Over the black lava glided a railway train on newly laid shining rails. It was a festival train; flags waved along the road; there were wreaths on the carriages; the seats were covered with purple cushions. At the stations the people stood and shouted: “Long live the king! long live the queen! long live the new railway!”
She heard it so well; she herself was on the train. Ah, how honored, how honored she was! She was summoned before the king and queen; and they thanked her for the new railway. “Ask a favor of us, princess!” said the king, giving her the title that the ladies of the race of Alagona had formerly borne.
“Sire,” she answered, as people answer in stories, “give freedom to the last Alagona!”
And it was granted to her. The king could not say no to a prayer from her who had built that fine railway, which was to give riches to all Etna.
When Donna Micaela lifted her arm so that her dress-sleeve slid up, one saw that she wore as a bracelet a ring of rusty iron. She had found it in the street, forced it over her hand, and now she always wore it. Whenever she happened to see or touch it, she grew pale, and her eyes no longer saw anything of the world about her. She saw a prison like that of Foscari in the doge’s palace in Venice. It was a dark, narrow, cellar-like hole; light filtered in through a grated aperture; and from the wall hung a great bunch of chains, which wound like serpents round the prisoner’s legs and arms and neck.
May the saint work a miracle! May the people work! May she herself soon have such praise that she can beg freedom for her prisoner! He will die if she does not hurry. May the iron ring eat incessantly into her arm, so that she shall not forget him for a second.