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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FRA FELICE’S LEGACY 23 7
“ Then the first number is drawn, and I was right.
Ah, Donna Elisa, they will be so astonished they
will scarcely be able to rejoice. For they have all
expected disappointment. When the second
number comes out, there is the silence of death. Then
comes the third. The lottery managers will be
astonished that everything is so quiet. 1 To-day
they are not winning anything,’ they will say.
’ To-day the state has all the prizes.’ Then comes
the fourth number. The poor-house child takes the
roll from the wheel; and the marker opens the roll,
and shows the number. Down among the people it
is almost terrible; no one is able to say a word for
joy. Then the last number comes. Donna Elisa,
the people scream, they cry, they fall into one
another’s arms and sob. They are rich. All
Diamante is rich — ”
Donna Elisa had kept her arm under Fra Felice’s
head and supported him while he had panted out all
this. Suddenly his head fell heavily back. Old
Fra Felice was dead.
While Donna Elisa was with old Fra Felice, many
people in Diamante had begun to trouble themselves
about the blind. Not the men; most of the men
were in the fields at work; but the women. They
had come in crowds to Santa Lucia to console the
blind, and finally, when about four hundred women
had gathered together, it occurred to them to go and
speak to the syndic.
They had gone up to the square and called for
the syndic. He had come out on the balcony of
the town-hall, and they had prayed for the blind.
The syndic was a kind and handsome man. He had
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