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mongibello
33
and a bit of city wall. Afterwards it ran round the
mountain spirally and threw down the houses. Poor
people’s houses were allowed to tumble down as
they would and could. There was no time for
anything else. One could not ask anything better than
crowding and confusion and crooked streets.
Indeed one could not. The principal street went in a
spiral round the mountain, just as the city had run,
and all along the road it had flung a church here and
a palace there. But some sort of order there had
been nevertheless, for the best was up highest.
When the city had reached the summit of the
mountain, it had laid out a market-place, and there it had
set down the court-house and the cathedral, and the
old palazzo Geraci.
But if he, Gaetano Alagona, would accompany
her to Diamante, she would take him with her up
to the market-place on the top of the mountain and
show him the stretches of land the ancient Alagonas
had owned on Etna and on the plains of
Catania, and where on the inland mountains they had
raised their strongholds. For up there one saw all
this and still more. One saw the whole sea.
It had not occurred to Gaetano that she had been
talking long, but Father Josef seemed impatient.
" Why, now, we have come to your own home,
Donna Elisa," he said gently.
But she assured Father Josef that she had nothing
worth seeing. First of all she wished to show
Gaetano the large house at the corso, called the
summer palace. It was not as beautiful as the palazzo
Geraci, but it was large, and when the Alagonas were
still rich and prosperous, they used to come there in
3
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