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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VICTORY
319
of pigs in Gela. They thrive better than the
people, for the people are almost always sick.
Fever is always raging there; malaria never leaves
it. It is so damp that the cellars are always under
water, and it is wrapped in swamp mists every
night. In Gela there are no shops and no police,
nor post-office, nor doctor, nor apothecary. Six
hundred people are living there forgotten and
brutalized. You have never heard of Gela?” She looked
honestly surprised.
Cavaliere Palmeri shook his head. “Of course
I have heard the name —”
Donna Micaela cast a questioning glance on her
father. She then bent quickly forward towards
him, and drew out of his breastpocket a small, bent
knife, such a knife as is used to prune grape-vines.
“Poor Empedokles,” she said, and all at once her
whole face sparkled with fun. “You may believe
you have mounted to the gods, but Etna always
throws up your shoe.”
Cavaliere Palmeri sank back as if shot.
“Micaela! “ he said, feebly fencing like some one
who who does not know how he shall defend himself.
But she was instantly as serious and innocent as
before. “I have been told,” she said, “that Gela
a few years ago was on the way to ruin. All the
people there grow grapes, and when the phylloxera
came and destroyed their vineyards, they almost
starved to death. The Agricultural Society sent
them some of those American plants that are not
affected by the phylloxera. The people of Gela set
them out, but all the plants died. How could the
people of Gela know how to tend American vines?
Well, some one came and taught them.”
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