Fra Angelo blessed them both, and said, addressing the prince:
"I hail with joy your accession to greatness and power, when I see you embrace a man of the common people of your native country. Michel de Castro-Reale, Michelangelo Lavoratori, I shall always love you as my nephew, while loving you as my prince. Will you tell me now, your excellency, that it is an imposition for those of my class to love and serve yours?"
"Do not remind me of my heresies, my excellent uncle," replied Michel. "I no longer know to what class I belong; I feel that I am a man and a Sicilian, that is all."
"Long live Sicily!" cried the Capuchin, saluting Ætna.
"Long live Sicily!" echoed Michel, saluting Catania.
Magnani was deeply moved and his manner was most affectionate. He rejoiced sincerely in Michel's good fortune; but, for his own part, he was sorely distressed by the obstacle that had arisen between Mila and him, and he trembled lest he should fall anew under the empire of his former passion. But the mother is something more than the woman, and the thought of Agatha in that new aspect made Magnani's adoration calmer and more solemn than it had been before. He felt that he should blush in Michel's presence if he retained the slightest trace of his madness. He determined to banish it altogether, and, happy in the thought that he could always say to himself that he had devoted his youth, by a solemn vow, to the loveliest saint in heaven, he retained her image and her memory in his heart like a divine perfume.
Magnani was cured; but what a sad cure, to renounce, at twenty-five, all the dreams of love! He was resigned to his fate; but from that moment life was to him nothing more than a stern and passionless duty.
The reveries and torments which had made that duty dear to him no longer existed. Never was there a man on earth more utterly alone, more disgusted with all earthly things, than Magnani on the day of his deliverance.
He left Fra Angelo and Michel, who proposed to go at once to Nicolosi, and passed the rest of the day walking alone by the seashore, opposite the basaltic isles of Acireale.
The young prince and the monk started immediately after making up their minds to visit the Piccinino. They were approaching the ill-omened Destatore's Cross when the bells of Catania, changing their rhythm, rang the knell that announces death. Fra Angelo crossed himself without stopping; Michel thought of his father, who had perhaps been assassinated by order of that wicked prelate, and quickened his pace in order to kneel upon the grave of Castro-Reale.