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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FRA FELICE’S LEGACY
23 7
The old man recognized Donna Elisa’s voice, and
he answered her, in his thick, old-man’s tones: —
“ Do you suppose that I have waited to have you
say that to me? Don’t you know that my first
thought was to go to the syndic?”
He spoke with such a hard and distinct voice that
the workmen stopped hammering and listened,
thinking some one had begun to preach.
“I told him that we blind singers are a company,
and that the Jesuits opened their church for us more
than three hundred years ago, and gave us the right
to gather here to select new members and try new
songs.
“And I said to him that there are thirty of us in
the company; and that the holy Lucia is our
patroness ; and that we never sing in the streets, only in
courts and in rooms; and that we sing legends of
the saints and mourning-songs, but never a wanton
song; and that the Jesuit, Father Succi, opened
the church for us, because the blind are Our Lord’s
singers.
“I told him that some of us are recitatori, who
can sing the old songs, but others are trovatori, who
compose new ones. I said to him that we give
pleasure to many on the noble isle. I asked him
why he wished to deprive us of life. For the
homeless cannot live.
“ I said to him that we wander from town to town
through all Etna, but the church of Lucia is our
home, and mass is held here for us every morning.
Why should he refuse us the comfort of God’s word?
“I told him that the Jesuits once changed their
attitude towards us and wished to drive us away
from their church, but they did not succeed. We
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