He feels a terrible difficulty in holding himself upright. He clutches in the air with his hands, tries to get support from the door-post, but nothing helps. His legs give way under him; he slides down the steps and strikes his head on the stones.
Every one rushes to him, carries him in, runs after surgeon and doctor, prescribes, talks, and proposes a thousand ways to help him.
Donna Elisa and Pacifica get him finally into one of the bedrooms. Luca drives the people out and places himself on guard before the closed door. Donna Micaela, who came in with the others, was taken first of them all by the hand and led out. She was not allowed to stay in at all. Luca had himself seen Gaetano fall as if from a blow on the temple when he caught sight of her.
Then the doctor comes, and he makes one attempt after another to rouse Gaetano. He is not successful; Gaetano lies as if turned to stone. The doctor thinks that he received a dangerous blow on the head when he fell. He does not know whether he will succeed in bringing him to life.
The swoon in itself was nothing, but that blow on the hard edge of the stone steps--
In the house there is an eager bustle. The poor people outside can only listen and wait.
There they stand the livelong day outside Donna Elisa’s door. There stand Donna Concetta and Donna Emilia. No love has been lost between them in former times, but to-day they stand beside one another and mourn.
Many anxious eyes peer in through the windows of Donna Elisa’s house. Little Gandolfo and old Assunta from the Cathedral steps, and the poor old chair-maker, stand there the whole afternoon without tiring. It is so terrible that Gaetano is going to die just when they have got him back again.
The blind stand and wait as if they expected him to give them their sight, and the poor people, both from Geraci and Corvaja, are waiting to hear how it will turn out for their young lord, the last Alagona.
He wished them well, and he had great strength and power. If he could only have lived--
“God has taken his hand from Sicily,” they say. “He lets all those perish who wish to help the people.”
All the afternoon and evening, and even till midnight, the crowd of people are still outside Donna Elisa’s house. At precisely twelve o’clock Donna Elisa throws open the shop-door and comes out on the steps. “Is he better?” they all cry at the sight of her.--“No, he is not better.”