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i so the miracles of* antichrist
sitting near could hear how his teeth chattered from
fright.
Finally when his turn came, and he rose and
commenced improvising, he was very deficient. He was
worse than any one had expected. He stumbled
through a couple of verses, but it was only a
repetition of what the others had said.
Then all at once he became’ silent and gasped for
breath. During that moment of hopeless despair he
grew suddenly strong. He straightened himself up
and a faint color rose to his cheeks.
" O, signori," said Gandolfo, " let me speak of
that of which I am always thinking! Let me tell of
that which I always see before me !"
And he began to relate freely and with great force
what he himself had seen. He told about how he,
who was a son of the town-hall keeper, had crept across
dark attics and lain hidden in one of the galleries of
the court that night, when the court-martial assembled
to judge the insurgents in Diamante.
He had then seen Don Gaetano Alagona on the
bench of the accused in company with a number of
wild fellows, who were worse than brutes.
He told about how handsome Gaetano had been.
To Gandolfo he had seemed like a god beside those
terrible people around him. And he described these
banditti with their beast-like faces, their coarse hair,
their uncouth limbs. He said they were such, that
to look into their eyes made one’s heart quiver.
Yet, in all his beauty, Don Gaetano was more
terrible than these people. Gandolfo knew not how
they dared to sit beside him on the bench. The
withering glances which flashed beneath his knit
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