As Margherita Cornado grew up, she used to spend most of her days there; but she never looked out over the dazzling landscape. She was occupied with other things.
Her father used to tell her of the life in the sulphur mines at Grotte, where he had worked. While Margherita Cornado sat on the airy terrace, she thought that she was incessantly walking about the dark mine veins, and finding her way through dim shafts.
She could not help thinking of all the misery that existed in the mines; especially she thought of the children, who carried the ore up to the surface. “The little wagons,” they called them. That expression never left her mind. Poor, poor little wagons, the little mine-wagons!
They came in the morning, and each followed a miner down into the mine. As soon as he had dug out enough ore, he loaded the mine-wagon with a basket of it, and then the latter began to climb. Several of them met on the way, so that there was a long procession. And they began to sing:—
“One journey made in struggling and pain,
Nineteen times to be travelled again.”
When they finally reached the light of day, they emptied their baskets of ore and threw themselves on the ground to rest a moment. Most of them dragged themselves over to the sulphurous pools near the shaft of the mine and drank the pestiferous water.
But they soon had to go down again, and they gathered at the mouth of the mine. As they clambered down, they cried: “Lord and God, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy!”
Every journey the little wagons made, their song grew more feeble. They groaned and cried as they crawled up the paths of the mine.
The little wagons were bathed in perspiration; the baskets of ore ground holes in their shoulders. As they went up and down they sang:—