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sirocco
135
Giannita tried to calm her. " We have no
socialists in Diamante," she said. " No one thinks of
rebelling in Diamante." But Donna Micaela asked her
if she did not know what it signified, that the old
spinstresses sat in their dark corners telling of the
great hero robbers, and of the famous Palermo
fisherman, Guiseppi Alesi, whom they called the Masaniello
of Sicily ?
If only the socialists could get the insurrection
started, Diamante would join also. All Diamante
knew that something dreadful was pending. One
had seen the great black monk haunting Palazzo
Geraci. Owls screeched all night long, and some
declared that the cocks crowed at sunset and were
silent at daybreak.
One day in November Diamante was suddenly
filled with terrible people: men with beast-like faces
and bristly beards and with large hands on
tremendously long arms. Some of them wore wide,
fluttering linen clothes, and one seemed to recognize in
them famous brigands, and lately-released
galley-slaves.
Giannita related that all these wild people haunted
the inland mountains, and had crossed Simeto and
come to Diamante, because of a rumor that the
insurrection had already broken out. But when all had
been quiet and the carabineer barracks full of people,
they had departed.
Donna Micaela was thinking of these people
constantly, and expecting that they would be her
murderers. She seemed to see their fluttering linen
clothes and beastly faces. She knew they were
lurking in their caves, waiting for the day when they
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