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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A yETTA TORE
261
Dear friend, Donna Micaela, — As I have heard that
you intend to build a railway along Etna, I wish to tell you
that with my consent it will never be. I tell you this now
so that you need not waste any more money and trouble on
the matter.
Enlightened and most nobly born signora, I remain
Your humble servant,
Falco Falcone.
Passafiero, my sister’s son, has written this letter.
Donna Micaela flung the dirty letter away. It
seemed to her as if it were the death sentence of the
railway, but to-day she would not think of it. Now
she had her bazaar.
The moment after, her road-builders, Giovanni
and Carmelo, appeared. They wished to counsel
her to get an engineer. She probably did not know
what kind of ground there was on Etna. There
was, first, lava; then there was ashes; and then lava
again. Should the road be laid on the top layer of
lava, or on the bed of ashes, or should they dig down
still deeper? About how firm a foundation did a
railway need ? They could not go ahead without a
man who understood that.
Donna Micaela dismissed them. To-morrow,
tomorrow; she had no time to think of it to-day.
Immediately after, Donna Elisa came with a still
worse piece of news.
There was a quarter in Diamante where a
poverty-stricken and wild people lived. Those poor souls
had been frightened when they heard of the railway.
“There will be an eruption of Etna and an
earthquake,” they had said. Great Etna will endure no
fetters. It will shake off the whole railway. And
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