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228 . the miracles of antichrist
to struggle with poverty, O, Signore, with Sicilian
poverty! What did she not distribute daily, and
what did she not give away during the festivals !
Carts drawn by two pairs of oxen, drove down to
Catania and came back laden with all sorts of
clothing. She was determined that all should have
whole clothes in the city where she reigned.
" But now, listen what happened to her, what
came of her struggle against poverty and of her
sovereign power and her palaces.
" She gave a banquet for the poor of Diamante,
and after the banquet a play at the Grecian theater.
It was what an emperor might have done. But who
had ever before heard of a woman doing such a
thing ?
" She invited all the poor. There were the two
blind women from the hotel gate and old Assunta
from the cathedral steps. There was the man from
the post-office, who had his chin done up in a red
handkerchief on account of cancer of the face; and
the idiot, who opens the iron portals of the Grecian
theater, was there. All the donkey-boys were there,
and the brothers without hands, who blew up a
bomb in their childhood and lost their fingers; and
there were the invalid with the wooden leg and the
old chairmaker, who had become too old to work.
" It was wonderful to see them crawl out of their
holes, all the poor of Diamante. The old women
who sit at their distaffs in the dark lanes were
there, and the organ grinder who has an instrument
as large as a church organ and a wandering young
mandolin player from Naples filled with all sorts
of deviltry. All those who had eye diseases and the
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