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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272 THE MIRACLES OF ANTICHRIST ’
on the other hand had to grow grapes and mine
sulphur, because the Geraci were interested in
agriculture and the working of mines. When a Geraci
received an inheritance some old relative of the
Corvaja had to lie down and die, so that the honor
of the family should not be hazarded.
Palazzo Geraci was always kept busy counting its
servants, in order not to let Palazzo Corvaja lead. But
not only the servants, but the braid on the caps, the
harnesses and the horses. The pheasant feather on
the heads of the Corvaja leaders must not be an inch
higher than that on the Geraci. Their goats must
increase in the same proportion, and the Geraci’s
oxen must have just as long horns as the Corvaja’s.
In our time one might have expected an end to
the enmity between the two palaces. In our time
there are just as few Corvaja in the one palace as
there are Geraci in the other.
The Geraci courtyard is now a dirty hole, which
contains donkey-stalls and pig-styes and chicken
houses. On the high steps rags are dried and the
bas-reliefs are broken and mouldy. In one of the
passage-ways a trade in vegetables is carried on, and
in the other shoes are made. The gate-keeper looks
like the most ragged of beggars, and from cellar to
attic live none but poor and penniless people.
It is no better in Palazzo Corvaja. There is not
a vestige of the mosaic left in the big hall; only
bare, empty arches. No beggars live there, because
the palace is principally in ruins. It no longer
raises its beautiful fagade with the carved windows
to the bright Sicilian sky.
But the enmity between Geraci and Corvaja is not
over. In the old days it was not only the noble
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