When the first festival day came, Donna Elisa’s house was the most gorgeously decorated. The green, red, and white standard of Italy waved from the roof, and red cloths, fringed with gold, bearing the saint’s initials, were spread over the window-sills and balcony railings. Up and down the wall ran garlands of holly, shaped into stars and arches, and round the windows crept wreaths made of the little pink roses from Donna Elisa’s garden. Just over the entrance stood the saint’s image, framed in lilies, and on the threshold lay cypress-branches. And if one had entered the house, one would have found it as much adorned on the inside as on the outside. From the cellar to the attic it was scoured and covered with flowers, and on the shelves in the shop no saint was too small or insignificant to have an everlasting or a harebell in his hand. Like Donna Elisa, every one in penniless Diamante had decorated along the whole street. In the street above the house of the little Moor there was such an array of flags that it looked like clothes hung out to dry from the earth to the sky. Every house and every arch carried flags, and across the streets were hung ropes, from which fluttered pennant after pennant.
At every tenth step the people of Diamante had raised triumphal arches over the street. And over every door stood the image of the saint, framed in wreaths of yellow everlastings. The balconies were covered with red quilts and bright-colored table-cloths, and stiff garlands wound up the walls.
There were so many flowers and leaves that no one could understand how they had been able to get them all in January. Everything was crowned and wreathed with flowers. The brooms had crowns of crocuses, and each door-knocker a bunch of hyacinths. In windows stood pictures with monograms, and inscriptions of blood-red anemones.
And between those decorated houses the stream of people rolled as mighty as a rising river. It was not the inhabitants of Diamante alone who were honoring San Sebastiano. From all Etna came yellow carts, beautifully ornamented and painted, drawn by horses in shining harness, and loaded down with people. The sick, the beggars, the blind singers came in great crowds. There were whole trains of pilgrims, unhappy people, who now, after their misfortunes, had some one to pray to.