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sirocco
141
It was not necessary for the aged Assunta to say
any more. Donna Micaela broke out into sobs, and
all the women joined in filling the room with
lamentations. For no grief is like that of losing one’s
husband. The widows remembered what they had
lost, and they who still had husbands thought of the
time when they should no longer stir on the street
because no man accompanied them, when they would
be left to loneliness, poverty and oblivion, when
they would be of no importance, when they would be
of the world’s outcasts, because they had no longer
a husband, because nothing gave them a right to live
any more.
It was towards the end of December, during the
days between Christmas and New Year.
There was still the same fear of an insurrection,
and one still heard the same alarming reports. It
was told that Falco Falcone had collected a band of
robbers in the quarry, and that he was only waiting
for the day fixed upon for the insurrection to fall
upon Diamante and plunder it.
It was also told that in several of the small
mountain hamlets the people had rebelled, torn down the
custom stations at the city gates, and driven the
officers away. The troops, it was said, marched from
city to city, arresting doubtful persons and shooting
them down by the hundred.
Everybody said that one must fight. One could
not allow one’s self to be murdered by those Italians
without making resistance.
Meanwhile Donna Micaela sat, chained to her
father’s bedside, just as she had sat by Don Fer-
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