MESSINA. RUINS OF A CHURCH. [Page 44.]
MESSINA. DIGGING FOR THE BURIED-ALIVE. [Page 47.]
THE KING AT MESSINA. [Page 45.]
herself at his feet, raised her bleeding hands in an agony of appeal.
“Maestá, aiuto! Save them! They are alive. I hear them, my husband, my son, my only son.”
“It is too much,” the King broke from her with a sob. “Help her, you others, if you can,” he cried to his aides and pushed on through the ghastly ruin of what three days ago had been the famous Marina, one of the most beautiful streets in the world.
“The King’s walk through Messina,” said Bonanno the avvocato who followed him, “was like the walk of Dante and Virgil through the Inferno. At every step raving men, weeping women clutched at him, clung to him, stretched out their hands to him. Those hands! I dream of them now, hairy hands of men, transparent hands of women, old shrivelled hands with gripping fingers, chubby hands of little children lifted to the King, as if he could help them. I would not have been in his place, no, not for three kingdoms.”