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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MONGIBELLO
27
“Monte Chiaro is on Etna, if you know where
Etna is.”
It sounded so anxious, as if it were too much to
ask that Gaetano should know anything about Etna.
And they laughed, all three, she and Father Josef
and Gaetano.
She seemed a different person after she had made
them laugh. “Will you come and see Diamante
and Etna and Monte Chiaro ?” she asked briskly.
“Etna you must see. It is the greatest mountain
in the world. Etna is a king, and the mountains
round about kneel before him, and do not dare to lift
their eyes to his face.”
Then she told many tales about Etna. She
thought perhaps that it would tempt him.
And it was really true that Gaetano had not
thought before what kind of a mountain Etna was.
He had not remembered that it had snow on its
head, oak forests in its beard, vineyards about its
waist, and that it stood in orange groves up to
its knees. And down it ran broad, black rivers.
Those streams were wonderful; they flowed without
a ripple; they heaved without a wind; the poorest
swimmer could cross them without a bridge. He
guessed that she meant lava. And she was glad
that he had guessed it. He was a clever boy. A
real Alagona!
And Etna was so big! Fancy that it took three
days to drive round it and three days to ride up to
the top and down again! And that there were fifty
towns beside Diamante on it, and fourteen great
forests, and two hundred small peaks, which were not
so small either, although Etna was so big that they
seemed as insignificant as a swarm of flies on a
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