But that is not by any means the only use that San Pasquale is to man. It is he, also, who gives warning if any one is to be married, or if any one is to die; and he even gives the sign with something besides stones. Old Mother Saraedda at Randazzo sat by her daughter’s sick bed one night and fell asleep. The daughter lay unconscious and was about to die, and no one could summon the priest. How was the mother waked in time? How was she waked, so that she could send her husband to the priest’s house? By nothing else than a chair, which began to rock forward and back, and to crack and creak, until she awoke. And it was San Pasquale who did it. Who else but San Pasquale is there to think of such a thing? There is one thing more to tell about San Pasquale. It was of big Cristoforo from Tre Castagni. He was not a bad man, but he had a bad habit. He could not open his mouth without swearing. He could not say two words without one of them being an oath. And do you think that it did any good for his wife and neighbors to admonish him? But over his bed he had a little picture representing San Pasquale, and the little picture succeeded in helping him. Every night it swung forward and back in its frame, swung fast or slow, as he had sworn that day. And he discovered that he could not sleep a single night until he stopped swearing. In Diamante San Pasquale has a church, which lies outside the Porta Etnea, a little way down the mountain. It is quite small and poor, but the white walls and the red roof stand beautifully embedded in a grove of almond-trees. Therefore, as soon as the almond-trees bloom in the spring, San Pasquale’s church becomes the most beautiful in Diamante. For the blossoming branches arch over it, thickly covered with white, glistening flowers, like the most gorgeous garment. San Pasquale’s church is very miserable and deserted, because no service can be held there. For when the Garibaldists, who freed Sicily, came to Diamante, they camped in San Pasquale’s church and in the Franciscan monastery beside it. And in the church itself they stabled brute beasts, and led such a wild life with women and with gambling that ever since it has been considered unhallowed and unclean, and has never been opened for divine service from that time. Therefore it is only when the almond-trees are in bloom that strangers and fine people pay attention to San Pasquale. For although the whole of the slopes of Etna are white then with almond-blossoms, still the biggest and the most luxuriant trees stand about the old, condemned church. But the poor people of Diamante come to San Pasquale the whole year round. For although the church is always closed, people go there to get advice from the saint. There is an image of him under a big stone canopy just by the entrance, and people come to ask him about the future. No one can foretell the future better than San Pasquale.