“Be merciful! You do not know how much I love him!” Don Ferrante laughed. “You ought to have begun with that. Now you have made me angry.” She still knelt and looked up at him. “It is well,” he said, “for you hereafter to know how you shall behave.” Still she knelt. Then he asked: “Shall I tell him, or will you?”
Donna Micaela was ashamed that she had humbled herself. She rose and answered imperiously: “I shall tell him, but not till the last day. And you shall not let him notice anything.”
“No, I shall not,” he said, and mimicked her. “The less talk about it, the better for me.”
But when he was gone Donna Micaela laughed at Don Ferrante for believing that he could do what he liked with her father. She knew some one who would help her.
In the Cathedral at Diamante there is a miracle-working image of the Madonna, and this is its story.
Long, long ago a holy hermit lived in a cave on Monte Chiaro. And this hermit dreamed one night that in the harbor of Catania lay a ship loaded with images of the saints, and among these there was one so holy that Englishmen, who are richer than anybody else, would have paid its weight in gold for it. As soon as the hermit awoke from this dream he started for Catania. In the harbor lay a ship loaded with images of the saints, and among the images was one of the holy Madonna that was more holy than all the others. The hermit begged the captain not to carry that image away from Sicily, but to give it to him. But the captain refused. “I shall take it to England,” he said, “and the Englishmen will pay its weight in gold.” The hermit renewed his petitions. At last the captain had his men drive him on shore, and hoisted his sail to depart.
It looked as if the holy image was to be lost to Sicily; but the hermit knelt down on one of the lava blocks on the shore and prayed to God that it might not be. And what happened? The ship could not go. The anchor was up, the sail hoisted, and the wind fresh; but for three long days the ship lay as motionless as if it had been a rock. On the third day the captain took the Madonna image and threw it to the hermit, who still lay on the shore. And immediately the ship glided out of the harbor. The hermit carried the image to Monte Chiaro, and it is still in Diamante, where it has a chapel and an altar in the Cathedral.
Donna Micaela was now going to this Madonna to pray for her father.
She sought out the Madonna’s chapel, which was built in a dark corner of the Cathedral. The walls were covered with votive offerings, with silver hearts and pictures that had been given by all those who had been helped by the Madonna of Diamante.