He wished to lay the little image in her hand, but she gently pushed it away. She saw that it was beautiful and spirited, she said, but she knew that it could not help her. She thanked him for his gift, but she would not accept it.
Then Gaetano seized the image and rolled it in paper and put it back in its place.
And not until it was wrapped up and put away did he speak to her.
But then he asked her why she came to buy wax candles if she was not a believer. Did she mean to say that she did not believe in San Michele? Did she not know that he was the most powerful of the angels, and that it was he who had vanquished Lucifer and thrown him into Etna? Did she not believe that it was true? Did she not know that San Michele lost a wing-feather in the fight, and that it was found in Caltanisetta? Did she know it or not? Or what did she mean by San Michele not being able to help her? Did she think that none of the saints could help? And he, who was standing in his workshop all day long, carving saints!--would he do such a thing if there was no good in it? Did she believe that he was an impostor?
But as Donna Micaela was just as strong a believer as Gaetano, she thought that his speech was unjust, and it irritated her to contradiction.
“It sometimes happens that the saints do not help,” she said to him. And when Gaetano looked unbelieving, she was seized by an uncontrollable desire to convince him, and she said to him that some one had promised her in the name of the Madonna that, if she was a faithful wife to Don Ferrante, her father should enjoy an old age free of care. But now her husband wished to put her father in a brotherhood, which was as wretched as a poor-house and strict as a prison. And the Madonna had not averted it; in eight days it would happen.
Gaetano listened to her with the greatest earnestness. That was what induced her to confide the whole story to him.
“Donna Micaela,” he said, “you must turn to the black Madonna in the Cathedral.”
“So you think that I have not prayed to her?”
Gaetano flushed and said almost with anger: “You will not say that you have turned in vain to the black Madonna?”
“I have prayed to her in vain these last three weeks--prayed to her, prayed to her.”