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
• 121
one laughed. The women courtesied, and the men
bowed as solemnly as if the carriage had been a
hundred years younger. And Donna Micaela could
not detect a smile on any face.
No one in all Diamante would have wished to
laugh; for every one knew how Don Ferrante treated
Donna Micaela. They knew how he loved her, and
how he wept if she left him for a single minute.
They knew, too, that he tormented her with jealousy,
and that he trampled her hats to pieces, if they
became her, and never gave her money for new
dresses, because no other was to find her beautiful,
and love her. But all the time he told her that she
was so ugly that no one but he could bear to look at
her face. And because every one in Diamante knew
it all, no one laughed. Laugh at her, sitting and
chatting with a sick man! They are pious
Christians in Diamante, and not barbarians.
So the gala-carriage in its faded glory drove up
and down the Corso in Diamante during the hour
between five and six. And in Diamante it drove
quite alone, for there were no other fine carriages
there; but people knew that at that same time all
the carriages in Rome drove to Monte Pincio, all
those in Naples to the Via Nazionale, and all in
Florence to the Cascine, and all in Palermo to La
Favorita.
But when the carriage approached the Porta Etnea
for the third time, a merry sound of horns was heard
from the road outside.
And through the gate swung a big, high coach in
the English style.
It was meant to look old-fashioned also. The
postilion riding on the off leader had leather trousers,
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