Old Assunta needed to say no more. Donna Micaela burst into lamentations. The whole room was filled with the sound of weeping from the sympathetic women; for there is no grief like losing a husband. Those who were widows thought of what they had lost, and those who were not as yet widows thought of the time when they would not be able to go on the street, because no husband would be with them; when they would be left to loneliness, poverty, oblivion; when they would be nothing, mean nothing; when they would be the world’s outcast children because they no longer had a husband; because nothing any longer gave them the right to live. * * * * * It was late in December, the days between Christmas and the New Year. There was still the same danger of insurrection, and people still heard terrifying rumors. It was said that Falco Falcone had gathered together a band of brigands in the quarries, and that he was only waiting for the appointed day to break into Diamante and plunder it. It was also whispered that the people in several of the small mountain towns had risen, torn down the custom’s offices at the town-gates, and driven away the officials. People said too that troops were passing from town to town, arresting all suspicious people, and shooting them down by hundreds. Every one said that they must fight. They could not let themselves be murdered by those Italians without trying to make some resistance. During all this, Donna Micaela sat tied to her father’s sick-bed, just as she had sat before by Don Ferrante’s. She could not escape from Diamante, and terror so grew within her that she was nothing but one trembling fear. The last and worst of all the messages of terror that reached her had been about Gaetano. For when Don Ferrante had been dead a week Gaetano had come home. And that had not caused her dismay; it had only made her glad. She had rejoiced in at last having some one near her who could protect her. At the same time she decided that she could not receive Gaetano if he came to see her. She felt that she still belonged to the dead. She would rather not see Gaetano until after a year. But when Gaetano had been at home a week without coming to the summer palace, she asked Giannita about him. “Where is Gaetano? Has he perhaps gone away again, since no one speaks of him?” “Alas, Micaela,” answered Giannita, “the less people speak of Gaetano, the better for him.” She told Donna Micaela, as if she was telling of a great shame, that Gaetano had become a socialist. “He has been quite transformed over there, in England,” she said. “He no longer worships either God or the saints. He does not kiss the priest’s hand when he meets him. He says to every one that they shall pay no more duties at the town-gates. He encourages the peasants not to pay their rent. He carries weapons. He has come home to start a rebellion, to help the bandits.”