In the church at first she saw nothing but a white cloud of dust. But hammer-strokes thundered through the cloud, for some workmen were busy breaking away a big stone knight, lying in a window niche. “Lord God!” said Donna Elisa, and clasped her hands together; “they are tearing down Sor Arrigo!” And she thought how tranquilly he had lain in his niche. Every time she had seen him she had wished that she might be as remote from disturbance and change as old Sor Arrigo. In the church of Lucia there was still another big monument. It represented an old Jesuit, lying on a black marble sarcophagus with a scourge in his hand and his cap drawn far down over his forehead. He was called Father Succi, and the people used to frighten their children with him in Diamante. “Would they also dare to touch Father Succi?” thought Donna Elisa. She felt her way through the plaster dust to the choir, where the sarcophagus stood, in order to see if they had dared to move the old Jesuit. Father Succi still lay on his stone bed. He lay there dark and hard, as he had been in life; and one could almost believe that he was still alive. Had there been doctors and tables with medicine-bottles and burning candles beside the bed, one would have believed that Father Succi lay sick in the choir of his church, waiting for his last hour. The blind sat round about him, like members of the family who gather round a dying man, and rocked their bodies in silent grief. There were both the women from the hotel court-yard, Donna Pepa and Donna Tura; there was old Mother Saraedda, who ate the bread of charity at the house of the Syndic Voltaro; there were blind beggars, blind singers, blind of all ages and conditions. All the blind of Diamante were there, and in Diamante there is an incredible number who no longer see the light of the sun. They all sat silent most of the time, but every now and then one of them burst into a wail. Sometimes one of them felt his way forward to the monk, Father Succi, and threw himself weeping aloud across him. It made it all the more like a death-bed that the priest and Father Rossi from the Franciscan monastery were there and were trying to comfort the despairing people. Donna Elisa was much moved. Ah, so often she had seen those people happy in her garden, and now to meet them in such misery! They had won pleasant tears from her when they had sung mourning-songs over her husband, Signor Antonelli, and over her brother, Don Ferrante. She could not bear to see them in such need. Old Mother Saraedda began to speak to Donna Elisa.