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94 the miracles of antichrist.
know what the worst misfortune was ? Their
Madonna was so ugly. She was mouldering, and she
had never been a work of art. She was so
ill-looking, that one could not bear to look at her.
To have been fooled by all the thousand votive
things hanging in the chapel, to have been fooled by
all the legends told about her! To have wasted
three weeks in praying to her! Now see, why she
hadn’t been succored ! It was no Madonna, it was
no Madonna.
They walked along the road which runs round
Monte Chiaro below the city wall. The whole world
around them was white. White mist enwreathed
the foot of the mountain, and the almond-trees over
there on Etna were perfectly white. Now and then
they themselves passed under an almond-tree whose
glittering branches were so full of blossoms that
they appeared to have been dipped in a bath of
silver. The moonlight was so intense, that every
thing was deprived of its color, and became white.
One might almost wonder that one could not feel it,
that it gave no heat, that the eyes were not
dazzled.
Donna Micaela wondered if it was the moonlight,
which subdued Gaetano, so that he did not seize her
and throw her down into Simeto, when she
blasphemed the black Madonna.
He walked calmly and silently by her side, but she
was afraid of what he might do. Yet in spite of her
fear she could not persuade herself to keep silent.
What still remained to be told was most terrible.
She said that the whole day she had tried to think of
the real Madonna and had recalled all the images of
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