Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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PAN EM ET CIR CENSES
195
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.
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