“Why will you not come with me?” said Don Ferrante. “Remember that I am the only one who loves you. Do you not see that not even your father loves you? You must not be ungrateful.”
In this way he had forced Donna Micaela to take her place in the gala carriage.
But it was not at all as she had expected. No one laughed. The women courtesied, and the men bowed as solemnly as if the carriage had been a hundred years younger. And Donna Micaela could not detect a smile on any face.
No one in all Diamante would have wished to laugh; for every one knew how Don Ferrante treated Donna Micaela. They knew how he loved her, and how he wept if she left him for a single minute. They knew, too, that he tormented her with jealousy, and that he trampled her hats to pieces, if they became her, and never gave her money for new dresses, because no other was to find her beautiful, and love her. But all the time he told her that she was so ugly that no one but he could bear to look at her face. And because every one in Diamante knew it all, no one laughed. Laugh at her, sitting and chatting with a sick man! They are pious Christians in Diamante, and not barbarians.
So the gala-carriage in its faded glory drove up and down the Corso in Diamante during the hour between five and six. And in Diamante it drove quite alone, for there were no other fine carriages there; but people knew that at that same time all the carriages in Rome drove to Monte Pincio, all those in Naples to the Via Nazionale, and all in Florence to the Cascine, and all in Palermo to La Favorita.
But when the carriage approached the Porta Etnea for the third time, a merry sound of horns was heard from the road outside.
And through the gate swung a big, high coach in the English style.
It was meant to look old-fashioned also. The postilion riding on the off leader had leather trousers, and a wig tied in a pig-tail. The coach was like an old diligence, with the body behind the coach box and seats on the roof.
But everything was new; the horses were magnificent, powerful animals, carriage and harness shone, and the passengers were some young gentlemen and ladies from Catania, who were making an excursion up Etna. And they could not help laughing as they drove by the old gala-carriage. They leaned over from where they sat on the high roof to look at it, and their laughter sounded very loud and echoed between the high, silent houses of Diamante.