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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TWO SONGS • 117
Don Ferrante liked that, and wished to hear her
talk so day in and day out. He was never tired
of listening, and Donna Micaela was very patient
with him.
But one day while she was chatting, Donna Elisa
came in. “Sister-in-law, if you happen to own the
* Legend of the Holy Virgin of Pompeii,’ will you
lend it to me ? “ she asked. — “ What, are you going
to begin to read?” asked Donna Micaela. —"The
saints preserve us! you know very well that I cannot
read. Gaetano is asking for it.”
Donna Micaela did not own the “Legend of the
Holy Virgin at Pompeii.” But she did not say so
to Donna Elisa; she went to her book-shelf and
took a little book, a collection of Sicilian
love-songs, and gave it to Donna Elisa, who carried the
little book over to Gaetano.
But Donna Micaela had no sooner done so before
a lively regret seized her. And she asked herself
what she had meant by behaving so, — she who had
been helped by the little Christ-child?
She blushed with shame as she thought that she
had marked one of the little songs, one that ran
thus:—
“ For one single question’s answer longing,
Night I asked, and asked the daytime’s burning;
Watched the flight of birds, and swift clouds thronging,
In water strove to read the hot lead’s turning;
Leaves I counted plucked from many flowers,
Lured dark prophets forth, and sought their powers,
Till at last I called on Heaven above me:
’ Doth he love me still, as once he loved me ? ’”
She had hoped to get an answer to it. But it would
serve her right if no answer came. It would serve
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