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sirocco 141
As long as this autumn lasted one never felt a fresh
mountain breeze. The disastrous Sirocco blew
continually.
At times it came dry and filled with sand, and so
burning hot that it was necessary to close doors and
windows and remain in one’s rooms in order not to
perish.
But oftenest it came warm and damp and
oppressive. And the people never found any peace. Grief
never left them, and troubles heaped themselves
upon them as snow-drifts on the high mountains.
And anxiety came to Donna Micaela also, where
she constantly sat watching beside her aged husband,
Don Ferrante.
During that autumn she never heard laughter, never
a song. The people stole past each other, so full of
anger and despair that they seemed nigh stifling.
And she said to herself, that in all probability they
were dreaming of an insurrection. She understood
that they must rebel. It certainly would not help
any one, but they had no other means to resort to.
At the beginning of the autumn she had sat on her
balcony and listened to the people talking on the
street. They talked of nothing but the distress that
prevailed. We have had a bad year for wheat and
wine, there’s a crisis in sulphur and oranges, all
Sicily’s yellow gold has failed. What, then, shall
one live of?
And Donna Micaela knew that this was dreadful.
Wheat, wine, oranges and sulphur, all their yellow
gold.
She also began to comprehend that the misery was
so great that the people could not continue to bear
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