Page:Under the shadow of Etna; Sicilian stories from the Italian of Giovanni Verga (IA undershadowofetn00vergrich).pdf/42

18 her baby boy, near the prison in which Gramigna was incarcerated. She could see nothing else besides the black grated windows along the mighty silent façade, and the sentinels drove her away if she stopped to look where he might be. At last she was told that he had not been there for some time, that he had been taken away to the other side of the sea, manacled, and with a basket fastened over his shoulder.

She said nothing. She did not go away; for she knew not where to go, and she had nothing more to expect. She made a shift to live, doing chores for the soldiers, for the prisoners, as if she herself made a part of that black and silent building; and she felt for the carabineers who had taken Gramigna in the thicket of prickly pears, and who had broken his leg with their shots, a sort of respectful tenderness, as it were a brute admiration of force.

On holidays, when she saw them with