Here was the true faith and the righteous, holy wrath. This young man must become an artist. To England, he should go to England! She wished to send him to the great master, her friend, who was trying to reform art; to him who wished to teach people to make beautiful house-furnishings, beautiful church-fittings, who wished to create a whole beautiful world. She decided and arranged, and Gaetano let her go on, because he would rather now go away from Diamante. He saw that he could no longer endure to live there. He believed that it was God leading him out of temptation. He went away quite unobserved. Donna Micaela scarcely knew anything of it until he was gone. He had not dared to come and bid her good-bye. X THE SIROCCO After that two years passed quietly. The only thing that happened at Diamante and in all Sicily was that the people grew ever poorer and poorer. Then there came an autumn, and it was about the time when the wine was to be harvested. At that time songs generally rise full-fledged to the lips; at that time new and beautiful melodies stream from the mandolins. Then crowds of young people go out to the vineyards, and there is work and laughter all day, dance and laughter all night, and no one knows what sleep is. Then the bright ocean of air over the mountain is more beautiful than at any other time. Then the air is full of wit; sparkling glances flash through it; it gets warmth not only from the sun, but also from the glowing faces of the young women of Etna. But that autumn all the vineyards were devastated by the phylloxera. No grape-pickers pushed their way between the vines; no long lines of women carrying heaped-up baskets on their heads wound up to the presses, and at night there was no dancing on the flat roofs. That autumn no clear, light October air lay over the Etna region. As if it had been in league with the famine, the heavy, weakening wind from the Sahara came over from Africa, and brought with it dust and exhalations that darkened the sky. Never, as long as that autumn lasted, was there a fresh mountain breeze. The baleful Sirocco blew incessantly. Sometimes it came dry and heavy with sand, and so hot that they had to shut doors and windows, and keep in their rooms, not to faint away. But oftener it came warm and damp and enervating. And the people felt no rest; trouble left them neither by day nor by night, and cares piled upon them like snow-drifts on the high mountains. And the restlessness reached Donna Micaela as she sat and watched with her old husband, Don Ferrante. During that autumn she never heard any one laugh, nor heard a song. People crept by one another, so full of anger and despair that they were almost choked. And she said to herself that they were certainly dreaming of an insurrection. She saw that they had to revolt. It would help no one, but they had no other resource.