Pepino said, ‘Please, lords and sirs, may Violetta and I go into the crypt now ?’
They had forgotten him. Now they started up from their contemplation of the touching relics.
Father Damico cleared the tears from his eyes. The doorway was freed now, and there was room for boy and donkey to pass. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, Pepino. You may enter now. And may God go with you.’
The hoofs of the donkey went sharply clip-clop, clip-clop on the ancient flagging of the passageway. Pepino did not support her now, but walked beside, hand just resting lightly and lovingly on her neck. His round, cropped head with the outstanding ears was held high, and his shoulders were bravely squared.
And to Father Damico it seemed, as they passed, whether because of the uneven light and the dancing shadows, or because he wished it so, that the ghost, the merest wisp, the barest suspicion of a smile had returned to the mouth of Violetta.
Thus the watchers saw boy and donkey silhouetted against the flickering oil lamps and altar candles of the crypt as they went forward to complete their pilgrimage of faith.
About Author
Paul Gallico was born in New York City in 1897, of Italian and Austrian parentage, and later attended Columbia University. From 1922 to 1936 he worked on the New York Daily News as sports editor, columnist and assistant managing editor. In 1936 he bought a house on top of a hill at Salcombe in South Devon and settled down with a Great Dane and twenty-three assorted cats. It was in 1941 that he made his name with The Snow Goose, a classic story of Dunkirk that became a world-wide bestseller. Having served as a gunner’s mate in the US Navy in 1918, he was again active as a war correspondent with the American Expeditionary Force in 1944. Paul Gallico, who later lived in Monaco, was a first-class fencer and a keen sea-fisherman. He wrote over forty books, among them: The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (1939), The Lonely (1947), Jennie (1950), Trial by Terror (1952), The Small Miracle (1952), The Foolish Immortals (1953), Thomasina (1957), The Hurricane Story (1959), Too Many Ghosts (1961), The Story of Silent Night (1967), The Poseidon Adventure (1969), Matilda (1970), Zoo Gang (1971) and Matilda in the Wilderness (1975). A posthumous work, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, was published in 1978. Penguin also publishes a volume of collected novels, The World of Mrs Harris. Paul Gallico died in 1976.
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