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 EE AST OF SAN SEBASTIANO 177
Then he had seen Don Gaetano Alagona on the
bench of the accused with a lot of wild fellows who
were worse than brutes.
He told how beautiful Gaetano had been. He
had seemed like a god to little Gandolfo beside
those terrible people about him. And he described
those bandits with their wild-beast faces, their
coarse hair, their clumsy limbs. He said that no
one could look into their eyes without a quiver of
the heart.
Yet, in all his beauty, Don Gaetano was more
terrible than those people. Gandolfo did not know
how they dared to sit beside him on the bench.
Under his frowning brows his eyes flashed at his
fellow-prisoners with a look which would have killed
their souls, if they like others had possessed such a
thing.
“ * Who are you,’ he seemed to ask, 1 who dare
to turn to plundering and murder while you call on
sacred liberty? Do you know what you have done?
Do you know that on account of your devices I am
now a prisoner? And it was I who would have
saved Sicily!’ “ And every glance he cast at them
was a death warrant.
His eyes fell on all the things that the bandits
had stolen and that were now piled up on a table.
He recognized them. Could he help knowing the
clocks and the silver dishes from the
summer-palace? could he help knowing the relics and coins
that had been stolen from his English patroness?
And when he had recognized the things, he turned
to his fellow-prisoners with a terrible smile. “’ You
heroes! you heroes!’ said the smile; ’you have
stolen from two women! ’ ”
12
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