Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Book II - IX. Palazzo Geraci and Palazzo Corvaja
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’palazzo geraci and palazzo corvaja 279
stories to them. " It is told, and once upon a time,"
she said.
So the children were told about the Christ-child,
which transformed itself to roses and lilies when the
Madonna met one of Herod’s soldiers, who had
received command to murder all children. And
they were told the legend about how the
Christ-child once sat making birds out of clay, and how it
clapped its hands and gave the clay cuckoo’s wings to
fly away with, when a bad boy wanted to break them.
While the elderly lady was talking, many children
gathered around her, but grown-up people came too.
It was Saturday night, so that the field laborers came
home from their work in the fields. Most of them
stopped at Corvaja’s well to get a drink of water
before going home. Hearing that legends were
being told there, they tarried to listen. The two
ladies were soon surrounded by a dark wall of coarse
black mantles and slouched hats.
Suddenly the old lady said to the children : " Do
you like the Christ-child ? "—"Yes, yes," they said,
and their large, dark eyes sparkled. " You would
no doubt, like to see it?"—"Yes, we would."
The lady threw back her mantle and showed the
children a little image of Christ in a swaddle beset
with rings and with a gold crown on its head, and
gold shoes on its feet. " Here it is," she said. " I
have taken it with me to show you."
The children were enraptured. They first folded
their hands before the image’s earnest face, then
they commenced to throw kisses at it.
"You think it beautiful, do you not? "said the
old lady.
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