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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168 THE MIRACLES OF AJVTICHRIST
Donna Elisa, every one in penniless Diamante had
decorated along the whole street. In the street
above the house of the little Moor there was such an
array of flags that it looked like clothes hung out to
dry from the earth to the sky. Every house and
every arch carried flags, and across the streets were
hung ropes, from which fluttered pennant after
pennant.
At every tenth step the people of Diamante had
raised triumphal arches over the street. And over
every door stood the image of the saint, framed in
wreaths of yellow everlastings. The balconies were
covered with red quilts and bright-colored
tablecloths, and stiff garlands wound up the walls.
There were so many flowers and leaves that no
one could understand how they had been able to get
them all in January. Everything was crowned and
wreathed with flowers. The brooms had crowns of
crocuses, and each door-knocker a bunch of hyacinths.
In windows stood pictures with monograms, and
inscriptions of blood-red anemones.
And between those decorated houses the stream of
people rolled as mighty as a rising river. It was
not the inhabitants of Diamante alone who were
honoring San Sebastiano. From all Etna came
yellow carts, beautifully ornamented and painted,
drawn by horses in shining harness, and loaded
down with people. The sick, the beggars, the blind
singers came in great crowds. There were whole
trains of pilgrims, unhappy people, who now, after
their misfortunes, had some one to pray to.
Such numbers came that the people wondered how
they all would ever find room within the town walls.
There were people in the streets, people in the
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