Donna Micaela

“ There were all kinds of criers, the sound of organs streamed from all the churches, and in the square on the summit of the mountain the town band played so that it could be heard over all Diamante.
The joyous noise, and the fragrance of the flowers, and the flapping of the flags outside Donna Micaela’s window had power to wake her from her stupor. She rose up, as if life had sent for her. “I will not die,” she said to herself. “I will try to live.” ”

“ There is a woman there. She is on her knees, praying, and her head is so deeply bent that they cannot see who she is. But when she hears steps behind her she lifts her long, bowed neck and looks up. It is Donna Micaela.
At first she is frightened and starts up as if she wished to escape. Donna Elisa is also frightened, and they look at one another as if they had never met before. Then Donna Micaela says in a very low voice: “You have come to pray for him, sister-in-law.” And the people see her move a little way along so that Donna Elisa may have room directly in front of the image. ”

“ Donna Micaela lay thinking that she could have saved Gaetano, but had not wished to do so. But why had she not wished? It seemed to her quite incomprehensible. She began to count up to herself all her reasons for permitting him to rush to destruction. He was an atheist; a socialist; he wished to cause a revolt. That had outweighed everything else when she opened the garden gate for him. It had crushed her love also. She could not now understand it. It was as if a scale full of feathers had weighed down a scale full of gold.
“My beautiful boy!” said Donna Elisa, “my beautiful boy! ”

“ And Donna Micaela for a moment thought she felt his grief over all the sorrow that lay under the surface of beauty. She saw life full of vice and suffering, like a dirty river filled with the stench of uncleanliness, wind through the glistening world of beauty.
“And no one can enjoy you,” said Gaetano; “no one can dare to enjoy you. You are untamed, and full of whims and anger. You are uncertainty and peril; you are sorrow and pain; you are want and shame; you are the force that grinds; you are everything terrible that can be named, because the people have not wished to make you better. ”

“ Poor Donna Elisa cast one glance at Donna Micaela, who had sat silent and displeased the whole time by her side. Donna Micaela had been persuaded with difficulty to go to Corvaja and show the image to the people there. “The image helps us when it wills,” she said. “We shall not force miracles.” ”

“ She told Donna Micaela, as if she was telling of a great shame, that Gaetano had become a socialist.
“He has been quite transformed over there, in England,” she said. “He no longer worships either God or the saints. He does not kiss the priest’s hand when he meets him. He says to every one that they shall pay no more duties at the town-gates. He encourages the peasants not to pay their rent. He carries weapons. He has come home to start a rebellion, to help the bandits.”
She needed to say no more to chill Donna Micaela with a greater terror than she had ever felt before. ”

“ But Donna Micaela does not hesitate a second, since there has been question of the Christ-image. She seems not to think of Falco’s being already mad. She does not say a word of her terror. Her faith in the image is such that she answers softly, like a subdued and obedient child:—
“Passafiore, I will go with you.”
She follows him as if walking in her sleep. She does not hesitate to go with him up Etna. She does not hesitate to climb down the steep cliffs into the quarry. She comes, pale as death, but with shining eyes, to the old brigand in his hole in the cliff and gives him her hand. ”

“ Donna Micaela listened with horror, but she tried to imagine that she was still dreaming. She thought she heard Gaetano ask if she was sacrificing him to God. She thought she answered that she did. Now she was dreaming of how it would be in case he really had been captured. It could be nothing else.
“What a night of misfortune!” said Donna Elisa. [160] “What is flying about in the air, and making people mad and confused? You have seen Gaetano, Cavaliere. He has always been passionate and fiery, but it has not been without intelligence; he has not been without sense and judgment. ”

“ Donna Micaela knew no more about him than that he was to leave Diamante, and that he was always carving holy images for Donna Elisa to have something to sell while he was earning great fortunes away in Argentina.
When she now saw Gaetano, she found him so handsome that it made her glad to look at him. She was full of anxiety as a hunted animal, but no sorrow [85] in the world could prevent her from feeling joy at the sight of anything so beautiful. ”

“ Every one said that they must fight. They could not let themselves be murdered by those Italians without trying to make some resistance.
During all this, Donna Micaela sat tied to her father’s sick-bed, just as she had sat before by Don Ferrante’s. She could not escape from Diamante, and terror so grew within her that she was nothing but one trembling fear.
The last and worst of all the messages of terror that reached her had been about Gaetano. ”

“ And the restlessness reached Donna Micaela as she sat and watched with her old husband, Don Ferrante.
During that autumn she never heard any one laugh, nor heard a song. People crept by one another, so full of anger and despair that they were almost choked. And she said to herself that they were certainly dreaming of an insurrection. She saw that they had to revolt. It would help no one, but they had no other resource. ”

“ Thereupon the poor man began to try to terrify her.
“It will go with your railway as with your festival.” Donna Micaela thought so too, but now she thought that she had closed all ways of escape for herself; now she must go on being good. “My festival will soon be in full swing,” she said calmly.
“Listen to me, Donna Micaela,” said the man. “The last thing a man ceases to believe good of is himself. No one can cease to have hope for himself.” ”

“ The only thing she had desired had been to find out if Gaetano loved her.
Several weeks again passed and Donna Micaela still sat with Don Ferrante.
But one day Donna Elisa had tempted her out. “Come with me into my garden, sister-in-law, and see my big magnolia-tree. You have never seen anything so beautiful.” ”

“ While some were content to laugh at Donna Micaela, some were angry with her.
She went to the cellar-like shop near the old Benedictine monastery, where Master Pamphilio related romances of chivalry. She came to ask him if he would come to her bazaar and entertain the public with Charlemagne and his paladins; but as he was in the midst of a story, she had to sit down on a bench and wait. ”

“ THE BELLS OF SAN PASQUALE
The people of Diamante soon perceived that Don Ferrante’s wife, Donna Micaela, was nothing but a great child. She could never succeed in looking like a woman of the world, and she really was nothing but a child. ”

“ She wondered if Gaetano had been shot.
“What do they mean by sentencing him to twenty-nine [161] years’ imprisonment?” said Donna Elisa. “Do you think that he can live so long, or that any one who loves him can live so long? He is dead, Cavaliere; as dead for me as Giannita.”
Donna Micaela felt as if strong fetters bound her beyond escape. It was worse, she thought, than to be tied to a pillory and whipped.
“All the joy of my old age is taken from me,” said Donna Elisa. “Both Giannita and Gaetano! I have always expected them to marry each other. ”

“ Donna Micaela asked Gaetano for a wax candle, and he began to look for one. And now, strangely enough, Gaetano, who saw the little shop every day, seemed to be quite strange there. He looked for the wax candle in the drawers of rosaries and in the little medallion boxes. He could not find anything, and he grew so impatient that he turned out the drawers and broke the boxes open. The destruction and disorder were terrible. And it would be a real grief to Donna Elisa when she came home. ”

“ Donna Elisa was in such great grief for to-day she had lost Gaetano forever. There was no more hope of getting him back.
The saints had gone over to the side of the opponent, and worked miracles in order to help Donna Micaela. No one could doubt that a miracle had happened. The poor women of Diamante would never have been able to stand still while Fra Felice’s [250] numbers burned if they had not been bound by a miracle.
It made a poor soul so old and cross to have the good saints help Donna Micaela, who did not like Gaetano. ”

“ She and Donna Elisa and every one is convinced that he has come to clasp her in his arms and say that he loves her. But just for that reason it is impossible for Gaetano. Some people are malicious; [350] it is their nature never to do just what they ought to do.
Gaetano begins to tell her of his journey; he does not speak even of socialism, but talks of express-trains and conductors and curious travelling companions.
Donna Micaela sits and looks at him; her eyes beg and implore more and more eagerly. Gaetano seems to be glad and happy to see her, but why can he not say what he has to say? ”

“ She threw it out over the balustrade. It struck against the steep mountain [152] side; fell deeper and deeper; broke loose stones, and certainly shattered itself to pieces. At last a splash was heard down in Simeto.
“What right have you to carve Madonnas?” she asked Gaetano.
He stood silent. He had never seen Donna Micaela thus.
In the moment when she rose up before him she had become tall and stately. The beauty that always came and went in her, like an uneasy guest, was enthroned in her face. She looked cold and inflexible; a woman to win and conquer. ”

“ He rises up, ghastly pale as she, and follows her. They do not seem like human beings, but like spectres. They move on [313] towards their goal in absolute silence. Their own identity is dead, but a mightier spirit guides and leads them.
Even the day after it seems like a fairy tale to Donna Micaela that she has done such a thing. She is sure that her own compassion, or pity, or love could never have made her go down into the brigands’ cave at night if a strange power had not led her.
While Donna Micaela is in the robber’s cave, old Caterina sits at her window, and waits for Falco. ”

“ Nor did any one sit crouching on the roof to set them going. People plainly saw how the bells swung backwards and forwards, and how the tongues hit against the brazen throats. It could not be explained.
When Donna Micaela awoke, the bells were already ringing, and she lay quiet for a long time, and listened, and listened. She had never heard anything more beautiful. She did not know that it was a miracle, but she lay and thought how beautiful it was. She lay and wondered if real bronze bells could sound like that. ”

“ She told him that he was nothing less than life itself to her.
“Must I die, Gaetano?” she asked.
“Is it not enough that those opinions and teachings part us? Is it not enough that they have [165] carried you to prison? Will you also cease to love me, because we do not think alike?
“Ah, Gaetano, love me! It leads to nothing; there is no hope in your love, but love me; I die if you do not love me.”
Donna Micaela had hardly sent off the letter before she began to wait for the answer. ”

“ During the reception in the harbor, Donna Micaela is fighting out a strange struggle. “If it were Gaetano,” she thinks, “could I, could I—
“If it were for him all these people were rejoicing, could I—”
There is so much joy—a joy the like of which she has never seen. The people love one another and are like brothers. And that not only because a socialist is coming home, but because they all believe that the earth will soon be happy. “If he were to come now, while all this joy is roaring about me,” she thinks. “Could I, could I—”
She sees Bosco’s carriage trying to force a way through the crowd. ”

“ Terror seemed to make every one mad. The peasants raised ramparts in the hills. In Diamante men stood in great groups on the market-place, stood there day after day, without going to their work. There was something terrible in those groups of men dressed in dark cloaks and slouch hats. They were all probably dreaming of the hour when they should plunder the summer palace.
The nearer the day approached when the insurrection was to break out, the sicker Don Ferrante became; and Donna Micaela began to fear that he would die. ”

“ Without being conscious of it the lips falter: “Thou, God, art God.”
About the walls of the temple glow the great events of the world in wonderful mosaic pictures. They only lead to him. They are only there to say: “All the past is his; all the present belongs to him, and all the future.”
The mysteries of life and death dwell within that head.
There lives the spirit which directs the fate of the world. There glows the love which shall lead the world to salvation.
And Donna Micaela calls to him: “Thou son of God, do not part me from thee! Let no man have power to part me from thee!” ”

“ The same indolence that had taken possession of Donna Micaela crept through the whole town. It was soon plain that everything that depended on people who did not believe in the Christchild of Diamante was badly managed and unsuccessful. Even the Etna railway was conducted in the wrong [327] way. Accidents were happening constantly on the steep inclines; and the price of the tickets was too high. The people began to use the omnibuses and post wagons again.
Donna Micaela and others with her began to think of carrying the Christ-image out into the world. ”