Page:The International - Volume 1.djvu/169

Nunziata nodded her head and looked not a little disturbed. "Why don't you go to confession here? Don Emilio is like oil, his words are sweet as honey, and his heart is full of compassion for poor erring sinners."

"I know it," said Phenicia, "and that is just why I am going to Father Philip."

"He is as pitiless as fire," Nunziata warned the young woman; "they say that he is a saint, and I do not question it. But from the time that that godless government destroyed his monastery, and he moved up to Mola—doubtless to be nearer heaven—he is so rigid that everybody is afraid of him. They say that the fires of purgatory flash from his eyes."

"Good-bye," said Phenicia lost in thought, and starting to go with her brother, who now returned with his best coat ready to accompany her.

The road leading from Taormin to Mola is precipitous and rocky, in fact, hewn out of the rock itself. On one side, towering high above one, are almost perpendicular walls, and on the other, one can look down into deep valleys, the bottoms of which are covered with fields and vineyards, and the sides with almond and fig trees. On this beautiful day the air was heavy with fragrance from the blossoming trees, and the sun kissed the sea and the mountains till they glowed. "The Mountain," as the Sicilians, for short, call Ætna, rising dark above a green hill, snow covering its summit, white clouds heaped about its zone, and sending forth volumes of white glistening smoke from its crater, seemed so near that one could almost touch it with thehand. It stood there like some isolated Titan, bathing his head in ether and hisfeet in the sea.

The brother and sister walked slowly up the steep road, giving little heed to the scenery about them. Many people passed them, some going up to Mola, some down to Taormin, and greetings were heard from all sides. Carmenio replied to them, Phenicia's mind being too preoccupied to hear them. With her head bowed low she walked on. Suddenly she stopped at a place where there was a well made by a spring issuing from the rock. It rang out like a bell as it

fell against the rocks, and sang merrily as it lost itself in the grass.

"I am thirsty," she said, as she bent down and drank of the cool water. Then she raised her head and looked about her.

"How do you feel?" asked Carmenio.

"The peace of angels and the glory of approaching Easter seem to lie over the country," replied Phenicia, opening wide her large dreamy eyes and leaning against the rock as she contemplated the scene before her. Like gigantic stairs the rocks were piled up one above the other, from the sea to where she was standing, and on the highest one directly beneath her feet, stood an old Moorish castle. How often as a child had she looked down from that very spot into the grass-covered court, and dreamed with horror of the Moors, those heathen robbers, who broke crucifixes. Her eyes now wandered far down into the furrowed valley, within whose rocky recesses vineyards were hiding, and fields and or chards lay smiling, all bathed in a glow of molten gold. The blue sea foamed like milk around the island of St. Andrea far down beyond Taormin, whose white houses lay in groups between the Greek theatre and the church of St. Pancratium. The long rays of the sun played about the mouldering walls of the theatre, changing them to burnished metal. And beyond the golden, billowy sea could be seen the bblue, yellow, pink and purple rocks of Mount Calabria, naked and desolate as a desert.

Phenicia, however, looked neither at the sea nor at the Calabrian rocks; her eyes, dim with tears, were fixed upon a group of blossoming almond trees beneath which the grass grew luxuriantly, and in whose branches small birds were warbling, darting about like arrows as if they were trying to catch the rays of the sun. The soft murmur of leaves and birds reached the rock where Phenicia stood, and behind her the spring sang on and on . . .

Suddenly she leaned so far over the abyss, that Carmenio, alarmed, seized her by the shoulder. "What are you doing? You will fall," he warned her.

"He appeared to me," she murmured ab-