Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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THE BELLS OF SAN PASQUALE ’ 107
miserable rags, went and put on the light-green
velvet livery that he wears only on saints’ days and
on the king’s birthday. And no one could see him
sitting in the gateway dressed in that array without
being chilled with fear, for people understood that
the old man expected that no other than destruction
would march in through the gate he was guarding.
It was dreadful how people frightened one another.
Poor Torino, who had once been a man of means,
went from house to house and cried that now the
time had come when every one who had cheated and
beggared him would get his punishment. He went
into all the little shops along the Corso and struck
the counter with his hand, saying that now every
one in the town would get his sentence, because all
had connived to cheat him.
It was also terrifying to hear of the game of cards
at the Cafe Europa. There the same four had
played year after year at the same table, and no one
had ever thought that they could do anything else.
But now they suddenly let their cards fall, and
promised each other that if they survived the
horror of this day they would never touch them
again.
Donna Elisa’s shop was packed with people; to
propitiate the saints and to avert the menace, they
bought all the sacred things that she had to sell.
But Donna Elisa thought only of Gaetano, who was
away, and believed that San Pasquale was warning
her that he would be lost during the voyage. And
she took no pleasure in all the money that she was
earning.
When San Pasquale’s bells went on ringing the
whole afternoon people could hardly hold out.
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