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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340 THE MIRACLES OF ANTICHRIST ’
“Come and love me once more,” it says. And you
can only be happy and grateful because it is willing
to accept your love.
Ah, when you go up the zigzag path that leads to
the gate of the town! The light shade of the
olive-tree falls over you. Was it meant as a caress ? A
little lizard scampers along a wall. You have to
stop and look. May not the lizard be a friend of
your childhood who wishes to say good-day?
Suddenly a fear strikes you. Your heart begins
to throb and beat. You remember that you do not
know what you may be going to hear when you
come home. No one has written letters; you have
received none. Everything that recalled home you
have put away. It seemed the most sensible way,
since you were never to come home again. Up to
that moment your feelings for your home have been
dead and indifferent.
But in that moment you do not know how you can
bear it if everything is not exactly the same on the
mountain of your birth. It will be a mortal blow
if there is a single palm missing on Monte Chiaro
or if a single stone has loosened from the town wall.
Where is the big agave at the turn of the cliff?
The agave is not there; it has blossomed and been
cut down. And the stone bench at the street-corner
is broken. You will miss that bench; it has been
such a pleasant resting-place. And look, they have
built a barn on the green meadow under the
almond-trees. You will never again be able to stretch out
there in the flowering clover.
You are afraid of every step. What will you
meet next?
You are so moved that you feel that you could
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