Donna Micaela began to crumble her bread rather hastily. Her patience was exhausted. She had not asked him to share her sorrows, but her joys; he must share her joys! All at once the shackles of submission and fear, which had bound her ever since the time of his imprisonment, broke. “You who ride so much about Etna,” she said with a very quiet voice, “must have also come to Gela?” The cavaliere looked up and seemed to search his memory. “Gela, Gela?” “Gela is a village of a hundred houses, which is situated on the southern side of Monte Chiaro, quite at its foot,” continued Donna Micaela, with the most innocent expression. “It is squeezed in between Simeto and the mountain, and a branch of the river generally flows through the principal street of Gela so that it is very unusual to be able to pass dry-shod through the village. The roof of the church fell in during the last earthquake, and it has never been mended, for Gela is quite destitute. Have you really never heard of Gela?” Cavaliere Palmeri answered with inexpressible solemnity: “My investigations have taken me up the mountain. I have not thought of looking for the great philosopher’s villa in Gela.” “But Gela is an interesting town,” said Donna Micaela, obstinately. “They have no separate out-houses there. The pigs live on the lower floor, the people one flight up. There is an endless number of pigs in Gela. They thrive better than the people, for the people are almost always sick. Fever is always raging there; malaria never leaves it. It is so damp that the cellars are always under water, and it is wrapped in swamp mists every night. In Gela there are no shops and no police, nor post-office, nor doctor, nor apothecary. Six hundred people are living there forgotten and brutalized. You have never heard of Gela?” She looked honestly surprised. Cavaliere Palmeri shook his head. “Of course I have heard the name--” Donna Micaela cast a questioning glance on her father. She then bent quickly forward towards him, and drew out of his breastpocket a small, bent knife, such a knife as is used to prune grape-vines. “Poor Empedokles,” she said, and all at once her whole face sparkled with fun. “You may believe you have mounted to the gods, but Etna always throws up your shoe.” Cavaliere Palmeri sank back as if shot. “Micaela!” he said, feebly fencing like some one who does not know how he shall defend himself. But she was instantly as serious and innocent as before. “I have been told,” she said, “that Gela a few years ago was on the way to ruin. All the people there grow grapes, and when the phylloxera came and destroyed their vineyards, they almost starved to death. The Agricultural Society sent them some of those American plants that are not affected by the phylloxera. The people of Gela set them out, but all the plants died. How could the people of Gela know how to tend American vines? Well, some one came and taught them.”