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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THE FEAST OF SAN SEJ5A S TIA NO 169
windows, people on the balconies. On the high
stone steps sat people, and the shops were full of
them. The big street-doors were thrown wide, and
in the openings chairs were arranged in a half-circle,
as in a theatre. There the house-owners sat with
their guests and looked at the passers-by.
The whole street was filled with an intoxicating
noise. It was not only the talking and laughter of
the people. There were also organ-grinders
standing and turning hand-organs big as pianos. There
were street-singers, and there were men and women
who declaimed Tasso in cracked, worn-out voices.
There were all kinds of criers, the sound of organs
streamed from all the churches, and in the square on
the summit of the mountain the town band played so
that it could be heard over all Diamante.
The joyous noise, and the fragrance of the flowers,
and the flapping of the flags outside Donna Micaela’s
window had power to wake her from her stupor.
She rose up, as if life had sent for her. “ I will not
die,” she said to herself. “I will try to live.”
She took her father’s arm and went out into the
street. She hoped that the life there would mount
to her head so that she might forget her sorrow.
“If I do not succeed,” she thought, “if I can find
no distraction, I must die.”
Now in Diamante there was a poor old
stonecutter, who had thought of earning a few soldi
during the festival. He had made a couple of small
busts out of lava, of San Sebastiano and of Pope Leo
XIII. And as he knew that many in Diamante
loved Gaetano, and grieved over his fate, he also
made a few portraits of him.
Just as Donna Micaela came out into the street
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