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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198 THE MIR A CLES OF ANTICHRIST
with an equal. They behaved to her as guests to
their hostess. “To-day I do you the honor to come
to you; to-morrow you do me the honor to come to
me. So and not otherwise.” She stood on the high
steps of the town-hall and looked down at all the
tables. And when the old chair-maker, who sat at
the head of the table, had got his glass filled, he
rose, bowed to her and said: “ I drink to your
prosperity, signorina.”
So did they all. They laid their hands on their
hearts and bowed to her. It would have perhaps
been good for her if she had met with such chivalry
earlier in life. Why had the men in her native land
let her forget that women exist to be worshipped?
Here they all looked as if they were burning with
a quiet adoration. Thus are women treated in our
noble island. What did they not give in return for
the food and the wine that she had offered them?
They gave youth and light-heartedness and all the
dignity of being worth coveting. They made
speeches for her. “ Noble-hearted signorina, you
who have come to us from over the sea, you who
love Sicily,” and so on, and so on. She showed
that she could blush. She no longer hid her power
to smile. When they had finished speaking, the
lips of the English signorina began to tremble.
She became twenty years younger. It was what she
needed.
The donkey-boy was there, who carries the
English ladies up to Tre Castagni, and who always falls
in love with them before he parts from them. Now
his eyes were suddenly opened to the great
benefactress. It is not only a slender, delicate body
and a soft cheek that are worthy to be adored, but
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