Two men came by dragging a rattling dray on which lay a mountain of red hangings, richly embroidered stoles, and altar pictures in broad, gilded frames. Donna Elisa struck out with her hand as if to push away all doubts. It could not be an actual miracle which had happened. The saint must know that Diamante could not afford to build a railway. People now came past driving a yellow cart, packed full of music-stands, prayer-books, praying-desks and confessionals. Donna Elisa woke up. She looked out between the rosaries that hung in garlands over the window panes. That was the third load of church furnishings that had passed. Was Diamante being plundered? Had the Saracens come to the town? She went to the door to see better. Again came a stretcher, and on it lay mourning-wreaths of tin, tablets with long inscriptions, and coats of arms, such as are hung up in churches in memory of the dead. Donna Elisa asked the bearers, and learned what was happening. They were clearing out the church of Santa Lucia in Gesù. The syndic and the town council had ordered it turned into a theatre. After the uprising there had been a new syndic in Diamante. He was a young man from Rome, who did not know the town, but nevertheless wished to do something for it. He had proposed to the town-council that Diamante should have a theatre like Taormina and other towns. They could quite easily fit up one of the churches as a play-house. They certainly had more than enough, with five town churches and seven monastery churches; they could easily spare one of them. There was for instance the Jesuits’ church, Santa Lucia in Gesù. The monastery surrounding it was already changed to a barracks, and the church was practically deserted. It would make an excellent theatre. That was what the new syndic had proposed, and the town-council had agreed to it. When Donna Elisa heard what was going on she threw on her mantilla and veil, and hurried to the Lucia church, with the same haste with which one hurries to the house where one knows that some one is dying. “What will become of the blind?” thought Donna Elisa. “How can they live without Santa Lucia in Gesù?” When Donna Elisa reached the silent little square, round which the Jesuits’ long, ugly monastery is built, she saw on the broad stone steps that extend the whole length of the church front, a row of ragged children and rough-haired dogs. All of them were leaders of the blind, and they cried and whined as loud as they could. “What is the matter with you all?” asked Donna Elisa. “They want to take our church away from us,” wailed the children. And thereupon all the dogs howled more piteously than ever, for the dogs of the blind are almost human. At the church-door Donna Elisa met Master Pamphilio’s wife, Donna Concetta. “Ah, Donna Elisa,” she said, “never in all your life have you seen anything so terrible. You had better not go in.” But Donna Elisa went on.