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 manœuvre 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.