She needed to say no more to chill Donna Micaela with a greater terror than she had ever felt before. It was this that the sultry days of the autumn had portended. It would be he who would shake the bolt from the clouds. Why had she not understood it long ago? It was a punishment and a revenge. It would be he who would bring the misfortune! During those last days she had been calmer. She had heard that all the socialists on the island had been put in prison, and all the little insurrection fires lighted in the mountain towns had been quickly choked. It looked almost as if the rebellion would come to nothing! But now the last Alagona was come, and him the people would follow. Life would enter into those black groups on the market-place. The men in the linen garments would climb up out of the quarries. * * * * * The next evening Gaetano spoke in the market-place. He had sat by the fountain, and had seen how the people came to get water. For two years he had foregone the pleasure of seeing the slender girls lift the heavy water-jars to their heads and walk away with firm, slow step. But it was not only the young girls who came to the fountain; there were people of all ages. And when he saw how poor and unhappy most of them were, he began to talk to them of the future. He promised them better times soon. He said to old Assunta that she hereafter should get her daily bread without needing to ask alms of any one. And when she said that she did not understand how that could be, he asked her almost with anger if she did not know that now the time had come when no old people and no children should be without care and shelter. He pointed to the old chair-maker, who was as poor as Assunta, and moreover very sick, and he asked if she believed that the people would endure much longer having no support for the poor, and no hospitals. Could she not understand that it was impossible for such things to continue? Could they not all understand that hereafter the old and the sick should be cared for? He also saw some children who, as he knew, lived on cresses and sorrel, which they gathered on the river-banks and by the roadside, and he promised that henceforward no one should need to starve. He laid his hand on the children’s heads, and swore as solemnly as if he were prince of Diamante, that they should never again want for bread. They knew nothing in Diamante, he said; they were ignorant; they did not understand that a new and blessed time had come; they believed that this old misery would continue forever. While he was thus consoling the poor, more and more had gathered about him, and he suddenly sprang up, placed himself on the steps of the fountain, and began to speak. How could they, he said, be so foolish as to believe that nothing better would come? Should the people, who possessed the whole earth, be content to let their parents starve, and their children grow up to be good-for-nothings and criminals?