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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FALCO FALCONE
30 7
beauty of Mongibello. They do not see the
vine-encircled Monte Rosso; they do not see the two
hundred craters that stand in a circle round Etna’s
lofty peak like towers round a town; they do not
see the endless stretches of thick forest.
In Casa del Bosco, where the road ends, they
dismount. Biagio and Passafiore take the wreath and
carry it between them. As they walk along, Falco
begins to talk. He likes to talk since he has grown old.
Falco says that the mountain is like the
twenty-five years of his life that he has passed there. The
years that founded his greatness had blossomed
with deeds. To be with him then had been like
going through an endless arbor, where lemons and
grapes hung down overhead. Then his deeds had
been as numerous as the orange-trees round Etna’s
base. When he had come higher the deeds had
been less frequent, but those he had executed had
been mighty as the oaks and chestnut-trees on the
rising mountain. Now that he was at the summit
of greatness, he scorned to act. His life was as
bald as the mountain top; he was content to see
the world at his feet. But people ought to
understand that, if he should now undertake anything,
nothing could resist him. He was terrible, like the
fire-spouting summit.
Falco walks before and talks; Passafiore and
Biagio follow him in silent terror. Dimly they
see the mighty slopes of Mongibello with their
towns and fields and forests spread out beneath
them. And Falco thinks that he is as mighty as
all that!
As they struggle upwards they are beset with a
growing feeling of dread. The gaping fissures in
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