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228 . the miracles of antichrist
him. "Father Elia," she said, "you ought to go
to the syndic."
" Think you I have waited for you to tell me that ?
Don’t you know that my first thought was to go to
the syndic ? " He spoke sternly and distinctly, so that
the laborers ceased hammering, and listened,
thinking that some one had commenced to preach.
" I have told him that we blind singers form a
guild, and that the Jesuits opened their church for
us three hundred years ago and gave us the right to
assemble here to choose new members, and hear new
songs.
" And I told him that we were thirty in the guild
and that the holy Lucia is our patron saint; that we
never sing on the streets, but only in courtyards
and indoors, and that we sing saintly legends and
also dirges, but never a flippant song, and that the
Jesuit, Father Succi, opened the church to us for
the reason that the blind are Our Lord’s singers.
" I told him that some of us are recitatori, who
can recite the ancient songs, and others are
trova-tori, who invent new ones. I told him that we
gladden many on this noble isle. I asked him why
he would not suffer us to live. For the homeless
one must perish.
" I told him that it is our custom to wander from
city to city all over the great Etna, but the
Lucia-church, ijti Diamante, is our home, and here mass is
said for us every morning. Why did he wish to
deny us the comfort of the Word of God ?
" I told him that once the Jesuits changed their
mood toward us, and wanted to drive-us away from
their church, but they did not succeed. We received
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