If you glance towards the heights above the town, you see that the gray cactus plants that climb along the edges of the cliffs are covered with blood-red flowers. They have blossomed everywhere like little, glowing flames. It looks as if the flower cups had been filled with fire, which now is breaking out. But, however much the cactus blossoms, it is still gray and dusty and cobwebby. You say to yourself that the cactus is like Sicily. However many springs it may blossom, it is still the gray land of poverty. It is hard to realize that everything has remained quiet and the same. Scylla and Charybdis ought to have begun to roar as in former days. The stone giant in the Girgenti temple should have risen with reconstructed limbs. The temple of Selinunto ought to have raised itself from its ruins. All Sicily should have awakened. If you continue your journey from Messina down the coast, you are still impatient. You see that the peasants are still ploughing with wooden ploughs and that their horses are just as thin and broken and jaded. Yes, everything is the same. The sun sheds its light over the earth like a rain of color; the pelargoniums bloom at the roadside; the sea is a soft pale blue, and caresses the shore. Wild mountains with bold peaks line the coast. Etna’s lofty top shines in the distance. You notice all at once that something strange is taking place. All your impatience is gone. Instead you rejoice in the blossoming earth and in the mountains and in the sea. You are reclaimed by the beautiful earth as a bit of her lost property. There is no time to think of anything but tufts and stones. At last you approach your real home, the home of your childhood. What wicked thoughts have filled your mind while you have been away! You never wished to see that wretched home again, because you had suffered too much there. And then you see the old walled town from afar, and it smiles at you innocently, unconscious of its guilt. “Come and love me once more,” it says. And you can only be happy and grateful because it is willing to accept your love. Ah, when you go up the zigzag path that leads to the gate of the town! The light shade of the olive-tree falls over you. Was it meant as a caress? A little lizard scampers along a wall. You have to stop and look. May not the lizard be a friend of your childhood who wishes to say good-day? Suddenly a fear strikes you. Your heart begins to throb and beat. You remember that you do not know what you may be going to hear when you come home. No one has written letters; you have received none. Everything that recalled home you have put away. It seemed the most sensible way, since you were never to come home again. Up to that moment your feelings for your home have been dead and indifferent.