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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62 THE MIR A CLES OF ANTICHRIST
VII
AFTER THE MIRACLE
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.”
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