But we shall obtain a better conception of his character by following him in the reflections he made at the gates of Catania, in the little chapel in which he had taken his seat. II THE TRAVELLER'S STORY I have forgotten to tell you, and it is important that you should know, why Michel had been separated from his father and sister for a year past. Although he earned his living readily at Rome, and despite his happy temperament, Pier-Angelo had never been able to accustom himself to living abroad, far from his cherished fatherland. Like the genuine islander he was, he regarded Sicily as a land favored by Heaven in every respect, and the mainland as a place of exile. When the Catanians speak of the terrible volcano which overwhelms and ruins them so often, they carry love of country so far as to say: _Our Ætna_!--"Ah!" said Pier-Angelo, on the day that he passed near the lava fields of Vesuvius, "if you had seen our famous Catanian wave! that was grand and wonderful! You would never dare to mention yours again!" He referred to the terrible eruption of 1669, which sent a river of fire to the very centre of the city, and destroyed half of the population and buildings. The destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum seemed to him a jest.--"Psha!" he would say proudly, "I have seen bigger earthquakes! You should come to our home if you want to know what an earthquake is!" In fact, he sighed incessantly for the moment when he could see again his dear furnace and its beloved gate of hell. When Michel and Mila, who were accustomed to his cheerful humor, saw that he was pensive and downcast, they were grieved and disturbed, as always happens with respect to persons with whom mental depression is a rare phenomenon. Thereupon he confessed to his children that he was thinking of his native land. "If I were not in excellent health," he said, "and if I did not constantly argue with myself, homesickness would have killed me long ago." But when his children spoke to him of returning to Sicily, he would wave his hands in a significant way, as if to say: "I cannot cross the strait again; I should escape Charybdis only to fall into Scylla." Once or twice he inadvertently said to them: "Prince Dionigi died a long while ago, but his brother Hieronymo is still living." And when his children questioned him as to what reason he had to fear Prince Hieronymo, he shook his finger and said: "Hush! I should not even have mentioned those princes before you."