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.
Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Second book - X. Falco Falcone
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
288 THE MIRACLES OF ANTICHRIST ’
Falco’s mother was an unfortunate woman, who
during the first years of her marriage brought only
daughters into the world. Her husband and all her
neighbors despised her.
The woman longed continually for a son. When
she was expecting her fifth child she strewed salt
every day on the threshold and sat and watched who
should first cross it. Would it be a man or a
woman? Should she bear a son or a daughter?
Every day she sat and counted. She counted the
letters in the month when her child was to be born.
She counted the letters in her husband’s name and
in her own. She added and subtracted. It was an
even number; therefore she would bear a son. The
next day she made the calculation over again.
“ Perhaps I counted wrong yesterday,” she said.
When Falco was -born his mother was muck
honored, and she loved him on account of it more
than all her other children. When the father came
in to see the child he snatched off his cap and made
a low bow. Over the house-door they set a hat as
a token of honor, and they poured the child’s bath
water over the threshold, and let it run out into the
street. When Falco was carried to the church he
was laid on his godmother’s right arm; when the
neighbors’ wives came to look after his mother they
courtesied to the child sleeping in his cradle.
He was also bigger and stronger than children
generally are. Falco had thick hair when he was
born, and when he was a week old he already had
a tooth. When his mother laid him to her breast
he was so wild that she laughed and said: “ I think
that I have brought a hero into the world.”
She was always expecting great achievements
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
