“I call him Signor Alfredo.”
“How does he get any food?” she asked.
“I prepare it for him,” said Gandolfo.
“And clothes?”
“I get them for him. I bring him books and newspapers, too.”
Donna Micaela was silent for a while. “Gandolfo,” she said, and gave him a rose which she held in her hand, “lay this on the tray the next time you take food to your poor prisoner.”
After that Donna Micaela sent some little thing almost every day to the man in the monastery. It might be a flower, a book or some fruit. It was her greatest pleasure. She amused herself with her fancies. She almost succeeded in imagining that she was sending all these things to Gaetano.
When the day for the bazaar came, Donna Micaela was in the cloister early in the morning. “Gandolfo,” she said, “you must go up to your prisoner and ask him if he will come to the entertainment this evening.”
Gandolfo soon came back with the answer. “He thanks you very much, Donna Micaela,” said the boy. “He will come.”
She was surprised, for she had not believed that he would venture out. She had only wished to show him a kindness.