolfo.
She was happy. She felt as if she had redeemed and saved the man. And it was more than that. People who have no imagination will not understand it. But Donna Micaela trembled and longed all day; she considered how she would be dressed. It was as if she had expected Gaetano.
Donna Micaela soon had something else to do than to dream; the livelong day a succession of calamities streamed over her.
The first was a communication from the old Etna brigand, Falco Falcone:—
Dear friend, Donna Micaela,—As I have heard that you intend to build a railway along Etna, I wish to tell you that with my consent it will never be. I tell you this now so that you need not waste any more money and trouble on the matter.
Enlightened and most nobly born signora, I remain
Your humble servant,
Falco Falcone.
Passafiero, my sister’s son, has written this letter.
Donna Micaela flung the dirty letter away. It seemed to her as if it were the death sentence of the railway, but to-day she would not think of it. Now she had her bazaar.
The moment after, her road-builders, Giovanni and Carmelo, appeared. They wished to counsel her to get an engineer. She probably did not know what kind of ground there was on Etna. There was, first, lava; then there was ashes; and then lava again. Should the road be laid on the top layer of lava, or on the bed of ashes, or should they dig down still deeper? About how firm a foundation did a railway need? They could not go ahead without a man who understood that.
Donna Micaela dismissed them. To-morrow, to-morrow; she had no time to think of it to-day.
Immediately after, Donna Elisa came with a still worse piece of news.
There was a quarter in Diamante where a poverty-stricken and wild people lived. Those poor souls had been frightened when they heard of the railway. “There will be an eruption of Etna and an earthquake,” they had said. Great Etna will endure no fetters. It will shake off the whole railway. And people said now that they ought to go out and tear up the track as soon as a rail was laid on it.
A day of misfortune, a day of misfortune! Donna Micaela felt farther from her object than ever.
“What is the good of our collecting money at our bazaar?” she said despondingly.
The day promised ill for her bazaar. In the afternoon it began to rain. It had not rained so in Diamante since the day when the clocks rang. The clouds sank to the very house-roofs, and the water poured down from them. People were wet to the skin before they had been two minutes in the street. Towards six o’clock, when Donna Micaela’s bazaar was to open, it was raining its very hardest. When she came out to the monastery, there was no one there but those who were to help in serving and selling.
She felt ready to cry. Such an unlucky day! What had dragged down all these adversities upon her?
Donna Micaela’s glance fell on a strange man who was leaning against a pillar, watching her. Now all at once she recognized him. He was the jettatore—the jettatore from Catania, whom people had taught her to fear as a child.
Donna Micaela went quickly over to him. “Come with me, signor,” she said, and went before him. She wished to go so far away that no one should hear them, and then she wished to beg of him never to come before her eyes again. She could do no less. He must not ruin her whole life.
She did not think in what direction she went. Suddenly she was at the door of the monastery church and turned in there.
Within, it was almost dark. Only by the Christ-image a little oil lamp was burning.
When Donna Micaela saw the Christ-image she was startled. Just then she had not wished to see him.
He reminded her of the time when his crown had rolled to Gaetano’s feet, when he had been so angry with the brigands. Perhaps the Christ-image did not wish her to drive away the jettatore.
She had good reason to fear the jettatore. It was wrong of him to come to her entertainment; she must somehow be rid of him.
Donna Micaela had gone on through the whole church, and now stood and looked at the Christ-image. She could not say a word to the man who followed her.
She remembered what sympathy she had lately felt for him, because a prisoner, like Gaetano. She had been so happy that she had tempted him out to life. What did she now wish to do? Did she wish to send him back to captivity?
She remembered both her father and Gaetano. Should this man be the third that she—
She stood silent and struggled with herself. At last the jettatore spoke:—
“Well, signora, is it not true that now you have had enough of me?”
Donna Micaela made a negative gesture.
“Do you not desire me to return to my cell?”
“I do not understand you, signor.”
“Yes, yes, you understand. Something terrible has happened to you to-day. You do not look as you did this morning.”
“I am very tired,” said Donna Micaela, evasively.
The man came close up to her as if to force out the truth. Questions and answers flew short and panting between them.
“Do you not see that all your festival is likely to be a failure?”—“I must arrange it again to-morrow.”—“Have you not recognized me?”—“Yes, I have seen you before in Catania.”—“And you are not afraid of the jettatore?”—“Yes, formerly, as a child.”—“But now, now are you not afraid?” She avoided answering him. “Are you yourself afraid?” she said. “Speak the truth!” he said, impatiently. “What did you wish to say to me when you brought me here?”
She looked anxiously about her. She had to say something; she must have something to answer him. Then a thought occurred to her which seemed to her quite terrible. She looked at the Christ-image. “Do you require it?” she seemed to ask him. “Shall I do it for this strange man? But it is throwing away my only hope.”
“I hardly know whether I dare to speak of what I wish of you,” she said. “No, you see; you do not dare.”—“I intend to build a railway; you know that?”—“Yes, I know.”—“I want you to help me.”—“I?”
Now that she had made a beginning, it was easier for her to continue. She was surprised that her words sounded so natural.
“I know that you are a railroad builder. Yes, you understand of course that with my railroad no pay is given. But it would be better for you to help me work than to sit shut in here. You are making no use of your time.”
He looked at her almost sternly. “Do you know what you are saying?”—“It is of course a presumptuous request.”—“Just so, yes, a presumptuous request.”
Thereupon the poor man began to try to terrify her.
“It will go with your railway as with your festival.” Donna Micaela thought so too, but now she thought that she had closed all ways of escape for herself; now she must go on being good. “My festival will soon be in full swing,” she said calmly.
“Listen to me, Donna Micaela,” said the man. “The last thing a man ceases to believe good of is himself. No one can cease to have hope for himself.”
“No; why should he?”
He made a movement as if he were impatient with her confidence.
“When I first began to think about the thing,” he said, “I was easily consoled. ‘There have been a few unfortunate occurrences,’ I said to myself, ‘so you have the reputation, and it has become a belief. It is the belief that has made the trouble. People have met you, and people have believed that they would come to grief, and come to grief they did. It is a misfortune worse than death to be considered a jettatore, but you need not yourself believe it.’”
“It is so absurd,” said Donna Micaela.
“Yes, of course, whence should my eyes have got the power to bring misfortune? And when I thought of it I determined to make a trial. I travelled to a place where no one knew me. The next day I read in the paper that the train on which I had travelled had run over a flagman. When I had been one day in the hotel, I saw the landlord in despair, and all the guests leaving. What had happened? I asked. ‘One of our servants has been taken with small-pox.’ Ah, what a wretched business!
“Well, Donna Micaela, I shut myself in and drew back from all intercourse with people. When a year had passed I had found peace. I asked myself why I was shut in so. ‘You are a harmless man,’ I said; ‘you wish to hurt no one. Why do you live as miserably as a criminal?’ I had just meant to go back to life again, when I met Fra Felice in one of the passages. ‘Fra Felice, where is the cat?’—‘The cat, signor?’—‘Yes, the monastery cat, that used to come and get milk from me; where is he now?’—‘He was caught in a rat-trap.’—‘What do you say, Fra Felice?’—‘He got his paw in a steel trap and he could not get loose. He dragged himself to one of the garrets and died of starvation.’ What do you say to that, Donna Micaela?”
“Was it supposed to be your fault that the cat died?”
“I am a jettatore.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Ah, what folly!”
“When some time had passed, again the desire to live awoke within me. Then Gandolfo knocked on my door, and invited me to your festival. Why should I not go? It is impossible to believe that one brings misfortune only by showing one’s self. It was a festival in itself, Donna Micaela, only to get ready and to take out one’s black clothes, brush them, and put them on. But when I came down to the scene of the festival, it was deserted; the rain streamed in torrents; your Venetian lanterns were filled with water. And you yourself looked as if you had suffered all life’s misfortunes in a single day. When you looked at me you became ashy gray with terror. I asked some one: ‘What was Signora Alagona’s maiden name?’—‘Palmeri.’—‘Ah, Palmeri; so she is from Catania. She has recognized the jettatore.’”
“Yes, it is true; I recognized you.”
“You have been very friendly, very kind, and I am distressed to have spoiled your festival. But now I promise you that I shall keep away both from your entertainment and your railway.”
“Why should you keep away?”
“I am a jettatore.”
“I do not believe it. I cannot believe it.”
“I do not believe it either. Yes, yes, I believe. Do you see, people say that no one can have power over a jettatore who is not as great in evil as he. Once, they say, a jettatore looked at himself in the glass, and then fell down and died. Well, I never look at myself in the glass. Therefore I believe it.”
“I do not believe it. I think I almost believed it when I saw you out there. Now I do not believe it.”
“Perhaps you will let me work on your railway?”
“Yes, yes, if you only will.”
He came again close up to her, and they exchanged a few short sentences. “Come forward to the light; I wish to see your face!”—“You think that I am dissembling.”—“I think that you are polite.”—“Why should I be polite to you?”—“That railway means something to you?”—“It means life and happiness to me.”—“How is that?”—“It will win one who is dear to me.”—“Very dear?”
She did not reply, but he read the answer in her face.
He bent his knee to her, and sank his head so low that he could kiss the hem of her dress. “You are good; you are very good. I shall never forget it. If I were not who I am, how I would serve you!”
“You shall serve me,” she said. And she was so moved by his misfortunes that she felt no more fear of his injuring her.
He sprang up. “I will tell you something. You cannot go across the floor without stumbling if I look at you.”
“Oh!” she said.
“Try!”
And she tried. She was very much frightened, and had never felt so unsteady as when she took her first step. Then she thought: “If it were for Gaetano’s sake, I could do it.” And then it was easy.
She walked to and fro on the church floor. “Shall I do it again?” He nodded.
As she was walking, the thought flashed through her brain: “The Christchild has taken the curse from him, because he is to help me.” She turned suddenly and came back to him.
“Do you know, do you know? you are no jettatore!”
“Am I not?”
“No, no!” She took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Do you not see? do you not understand? It is taken from you.”
Little Gandolfo’s voice was heard in the path outside the church. “Donna Micaela, Donna Micaela, where are you? There are so many people, Donna Micaela. Do you hear; do you hear?”
“Is it no longer raining?” said the jettatore, in an uncertain voice.
“It is not raining; how could it be raining? The Christ-image has taken the curse from you because you are going to work for his railway.”
The man reeled and grasped at the air with his hands. “It is gone. Yes, I think it is gone. Just now it was there. But now—”
He wished again to fall on his knees before Donna Micaela.
“Not to me,” she said; “to him, to him.” She pointed to the Christ-image.
But nevertheless he fell down before her. He kissed her hands, and with a voice broken by sobs he told her how every one had hated and persecuted him, and how much misery life had brought him hitherto.
The next day the jettatore went out on Etna and staked out the road. And he was no more dangerous than any one else.
IX
PALAZZO GERACI AND PALAZZO CORVAJA
At the time when the Normans ruled in Sicily, long before the family of Alagona had come to the island, the two magnificent buildings, Palazzo Geraci and Palazzo Corvaja, were built in Diamante.
The noble Barons Geraci placed their house in the square, high up on the summit of Monte Chiaro. The Barons Corvaja, on the other hand, built their home far down the mountain and surrounded it with gardens.
The black-marble walls of Palazzo Geraci were built round a square court-yard, full of charm and beauty. A long flight of steps, passing under an arch adorned with an escutcheon, led to the second story. Not entirely round the court-yard, but here and there in the most unexpected places, the walls opened into little pillared loggias. The walls were covered with bas-reliefs, with speckled slabs of Sicilian marble and with the coats of arms of the Geraci barons. There were windows also, very small, but with exquisitely carved frames; some round, with panes so small that they could be covered with a grape leaf; some oblong, and so narrow that they let in no more light than a slit in a curtain.
The Barons Corvaja did not try to adorn the court-yard of their palace, but on the lower floor of the house they fitted up a magnificent hall. In the floor was built a basin for gold-fish; in niches in the walls fountains covered with mosaic, in which clear water spouted into gigantic shells. Over it all, a Moorish vaulted roof, supported on slender pillars, with twining vines in mosaic. It was a hall whose equal is only to be seen in the Moorish palace in Palermo.
There was much rivalry and emulation during all the time of building. When Palazzo Geraci put forth a balcony, Palazzo Corvaja acquired its high Gothic bay-windows; when the roof of Palazzo Geraci was adorned with richly carved battlements, a frieze of black marble, inlaid with white a yard wide, appeared on Palazzo Corvaja. The Geraci house was crowned by a high tower; the Corvaja had a roof garden, with antique pots along the railing.
When the palaces were finished the rivalry began between the families who had built them. The houses seemed to breed hostility and strife for all who lived in them. A Baron Geraci could never agree with a Baron Corvaja. When Geraci fought for Anjou, Corvaja fought for Manfred. If Geraci changed sides, and supported Aragoni, Corvaja went to Naples, and fought for Robert and Joanna.
But that was not all. It was an understood thing that when Geraci found a son-in-law, Corvaja had to increase his power by a rich marriage. Neither of the families could rest. They had to vie with each other while eating, while amusing themselves, while working. The Geraci came to the court of the Bourbons in Naples, not out of desire of distinction, but because the Corvaja were there. The Corvaja on the other hand had to grow grapes and mine sulphur, because the Geraci were interested in agriculture and the working of mines. When a Geraci received an inheritance some old relative of the Corvaja had to lie down and die, so that the honor of the family should not be hazarded.
Palazzo Geraci was always kept busy counting its servants, in order not to let Palazzo Corvaja lead. But not only the servants, but the braid on the caps, the harnesses and the horses. The pheasant feather on the heads of the Corvaja leaders must not be an inch higher than that on the Geraci. Their goats must increase in the same proportion, and the Geraci’s oxen must have just as long horns as the Corvaja’s.
In our time one might have expected an end to the enmity between the two palaces. In our time there are just as few Corvaja in the one palace as there are Geraci in the other.
The Geraci court-yard is now a dirty hole, which contains donkey-stalls and pig-styes and chicken houses. On the high steps rags are dried and the bas-reliefs are broken and mouldy. In one of the passage-ways a trade in vegetables is carried on, and in the other shoes are made. The gate-keeper looks like the most ragged of beggars, and from cellar to attic live none but poor and penniless people.
It is no better in Palazzo Corvaja. There is not a vestige of the mosaic left in the big hall; only bare, empty arches. No beggars live there, because the palace is principally in ruins. It no longer raises its beautiful faÇade with the carved windows to the bright Sicilian sky.
But the enmity between Geraci and Corvaja is not over. In the old days it was not only the noble families themselves who competed with one another; it was also their neighbors and dependents. All Diamante is to this day divided into Geraci and Corvaja. There is still a high, loop-holed wall running across the town, dividing the part of Diamante which stands by the Geraci from that which has declared itself for the Corvaja.
Even in our day no one from Geraci will marry a girl from Corvaja. And a shepherd from Corvaja cannot let his sheep drink from a Geraci fountain. They have not even the same saints. San Pasquale is worshipped in Geraci, and the black Madonna is Corvaja’s patron saint.
A man from Geraci can never believe but that all Corvaja is full of magicians, witches, and werewolves. A man from Corvaja will risk his salvation that in Geraci there are none but rogues and pick-pockets.
Donna Micaela lived in the Geraci district, and soon all that part of the town were partisans of her railway. But then Corvaja could do no less than to oppose her.
The inhabitants of Corvaja specially disliked two things. They were jealous of the reputation of the black Madonna, and therefore did not like to have another miracle-working image come to Diamante. That was one thing. The other was that they feared that Mongibello would bury all Diamante in ashes and fire if any one tried to encircle it with a railway.
A few days after the bazaar Palazzo Corvaja began to show itself hostile. Donna Micaela one day found on the roof-garden a lemon, which was so thickly set with pins that it looked like a steel ball. It was Palazzo Corvaja, that was trying to bewitch as many pains into her head as there were pins in the lemon.
Then Corvaja waited a few days to see what effect the lemon would have. But when Donna Micaela’s people continued to work on Etna and stake out the line, they came one night and pulled everything up. And when the stakes were set up again the next day, they broke the windows in the church of San Pasquale and threw stones at the Christ-image.
There was a long and narrow little square on the south side of Monte Chiaro. On both the long sides stood dark, high buildings. On one of the short sides was an abyss; on the other rose the steep mountain. The mountain wall was arranged in terraces, but the steps were crumbled and the marble railings broken. On the broadest of the terraces rose the stately ruins of Palazzo Corvaja.
The chief ornament of the square was a beautiful, oblong water-basin which stood quite under the terraces, close to the mountain wall. It stood there white as snow, covered with carvings, and full of clear, cold water. It was the best preserved of all the former glories of the Corvaja.
One beautiful and peaceful evening two ladies dressed in black came walking into the little square. For the moment it was almost empty. The two ladies looked about them, and when they saw no one they sat down on the bench by the fountain, and waited.
Soon several inquisitive children came forward and looked at them, and the older of the two began to talk to the children. She began to tell them stories: “It is said,” and “It is told,” and “Once upon a time,” she said.
Then the children were told of the Christchild who turned himself into roses and lilies when the Madonna met one of Herod’s soldiers, who had been commanded to kill all children. And they were told the legend of how the Christchild once had sat and shaped birds out of clay, and how he clapped his hands and gave the clay pigeons wings with which to fly away when a naughty boy wished to break them to pieces.
While the old lady was talking, many children gathered about her, and also big people. It was a Saturday evening, so that the laborers were coming home from their work in the fields. Most of them came up to the Corvaja fountain for water. When they heard that some one was telling legends they stopped to listen. Both the ladies were soon surrounded by a close, dark wall of heavy, black cloaks and slouch hats.
Suddenly the old lady said to the children: “Do you like the Christchild?” “Yes, yes,” they said, and their big, dark eyes sparkled.—“Perhaps you would like to see him?”—“Yes, we should indeed.”
The lady threw back her mantilla and showed the children a little Christ-image in a jewelled dress, and with a gold crown on his head and gold shoes on his feet. “Here he is,” she said. “I have brought him with me to show you.”
The children were in raptures. First they clasped their hands at the sight of the image’s grave face, then they began to throw kisses to it.
“He is beautiful, is he not?” said the lady.
“Let us have him! Let us have him!” cried the children.
But now a big, rough workman, a dark man with a bushy, black beard, pushed forward. He wished to snatch away the image. The old lady had barely time to thrust it behind her back.
“Give it here, Donna Elisa, give it here!” said the man.
Poor Donna Elisa cast one glance at Donna Micaela, who had sat silent and displeased the whole time by her side. Donna Micaela had been persuaded with difficulty to go to Corvaja and show the image to the people there. “The image helps us when it wills,” she said. “We shall not force miracles.”
But Donna Elisa had been determined to go, and she had said that the image was only waiting to be taken to the faithless wretches in Corvaja. After everything that he had done, they might have enough faith in him to believe that he could win them over also.
Now she, Donna Elisa, stood there with the man over her, and she did not know how she could prevent him from snatching the image away.
“Give it to me amicably, Donna Elisa,” said the man, “otherwise, by God, I will take it in spite of you. I will hack it to small pieces, to small, small pieces. You shall see how much there will be left of your wooden doll. You shall see if it can withstand the black Madonna.”
Donna Elisa pressed against the mountain wall; she saw no escape. She could not run, and she could not struggle. “Micaela!” she wailed, “Micaela!”
Donna Micaela was very pale. She held her hands against her heart, as she always did when anything agitated her. It was terrible to her to stand opposed to those dark men. These were they of the slouch hats and short cloaks of whom she had always been afraid.
But now, when Donna Elisa appealed to her, she turned quickly, seized the image and held it out to the man.
“See here, take it!” she said defiantly. And she took a step towards him. “Take it, and do with it what you can!”
She held the image on her outstretched arms, and came nearer and nearer to the dark workman.
He turned towards his comrades. “She does not believe that I can do anything to the doll,” he said, and laughed at her. And the whole group of workmen slapped themselves on the knee and laughed.
But he did not take the image; he grasped instead the big pick-axe, which he held in his hand. He drew back a few steps, lifted the pick over his head, and stiffened his whole body for a blow which was to crush at once the entire hated wooden doll.
Donna Micaela shook her head warningly. “You cannot do it,” she said, and she did not draw the image back.
He saw that nevertheless she was afraid, and he enjoyed frightening her. He stood longer than was necessary with uplifted pick.
“Piero!” came a cry shrill and wailing.
“Piero! Piero!”
The man dropped his pick without striking. He looked terrified.
“God! it is Marcia calling!” he said.
At the same moment a crowd of people came tumbling out of a little cottage which was built among the ruins of the old Palazzo Corvaja. There were about a dozen women and a carabiniere, who were fighting. The carabiniere held a child in his arms, and the women were trying to drag the child away from him. But the policeman, who was a tall, strong fellow, freed himself from them, lifted the child to his shoulder, and ran down the terrace steps.
The dark Piero had looked on without making a movement. When the carabiniere freed himself, he bent down to Donna Micaela and said eagerly: “If the little one can prevent that, all Corvaja shall be his friend.”
Now the carabiniere was down in the square. Piero made a sign with his hand. Instantly all his comrades closed in a ring round the fugitive. He turned squarely round. Everywhere a close ring of men threatened him with picks and shovels.
All at once there was terrible confusion. The women who had been struggling with the carabiniere came rushing down with loud cries. The little girl, whom he held in his arms, screamed as loud as she could and tried to tear herself away. People came running from all sides. There were questionings and wonderings.
“Let us go now,” said Donna Elisa to Donna Micaela. “Now no one is thinking of us.”
But Donna Micaela had caught sight of one of the women. She screamed least, but it was instantly apparent that it was she whom the matter concerned. She looked as if she was about to lose her life’s happiness.
She was a woman who had been very beautiful, although all freshness now was gone from her, for she was no longer young. But hers was still an impressive and large-souled face. “Here dwells a soul which can love and suffer,” said the face. Donna Micaela felt drawn to that poor woman as to a sister.
“No, it is not the time to go yet,” she said to Donna Elisa.
The carabiniere asked and asked if they would not let him come out.
No, no, no! Not until he let the child go!
It was the child of Piero and his wife, Marcia. But they were not the child’s real parents. The trouble arose from that.
The carabiniere tried to win the people over to his side. He tried to convince, not Piero nor Marcia, but the others. “Ninetta is the child’s mother,” he said; “you all know that. She has not been able to have the child with her while she was unmarried; but now she is married, and wishes to have her child back. And now Marcia refuses to give her the boy. It is hard on Ninetta, who has not been able to have her child with her for eight years. Marcia will not give him up. She drives Ninetta away when she comes and begs for her child. Finally Ninetta had to complain to the syndic. And the syndic has told us to get her the child. It is Ninetta’s own child,” he said appealingly.
But it had no great effect on the men of Corvaja.
“Ninetta is a Geraci,” burst out Piero, and the circle stood fast round the carabiniere.
“When we came here to fetch the child,” said the latter, “we did not find him. Marcia was dressed in black, and her rooms were draped with black, and a lot of women sat and mourned with her. And she showed us the certificate of the child’s death. Then we went and told Ninetta that her child was in the church-yard.
“Well, well, a while afterwards I went on guard here in the square. I watched the children playing there. Who was strongest, and who shouted the loudest, if not one of the girls? ‘What is your name?’ I asked her. ‘Francesco,’ she answered instantly.
“It occurred to me that that girl, Francesco, might be Ninetta’s boy, and I stood quiet and waited. Just now I saw Francesco go into Marcia’s house. I followed, and there sat the girl Francesco and ate supper with Marcia. She and all the mourners began to scream when I appeared. Then I seized Signorina Francesco and ran. For the child is not Marcia’s. Remember that, signori! He is Ninetta’s. Marcia has no right to him.”
Then at last Marcia began to speak. She spoke in a deep voice which compelled every one to listen, and she made only a few, but noble gestures. Had she no right to the child? But who had given him food and clothing? He had been dead a thousand times over if she had not been there. Ninetta had left him with La Felucca. They knew La Felucca. To leave one’s child to her was the same as saying to it: “You shall die.” And, moreover, right? right? What did that mean? The one whom the boy loved had a right to him. The one who loved the boy had a right to him. Piero and she loved the boy like their own son. They could not be parted from him.
The wife was desperate, the husband perhaps even more so. He threatened the carabiniere whenever he made a movement. Yet the carabiniere seemed to see that the victory would be his. The people had laughed when he spoke of “Signorina Francesco.” “Cut me down, if you will,” he said to Piero. “Does it help you? Will you retain the child for that? He is not yours. He is Ninetta’s.”
Piero turned to Donna Micaela. “Pray to him to help me.” He pointed to the image.
Donna Micaela instantly went forward to Marcia. She was shy and trembled for what she was venturing, but it was not the time for her to hold back. “Marcia,” she whispered, “confess! Confess,—if you dare!” The startled woman looked at her. “I see it so well,” whispered Donna Micaela; “you are as alike as two berries. But I will say nothing if you do not wish it.” “He will kill me,” said Marcia. “I know one who will not let him kill you,” said Donna Micaela. “Otherwise they will take your child from you,” she added.
All were silent, with eyes fixed on the two women. They saw how Marcia struggled with herself. The features of her strong face were distorted. Her lips moved. “The child is mine,” she said, but in so low a voice that no one heard it. She said it again, and now it came in a piercing scream: “The child is mine!”
“What will you do to me when I confess it?” she said to the man. “The child is mine, but not yours. He was born in the year when you were at work in Messina. I put him with La Felucca, and Ninetta’s boy was there too. One day when I came to La Felucca she said, ‘Ninetta’s boy is dead.’ At first I only thought: ‘God! if it had been mine! Then I said to La Felucca: ‘Let my boy be dead, and let Ninetta’s live.’ I gave La Felucca my silver comb, and she agreed. When you came home from Messina I said to you: ‘Let us take a foster child. We have never been on good terms. Let us try what adopting a child will do.’ You liked the proposal, and I adopted my own child. You have been happy with him, and we have lived as if in paradise.”
Before she finished speaking the carabiniere put the child down on the ground. The dark men silently opened their ranks for him, and he went his way. A shiver went through Donna Micaela when she saw the carabiniere go. He should have stayed to protect the poor woman. His going seemed to mean: “That woman is beyond the pale of the law; I cannot protect her.” Every man and woman standing there felt the same: “She is outside of the law.”
One after another went their way.
Piero, the husband, stood motionless without looking up. Something fierce and dreadful was gathering in him. Rage and suffering were gathering within him. Something terrible would happen as soon as he and Marcia were alone.
The woman made no effort to escape. She stood still, paralyzed by the certainty that her fate was sealed, and that nothing could change it. She neither prayed nor fled. She shrank together like a dog before an angry master. The Sicilian women know what awaits them when they have wounded their husbands’ honor.
The only one who tried to defend her was Donna Micaela. Never would she have begged Marcia to confess, she said to Piero, if she had known what he was. She had thought that he was a generous man. Such a one would have said: “You have done wrong; but the fact that you confess your sin publicly, and expose yourself to my anger to save the child, atones for everything. It is punishment enough.” A generous man would have taken the child on one arm, put the other round his wife’s waist, and have gone happy to his home. A signor would have acted so. But he was no signor; he was a bloodhound.
She talked in vain; the man did not hear her; the woman did not hear her. Her words seemed to be thrown back from an impenetrable wall.
Just then the child came to the father, and tried to take his hand. Furious, he looked at the boy. As the latter was dressed in girl’s clothes, his hair smoothly combed and drawn back by the ears, he saw instantly the likeness to Marcia, which he had not noticed before. He kicked Marcia’s son away.
There was a terrible tension in the square. The neighbors continued to go quietly and slowly away. Many went unwillingly and with hesitation, but still they went. The husband seemed only to be waiting for the last to go.
Donna Micaela ceased speaking; she took the image instead and laid it in Marcia’s arms. “Take him, my sister Marcia, and may he protect you!” she said.
The man saw it, and his rage increased. It seemed as if he could no longer contain himself till he was alone. He crouched like a wild beast ready to spring.
But the image did not rest in vain in the woman’s arms. The outcast moved her to an act of the greatest love.
“What will Christ in Paradise say to me, who have first deceived my husband, and then made him a murderer?” she thought. And she remembered how she had loved big Piero in the days of her happy youth. She had not then thought of bringing such misery upon him.
“No, Piero, no, do not kill me!” she said eagerly. “They will send you to the galleys. You shall be relieved of seeing me again without that.”
She ran towards the other side of the square, where the ground fell away into an abyss. Every one understood her intention. Her face bore witness for her.
Several hurried after her, but she had a good start. Then the image, which she still carried, slipped from her arms and lay at her feet. She stumbled over it, fell, and was overtaken.
She struggled to get away, but a couple of men held her fast. “Ah, let me do it!” she cried; “it is better for him!”
Her husband came up to her also. He had caught up her child and placed him on his arm. He was much moved.
“See, Marcia, let it be as it is,” he said. He was embarrassed, but his dark, deep-set eyes shone with happiness and said more than his words. “Perhaps, according to old custom, it ought to be so, but I do not care for that. Look, come now! It would be a pity for such a woman as you, Marcia.”
He put his arm about Marcia’s waist, and went towards his house in the ruins of Palazzo Corvaja. It was like a triumphal entry of one of the former barons. The people of Corvaja stood on both sides of the way and bowed to him and Marcia.
As they went past Donna Micaela, they both stopped, bowed deep to her, and kissed the image which some one had given back to her. But Donna Micaela kissed Marcia. “Pray for me in your happiness, sister Marcia!” she said.
X
FALCO FALCONE
The blind singers have week after week sung of Diamante’s railway, and the big collection-box in the church of San Pasquale has been filled every evening with gifts. Signor Alfredo measures and sets stakes on the slopes of Etna, and the distaff-spinners in the dark alleys tell stories of the wonderful miracles that have been performed by the little Christ-image in the despised church. From the rich and powerful men who own the land on Etna comes letter after letter promising to give ground to the blessed undertaking.
During these last weeks every one comes with gifts. Some give building stone for the stations, some give powder to blast the lava blocks, some give food to the workmen. The poor people of Diamante, who have nothing, come in the night after their work. They come with shovels and wheelbarrows and creep out on Etna, dig the ground, and ballast the road. When Signor Alfredo and his people come in the morning they believe that the Etna goblins have broken out from their lava streams and helped on the work.
All the while people have been questioning and asking: “Where is the king of Etna, Falco Falcone? Where is the mighty Falco who has held sway on the slopes of Etna for five and twenty years? He wrote to Don Ferrante’s widow that she would not be allowed to construct the railway. What did he mean by his threat? Why does he sit still when people are braving his interdiction? Why does he not shoot down the people of Corvaja when they come creeping through the night with wheelbarrows and pickaxes? Why does he not drag the blind singers down into the quarry and whip them? Why does he not have Donna Micaela carried off from the summer-palace, in order to be able to demand a cessation in the building of the railway as a ransom for her life?”
Donna Micaela says to herself: “Has Falco Falcone forgotten his promise, or is he waiting to strike till he can strike harder?”
Everybody asks in the same way: “When is Etna’s cloud of ashes to fall on the railway? When will Mongibello cataracts tear it away? When will the mighty Falco Falcone be ready to destroy it?”
While every one is waiting for Falco to destroy the railway, they talk a great deal about him, especially the workmen under Signor Alfredo.
Opposite the entrance to the church of San Pasquale, people say, stands a little house on a bare crag. The house is narrow, and so high that it looks like a chimney left standing on a burnt building site. It is so small that there is no room for the stairs inside the house; they wind up outside the walls. Here and there hang balconies and other projections that are arranged with no more symmetry than a bird’s nest on a tree-trunk.
In that house Falco Falcone was born, and his parents were only poor working-people. In that miserable hut Falco learned arrogance.
Falco’s mother was an unfortunate woman, who during the first years of her marriage brought only daughters into the world. Her husband and all her neighbors despised her.
The woman longed continually for a son. When she was expecting her fifth child she strewed salt every day on the threshold and sat and watched who should first cross it. Would it be a man or a woman? Should she bear a son or a daughter?
Every day she sat and counted. She counted the letters in the month when her child was to be born. She counted the letters in her husband’s name and in her own. She added and subtracted. It was an even number; therefore she would bear a son. The next day she made the calculation over again. “Perhaps I counted wrong yesterday,” she said.
When Falco was born his mother was much honored, and she loved him on account of it more than all her other children. When the father came in to see the child he snatched off his cap and made a low bow. Over the house-door they set a hat as a token of honor, and they poured the child’s bath water over the threshold, and let it run out into the street. When Falco was carried to the church he was laid on his god-mother’s right arm; when the neighbors’ wives came to look after his mother they courtesied to the child sleeping in his cradle.
He was also bigger and stronger than children generally are. Falco had thick hair when he was born, and when he was a week old he already had a tooth. When his mother laid him to her breast he was so wild that she laughed and said: “I think that I have brought a hero into the world.”
She was always expecting great achievements from Falco, and she put pride into him. But who else hoped anything of him? Falco could not even learn to read. His mother tried to take a book and teach him the letters. She pointed to A, that is the big hat; she pointed to B, that is the spectacles; she pointed to C, that is the snake. That he could learn. Then his mother said: “If you put the spectacles and the big hat together, it makes Ba.” That he could not learn. He became angry and struck her, and she let him alone. “You will be a great man yet,” she said.
Falco was dull and bad-tempered in his childhood and youth. As a child, he would not play; as a youth, he would not dance. He had no sweetheart, but he liked to go where fighting was to be expected.
Falco had two brothers who were like other people, and who were much more esteemed than he. Falco was wounded to see himself eclipsed by his brothers, but he was too proud to show it. His mother was always on his side. After his father’s death she had him sit at the head of the table, and she never allowed any one to jest with him. “My oldest son is the best of you all,” she said.
When the people remember it all they say: “Falco is proud. He will make it a point of honor to destroy the railway.”
And they have hardly terrified themselves with one story before they remember another about him.
For thirty long years, people say, Falco lived like any other poor person on Etna. On Monday he went away to his work in the fields with his brothers. He had bread in his sack for the whole week, and he made soup of beans and rice like every one else. And he was glad on Saturday evening to be able to return to his home. He was glad to find the table spread, with wine and macaroni, and the bed made up with soft pillows.
It was just such a Saturday evening. Falco and Falco’s brothers were on their way home; Falco, as usual, a little behind the others, for he had a heavy and slow way of walking. But look, when the brothers reached home, no supper was waiting, the beds were not made, and the dust lay thick on the threshold. What, were all in the house dead? Then they saw their mother sitting on the floor in a dark corner of the cottage. Her hair was drawn down over her face, and she sat and traced patterns with her finger on the earth floor. “What is the matter?” said the brothers. She did not look up; she spoke as if she had spoken to the earth. “We are beggared, beggared.” “Do they want to take our house from us?” cried the brothers. “They wish to take away our honor and our daily bread.”
Then she told: “Your eldest sister has had employment with Baker Gasparo, and it has been good employment. Signor Gasparo gave Pepa all the bread left over in the shop, and she brought it to me. There has been so much that there was enough for us all. I have been happy ever since Pepa found that employment. It will give me an old age free from care, I thought. But last Monday Pepa came home to me and wept; Signora Gasparo had turned her away.”
“What had Pepa done?” asked Nino, who was next younger to Falco.
“Signora Gasparo accused Pepa of stealing bread. I went to Signora Gasparo and asked her to take Pepa back. ‘No,’ she said, ‘the girl is not honest.’ ‘Pepa had the bread from Signor Gasparo,’ I said; ‘ask him.’ ‘I cannot ask him,’ said the signora; ‘he is away, and comes home next month.’ ‘Signora,’ I said, ‘we are so poor. Let Pepa come back to her place.’ ‘No,’ she said; ‘I myself will leave Signor Gasparo if he takes that girl back.’ ‘Take care,’ I said then; ‘if you take bread from me, I will take life from you.’ Then she was frightened and called others in, so that I had to go.”
“What is to be done about it?” said Nino. “Pepa must find some other work.”
“Nino,” said Mother Zia, “you do not know what that woman has said to the neighbors about Pepa and Signor Gasparo.”
“Who can prevent women from talking?” said Nino.
“If Pepa has nothing else to do, now she might at least have cooked dinner for us,” said Turiddo.
“Signora Gasparo has said that her husband let Pepa steal bread that she should—”
“Mother,” interrupted Nino, red as fire, “I do not intend to have myself put in the galleys for Pepa’s sake.”
“The galleys do not eat Christians,” said Mother Zia.
“Nino,” said Pietro, “we had better go to the town to get some food.”
As they said it they heard some one laugh behind them. It was Falco who laughed.
A while later Falco entered Signora Gasparo’s shop and asked for bread. The poor woman was frightened when Pepa’s brother came into the shop. But she thought: “He has just come from his work. He has not been home yet. He knows nothing.”
“Beppo,” she said to him, for Falco’s name was not then Falco, “is the harvest a good one?” And she was prepared not to have him answer.
Falco was more talkative than usual, and immediately told her how many grapes had already been put through the press. “Do you know,” he continued, “that a farmer was murdered yesterday.”—“Alas, yes, poor Signor Riego; I heard so.” And she asked how it had happened.
“It was Salvatore who did it. But it is too dreadful for a signora to hear!”—“Oh, no, what is done can be and is told.”
“Salvatore went up to him in this way, signora.” And Falco drew his knife and laid his hand on the woman’s head. “Then he cut him across the throat from ear to ear.”
As Falco spoke, he suited the action to the word. The woman did not even have time to scream. It was the work of a master.
After that, Falco was sent to the galleys, where he remained five years.
When the people tell of that, their terror increases. “Falco is brave,” they say. “Nothing in the world can frighten him away from his purpose.”
That immediately made them think of another story.
Falco was taken to the galleys in August, where he became acquainted with Biagio, who afterwards followed him through his whole life. One day he and Biagio and a third prisoner were ordered to go to work in the fields. One of the overseers wished to construct a garden around his house. They dug there quietly, but their eyes began to wander and wander. They were outside the walls; they saw the plain and the mountains; they even saw up to Etna. “It is the time,” whispered Falco to Biagio. “I will rather die than go back to prison,” said Biagio. Then they whispered to the other prisoner that he must stand by them. He did not wish to do so, because his time of punishment was soon up. “Else we will kill you,” they said, and then he agreed.
The guard stood over them with his loaded rifle in his hand. On account of their fetters, Falco and Biagio hopped with feet together over to the guard. They swung their shovels over him, and before he had time to think of shooting he was thrown down, bound, and had a clump of earth in his mouth. Thereupon the prisoners pried open their chains with the shovels, so that they could take a step, and crept away over the plain to the hills.
When night came Falco and Biagio abandoned the prisoner whom they had taken with them. He was old and feeble, so that he would have hindered their flight. The next day he was seized by the carabinieri, and shot.
They shudder when they think of it. “Falco is merciless,” they say. They know that he will not spare the railway.
Story after story comes to frighten the poor people working on the railway on the slopes of Etna.
They tell of all the sixteen murders that Falco has committed. They tell of his attacks and plunderings.
There is one story more terrifying than all the others together.
When Falco escaped from the galleys he lived in the woods and caves, and in the big quarry near Diamante. He soon gathered a band about him, and became a wonderful and famous brigand hero.
All his family were held in much greater consideration than before. They were respected, as the mighty are respected. They scarcely needed to work, for Falco loved his relations and was generous to them. But he was not lenient towards them; he was very stern.
Mother Zia was dead, and Nino was married and lived in his father’s cottage. It happened one day that Nino needed money, and he knew no better way than to go to the priest,—not Don Matteo, but to old Don Giovanni. “Your Reverence,” said Nino to him, “my brother asks you for five hundred lire.” “Where shall I find five hundred lire?” said Don Giovanni. “My brother needs them; he must have them,” said Nino.
Then old Don Giovanni promised to give the money, if he only were given time to collect it. Nino was hardly willing to agree to that. “You can scarcely expect me to take five hundred lire from my snuff-box,” said Don Giovanni. And Nino granted him three days’ respite. “But beware of meeting my brother during that time,” he said.
The next day Don Giovanni rode to Nicolosi to try to claim a payment. Who should he meet on the way but Falco and two of his band. Don Giovanni threw himself from his donkey and fell on his knees before Falco. “What does this mean, Don Giovanni?”—“As yet I have no money for you, Falco, but I will try to get it. Have mercy upon me!”
Falco asked, and Don Giovanni told the whole story. “Your Reverence,” said Falco, “he has been deceiving you.” He begged Don Giovanni to go with him to Diamante. When they came to the old house Don Giovanni rode in behind the wall of San Pasquale, and Falco called Nino out. Nino came out on one of the balconies. “Eh, Nino!” said Falco, and laughed. “You have cheated the priest out of money?” “Do you know it already?” said Nino. “I was just going to tell it to you.”
Now Falco became sterner. “Nino,” he said, “the priest is my friend, and he believes that I have wished to rob him. You have done very wrong.” He suddenly put his gun to his shoulder and shot Nino down, and when he had done so he turned to Don Giovanni, who had almost fallen from his donkey with terror. “You see now, your Reverence, that I had no part in Nino’s designs on you!”
And that happened twenty years ago, when Falco had not been a brigand for more than five years.
“Will Falco spare the railway,” people say, as they tell it, “when he did not spare his own brother?”
There was yet more.
After Nino’s murder there was a vendetta over Falco. Nino’s wife was so terrified when she found her husband dead that half her body became paralyzed, and she could no longer walk. But she took her place at the window in the old cottage. There she has sat for twenty years with a gun beside her, and waited for Falco. And of her the great brigand has been afraid. For twenty years he has not gone past the home of his ancestors.
The woman has not deserted her post. No one ever goes to the church of San Pasquale without seeing her revengeful eyes shining behind the panes. Who has ever seen her sleep? Who has seen her work? She could do nothing but await her husband’s murderer.
When people hear that, they are even more afraid. Falco has luck on his side, they think. The woman who wishes to kill him cannot move from her place. He has luck on his side. He will also succeed in destroying the railway. Fortune has never failed Falco. The carabinieri have hunted, but have never been able to catch him. The carabinieri have feared Falco more than Falco has feared the carabinieri.
People tell a story of a young carabiniere lieutenant who once pursued Falco. He had arranged a line of beaters and hunted Falco from one thicket to another. At last the officer was certain that he had Falco shut in in a grove. A guard was stationed round the wood, and the officer searched the covert, gun in hand. But however much he searched, he saw no Falco. He came out, and met a peasant. “Have you seen Falco Falcone?”—“Yes, signor; he just went by me, and he asked me to greet you.”—“Diavolo!”—“He saw you in the thicket, and he was just going to shoot you, but he did not do so, because he thought that perhaps it was your duty to prosecute him.”—“Diavolo! Diavolo!”—“But if you try another time—”—“Diavolo! Diavolo! Diavolo!”
Do you think that lieutenant came back? Do you not think that he instantly sought out a district where he did not need to hunt brigands?
And the workmen on Etna asked themselves: “Who will protect us against Falco? He is terrible. Even the soldiers tremble before him.”
They remember that Falco Falcone is now an old man. He no longer plunders post-wagons; he does not carry off land-owners. He sits quiet generally in the quarry near Diamante, and instead of robbing money and estates, he takes money and estates under his protection.
He takes tribute from the great landed proprietors and guards their estates from other thieves, and it has become calm and peaceful on Etna, for he allows no one to injure those who have paid a tax to him.
But that is not reassuring. Since Falco has become friends with the great, he can all the more easily destroy the railway.
And they remember the story of Niccola Galli, who is overseer on the estate of the Marquis di San Stefano on the southern side of Etna. Once his workmen struck in the middle of the harvest time. Niccola Galli was in despair. The wheat stood ripe, and he could not get it reaped. His workmen would not work; they lay down to sleep at the edge of a ditch.
Niccola placed himself on a donkey and rode down to Catania to ask his lord for advice. On the way he met two men with guns on their shoulders. “Whither are you riding, Niccola?”
Before Niccola had time to say many words they took his donkey by the bit and turned him round. “You must not ride to the Marquis, Niccola?”—“Must I not?”—“No; you must ride home.”
As they went along, Niccola sat and shook on his donkey. When they were again at home the men said: “Now show us the way to the fields!” And they went out to the laborers. “Work, you scoundrels! The marquis has paid his tribute to Falco Falcone. You can strike in other places, but not here.” That field was reaped as never before. Falco stood on one side of it and Biagio on the other. The grain is soon harvested with such overseers.
When the people remember that, their terror does not decrease. “Falco keeps his word,” they say. “He will do what he has threatened to do.”
No one has been a robber chief as long as Falco. All the other famous heroes are dead or captives. He alone keeps himself alive and in his profession by incredible good fortune and skill.
Gradually he has collected about him all his family. His brothers-in-law and nephews are all with him. Most of them have been sent to the galleys, but not one of them thinks whether he suffers in prison; he only asks if Falco is satisfied with him.
In the newspapers there are often accounts of Falco’s deeds. Englishmen thrust a note of ten lire into their guide’s hand if he will show them the way to Falco’s quarry. The carabinieri no longer shoot at him, because he is the last great brigand.
He so little fears to be captured that he often comes down to Messina or Palermo. He has even crossed the sound and been in Italy. He went to Naples when Guglielmo and Umberto were there to christen a battle-ship. He travelled to Rome when Umberto and Margherita celebrated their silver wedding.
The people think of it all, and tremble. “Falco is loved and admired,” the workmen say. “The people worship Falco. He can do what he will.”
They know too that when Falco saw Queen Margherita’s silver wedding, it pleased him so much that he said: “When I have lived on Etna for five and twenty years, I shall celebrate my silver wedding with Mongibello.”
People laughed at that and said that it was a good idea of Falco’s. For he had never had a sweetheart, but Mongibello with its caves and forests and craters and ice-fields had served and protected him like a wife. To no one in the world did Falco owe such gratitude as to Mongibello.
People ask when Falco and Mongibello are going to celebrate their silver wedding. And people answer that it will be this spring. Then the workmen think: “He is coming to destroy our railway on the day of Mongibello.”
They are filled with doubt and terror. They soon will not dare to work any more. The nearer the time approaches when Falco is to celebrate his union with Mongibello, the more there are who leave Signor Alfredo. Soon he is practically alone at the work.
There are not many people in Diamante who have seen the big quarry on Etna. They have learned to avoid it because Falco Falcone lives there. They have been careful to keep out of range of his gun.
They have not seen the great hole in Mongibello’s side from which their ancestors, the Greeks, took stone in remote times. They have not seen the beautifully colored walls, and the mighty rocks that look like ruined pillars. Perhaps they do not know that on the bottom of the quarry grow more magnificent flowers than in a conservatory. There it is no longer Sicily; it is India.
In the quarry are mandarin trees, so yellow with fruit that they look like gigantic sun-flowers; the camellias are as big as tambourines; and on the ground between the trees lie masses of magnificent figs and downy peaches embedded in fallen rose-leaves.
One evening Falco is sitting alone in the quarry. Falco is busy making a wreath, and he has beside him a mass of flowers. The string he is using is as thick as a rope; he holds his foot on the ball so that it shall not roll away from him. He wears spectacles, which continually slip too far down his hooked nose.
Falco is swearing horribly, for his hands are stiff and callous from incessantly handling a gun, and cannot readily hold flowers. The fingers squeeze them together like steel tongs. Falco swears because the lilies and anemones fall into little pieces if he merely looks at them.
Falco sits in his leather breeches and in the long, buttoned-up coat, buried in flowers like a saint on a feast-day. Biagio and his nephew, Passafiore, have gathered them for him. They have piled up in front of him an Etna of the most beautiful flowers of the quarry. Falco can choose among lilies and cactus-flowers and roses and pelargoniums. He roars at the flowers that he will trample them to dust under his leather sandals if they do not submit themselves to his will.
Never before has Falco Falcone had to do with flowers. In the whole course of his life he has never tied a nosegay for a girl, or plucked a rose for his button-hole. He has never even laid a wreath on his mother’s grave.
Therefore the delicate flowers rebel against him. The flower sprays are entangled in his hair and in his hat, and the petals have caught in his bushy beard. He shakes his head violently, and the scar in his cheek glows red as fire as it used to do in the old days, when he fought with the carabinieri.
Still the wreath grows, and thick as a tree-trunk it winds round Falco’s feet and legs. Falco swears at it as if it were the steel fetters that once dragged between his ankles. He complains more, when he tears himself on a thorn or burns himself on a nettle, than he did when the whip of the galley guard lashed his back.
Biagio and Passafiore, his nephew, do not dare to show themselves; they lie concealed in a cave till everything is ready. They laugh at Falco with all their might, for such wailings as Falco’s have not sounded in the quarry since unhappy prisoners of war were kept at work there.
Biagio looks up to great Etna, which is blushing in the light of the setting sun. “Look at Mongibello,” he says to Passafiore; “see how it blushes. It must guess what Falco is busy with down in the quarry.” And Passafiore answers: “Mongibello has probably never thought that it would ever have anything on its head but ashes and snow.”
But suddenly Biagio stopped laughing. “It is not well, Passafiore,” he said. “Falco has become too proud. I am afraid that the great Mongibello is going to make a fool of him.”
The two bandits look one another in the eyes questioningly. “It is well if it is only pride,” says Passafiore.
But now they look away at the same moment, and dare say no more. The same thought, the same dread has seized them both. Falco is going mad. He is already mad at times. It is always so with great brigand chiefs; they cannot bear their glory and their greatness; they all go mad.
Passafiore and Biagio have seen it for a long time, but they have borne it in silence, and each has hoped that the other has seen nothing. Now they understand that they both know it. They press each other’s hands without a word. There is still something so great in Falco. Both of them, Passafiore and Biagio, will take care that no one shall perceive that he is no longer the man he was.
Finally Falco has his wreath ready; he hangs it on the barrel of his gun and comes out to the others. All three climb out of the quarry, and at the nearest farm-house they take horses in order to come quickly to the top of Mongibello.
They ride at full gallop so that they have no chance to talk, but as they pass the different farms they can see the people dancing on the flat roofs. And from the sheds, where the laborers sleep at night, they hear talk and laughter. There happy, peaceful people are sitting, guessing conundrums and matching verses. Falco storms by, such things are not for him. Falco is a great man.
They gallop towards the summit. At first they ride between almond-trees and cactus, then under plane-trees and stone-pines, then under oaks and chestnut-trees.
The night is dark; they see nothing of the beauty of Mongibello. They do not see the vine-encircled Monte Rosso; they do not see the two hundred craters that stand in a circle round Etna’s lofty peak like towers round a town; they do not see the endless stretches of thick forest.
In Casa del Bosco, where the road ends, they dismount. Biagio and Passafiore take the wreath and carry it between them. As they walk along, Falco begins to talk. He likes to talk since he has grown old.
Falco says that the mountain is like the twenty-five years of his life that he has passed there. The years that founded his greatness had blossomed with deeds. To be with him then had been like going through an endless arbor, where lemons and grapes hung down overhead. Then his deeds had been as numerous as the orange-trees round Etna’s base. When he had come higher the deeds had been less frequent, but those he had executed had been mighty as the oaks and chestnut-trees on the rising mountain. Now that he was at the summit of greatness, he scorned to act. His life was as bald as the mountain top; he was content to see the world at his feet. But people ought to understand that, if he should now undertake anything, nothing could resist him. He was terrible, like the fire-spouting summit.
Falco walks before and talks; Passafiore and Biagio follow him in silent terror. Dimly they see the mighty slopes of Mongibello with their towns and fields and forests spread out beneath them. And Falco thinks that he is as mighty as all that!
As they struggle upwards they are beset with a growing feeling of dread. The gaping fissures in the ground; the sulphur smoke from the crater, which rolls down the mountain, too heavy to rise into the air; the explosions inside the mountain; the incessant, gently rumbling earthquake; the slippery, rough ice-fields crossed by gushing brooks; the extreme cold, the biting wind,—make the walk hideous. And Falco says that it is like him! How can he have such things in his soul? Is it filled with a cold and a horror to be compared to Etna’s?
They stumble over blocks of ice, and they struggle forward through snow lying sometimes a yard deep. The mountain blast almost throws them down. They have to wade through slush and water, for through the day the sun has melted a mass of snow. And while they grow stiff with cold, the ground shakes under them with the everlasting fire.
They remember that Lucifer and all the damned are lying under them. They shudder because Falco has brought them to the gates of Hell.
But nevertheless beyond the ice-field they reach the steep cone of ashes on the very summit of the mountain. Here they drag themselves up, walking on sliding ashes and pumice-stone. When they are half way up the cone Falco takes the wreath, and motions to the others to wait. He alone will scale the summit.
The day is just breaking, and as Falco reaches the top the sun is visible. The glorious morning light streams over Mongibello and over the old Etna brigand on its summit. The shadow of Etna is thrown over the whole of Sicily, and it looks as if Falco, standing up there, reached from sea to sea, across the island.
Falco stands and gazes about him. He looks across to Italy; he fancies he sees Naples and Rome. He lets his glance pass over the sea to the land of the Turk to the east and the land of the Saracen to the south. He feels as if it all lay at his feet and acknowledged his greatness.
Then Falco lays the wreath on the summit of Mongibello.
When he comes down to his comrades he solemnly presses their hands. As he leaves the cone they see that he picks up a piece of pumice-stone, and puts it in his pocket. Falco takes with him a souvenir of the most beautiful hour of his life. He has never before felt himself so great as on the top of Mongibello.
On that day of happiness Falco will do no work. The next day, he says, he will begin the undertaking of freeing Mongibello from the railway.
There is a lonely farm-house on the road between PaternÓ and AdernÓ. It is quite large, and it is owned by a widow, Donna Silvia, who has many strong sons. They are bold people who dare to live alone the whole year in the country.
It is the day following the one when Falco crowned Mongibello. Donna Silvia is sitting on the grass-plot with her distaff; she is alone; there is no one else at home on the farm. A beggar comes softly creeping in through the gate.
He is an old man with a long, hooked nose which hangs down over his upper lip, a bushy beard, pale eyes with red eyelids. They are the ugliest eyes imaginable; the whites are yellowish, and they squint. The beggar is tall and very thin; he moves his body when he walks, so that it looks as if he wriggled forward. He walks so softly that Donna Silvia does not hear him. The first thing she notices is his shadow, which, slender as a snake, bends down towards her.
She looks up when she sees the shadow. Then the beggar bows to her and asks for a dish of macaroni.
“I have macaroni on the fire,” says Donna Silvia. “Sit down and wait; you shall have your fill.”
The beggar sits down beside Donna Silvia, and after a while they begin to chat. They soon talk of Falco.
“Is it true that you let your sons work on Donna Micaela’s railway?” says the beggar.
Donna Silvia bites her lips together, and nods an assent.
“You are a brave woman, Donna Silvia. Falco might be revenged on you.”
“Then he can take revenge,” says Donna Silvia. “But I will not obey one who has killed my father. He forced him to escape from prison in Augusta, and my father was captured and shot.”
And so saying she rises and goes in to get the food.
As she stands in the kitchen she sees the beggar through the window, sitting and rocking on the stone-bench. He is not quiet for a moment. And in front of him writhes his shadow, slender and lithe as a snake.
Donna Silvia remembers what she had once heard Caterina, who had been married to Falco’s brother, Nino, say. “How will you recognize Falco after twenty years?” people had asked her. “Should I not recognize the man with the snake-shadow?” she answered. “He will never lose it, long as he may live.”
Donna Silvia presses her hand on her heart. There in her yard Falco Falcone is sitting. He has come to be revenged because her sons work on the railway. Will he set fire to the house, or will he murder her?
Donna Silvia is shaking in every limb as she serves up her macaroni.
Falco begins to find the time long as he sits on the stone-bench. A little dog comes up to him and rubs against him. Falco feels in his pocket for a piece of bread, but he finds only a stone, which he throws to the dog.
The dog runs after the stone and brings it back to Falco. Falco throws it again. The dog takes the stone again, but now he runs away with it.
Falco remembers that it is the stone he picked up on Mongibello, and goes after the dog to get it back. He whistles to the dog, and it comes to him instantly. “Drop the stone!” The dog puts its head on one side and will not drop it. “Ah, give me the stone, rascal!” The dog shuts its mouth. It has no stone. “Let me see; let me see!” says Falco. He bends the dog’s head back and forces it to open its mouth. The stone lies far in under the gums, and Falco tries to force it out. Then the dog bites him, till the blood flows.
Falco is terrified. He goes in to Donna Silvia. “I hope your dog is healthy,” he says.
“My dog? I have no dog. It is dead.”—“But the one running outside?”—“I do not know which one you mean,” she says.
Falco says nothing more, nor does he do Donna Silvia any harm. He simply goes his way, frightened; he thinks that the dog is mad, and he fears hydrophobia.
One evening Donna Micaela sits alone in the music-room. She has put out the lamp and opened the balcony doors. She likes to listen to the street in the evening and at night. No more smiths and stone-cutters and criers are heard. There is song, laughter, whispering, and mandolins.
Suddenly she sees a dark hand laid on the balcony railing. The hand drags up after it an arm and a head; within a moment a whole human being swings himself into the balcony. She sees him plainly, for the street-lamps are still burning. He is a small, broad-shouldered, bearded fellow, dressed like a shepherd, with leather sandals, a slouch hat, and an umbrella tied to his back. As soon as he is on his feet he snatches his gun from his shoulder and comes into the room with it in his hands.
She sits still without giving a sign of life. There is no time either to summon help or to escape. She hopes that the man will take what he wishes to take, and go away without noticing her, sitting back in the dark room.
The man puts his gun down between his legs, and she hears him scratching with a match. She shuts her eyes. He will believe that she is asleep.
When the robber gets the match lighted, he sees her instantly. He coughs to wake her. As she remains motionless, he creeps over to her and carefully stretches out a finger towards her arm. “Do not touch me! do not touch me!” she screams, and can no longer sit still. The man draws back instantly. “Dear Donna Micaela, I only wanted to wake you.”
There she sits and shakes with terror, and he hears how she is sobbing. “Dear signora, dear signora!” he says. “Light a candle that I can see where you are,” she cries. He scratches a new match, lifts the shade and chimney off the lamp, and lights it as neatly as a servant. He places himself again by the door, as far from her as possible. Suddenly he goes out on the balcony with his gun. “Now the signora cannot be afraid any longer.”
But when she does not cease weeping he says: “Signora, I am Passafiore; I come with a message to you from Falco. He no longer wishes to destroy your railway.”
“Have you come to jest with me?” she says.
Then the man answers, almost weeping: “Would God that it were a jest! God! that Falco were the man he has been!”
He tells her how Falco went up Mongibello and crowned its top. But the mountain had not liked it; it had now overthrown Falco. A single little piece of pumice-stone from Mongibello had been enough to overthrow him.
“It is all over with Falco,” says Passafiore. “He goes about in the quarry, and waits to fall ill. For a week he has neither slept nor eaten. He is not sick yet, but the wound in his hand does not heal either. He thinks that he has the poison in his body. ‘Soon I shall be a mad dog,’ he says. No wine nor food tempt him. He takes no pleasure in my praising his deeds. ‘What is that to talk about?’ he says. ‘I shall end my life like a mad dog.’”
Donna Micaela looked sharply at Passafiore. “What do you wish me to do about it? You cannot mean that I am to go down into the quarry to Falco Falcone?”
Passafiore looks down and dares not answer anything.
She explains to him what that same Falco has made her suffer. He has frightened away her workmen. He has set himself against her dearest wish.
All of a sudden Passafiore falls on his knees. He dares not go a step nearer to her than he is, but he falls on his knees.
He implores her to understand the importance of it. She does not know, she does not understand who Falco is. Falco is a great man. Ever since Passafiore was a little child he has heard of him. All his life long he has longed to come out to the quarry and live with him. All his cousins went to Falco; his whole race were with him. But the priest had set his heart that Passafiore should not go. He apprenticed him to a tailor; only think, to a tailor! He talked to him, and said that he should not go. It was such a terrible sin to live like Falco. Passafiore had also struggled against it for many years for Don Matteo’s sake. But at last he had not been able to resist; he had gone to the quarry. And now he has not been with Falco more than a year before the latter is quite destroyed. It is as if the sun had gone out in the sky. His whole life is ruined.
Passafiore looks at Donna Micaela. He sees that she is listening to him, and understands him.
He reminds Donna Micaela that she had helped a jettatore and an adulteress. Why should she be hard to a brigand? The Christ-image in San Pasquale gave her everything she asked for. He was sure that she prayed to the Christchild to protect the railway from Falco. And he had obeyed her; he had made Mongibello’s pumice-stone break Falco’s might. But now, would she not be gracious, and help them, that Falco might get his health again, and be an honor to the land, as he had been before?
Passafiore succeeds in moving Donna Micaela. All at once she understands how it is with the old brigand in the dark caves of the quarry. She sees him there, waiting for madness. She thinks how proud he has been, and how broken and crushed he now is. No, no; no one ought to suffer so. It is too much, too much.
“Passafiore,” she exclaims, “tell me what you wish. I will do whatever I can. I am no longer afraid. No, I am not at all afraid.”
“Donna Micaela, we have begged Falco to go to the Christchild and ask for grace. But Falco will not believe in the image. He will not do anything but sit still and wait for the disaster. But to-day, when I implored him to go and pray, he said: ‘You know who sits and waits for me in the old house opposite the church. Go to her, and ask her if she will give me the privilege to go by her into the church. If she gives her permission, then I shall believe in the image, and say my prayers to him.’”
“Well?” questions Donna Micaela.
“I have been to old Caterina, and she has given her permission. ‘He shall be allowed to go into San Pasquale without my killing him,’ she said.”
Passafiore is still on his knees.
“Has Falco already been to the church?” asks Donna Micaela.
Passafiore moves somewhat nearer. He wrings his hands in despair. “Donna Micaela, Falco is very ill. It is not alone that about the dog; he was ill before.” And Passafiore struggles with himself before he can say it out. At last he acknowledges that although Falco is a very great man, he sometimes has attacks of madness. He had not spoken of old Caterina alone; he had said: “If Caterina will let me go into the church, and if Donna Micaela Alagona comes down into the quarry and gives me her hand, and leads me to the church, I will go to the image.” And from that no one had been able to move him. Donna Micaela, who was greatest and holiest of women, must come to him, or he would not go.
When Passafiore has finished, he remains kneeling with bowed head. He dares not look up.
But Donna Micaela does not hesitate a second, since there has been question of the Christ-image. She seems not to think of Falco’s being already mad. She does not say a word of her terror. Her faith in the image is such that she answers softly, like a subdued and obedient child:—
“Passafiore, I will go with you.”
She follows him as if walking in her sleep. She does not hesitate to go with him up Etna. She does not hesitate to climb down the steep cliffs into the quarry. She comes, pale as death, but with shining eyes, to the old brigand in his hole in the cliff and gives him her hand. He rises up, ghastly pale as she, and follows her. They do not seem like human beings, but like spectres. They move on towards their goal in absolute silence. Their own identity is dead, but a mightier spirit guides and leads them.
Even the day after it seems like a fairy tale to Donna Micaela that she has done such a thing. She is sure that her own compassion, or pity, or love could never have made her go down into the brigands’ cave at night if a strange power had not led her.
While Donna Micaela is in the robber’s cave, old Caterina sits at her window, and waits for Falco. She has consented, almost without their needing to ask her.
“He shall go in peace to the church,” she says. “I have waited for him twenty years, but he shall go to the church.”
Soon Falco comes by, walking with Donna Micaela’s hand in his. Passafiore and Biagio follow him. Falco is bent; it is plain that he is old and feeble. He alone goes into the church; the others remain outside.
Old Caterina has seen him very plainly, but she has not moved. She sits silent all the time Falco is inside the church. Her niece, who lives with her, believes that she is praying and thanking God because she has been able to conquer her thirst for revenge.
At last Caterina asks her to open a window. “I wish to see if he still has his snake shadow,” she says.
But she is gentle and friendly. “Take the gun, if you wish,” she says. And her niece moves the gun over to the other side of the table.
At last Falco comes from the church. The moonlight falls on his face, and Caterina sees that he is unlike the Falco she remembered. The terrible moroseness and arrogance are no longer visible in his face. He comes bent and broken; he almost inspires her with pity.
“He helps me,” he says aloud to Passafiore and Biagio. “He has promised to help me.”
The brigands wish to go, but Falco is so happy that he must first tell them of his joy.
“I feel no buzzing in my head; there is no burning, no uneasiness. He is helping me.”
His comrades take him by the hand to lead him away.
Falco goes a few steps, then stops again. He straightens himself up, and at the same time moves his body so that the snake shadow writhes and twists on the wall.
“I shall be quite well, quite well,” he says.
The men drag him away, but it is too late.
Caterina’s eyes have fallen on the snake shadow. She can control herself no longer; she throws herself across the table, takes the gun, shoots and kills Falco. She had not intended to do it, but when she saw him it was impossible for her to let him go. She had cherished the thought of revenge for twenty years. It took the upper hand over her.
“Caterina, Caterina,” screams her niece.
“He only asked me to be allowed to go in peace into the church,” answers the old woman.
Old Biagio lays Falco’s body straight, and says with a grim look:—
“He would be quite well; quite well.”
XI
VICTORY
Far back in ancient days the great philosopher Empedokles lived in Sicily. He was the most beautiful and the most perfect of men; so wonderful and so wise that the people regarded him as an incarnate god.
Empedokles owned a country-place on Etna, and one evening he prepared a feast there for his friends. During the repast he spoke such words that they cried out to him: “Thou art a god, Empedokles; thou art a god!”
During the night Empedokles thought: “You have risen as high as you can rise on earth. Now die, before adversity and feebleness take hold of you.” And he wandered up to the summit of Etna and threw himself into the burning crater. “When no one can find my body,” he thought, “the people will say that I have been taken up alive to the gods.”
The next morning his friends searched for him through the villa and on the mountain. They too came up to the crater, and there they found by the crater’s mouth Empedokles’ sandal. They understood that Empedokles had sought death in the crater in order to be counted among the immortals.
He would have succeeded had not the mountain cast up his shoe.
But on account of that story Empedokles’ name has never been forgotten, and many have wondered where his villa could have been situated. Antiquaries and treasure-seekers have looked for it; for the villa of the wonderful Empedokles was naturally filled with marble statues, bronzes, and mosaics.
Donna Micaela’s father, Cavaliere Palmeri, had set his heart on solving the problem of the villa. Every morning he mounted his pony, Domenico, and rode away to search for it. He was armed as an investigator, with a scraper in his belt, a spade at his side, and a big knapsack on his back.
Every evening, when Cavaliere Palmeri came home, he told Donna Micaela about Domenico. During the years that they had ridden about on Etna, Domenico had become an antiquary. Domenico turned from the road as soon as he caught sight of a ruin. He stamped on the ground in places where excavations should be made. He snorted scornfully and turned away his head if any one showed him a counterfeit piece of old money.
Donna Micaela listened with great patience and interest. She was sure that in case that villa finally did let itself be found Domenico would get all the glory of the discovery.
Cavaliere Palmeri never asked his daughter about her undertaking. He never showed any interest in the railway. It seemed almost as if he were ignorant that she was working for it.
It was not singular however; he never showed interest in anything that concerned his daughter.
One day, as they both sat at the dining-table, Donna Micaela all at once began to talk of the railway.
She had won a victory, she said; she had finally won a victory.
He must hear what news she had received that day. It was not merely to be a railway between Catania and Diamante, as she first had thought; it was to be a railway round the whole of Etna.
By Falco’s death she had not only been rid of Falco himself, but now the people believed also that the great Mongibello and all the saints were on her side. And so there had arisen an agitation of the people to make the railway an actuality. Contributions were signed in all the towns of Etna. A company was formed. To-day the concession had come; to-morrow the work was to begin in earnest.
Donna Micaela was excited; she could not eat. Her heart swelled with joy and thankfulness. She could not help talking of the tremendous enthusiasm that had seized the people. She spoke with tears in her eyes of the Christchild in the church of San Pasquale.
It was touching to see how her face shone with hope. It was as if she had, besides the happiness of which she was speaking, a whole world of bliss in expectation.
That evening she felt that Providence had guided her well and happily. She perceived that Gaetano’s imprisonment had been the work of God to lead him back to faith. He would be set free by the miracles of the little image, and that would convert him so that he would become a believer as before. And she might be his. How good God was!
And while this great bliss stirred within her, her father sat opposite her quite cold and indifferent.
“It was very extraordinary,” was all he said.
“You will come to-morrow to the ceremony of the laying of the foundations?”
“I do not know; I have my investigations.”
Donna Micaela began to crumble her bread rather hastily. Her patience was exhausted. She had not asked him to share her sorrows, but her joys; he must share her joys!
All at once the shackles of submission and fear, which had bound her ever since the time of his imprisonment, broke.
“You who ride so much about Etna,” she said with a very quiet voice, “must have also come to Gela?”
The cavaliere looked up and seemed to search his memory. “Gela, Gela?”
“Gela is a village of a hundred houses, which is situated on the southern side of Monte Chiaro, quite at its foot,” continued Donna Micaela, with the most innocent expression. “It is squeezed in between Simeto and the mountain, and a branch of the river generally flows through the principal street of Gela so that it is very unusual to be able to pass dry-shod through the village. The roof of the church fell in during the last earthquake, and it has never been mended, for Gela is quite destitute. Have you really never heard of Gela?”
Cavaliere Palmeri answered with inexpressible solemnity: “My investigations have taken me up the mountain. I have not thought of looking for the great philosopher’s villa in Gela.”
“But Gela is an interesting town,” said Donna Micaela, obstinately. “They have no separate out-houses there. The pigs live on the lower floor, the people one flight up. There is an endless number of pigs in Gela. They thrive better than the people, for the people are almost always sick. Fever is always raging there; malaria never leaves it. It is so damp that the cellars are always under water, and it is wrapped in swamp mists every night. In Gela there are no shops and no police, nor post-office, nor doctor, nor apothecary. Six hundred people are living there forgotten and brutalized. You have never heard of Gela?” She looked honestly surprised.
Cavaliere Palmeri shook his head. “Of course I have heard the name—”
Donna Micaela cast a questioning glance on her father. She then bent quickly forward towards him, and drew out of his breastpocket a small, bent knife, such a knife as is used to prune grape-vines.
“Poor Empedokles,” she said, and all at once her whole face sparkled with fun. “You may believe you have mounted to the gods, but Etna always throws up your shoe.”
Cavaliere Palmeri sank back as if shot.
“Micaela!” he said, feebly fencing like some one who does not know how he shall defend himself.
But she was instantly as serious and innocent as before. “I have been told,” she said, “that Gela a few years ago was on the way to ruin. All the people there grow grapes, and when the phylloxera came and destroyed their vineyards, they almost starved to death. The Agricultural Society sent them some of those American plants that are not affected by the phylloxera. The people of Gela set them out, but all the plants died. How could the people of Gela know how to tend American vines? Well, some one came and taught them.”
“Micaela!”—it came almost like a wail. Donna Micaela thought that her father already looked like a conquered man, but she continued as if she had noticed nothing.
“Some one came,” she said with strong emphasis, “and he had had new vines sent out. He began to plant them in their vineyards. They laughed at him; they said that he was mad. But look, his vines grew and lived; they did not die. And he has saved Gela.”
“I do not think that your story is entertaining, Micaela,” said Cavaliere Palmeri with an attempt to interrupt her.
“It is quite as entertaining as your investigations,” she said, calmly. “But I will tell you something. One day I went into your room to get a book on antiquities. Then I found that all your bookshelves were full of pamphlets about the phylloxera, about the cultivation of grapes, about wine-making.”
The cavaliere twisted on his chair like a worm. “Be silent; be silent!” he said feebly. He was more embarrassed than when he was accused of theft.
Now all the suppressed fun shone once more in her eyes.
“I sometimes looked at the letters you sent off,” she continued. “I wished to see with what learned men you corresponded. It surprised me that the letters were always addressed to presidents and secretaries of Agricultural Societies.”
Cavaliere Palmeri was unable to utter a word. Donna Micaela enjoyed his helplessness more than can be described.
She looked him steadily in the eyes. “I do not believe that Domenico has yet learned to recognize a ruin,” she said with emphasis. “The dirty children of Gela play with him every day, and feed him with water-cresses. Domenico seems to be a god in Gela, to say nothing of his—”
Cavaliere Palmeri seemed to have an idea.
“Your railway,” he said; “what did you say about your railway? Perhaps I really can come to-morrow.”
Donna Micaela did not listen to him. She took up her pocket-book.
“I have here a counterfeit old coin,” she said,—“a ‘Demarata’ of nickel. I bought it to show Domenico. He is going to snort.”
“Listen, child!”
She did not answer his attempts to make amends. Now the power was hers. It would take more than that to pacify her.
“Once I opened your knapsack to look at your antiquities. The only thing there was an old grape-vine.”
She was full of sparkling gayety.
“Child, child!”
“What is it to be called? It does not seem to be investigating. Is it perhaps charity; is it perhaps atonement—”
Cavaliere Palmeri struck with his clenched fist on the table so that the glasses and plates rang. It was unbearable. A dignified and solemn old gentleman could not endure such mockery. “As surely as you are my daughter, you must be silent now.”
“Your daughter!” she said, and her gayety was gone in an instant; “am I really your daughter? The children in Gela are allowed to caress at least Domenico, but I—”
“What do you wish, Micaela, what do you want?”
They looked at one another, and their eyes simultaneously filled with tears.
“I have no one but you,” she murmured.
Cavaliere Palmeri opened his arms unconditionally to her. She rose hesitatingly; she did not know if she saw right.
“I know how it is going to be,” he said, grumblingly; “not one minute will I have to myself.”
“To find the villa?”
“Come here and kiss me, Micaela! To-night is the first time since we left Catania that you have been irresistible.”
When she threw her arms about him it was with a hoarse, wild cry which almost frightened him.
