Nor did any one dare to say that it might be a device of old Fra Felice to collect money. Fra Felice was beloved. It would fare badly with whoever said such things as that.
Donna Micaela also came out to San Pasquale and took her father with her. She walked with her head high and quite without fear. She came to thank him for having rung a great passion into her soul. “My life begins this day,” she said to herself.
Don Ferrante did not seem to be afraid either, but he was grim and angry. For every one had to go in to him in his shop, and tell him what they thought, and hear his opinion, because he was one of the Alagonas, who had governed the town for so many years.
All day terrified, trembling people came into his shop. And they all came up to him and said: “This is a terrible ringing, Don Ferrante. What is to become of us, Don Ferrante?”
Even Ugo Favara, the splenetic advocate, came into the shop, and took a chair, and sat down behind the counter. And Don Ferrante had him sitting there all day, quite livid, quite motionless, suffering the most inconceivable anguish without uttering a word.
Every five minutes Torino-il-Martello came in and struck the counter, saying that the hour had come in which Don Ferrante was to get his punishment.
Don Ferrante was a hard man, but he could no more escape the bells than any other. And the longer he heard them, the more he began to wonder why everybody streamed into his shop. It seemed as if they meant something special. It seemed as if they wished to make him responsible for the ringing, and the evil it portended.
He had not spoken of it to any one, but his wife must have spread it about. He began to believe that everybody was thinking the same, although they did not dare to say it. He thought that the advocate was sitting and waiting for him to yield. He believed that the whole town came in to see if he would really dare to send his father-in-law away.
Donna Elisa, who had so much to do in her own shop that she could not come herself, sent old Pacifica continually to him to ask what he thought of the bell-ringing. And the priest too came to the shop for a moment and said, like all the others: “Did you ever hear such a terrible ringing, Don Ferrante?”