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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72 THE MIRACLES OF AJVTICHRIST
where the spider-webs were so thick that the nimble
lizards were almost held fast in them.
Don Matteo lifted the knocker, and knocked till
it thundered. All the women in the street began
to talk, and to question. All the washerwomen by
the fountain in the square dropped soap and wooden
clapper, and began to whisper, and ask, “What is
Don Matteo’s errand ? Why does Don Matteo knock
on the door of an old, haunted house, where nobody
dares to live except the strange signorina, whose
father is in prison ?”
But now Giannita opened the door for Don Matteo,
and conducted him through long passages, smelling
of mould and damp. In several places in the floor
the stones were loose, and Don Matteo could see
way down into the cellar, where great armies of rats
raced over the black earth floor.
As Don Matteo walked through the old house, he
lost his good-humor. He did not pass by a stairway
without suspiciously spying up it, and he could not
hear a rustle without starting. He was depressed
as before some misfortune. Don Matteo thought
of the little turbaned Moor who was said to show
himself in that house, and even if he did not see
him, he might be said to have felt him.
At last Giannita opened a door and showed the
priest into a room. The walls there were bare, as
in a stable; the bed was as narrow as a nun’s, and
over it hung a Madonna that was not worth thret
soldi. The priest stood and stared at the little
Madonna till the tears rose to his eyes.
While he stood so Signorina Palmeri came into
the room. She kept her head bent and moved slowly,
as if wounded. When the priest saw her he wished
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