The next day, towards sunset, Giannita came into the sick-room and whispered to Donna Micaela: “There is an insurrection in Paternó. They have been shooting for several hours, and you can hear them as far away as here. Orders for troops have already gone to Catania. And Gaetano says that it will break out here, too. He says that it will break out in all the towns of Etna at one time.” Donna Micaela made a sign to Giannita to stay with her father, and she herself went across the street and into Donna Elisa’s shop. Donna Elisa sat behind the counter with her frame, but she was not working. The tears fell so heavy and fast that she had ceased to embroider. “Where is Gaetano?” said Donna Micaela, without any preamble. “I must speak to him.” “God give you strength to talk to him,” answered Donna Elisa. “He is in the garden.” She went out across the court-yard and into the walled garden. In the garden there were many narrow paths winding from terrace to terrace. There was also a number of arbors and grottos and benches. And it was so thick with stiff agaves, and close-growing dwarf palms, and thick-leaved rubber-plants, and rhododendrons, that it was impossible to see two feet in front of one. Donna Micaela walked for a long time on those innumerable paths before she could find Gaetano. The longer she walked, the more impatient she became. At last she found him at the farther end of the garden. She caught sight of him on the lowest terrace, built out on one of the bastions of the wall of the town. There sat Gaetano at ease, and worked with chisel and hammer on a statuette. When he saw Donna Micaela, he came towards her with outstretched hands. She hardly gave herself time to greet him. “Is it true,” she said, “that you have come home to be our ruin?” He began to laugh. “The syndic has been here,” he said. “The priest has been here. Are you coming too?” It wounded her that he laughed, and that he spoke of the priest and the syndic. It was something different, and more, that she came. “Tell me,” she said, stiffly, “if it is true that we are to have an uprising this evening.”--“Oh, no,” he answered; “we shall have no uprising.” And he said it in such a voice that it almost made her sorry for him. “You cause Donna Elisa great grief,” she burst out.--“And you too, do I not?” he said, with a slight sneer. “I cause you all sorrow. I am the lost son; I am Judas. I am the angel of justice who is driving you from that paradise where people eat grass.” She answered: “Perhaps we think that what we have is better than being shot by the soldiers.”--“Yes, of course; it is better to starve to death. We are used to that.”--“Nor is it pleasant to be murdered by bandits.”--“But why for Heaven’s sake have any bandits, if you do not want to be murdered by them?”--“Yes, I know,” she said, more passionately, “that you want all the rich to perish.”