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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THE LADY WITH THE IRON RING 227
Over the black lava glided a railway train on
newly laid shining rails. It was a festival train;
flags waved along the road; there were wreaths
on the carriages; the seats were covered with purple
cushions. At the stations the people stood and
shouted: “ Long live the king! long live the queen !
long live the new railway! ”
She heard it so well; she herself was on the train.
Ah, how honored, how honored she was! She was
summoned before the king and queen; and they
thanked her for the new railway. “ Ask a favor of
us, princess! “ said the king, giving her the title
that the ladies of the race of Alagona had formerly
borne.
“ Sire,” she answered, as people answer in stories,
“ give freedom to the last Alagona! ”
And it was granted to her. The king could not
say no to a prayer from her who had built that fine
railway, which was to give riches to all Etna.
When Donna Micaela lifted her arm so that her
dress-sleeve slid up, one saw that she wore as a
bracelet a ring of rusty iron. She had found it in
the street, forced it over her hand, and now she
always wore it. Whenever she happened to see
or touch it, she grew pale, and her eyes no longer
saw anything of the world about her. She saw a
prison like that of Foscari in the doge’s palace in
Venice. It was a dark, narrow, cellar-like hole;
light filtered in through a grated aperture; and from
the wall hung a great bunch of chains, which wound
like serpents round the prisoner’s legs and arms and
neck.
May the saint work a miracle! May the people
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