"Well, well, Mila, where did you find that?" cried Michel, looking at his sister in surprise. "I fancied I was dreaming as I listened to you!"
The conversation of the two children was interrupted by the arrival of their father. He came to suggest to Michel that they should go and demolish the ball-room. All the workmen who had taken part in building it had agreed to meet at three o'clock in the afternoon, to rid the palace of that temporary structure.
"I know," said Pier-Angelo, "that the princess is anxious to preserve your frescoes on canvas, and I want you to help me roll them up and carry them safely to one of the galleries of the palace."
Michel followed his father, but they were no sooner outside the city than the old man stopped.
"My boy," he said, "I am going to the villa alone, for I must talk a moment with the princess about that infernal abbé, who disguises himself as a monk to spy upon something or somebody in her house. Do you walk about two miles to the northwest, following the path that begins here, and turning neither to right nor left. In an hour you will reach the Capuchin convent of Bel Passo, where your uncle Fra Angelo told me that he would wait for you till sunset. He has satisfied himself that the suspicious monk whom we pointed out to him was no other than Ninfo, and, without deigning to inform me what he supposes his designs to be, he told me that he wished to have a serious talk with you. I suspect that your uncle knows more than we do about the cardinal's condition and the abbé's plans; but he is a man of sense and foresight. He has probably made inquiries during the morning, and I shall be very glad to have his opinion."
Michel followed the path, and, after an hour's walk through the most beautiful country that the mind can conceive, he reached the gate of his uncle's convent.
This convent was situated on a hill above a small village in the cultivated district, gay with flowers and dotted with country houses, which lies at the foot of Ætna. The building was sheltered by the great trunks of venerable trees, and the garden, exposed to the African sun, commanded a magnificent view bounded by the sea.
This romantic spot, strewn with formidable masses of lava, bore two names which had been given it in turn, and which, in view of the uncertainty as to which it was more likely to retain, were bestowed upon it indifferently at the time of which we write. The location being superb, the soil fertile, and the climate mild and agreeable, it had been called on general principles Bel Passo. Then had come the terrible eruptions of Ætna and Monte-Rosso, which had overwhelmed and ruined it; whereupon it had been christened Mal Passo. Then, as time passed on, the village and convent were rebuilt, the lava broken up, cultivation resumed, and they gradually reverted to the original complimentary name. But these two contrasting designations were still confused in the memories and the customs of the people. The old men, who had seen their country in its primitive splendor, said Bel Passo, as did the children, who had seen it only after it had emerged from chaos, and had been restored to life, as it were. But the men who had seen the spectacle of the catastrophe and experienced its disastrous results in their early years—who had had no other cradle than toil and terror, and were just beginning to obtain some result from their labors—called it Mal Passo more frequently than Bel Passo.
For a very long time that gorge had changed its name thus, twice or thrice in a century, according to circumstances; an example of the heedless courage of the human race, which builds its nest beside the broken branch, and continues to love and beautify and sing the praises of the domain which it has with difficulty reconquered from the tempests of yesterday.
However, this spot afforded equal justification for both of the names which disputed possession of it. It was an epitome of all the horrors and all the charms of nature. Where the river of fire had poured its destructive waves, the ridges of lava, the gray wastes of slag, the ruins of the former soil, upturned, flooded or baked, recalled the evil days, when the population was reduced to begging, and wives and mothers were in mourning; Niobe changed to stone at the sight of her murdered children. But near at hand old fig-trees, reanimated by the passage of the flame, had put forth new branches, and strewed with their succulent fruit the new grass and the worn-out soil, newly steeped in the most generous juices.