My hero's name shall be Michelangelo Lavoratori, but we must never confound him with the illustrious Michelangelo Buonarotti, who died at least two hundred years before my man's birth. As for the period in which the events are supposed to take place--another unpleasant incident of the beginning of a novel--you are entirely at liberty to select it yourself, dear reader. But inasmuch as our characters will be actuated by ideas now in circulation in the world, and as it would be impossible for me to speak to you as I should like to do of the men of past ages, I fancy that the story of the Princess Agatha of Palmarosa and Michelangelo Lavoratori belongs somewhere between 1810 and 1840. Fix the precise year, day, and hour at which we begin our narrative to suit yourself; it is a matter of indifference to me, for my novel is neither historical nor descriptive, nor does it pride itself at all upon being exact in either respect. On the day in question--it was in autumn and broad daylight, if you please--Michelangelo Lavoratori was descending diagonally across the gorges and ravines which alternate with each other from the slopes of Ætna to the fertile plain of Catania. He was coming from Rome; he had crossed the Strait of Messina, he had followed the highroad as far as Taormina. There, intoxicated by the grandeur of the spectacle which his eyes beheld in all directions, and uncertain whether to choose the seashore or the mountains, he had gone forward to some extent at random, torn between his impatience to embrace his father and sister, whom he had not seen for a year, and the temptation to go a little nearer the gigantic volcano, compared to which it seemed to him, as to Spallanzani, that Vesuvius is simply a parlor volcano. As he was alone and on foot, he had lost his way more than once in that wild region, intersected by vast streams of lava which form on all sides steep mountains and valleys filled with luxuriant vegetation. One travels far and makes very little progress when he must constantly ascend and descend over a distance quadrupled in length by natural obstacles. Michel had taken two days to travel the ten leagues, more or less, which lie between Taormina and Catania as the crow flies; but at last he was drawing near his journey's end, indeed, he had arrived; for, after crossing the Cantaro and passing through Mascarello, Piano-Grande, Valverde, and Mascalucia, he had at last left Santa-Agata on his right and Ficarazzi on his left. Therefore he was only about a mile from the suburbs of the city; if he had walked a quarter of an hour more, he would have reached the end of the adventures of a pedestrian journey, during which, despite the fascination and the enthusiastic admiration which such natural scenery inspires in a young artist, he had suffered considerably from heat in the ravines, from cold on the mountain-tops, from hunger, and from fatigue.