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diff --git a/old/55840-0.txt b/old/55840-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index aeea8ea..0000000 --- a/old/55840-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8651 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Seekers in Sicily, by Elizabeth Bisland and -Anne Hoyt - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Seekers in Sicily - Being a Quest for Persephone by Jane and Peripatetica - - -Author: Elizabeth Bisland and Anne Hoyt - - - -Release Date: October 28, 2017 [eBook #55840] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEEKERS IN SICILY*** - - -E-text prepared by Clarity, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made -available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustrations. - See 55840-h.htm or 55840-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55840/55840-h/55840-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55840/55840-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/seekersinsicily00wetmiala - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores - (_italics_). - - Text that was in bold face is enclosed by equal signs - (=bold=). - - - - - -SEEKERS IN SICILY - - -[Illustration: “Demeter’s Well-Beloved Children”] - - -SEEKERS IN SICILY - -Being a Quest for Persephone by Jane and Peripatetica - -Done into the Vernacular - -by - -ELIZABETH BISLAND AND ANNE HOYT - - - - - - -New York: John Lane Company. MCMIX -London: John Lane, The Bodley Head - -Copyright, 1909 -By John Lane Company - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - To - - ANDERS AND FRAU ZORN - - FROM THE NORTH, IN MEMORY - OF THE SUN AND THE SOUTH, - THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED - - BY - - A PAIR OF “WORD BRAIDERS” - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - =NOTE= - - -_THE designs upon the cover of this book, and at the heads of the -chapters, are the tribe signs or totems of the original inhabitants of -the island of Sicily, which have survived all conquests and races and -are still considered as tokens of good luck and defenders from the -Evil-eye._ - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - PREFACE - -WHEN this book was written—in the spring of the year—the Land of the -Older Gods was unmarred by the terrible seismic convulsions which -wrought such ruin in the last days of 1908. - -Very sad to each of us it is when time and the sorrows of “this -unintelligible world” carve furrows upon our own countenances, but when -the visage of the globe shrivels and wrinkles with the lapse of ages -then the greatness of the disaster touches the whole race. Sicily, whose -history is so full of blood and tears, has been the victim of the -greatest natural tragedy that man’s chronicles record because of this -line drawn by Time upon our planet’s face—yet it leaves her still so -fair, so poignantly lovely, that pilgrims of beauty will—forgetting this -slight blemish—still journey to see the sweetest remnant of the world’s -youth. Happily Messina, the one city injured, was the one city where -travellers rarely paused. All the others remain unmarred and are still -exactly as they were when this chronicle of their ancient beauty and -charm was set down. - - E. B. AND A. H. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CONTENTS - - PAGE - PREFACE 9 - CHAPTER - I ON THE ROAD TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 15 - II A NEST OF EAGLES 45 - III ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 126 - IV THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 178 - V A CITY OF TEMPLES 192 - VI THE GOLDEN SHELL 229 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - “Demeter’s Well-Beloved Children” _Frontispiece_ - - PAGE - - “A Place Where the Past Reveals Itself” 68 - - “Pan’s Goatherd” 132 - - “Ætna, The Salient Fact of Sicily” 186 - - “The Saffron Mass of Concordia” 198 - - “Lifting Themselves Airily From a Sea of 218 - Flowers” - - “Sicily’s Picture-book, The Painted 234 - Cart” - - “The Last Resting Place of Queen 248 - Constance” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - - SEEKERS IN SICILY - - - CHAPTER I - - ON THE ROAD TO THE LAND OF THE GODS - - “He ne’er is crown’d with immortality - Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.” - -“OH, Persephone, Persephone!... Surely Koré is in Hell.” - -This is a discouraged voice from the window. - -“Peripatetica, that _sounds_ both insane and improper. Would it fatigue -you too much to explain in the vernacular what you are trying, in your -roundabout way, to suggest?” - -Thus Jane, a mere diaphanous mauve cloud, from which the glimmering fire -picked out glittering points here and there. When Jane takes to teagowns -she is really very dressy. - -Peripatetica strolled up and down the dusky drawing-room two or three -times, without answering. Outside a raging wind drove furiously before -it in the darkness the snow that flew upward in long spirals, like -desperate hunted ghosts. Finally she took up a book from the table, and -kneeling, to get the light from the logs on the page, began to read -aloud. - -These two were on such kindly terms that either one could read aloud -without arousing the other to open violence. - -“Persephone, sometimes called Koré—” read Peripatetica, “having been -seized by Pluto, as she gathered narcissus, and wild thyme, and mint, -and the violet into her green kirtle—was carried, weeping very bitterly, -into his dark hell. And Demeter, her mother, missing her fair and -sweet-curled daughter, sought her through all the world with tears and -ravings; the bitter sound and moisture of her grief making a noise as of -winter wind and rain. And her warm heart being so cold with pain the -blossoms died on her bosom, and her vernal hair was shredded abroad into -the air, and all growing things drooped and perished, and her brown -benignant face became white as the face of the dead are white——” - -Peripatetica closed the book, put it back on the table, and drew a -hassock under her for a seat. - -“I see,” said Jane. “Demeter is certainly passing this way to-night, -poor dear! It’s a pity she can’t realize Persephone, that sweet soul of -Spring, will come back. She always does come back.” - -“Yes; but Demeter, the mother-earth, always fears that this time she may -not; that Pluto will keep her in hell always. And every time she makes -the same outcry about it.” - -“I suppose she always finds her first in Enna,” Jane hazarded. “Isn’t -Enna in Sicily?” - -“Yes, I think so; but I don’t know much about Sicily, though everybody -goes there nowadays. Let’s go there, Jane, and help Demeter find -Persephone.” - -“Let’s!” agreed Jane, with sympathetic enthusiasm, and they went. - - * * * * * - -Now, being Americans, and therefore accustomed to the most obliging -behaviour on the part of the male sex, it never occurred to them that -Pluto might be ungallant enough to object to their taking a hand in. But -he did—as they might have foreseen would be likely in a person so -unmannerly as to snatch lovely daughters from devoted mothers. - -It began on the ocean. On quite a calm evening a wave, passing from -under the side of the ship, threw its crest back—perhaps to look at the -stars—and fell head over heels into their open port. Certainly as much -as two tons of green and icy Atlantic entered impulsively, and by the -time they were dried out and comforted by the tight-corseted, rosy, -sympathetic Lemon every object they possessed was a mere bunch of -depressed rumples. Throughout the rest of the voyage they presented the -unfortunate appearance of having slept in their clothes, including their -hats. These last, which they had believed refreshingly picturesque, or -coquettish, at starting, had that defiantly wretched aspect displayed by -the broody hen after she has been dipped in the rain-barrel to check her -too exuberant aversion to race-suicide. - -That was how Pluto began, and it swiftly went from bad to worse. - -Three large tourist ships discharged bursting cargoes of humanity upon -Naples on one and the same day, and the hotel-keepers rose to their -opportunity and dealt guilefully with the horde clamouring as with one -voice for food and shelter. That one’s hard-won shelter was numbered 12 -_bis_ (an artful concealment of the unlucky number 13) was apparently an -unimportant detail. It was shelter, though even a sea-sodden mind should -have seen something suspicious in those egregious frescoes of fat ladies -sitting on the knife edge of crescent moons with which Room 13 -endeavoured to conceal its real banefulness. Even such a mind should -have distrusted that flamingly splendid fire-screen in front of a -walled-up fireplace; should have scented danger in that flamboyant black -and gold and blue satin furniture of the vintage of 1870. There was -plainly, to an observant eye, something sinister and meretricious in so -much dressiness, but Jane and Peripatetica yielded themselves up to that -serpent lodging without the smallest precaution, and lived to rue their -impulsive confidence. - -To begin with, Naples, instead of showing herself all flowers and -sunshine, tinkling mandolins, and moonlight and jasper seas, was as -merry and pleasing as an iced sponge. Loud winds howled through the -streets, driving before them cold deluges of rain, and in these chilling -downpours the street troubadours stood one foot in the puddles snuffling -songs of “Bella Napoli” to untuned guitars, with water dripping from the -ends of their noses. Peripatetica—whose eyes even under her low-spirited -hat had been all through the voyage full of dreamful memories of -Neapolitan tea-roses and blue blandness—curled up like a disappointed -worm and retired to a fit of neuralgia and a hot-water bottle. There was -something almost uncanny in the scornful irony of her expression as she -hugged her steaming comforter to her cheek, and paced the floor in time -to those melancholy damp wails from the street. Instead of tea-roses she -was prating all day of American comforts, as she clasped the three tepid -coils of the chilly steam-heater to her homesick bosom, while Jane -paddled about under an umbrella in search of the traditional ideal -Italian maid, who would be willing to contribute to the party all the -virtues and a cheerful disposition, for sixty francs a month. - -Minna, when she did appear, proved to be Swiss instead of Italian, but -she carried an atmosphere of happy comfort about her, could spin the -threads of three languages with her gifted tongue, while sixty francs -seemed to satisfy her wildest dreams of avarice. So the two depressed -pilgrims, soothed by Minna’s promise to assume their burdens the next -day, fell asleep dreaming that the weather might moderate or even clear. - -Eight o’clock of the following morning came, but Minna didn’t. Jane -interviewed the concierge, who had recommended her. The concierge -interviewed the heavens and the earth, and the circumambient air, but -spite of outflung fingers and polyglot cries, the elements had nothing -to say about the matter, and for twenty-four hours they declined to let -the secret leak out that other Americans in the same hotel had ravished -their Minna from them with the glittering lure of twenty francs more. - -Finally it dawned upon two damp and depressed minds that some unknown -enemy had put a _comether_ on them—though at that time they had no -inkling of his identity. Large-eyed horror ensued. First aid to the -hoodooed must be sought. Peripatetica tied a strip of red flannel around -her left ankle. - -“In all these very old countries,” she said oracularly, “secret malign -influences from the multitudes of wicked dead rise up like vapours from -the soil where they have been buried.” - -Jane listened and, pale but resolute, went forth and purchased a coral -_jettatura_. - -“Let us pass on at once from this moist Sodom,” she said. - -Visions of sun and Sicily dawned upon their mildewed imaginations. - -Now there is really but one way to approach Sicily satisfactorily. Of -course a boat leaves Naples every evening for Palermo, but the -Mediterranean is a treacherous element in February. It had broken night -after night in thunderous shocks upon the sea wall, making the heavy -stone-built hotel quiver beneath their beds, and in the darkness of each -night they had seen the water squadron charge again and again, the -foremost spinning up tall and white to fling itself in frenzied futile -spray across the black street. So that the thought of trusting insides -jaded by two weeks of the Atlantic to such a foe as this was far from -their most reckless dreams. The none too solid earth was none too good -for such as they, and a motor eats up dull miles by magic. Motors are to -be had in Naples even when fair skies lack, and with a big Berliet -packed with luggage, and with the concierge’s tender, rueful smile -shedding blessings, at last they slid southward. - -—Pale clouds of almond blossoms were spread against grey terraces.... -Less pale smells rose in gusty whiffs.... Narrow yellow streets crooked -before them, where they picked a cautious hooting way amid Italy’s -rising population complicated with goats and asses.... Then flat, muddy -roads, and Berliet bumping, splashing between fields of green -artichokes.... The clouds held up; thinned, and parted, showing rifts of -blue.... Vesuvius pushed the mists from her brow, and purple shadows -dappled her shining, dripping flanks.... Orange groves rose along the -way. Flocks of brown goats tinkled past. More almond boughs leaned over -walls washed a faded rose. Church bells clanked sweetly through the -moist air from far-away hills. Runnels chattered out from secret -channels fringed with fern. Grey olive orchards hung like clouds along -the steep.... The sun was fairly out, and Italy assuming her old -traditional air of professional beauty among the nations of the -earth.... - -The Berliet climbed as nimbly as a goat toward Sorrento. The light -deepened; the sea began to peacock. More and more the landscape assumed -the appearance of the impossibly chromatic back drop of an opera, and as -the turn was made under the orange avenue of the hotel at Sorrento -everything was ready for the chorus of merry villagers, and for the -prima donna to begin plucking song out of her bosom with stereotyped -gestures. - -It was there they began to offer the light wines of the country, as -sweetly perfumed and innocent as spring violets; no more like to the -astringent red inks masquerading in straw bottles in America under the -same names, than they to Hercules. The seekers of Persephone drank -deeply—as much as a wine-glass full—and warmed by this sweet ichor of -Bacchus they bid defiance to hoodoos and pushed on to Amalfi. - -Berliet swam along the Calabrian shore, lifting them lightly up the -steeps, swooping purringly down the slopes,—swinging about the bold -curves of the coast; rounding the tall spurs, where the sea shone, green -and purple as a dove’s neck, five hundred feet below, and where orange, -lemon, and olive groves climbed the narrow terraces five hundred feet -above. They were following the old, old way, where the Greeks had gone, -where the Romans went, where Normans rode, where Spaniards and Saracens -marched; the line of the drums and tramplings of not three, but of three -hundred conquests! They were following—in a motor car—the passageway of -three thousand years of European history that was to lead them back -beyond history itself to the old, old gods. - -The way was broad and smooth, looping itself like a white ribbon along -the declivity, and even Peripatetica admitted it was lovely, though she -has an ineradicable tendency to swagger about the unapproachable -superiority of Venezuelan scenery; probably because so few are in a -position to contradict her, or because she enjoys showing off her -knowledge of out-of-the-way places which most of us don’t go to. She had -always sniffed at the Mediterranean as overrated in the matter of -colour, and declared it pale and dull beside the green and blue fire of -Biscayne Bay in Florida, but it was a nice day, and a nice sight, and -Peripatetica handsomely acknowledged that _after_ Venezuela this was the -very best scenery she knew. - -At Amalfi - - “Where amid her mulberry trees - Sits Amalfi in the heat, - Bathing ever her white feet - In the tideless summer seas,” - -they climbed 175 steps to the Cappucini convent which hangs like a -swallow’s nest in a niche of the cliffs, flanked by that famous terrace -the artists paint again and again, from every angle, at every season of -the year, at every hour of the day. There they imbibed a very superior -tea, while sea and sky did their handsomest, listening meanwhile to a -fellow tourist brag of having climbed to Ravello in his motor car. - -If one cranes one’s neck from the Cappucini terrace, on a small peak -will be seen what purports to be a town, but the conclusion will be -irresistible that the only way to reach such a dizzy eminence is by -goat’s feet, or hawk’s wings, and the natural inference is that the -fellow tourist is fibbing. Nevertheless one hates to be outdone, and one -abandons all desire to sleep in one of those coldly clean little -monk-cells of the convent, and climbs resolutely down the 175 steps -again and interviews Berliet. Berliet thinks his chassis is too long for -the sharp turns. Thinks that the road is bad; that it is also unsafe; -that the hotel in Ravello is not possible; that he suspects his off fore -tire; that there’s not time to do it before dark; that his owner forbids -his going to Ravello at all; that he has an appointment that evening -with a good-looking lady in Amalfi; that he is tired with his long run, -and doesn’t want to any way. All of which eleven reasons appeared so -irrefutable, collectively and individually, that Jane and Peripatetica -climbed into their seats and announced that they would go to Ravello, -and go immediately. - -Berliet muttered unpleasant things in his native tongue as to signori -being reckless, obstinate, and inconsiderate; wound them up sulkily and -took them. - -Peripatetica admitted in a whisper that up to that very day she had -never even heard of Ravello, which proved to be a really degrading piece -of ignorance, for every human being they met for the next three months -knew all about the place—or said they did. Further experience taught -them to know that Italy is crowded with little crumbling towns one has -never heard of before, which when examined prove to be the very -particular spots in which took place about a half of all the history -that ever happened. History being a thing one must be pretty skilful if -one means to evade it in Italy, for the truth is that whenever history -took a notion to _be_, it promptly went on a trip to Italy and _was_. - -They hooted slowly again through narrow streets, pushed more goats and -children out their way, and then Berliet swung round on one wheel and -began to mount. Began to climb like the foreseen goat, to soar like the -imagined hawk, up sharp zigzags that lifted them by almost exact -parallels. Everything that puts on power and speed, and makes noises -like bomb explosions in a saw-factory, was pushed forward or pulled -back. They rushed noisily round and round the peak at locomotive speed, -and finally half way up into the very top of the sky they pulled up -sharply in a cobble-paved square. Berliet leaped nimbly out, unscrewed a -hot lid—with the tail of his linen duster—from which lid liquids and -steam and smells boiled as from an angry geyser, and they found -themselves in the wild eyrie of Ravello. That ubiquituosity—(with the -name of a hotel on his cap)—who springs out from every stone in Italy -like a spider upon the foolish swarming tourist fly, was waiting for -them in the square as if by appointment, and before they could draw the -first gasp of relief he had their possessions loaded upon the backs of -the floating population, and they were climbing in the dusk a stone -stairway that called itself a street—meekly and weakly unwitting of -their possible destination. The destination proved to be a vaulted -courtyard, opening behind a doorway which was built of a choice -assortment of loot from four periods of architecture and sculpture; -proved to be a reckless jumble of winding steps, of crooked passages, of -terraces, balconies, and loggias, and the whole of this destination went -by the name of the Hotel Bellevue. And once there, then suddenly, after -all the noise and odours, the confusion and human clatter of the last -three weeks, they stepped quietly out upon a revetment of Paradise. - -Below—a thousand feet below—in the blue darkness little sparks of light -were Amalfi. In the blue darkness above, hardly farther away it seemed, -were the larger sparks of the rolling planets. The cool, lonely darkness -bathed their spirits as with a blessed chrism. The place was, for the -night, theirs alone, and for one holy moment the swarming tourist failed -to swarm. - - * * * * * - - “In the Highlands! In the country places!”— - -murmured Jane, gratefully declining upon a broad balustrade, and -Peripatetica echoed softly—declining in her turn— - - ... “Oh, to dream; oh, to awake and wander - There, and with delight to take and render - Through the trance of silence - Quiet breath.”... - -And Jane took it up again— - - ... “Where essential silence cheers and blesses, - And forever in the hill recesses - Her more lovely music broods and dies.” - -Just then essential silence was broken by the last protesting squawk of -a virtuous hen, who seemed to be about to die that they might live. -Peripatetica recognized that plaintive cry. Hens were kept handy in -fattening-coops on the Plantation, against the sudden inroads of -unexpected guests. - -“When the big-gate slams chickens begin to squawk,” was a -well-remembered Plantation proverb. - -“How tough she will be, though,” Jane gently moaned, “and we shan’t be -able to eat her, and she will have died in vain.” - -Little did she reck of Signor Pantaleone Caruso’s beautiful art, for -when they had dressed by the dim, soothing flicker of candles in big -clean bed-rooms that were warmed by smouldering olive-wood fires, they -were sweetly fed on a dozen lovely dishes; dishes foamy and yellow, with -hot brown crusts, made seemingly of varied combinings of meal and -cheese, and called by strange Italian cognomens. And the late—so very -late—pullet appeared in her due course amid maiden strewments of crisp -salads; proving, by some Pantaleonic magic, to be all that a hen could -or should be. And they drank gratefully to her manes in Signor Caruso’s -own wine, as mellow and as golden as his famous cousin’s voice. After -which they ate small, scented yellow apples which might well have grown -in Hesperidian gardens, and drowsed contentedly by the musky olive-wood -blaze, among bowls of freesias and violets, until the almost weird hour -of half past eight, when inward blessedness and a day of mountain air -would no longer be denied their toll. - -Yet all through the hours of sleep “old forgotten, far-off things, and -battles long ago” stirred like an undertone of dreams within dreams. The -clank of armed feet moved in the street. Ghostly bells rang whispered -tocsins of alarm, and shadowy life swept back and forth in the broken, -deserted town. The “Brass Hats” glimmered in the darkness. Goths set -alight long extinguished fires. Curved Saracen swords glittered faintly, -and Normans grasped the heights with mailed hands. The Rufolis, the -d’Affliti, the Confalones, and della Maras married, feasted, and warred -again in dumb show, and up and down the stairs of this very house -rustled the silk robes and soft shod feet of sleek prelates. - -Even the sea below—where the new moon floated at the western rim like a -golden canoe—was astir with the myriad sails of _revenants_. First the -white wings of that— - - “Grave Syrian trader ... - Who snatched his rudder and shook out his sail ... - Between the Syrtes and soft Sicily.” - -After him followed hard the small ghostly sails of the Greeks. - -“They were very perfect men, and could do all and bear all that could be -done and borne by human flesh and blood. Taking them all together they -were the most faultlessly constructed human beings that ever lived, and -they knew it, for they worshipped bodily health and strength, and spent -the lives of generations in the cultivation of both. They were fighting -men, trained to use every weapon they knew, they were boxers and -wrestlers, athletes, runners and jumpers, and drivers of chariots; but -above all they were seamen, skilled at the helm, quick at handling the -sails, masters of the oar, and fearless navigators when half of all -navigation led sooner or later to certain death. For though they loved -life, as only the strong and the beautiful can love it, and though they -looked forward to no condition of perpetual bliss beyond, but only to -the shadowy place where regretful phantoms flitted in the gloom as in -the twilight of the Hebrew Sheol, yet they faced dying as fighters -always have and always will, with desperate hands and a quiet heart.” - -The golden canoe of the young moon filled and sank behind the sea’s rim, -but through the darkness came the many-oared beat of ponderous Roman -galleys carrying the dominion of the earth within their great sides, and -as they vanished like a fog-wreath along the horizon, followed fast the -hawk-winged craft of the keen-bladed, keen-faced Saracen, whose -sickle-like crescent would never here on this coast round to the full. -For, far away on the grey French coast of Coutance was a Norman -gentleman named Tancred, very strong of heart, and very stout of his -hands. There was no rumour of him here, as he rode to the hunt and -spitted the wild boar upon his terrible length of steel. What should the -Moslems know of a simple Norman gentleman, or care?—and yet in those -lion loins lay the seeds of a dozen mighty whelps who were to rend their -Christian prey from the Moslem and rule this warm coloured South as -kings and dukes and counts, and whose blood was to be claimed by every -crown in Europe for a thousand years. Very few among the shadowy sails -were those of the de Hautevilles, but quality, not quantity, counts most -among men, and those ships carried a strange, potent race. Anna Comnena -thus describes one of them: - -“This Robert de Hauteville was of Norman origin—he united a marvellous -astuteness with immense ambition, and his bodily strength was -prodigious. His whole desire was to attain to the wealth and power of -the greatest living men; he was extremely tenacious of his designs and -most wise in finding means to attain his ends. In stature he was taller -than the tallest; of a ruddy hue and fair-haired, he was -broad-shouldered, and his eyes sparkled with fire; the perfect -proportion of all his limbs made him a model of beauty from head to -heel, as I have often heard people tell. Homer says of Achilles that -those who heard his voice seemed to hear the thundering shout of a great -multitude, but it used to be said of the de Hautevilles that their -battle cry would turn back tens of thousands. Such a man, one in such a -position, of such a nature, and of such spirit, naturally hated the idea -of service, and would not be subject to any man; for such are those -natures which are born too great for their surrounding.” - - * * * * * - -When morning dawned all spirits of the past had vanished, and only the -noisy play of the young hopes of the Caruso family disturbed the peace -of the echoing court. Jane insisted upon calling these innocent infants -Knickerbockers, because, she said, they were only short -Pantaleones—which is the sort of mild pleasantry Jane affects. -Peripatetica doesn’t lend herself to these gentler forms of jest. It was -she who put in all that history and poetry. (See above.) - -Ravello used to be famous for her dye stuffs, and for the complete -thorough-goingness of her attacks of plague, but her principal -industries to-day are pulpits, and fondness for the Prophet Jonah. Her -population in the day of dyes and plague was 36,000, and is now, by -generous computation, about thirty-six—which does not include the -Knickers. Just opposite the Hotel Bellevue is one of these pulpits, in -the church of St. John of the Bull; a church which about a thousand -years ago was a very superior place indeed; but worse than Goths or -Vandals, or Saracens, or plague, was the pernicious activity of the -Eighteenth Century. Hardly a church in Italy has escaped unscathed from -its busy rage. No sanctuary was too reverend or too beautiful to be -ravaged in the name of Palladio, or of “the classic style.” Marbles were -broken, mosaics torn out, dim aisles despoiled, brass and bronze melted, -carvings chopped and burned, rich glass shattered, old tapestries flung -on the dust heap. All the treasures of centuries—sweet with incense, -softened and tinted by time, sanctified by a thousand prayers, and -beautified by the tenderest emotions—were bundled out of the way of -those benighted savages, and tons of lime were had into the poor gaunt -and ruined fanes to transform them into whited sepulchres of beauty. -Blank plaster walls hid the sweetest of frescoes; clustered grey columns -were limed into ghastly imitations of the Doric; soaring arches—flowered -like forest boughs—vanished in stodgy vaultings; Corinthian pilasters -shoved lacelike rood-screens out of the way, and fat sprawling cherubs -shouldered bleeding, shadowy Christs from the altars. - -The spirit which inspired this stupid ruthlessness was perfectly -expressed by Addison, who, commenting upon the great Cathedral of Siena, -said pragmatically: - -“When a man sees the prodigious pains that our forefathers have been at -in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy what miracles of -architecture they would have left us had they only been instructed in -the right way; for when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than -it is at present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal -of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic -churches as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings -than have been raised before or since that time. Than these Gothic -churches nothing can make a prettier show to those who prefer false -beauties and affected ornaments to a noble and majestic simplicity”—of -dull plaster! - -Much has been said of the irreverence of the Nineteenth Century. The -Eighteenth respected nothing their forefathers had wrought; not even in -this little far-away mountain town, and St. John of the Bull is now—poor -Saint!—housed drearily in a dull, dusty, echoing white cavern, with not -one point of beauty to hold the protesting eye save the splendid marble -pulpit—escaped by some miracle of ruth to stand out in that dull waste -upon delicate twisted alabaster columns, which stand in their turn upon -crawling marble lions. Its four sides, and its baldachino, show -beautiful patterns of precious mosaics, wrought with lapis lazuli, with -verd antique, and with sanguine Egyptian marbles. The carefullest and -richest of these mosaics, of course—along the side of the pulpit’s -stair—is devoted to picturing that extremely qualmish archaic whale who -in all Ravello’s churches _unswallows_ the Prophet Jonah with every -evidence of emotion and relief. - -Recently, in the process of removing some of the acres of Eighteenth -Century plaster, there was brought to light in a little chapel in the -crypt a life-sized relief of St. Catherine and her wheel. - -Such a lovely lady!—so fair, so pure, so saint-like; with faint memories -of old tinting on her small lips, on her close-folded hair, and her -downcast eyes—that even the most frivolous of tourists might be moved to -tears by the thought that she alone is the one sweet ghost escaped from -all that brutal destruction of mediæval beauty; resurrected by the -merest chance from her plaster tomb. - -Jane at the thought of it became quite dangerously violent. She insisted -upon digging up the Eighteenth Century and beating it to death again -with its own dusty old wig, and was soothed and calmed only by being -taken outside to look once more by daylight at the delicious marble -mince of fragments which the Hotel Bellevue has built into its -portals—Greek and Roman capitals upside down; marble lambs and crosses, -gargoyles, and corbels adorning the sides and lintels in a charming -confusion of styles, periods, and purposes. - -Ravello, as are all these arid ancient towns from which the tides of -life have drained away, is as dry and empty as an old last year’s nut; a -mere hollow shell, ridged and parched, out of which the kernel of -existence has vanished. - -A tattered, rosy-cheeked child runs up the uncertain footway—the -stair-streets—with feet as light and sure as a goat’s. An old, old man, -with head and jaws bound in a dirty red kerchief, and with the keen -hawk-like profile of some far-off Saracen ancestry, crouches in a -doorway with an outstretched hand. He makes no appeal, but his apparent -confidence that his age and helplessness will touch them, does touch -them, and they search their pockets hastily for coppers, with a faint -anguished sense of the thin shadow of a dial-finger which for them too -creeps round and round, as for this old derelict man, for this old -skeleton city.... - -A donkey heaped with brushwood patters up the steep narrow way; so -narrow that they must flatten themselves against the wall to admit of -his stolidly sorrowful passage. They may come and go, as all the others -have come and gone, but our brother, the ass, is always there, recking -not of Greek or Roman, of American or Tedeschi; for all of them he bears -burdens with the same sorrowful stolidity, and from none does he receive -any gratitude.... - -These are the only inhabitants of Ravello they see until they reach the -Piazza and the Cathedral of Saint Pantaleone. They know beforehand that -the Cathedral too has been spoiled and desecrated, but there still -remain the fine bronze doors by the same Barisanus who made the famous -ones in the church at Monreale in Sicily, and here they find the most -beautiful of the pulpits, and the very biggest Jonah and the very -biggest whale in all Ravello. - -Before that accursed Bishop Tafuri turned it into a white-washed cavern -the old chroniclers exhausted their adjectives in describing the glories -of Saint Pantaleone’s Cathedral. The richness of its sixteen enormous -columns of verd antique; its raised choir with fifty-two stalls of -walnut-wood, carved with incredible richness; its high altar of -alabaster under a marble baldachino glowing with mosaics and supported -upon huge red Egyptian Syenite columns—its purple and gold Episcopal -throne; its frescoed walls, its silver lamps and rich tombs, its -pictures and shrines and hangings—all pitched into the scrap heap by -that abominable prelate, save only this fine pulpit, and the Ambo. The -Ambo gives itself wholly to the chronicles of the prophet Jonah. On one -stairside he leaps nimbly and eagerly down the wide throat which looks -so reluctant to receive him, as if suspecting already the discomfort to -be caused by the uneasy guest. But Jonah’s aspect is all of a careless -gaiety; he is not taking this lodging for more than a day or two, and is -aware that after his brief occultation his reappearance will be dramatic -and a portent. On the opposite stair it happens as he had prophetically -foreseen, the mosaic monster disgorging him with an air of mingled -violence and exhausted relief. - -No one can tell us why Jonah is so favourite a topic in Ravello. “_Chi -lo sara_” everyone says, with that air of weary patience Italy so -persistently assumes before the eccentric curiosity of Forestieri. - -Rosina Vokes once travelled about with a funny little playlet called -“The Pantomime Rehearsal,” which concerned itself with the sufferings of -the author and stage manager of an English house-party’s efforts at -amateur theatricals. The enthusiastic conductor used to say -dramatically: - -“Now, Lord Arthur, you enter as the Chief of the fairies!” - -To which the blond guardsman replies with puzzled heaviness: “Yes; but -_why_ fairies?” - -Producing in the wretched author a sort of paralysis of bafflement. The -same look comes so often into these big Italian eyes. The thing just -_is_. Why clamour for reasons? It is as if these curious wandering folk, -always staring and chattering and rushing about, and paying good money -that would buy bread and wine, merely to look at old stones, should ask -_why_ the sun, or why the moon, or why anything at all?... - -So they abandon Jonah and take on the pulpit instead, the most famous of -all the mosaic pulpits in a region celebrated for mosaic pulpits. It is -done after the same pattern as that of St. John of the Bull, but the -pattern raised to the _n_th power. More and bigger lions; more and -taller columns; richer scrolls of mosaics; the bits of stone more deeply -coloured; the marble warmed by time to a sweeter and creamier blond. The -whole being crowned, moreover, by an adorable bust of Sigelgaita Rufolo, -wife of the founder of the Cathedral and giver of the pulpit. A pompous -Latin inscription under the bust records the virtues of this magnificent -patron of religion. The inscription including the names of all the long -string of stalwart sons Sigelgaita brought forth, and it calls in -dignified Latinity the attention of the heavenly powers to the eminent -deserts of this generous Rufolo, this mediæval Carnegie. - -Sigelgaita’s bust is an almost unique example of the marble portraiture -of the Thirteenth Century—if indeed it truly be a work of that time, for -so noble, so lifelike is this head with its rolled hair, its princely -coronet and long earrings, so like is it to the head of the Capuan Juno, -that one half suspects it of being from a Roman hand—those masters of -marmoral records of character—and that it was seized upon by Sigelgaita -to serve as a memorial of herself. - -Bernardo Battinelli, a notary of Ravello, writing in 1540 relates an -anecdote which shows what esteem was inspired by this marble portrait -long after its original was dust: - -“I remember in the aforesaid month and year, the Spanish Viceroy Don -Pietro di Toledo sent for the marble bust, which is placed in the -Cathedral and much honest resistance was made, so that the first time he -that came returned empty-handed, but shortly after he came back, and it -was necessary to send it to Naples in his keeping, and having sent the -magnifico Giovanni Frezza, who was in Naples, and Ambrose Flomano from -this place to his Excellency, after much ado, by the favour of the -glorious Virgin Mary, and by virtue of these messengers from thence -after a few days the head was returned.” - -In the year 1851 the palace of these splendid Rufoli, which in the time -of Roger of Sicily had housed ninety knights with their men at arms, had -fallen to tragical decay. A great landslide in the Fifteenth Century -destroyed the harbour of Amalfi; hid its great quays and warehouses, its -broad streets and roaring markets beneath the sea, and reduced it from a -powerful Republic, the rival of Venice and Genoa, to a mere fishing -village. A little later the plague followed, and decimated the now -poverty-stricken inhabitants of Ravello, and then the great nobles began -to drift away to Naples, came more and more rarely to visit their -Calabrian seats, and these gradually sank in the course of time into -ruin and decay. Fortunately in the year before mentioned a rich English -traveller, making the still fashionable “grand tour,” happened into -Ravello, saw the possibilities of this crumbling castle set upon one of -the most beautiful sites in the world, and promptly purchased it from -its indifferent Neapolitan owner. He, much absorbed in the opera dancers -and the small intrigues of the city, was secretly and scornfully amused -that a mad Englishman should be willing to part with so much good hard -money in exchange for ivied towers and gaping arches in a remote country -town. - -The Englishman mended the arches, strengthened the towers, gathered up -from among the weeds the delicate sculptures and twisted columns, -destroyed nothing, preserved and restored with a reverent hand, and made -for himself one of the loveliest homes in all Italy. It was in that -charming garden, swung high upon a spur of the glorious coast, that Jane -and Peripatetica contracted that passion for Ravello which haunted them -with a homesickness for it all through Sicily. For never again did they -find anywhere such views, such shadowed green ways of ilex and cypress, -such ivy-mantled towers, such roses, such sheets of daffodils and blue -hyacinths. They dreamed there through the long day, regretting that -their luggage had been sent on to Sicily by water, and—forgetting quite -their quest of Persephone—that they were therefore unable to linger in -the sweet precincts of the Pantaleone wines and cooking, devoting weeks -to exploring the neighbouring hills, and to unearthing more pulpits and -more Jonahs in the nearby churches. - -In the dusk they lingered by the Fountain of Strange Beasts, in the dusk -they wandered afoot down the cork-screwed paths up which they had so -furiously and smellily mounted. Berliet hooted contemptuously behind -them as he crawled after, jeering as at “scare-cats,” who dared mount, -but shrank from descending these abrupt curves and tiptilted inclines -except in the safety of their own low-heeled shoes. - -At Amalfi they plunged once again into the noisy tourist belt—the _va et -vient_, the chatter, the screaming flutter of the passenger pigeons of -the Italian spring. And yet there was peace in the tiny white cells in -which they hung over the sheer steep, while the light died nacreously -along the West. There was quiet in certain tiny hidden courts and -terraces under the icy moonlight, and Jane said in one of these—her -utterance somewhat interrupted by the chattering of her teeth, for -Italian spring nights are as cold as Italian spring days are warm—Jane -said: - -“What idiotic assertions are made in our time about ancient Europe -having no love for, no eye for, Nature’s beauty! Did you ever come -across a mediæval monastery, a Greek or Roman temple that was not placed -with an unerring perception of just the one point at which it would look -best, just at the one point at which everything would look best from -it?” - -“Of course I never did,” Peripatetica admitted with sympathetic -conviction. “We get that absurd impression of their indifference from -the fact that our forebears were not nearly so fond of talking about -their emotions as we. They had a trust in their fellow man’s -comprehension that we have lost. We always imagine that no one can know -things unless we tell them, and tell them with all our t’s carefully -crossed and our i’s elaborately dotted. The old literatures are always -illustrating that same confidence in other people’s imaginations, -stating facts with what to our modern diffuseness appears the baldest -simplicity, and yet somehow conveying all their subtlest meanings. Our -ancestors happily were not ‘inebriated with the exuberance of their own -verbosity.’... And now, Jane, bring that congealed nose of yours in out -of the open air. The moon isn’t going on a vacation. She will be doing -her old romance and beauty business at the same old stand long after we -are dead and buried, not to mention to-morrow night.” - -Berliet was all his old self the next day, and they swooped and soared, -slid and climbed toward Pæstum, every turn around every spur showing -some new beauty, some new effect. Gradually the coast sank and sank -toward the sea; the snow-caps moved further back into the horizon; grew -more and more mere white clouds above, more and more mere vapoury -amethyst below, and at last they shot at a right angle into a wide level -plain, and commenced to experience thrills. For the guide-books were -full, one and all, of weird tales of Pæstum which lay, so they said, far -back in a country as cursed and horrible as the dreadful land of the -Dark Tower. About it, they declared, stretched leprous marshes of -stagnant ooze choked with fat reeds, where fierce buffalo wallowed in -the slime. The contadini passed through its deadly miasma in shuddering -haste, gazing large-eyed upon a dare-devil Englishman who had once had -the courage to pass a night there in order to gratify a bold, fantastic -desire to see the temples by moonlight. It was such a strange, -tremendous story, that of the Greek Poseidonia, later the Roman Pæstum. - -Long ago those adventuring mariners from Greece had seized the fertile -plain which at that time was covered with forests of great oak and -watered by two clear and shining rivers. They drove the Italian natives -back into the distant hills, for the white man’s burden even then -included the taking of all the desirable things that were being wasted -by incompetent natives, and they brought over colonists—whom the -philosophers and moralists at home maligned, no doubt, in the same -pleasant fashion of our own day. And the colonists cut down the oaks, -and ploughed the land, and built cities, and made harbours, and finally -dusted their busy hands and busy souls of the grime of labour and -wrought splendid temples in honour of the benign gods who had given them -the possessions of the Italians and filled them with power and fatness. -Every once in so often the natives looked lustfully down from the hills -upon this fatness, made an armed snatch at it, were driven back with -bloody contumely, and the heaping of riches upon riches went on. And -more and more the oaks were cut down—mark that! for the stories of -nations are so inextricably bound up with the stories of trees—until all -the plain was cleared and tilled; and then the foothills were denuded, -and the wave of destruction crept up the mountain sides and they too -were left naked to the sun and the rains. - -At first these rains, sweeping down torrentially, unhindered by the lost -forests, only enriched the plain with the long hoarded sweetness of the -trees, but by and by the living rivers grew heavy and thick, vomiting -mud into the ever-shallowing harbours, and the lands soured with the -undrained stagnant water. Commerce turned more and more to deeper ports, -and mosquitoes began to breed in the brackish soil that was making fast -between the city and the sea. Who of all those powerful land-owners and -rich merchants could ever have dreamed that little buzzing insects could -sting a great city to death? But they did. Fevers grew more and more -prevalent. The malaria-haunted population went more and more languidly -about their business. The natives, hardy and vigorous in the hills, were -but feebly repulsed. Carthage demanded tribute, and Rome took it, and -changed the city’s name from Poseidonia to Pæstum. After Rome grew weak -Saracen corsairs came in by sea and grasped the slackly defended riches, -and the little winged poisoners of the night struck again and again, -until grass grew in the streets, and the wharves crumbled where they -stood. Finally the wretched remnant of a great people wandered away into -the more wholesome hills, the marshes rotted in the heat and grew up in -coarse reeds where corn and vine had flourished, and the city melted -back into the wasted earth. So wicked a name had the miasmatic, -fever-haunted plain that age after age rolled away and only birds and -serpents and wild beasts dared dwell there, or some outlaw chose to face -its sickly terrors rather than the revenge of the law. - -“Think,” said Jane, “of the sensations of the man who came first upon -those huge temples standing lonely in the naked plain! So lonely that -their very existence had been long forgotten. Imagine the awe and -surprise of such a discovery——” - -They were spinning—had been spinning for half an hour—along a rather bad -highway, and Peripatetica found it hard to call up the proper emotions -in answer to Jane’s suggestion, so occupied was she in looking for the -relishing grimness insisted upon by the guide-books. There were reeds; -there were a very few innocuous-looking buffalo, but for the most part -there were nice cultivated fields of grain and vines on either hand, and -occasionally half a mile or so of neglected shrubby heath. - -“Why, half of Long Island is wilder than this!” grumbled Peripatetica. -“Where’s the Dark Tower country? Childe Roland would think this a formal -garden. I _insist_ upon Berliet taking us somewhere that will thick our -blood with horror.” - -As it turned out, a wise government had drained the accursed land, -planted eucalyptus trees, and was slowly reclaiming the plain to its old -fertility, but the guide-books feel that the story is too good to be -spoiled by modern facts, and cling to the old version of 1860. - -Just then—by way of compensation, Berliet having fortunately slowed down -over a bad bit—an old altar-piece of a Holy Family stepped down out its -frame and came wandering toward them in the broad light of day. On the -large mild gray ass—a real altar-piece ass—sat St. Anna wrapped in a -faded blue mantle, carrying on her arm a sleeping child. At her right -walked the child’s mother, whose thin olive cheek and wide, timid eyes -seemed half ghostly under the white linen held together with one hand -under her chin. Young St. John led the ass. A wreath of golden-brown -curls blew about his golden-red cheeks, and he wore goat-hide shoes, and -had cross-gartered legs. - -Jane now says they never saw them at all. That it was just a mirage, or -a bit of glamourie, and that there is nothing remaining in new Italy -which could look so like the typical old Italy—but if Jane is right then -how did the two happen to have exactly the same glamour at exactly the -same moment? How could they both imagine the benign smile of that -strayed altar picture? Is it likely that a motor car would lend itself -to sacred visions? I ask you that! - -There was certainly some illusion—not sacred—about the dare-devilishness -of that Englishman who once spent a moonlit night at the temples, for a -little farming village lies close to the enclosure that shuts off the -temples from the highway, the inhabitants of which village seemed as -meek as sheep and anything but foolhardy, and there was reason to -believe that they spend every night there, whether the moon shines or -not. - -But the Temples were no illusion, standing in stately splendour in the -midst of that wide shining green plain, by a sea of milky chalcedony, -and in a semicircle behind them a garland of purple mountains crowned -with snow. Great-pillared Neptune was all of dull, burned gold, its -serried columns marching before the blue background with a curious -effect of perfect vigour in repose, of power pausing in solid ease. No -picture or replica gives the sense of this energy and power. Doric -temples tend to look lumpish and heavy in reproductions, but the real -thing at its very best (and this shrine of Neptune is the perfectest of -Greek temples outside of Athens) has a mighty grace, a prodigious -suggestion of latent force, of contained, available strength that wakes -an awed delight, as by the visible, material expression of an ineffable, -glorious, all-powerful god. - -“Well, certainly those Greeks——!” gasped Jane when the full meaning of -it all began to dawn upon her, and Peripatetica, who usually suffers -from chronic palpitation of the tongue, simply sat still staring with -shining eyes. Greeks to her are as was King Charles’ head to Mr. Dick. -She is convinced the Greeks knew everything worth knowing, and did -everything worth doing, and any further proof of their ability only -fills her with a gratified sense of “I-told-you-so-ness.” So she lent a -benign ear to a young American architect there, who pointed out many -constructive details, which, under an appearance of great simplicity, -proved consummate grasp of the art, and of the subtlest secrets of -architectural harmonics. - -Before the land made out into the harbour Poseidon’s temple stood almost -on the sea’s edge. The old pavement of the street before its portals -being disinterred shows the ruts made by the chariot wheels still -deep-scored upon it, and it was here - - “The merry Grecian coaster came - Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, - Green bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine—” - -anchoring almost under the shadow of the great fane of the Lord of the -Waters; and here, when his cargo was discharged, he went up to offer -sacrifices and thanks to the Sea-god of Poseidonia, and - - “Hung his sea-drenched garments on the wall,” - -and prayed for skill to outwit his fellows in trade; for fair winds to -blow him once more to Greece. - -Besides the temple of Neptune there was, of course, the enormous -Basilica, and a so-called temple of Ceres, and some Roman fragments, but -these were so much less interesting than the golden-pillared shrine of -the Trident God, that the rest of the time was spent in looking vainly -and wistfully for Pæstum’s famous rose gardens, of which not even the -smallest bud remained, and then Berliet gathered them up, and went in -search of the Station of La Cava. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - - - - CHAPTER II - - A NEST OF EAGLES - - “So underneath the surface of To-day - Lies yesterday and what we call the Past, - The only thing which never can decay.” - -TRUSTFULLY and sleepily Jane and Peripatetica, in the icy starlight of -La Cava, boarded the express of European _de Luxe_. Drowsy with the long -day’s rush through the wind, they believed that the train’s clatter -would be a mere lullaby to dreams of golden temples and iris seas and -“the glory that was Greece.” No robbers or barbarians nearer than -defunct corsairs crossed their imaginings; the hoodoo had faded from -mind, shaken off by the glorious swoop of Berliet, and they supposed it -left behind at Naples, clinging bat-like under the gaudy frescoes of -Room 13 to descend on other unwary travellers. - -Half of their substance had been paid to the Compagnie Internationale -des Wagon Lits for this night’s rolling lodging, and they begrudged it -not, remembering that it entitled their fatigue to the comforts of a -room to themselves in all the vaunted superior civilization and -decencies of a European compartment car. Presenting their tickets in -trusting calm they prepared to follow the porter to a small but cosy -room where two waiting white beds lay ready for their weary heads. But -the Hoodoo had come on from Naples in that very train. Compartments and -beds there were, but not for them. The porter led on, and in a toy -imitation of an American Pullman, showed them to a Lilliputian blue -plush seat and a ridiculous wooden shelf two feet above that pretended -it could unfold itself into an upper berth. This baby section in the -midst of a shrieking babble of tongues, a suffocation of unaired Latin -and Teutonic humanity, was their compartment room, “à vous seules, -Mesdames!” telegraphed for to Rome and made over to them with such -flourish by the polite agent at Naples! - -If the car was Lilliputian its passengers were not. Mammoth French -dowagers and barrel-like Germans overflowed all its tiny blue seats, and -the few slim Americans more than made good by their generous excess of -luggage. It was a very sardine box. - -In a fury too deep for words or tears Peripatetica and Jane sank into -the few narrow inches the porter managed to clear for them, and resigned -themselves to leaving their own dear bags in the corridor. - -“They will, of course, be stolen, but then we may never need them again. -We can’t undress, and shall probably be suffocated long before morning,” -remarked Peripatetica bitterly, with a hopeless glare at the imitation -ventilators not made to open. Their fury deepened at the slow struggles -of the porter to adjust the inadequate little partitions, at the grimy -blankets and pillows on the little shelves, at the curtains which didn’t -conceal them, the wash-room without water or towels and the -cattle-train-like burden of grunts and groans and smells floating on the -unbreathable atmosphere. - -Morning dawned golden on the flying hills at last, and then deepest fury -of all was Peripatetica’s, that passionate lover of fresh air, to find -that in spite of everything she _had_ slept, and was still breathing! - -Calabria, lovely as ever, melted down to her glowing seas; one last -swooping turn of the rails, and another line of faint hills rose -opposite—and that was Sicily! - -The train itself coiled like a weary serpent into a waiting steamer, -which slipt smoothly by the ancient perils of Scylla and Charybdis; and -nearer and nearer it rose, that gold and amethyst mountain-home of the -Old Gods. The white curve of Messina, “the Sickle,” showed clear at the -base of the cloud-flecked hills. Kronos, father of Demeter, enthroned on -those very mountain peaks, had dropped his scythe at the sea’s edge, -cutting space there for the little homes of men, and leaving them the -name of his shining blade, “Zancle,” the sickle, through all Greek days. -It was there, really there in actual vision, land of fire and myths; the -place of the beginnings of gods and men. - -Peripatetica and Jane burst from the car and climbed to the narrow deck -above to get clearer view. The sea wind swept the dust from their eyes -and all fatigue and discomfort from their memories. Their spirits rose -to meet that Spirit Land where Immortals had battled and labored; had -breathed themselves into man,—the divine spirit stirring his little -passing life with revelation of that which passeth not; that soul of -beauty and wisdom, and of poetry which should move through the ages. -Their eyes were wide to see the land where man’s imaginings had brought -the divine into all surroundings of his life, until every tree and -spring and rock and mountain grew into semblance of a god. Oh, was it -all a “creed outworn”? Here might not one perchance still see - - “Proteus rising from the sea, - Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn”? - -In these very mountains before them had man himself been shaped; -hammered out by Vulcan upon his forge in Ætna. Here, in this land he had -been taught by Demeter to nourish himself from the friendly earth, -taught how to shelter himself from the inclement elements by Orion, -Hunter and Architect—a god before he was a star. There Zeus, -all-conquering wisdom, had prevailed against his opponents and placed -his high and fiery seat, this very Ætna, upon the bound body of the last -rebellious Titan, making even the power of ignorance the pediment of his -throne. There the fair maiden goddesses, Artemis and Minerva and -Persephone, had played in flowery fields. There had Pluto stolen the -fairest away from among the blossoms, the entrance to his dark -underworld gaping suddenly among the sunny meadows. There had the -desolate mother Demeter lit at Ætna the torch for her long and desperate -search. There had demi-gods and heroes lived and loved and struggled. -Its very rivers were transformed nymphs, its islands rocks tossed in -Cyclop’s battles. There Ulysses had wandered and suffered; there -Pythagoras had taught, Theocritus had sung. There—but man nor woman -either is yet entirely spirit; and though it was in truth the actual -land of their pilgrimage, of the birthplace of myth, of beauty and -wonder, Persephone had not yet returned. The icy wind was turning all -sentiment into shivers and they fled back to the Twentieth Century and -its Pullman car. - -Messina looked still more enticing when close at hand; both prosperous -and imposing with its lines of stone quays and palaces on the sea front. -Beyond these there were famous fountains they knew, and colourful -marketplaces, and baroque churches with spires like fluted seashells, -and interiors gleaming like sea caverns with all the rich colour and -glow of Sicilian mosaics. In one of the churches was the shrine of a -miracle-working letter from the Madonna, said to have been written by -her own hand. There was besides an old Norman Cathedral, built of Greek -ruins and Roman remains; much surviving Spanish quaintness, but to two -unbreakfasted _Wagon Lit_ passengers all this was but ashes in the -mouth. They felt that the attractions of Messina could safely remain in -the guide-books. They were impelled on to Taormina.... No prophetic -vision warned them that in their haste they were losing the chance of -ever seeing that doomed Sickle-City at all. In that placid, modern port, -where travellers for pleasure rarely paused, there seemed nothing to -stay them. No ominous shadow lay upon it to tell that it was marked for -destruction by “the Earth-Shaker,” or that before the year had gone it -would be echoing the bitter cry of lost Berytus: - -“Here am I, that unhappy city—no more a city—lying in ruins, my citizens -dead men, alas! most ill-fated of all! The Fire-god destroyed me after -the shock of the Earth-Shaker. Ah me! From so much loveliness I am -become ashes. Yet do ye who pass me by bewail my fate, and shed a tear -in my honour who am no more. A tomb of tombless men is the city, under -whose ashes we lie.” - -Taormina, the little mountain town, crouched under Ætna’s southern side, -not far from those meadows of Enna from which Persephone had been -ravished away. There she would surely first return to the upper world, -and Demeter’s joy burst into flowers and sunshine. So there they decided -to seek her, and turned their grimy faces straight to the train. The -only sight-seeing that appealed to them now was a vision of the San -Domenico Hotel with quiet white monkish cells like to Amalfi’s to rest -their weariness in, peaceful pergolas, large bathtubs, and a hearty -table d’hôte luncheon. - -So they stayed not for sights, and stopped not for stone—nor breakfast, -nor washing, nor even for their trunks, which had not materialized, but -sat in a dusty railway carriage impatient for the train to start. - -“It was beautiful,” remarked Jane, thinking of the harbour approach to -the city. - -“Yes,” said Peripatetica, jumping at her unexpressed meaning as usual. -“Messina has always been a famous beauty, and always will be. But she -is, and always has been, an incorrigible cocotte,—submitting without a -struggle to every invader of Sicily in turn. And she certainly doesn’t -in the least look her enormous age in spite of having led a _vie -orageuse_. Whenever the traces of her past become too obvious she goes -and takes an earthquake shock, they say, and rises fresh and rejuvenated -from the ruins, ready to coquette again with a new master and be -enticing and treacherous all over again.”[1] - -Footnote 1: - - Messina suffered a terrific earthquake shock in 1783 and has had in - her history serious damage from seismic convulsions no less than nine - times. - -It was hard to imagine on her modern boulevards the armies of the -past—all those many conquerors that Messina had herself called in, -causing half the wars and troubles of Sicily by her invitations to new -powers to come and take possession, and to do the fighting for her that -she never would do for herself; betraying in turn every master, good or -bad, for the excitement of getting a new one.... - -Greeks, Carthagenians, Mamertines, Romans, Arabs, Normans, -Spaniards—where were the ways of their tramplings now? On that modern -light-house point there was not even a trace of the Golden Temple in -which Neptune sat on a crystal altar “begirt with smooth-necked shells, -sea-weeds, and coral, looking out eastward to the morning sun?” - -“If it were near the 15th of August I would stay here in spite of -everything,” ventured Peripatetica, looking up from her book. “The -Procession of the Virgin is the only thing really worth seeing left in -Messina.” And in answer to Jane’s enquiring eyebrows Peripatetica began -to read aloud of that extraordinary pageant of the Madonna della Lettera -and her car, that immense float, dragged through Messina’s streets by -hundreds of men and women; of its tower fifty feet high, on which are -ranged tiers over tiers of symbolically dressed children standing upon -all its different stories; poor babies with painted wings made to fly -around on iron orbits up to the very top of the erection; of the great -blue globe upon which stands a girl dressed in spangled gauze, -representing the Saviour, holding upon her right hand—luckily supported -by iron machinery—another child representing the Soul of the Blessed -Virgin. - -“Not real children—not live babies!” protested Jane. - -“Yes, indeed, just listen to Hughes’ account of it.” Peripatetica read: -“At an appointed signal this well-freighted car begins to move, when it -is welcomed with reiterated shouts and vivas by the infatuated populace; -drums and trumpets play; the Dutch concert in the machine commences, and -thousands of _pateraroes_ fired off by a train of gunpowder make the -shores of Calabria re-echo with the sound; then angels, cherubim, -seraphim, and ‘animated intelligences,’ all begin to revolve in such -implicated orbits as to make even the spectators giddy with the sight; -but alas for the unfortunate little actors in the pantomime; they in -spite of their heavenly characters are soon doomed to experience the -infirmities of mortality; angels droop, cherubim are scared out of their -wits, seraphim set up outrageous cries, ‘souls of the universe’ faint -away, and ‘moving intelligences’ are moved by the most terrible -inversion of the peristaltic nerves; then thrice happy are those to whom -an upper station has been allotted. Some of the young brats, in spite of -the fracas, seem highly delighted with their ride, and eat their -ginger-bread with the utmost composure as they perform their evolutions; -but it not unfrequently happens that one or more of these poor innocents -fall victims to this revolutionary system and earn the crown of -martyrdom.” - -Jane seized the book to make sure it was actually so written and not -just one of Peripatetica’s flights of fancy, and plunged into an account -of another part of the pageant—the giant figures of Saturn and Cybele -fraternizing amiably with the Madonna; Cybele “seated on a large horse -clothed like a warrior. Her hair is tied back with a crown of leaves and -flowers with a star in front, and the three towers of Messina. She wears -a collar and a large blue mantle covered with stars, which lies on the -back of the horse. A mace of flowers in her right hand and a lance in -her left. The horse is barded, and covered with rich trappings of red, -with arabesques of flowers and ribbons.”...[2] - -Footnote 2: - - All this, along with every treasure of her past, has now disappeared. - -“What curious folk the Sicilians are! They accept new creeds and -ceremonies, but the old never quite lose their place. Where else would -the Madonna allow a Pagan goddess to figure in her train? And did you -notice in this very procession they still carry the identical skin of -the camel on which Roger entered the city when he began his conquest of -Sicily? I wish it were near the 15th of August!” - -“I wish it were near the time this train starts, if it ever does,” -replied Peripatetica crossly. - -And, as if but waiting the expression of her wish, the train did begin -to stream swiftly along the deeply indented coast beside whose margin -came that wild Norman raid upon Messina of the dauntless young hawks of -de Hauteville. Roger, the youngest and greatest of the twelve sons, -accompanied by but sixty knights and their squires, two hundred men in -all, pouncing daringly upon a kingdom. A half dozen galleys slipped over -from Reggio by night, and the morning sun flashed upon the dew-wet -armour as they galloped through the dawn to Messina’s walls. The great -fortified city was in front of them, a hostile country around them, and -a navy on the watch to cut them off from reinforcements or return by -sea. That they should succeed was visibly impossible. But determined -faces were under the steel visors, the spirit of conquering adventure -shining in their grey eyes. Every man of the host was confessed and -absolved for this fight of the Cross against the Crescent and their -young Commander was dedicated to a life pure and exemplary, if to him -was entrusted the great task of winning Sicily to Christian dominion. - -They did it because they thought they could do it; as in the old Greek -games success was to the man who believed in his success. The Saracens -fell into a panic at the sight of that intrepid handful at their gates, -thinking from the very smallness of the band that it must be the advance -pickets of a great army already past their guarding navy and advancing -upon the city. - -“So the Saracens gave up in panic, and Roger and his two hundred took -all the town with much gold and many slaves, as was a conquering -warrior’s due.” - -The key of Messina was sent to Brother Robert in Calabria with the proud -message that the city was his to come and take possession of. And the -Normans went on with the same bold confidence; and always their belief -was as a magic buckler to them as over all the island they extended -their conquest. Seven hundred Normans routed an army of 15,000 Saracens, -killing 10,000. And young Serbo, nephew of Roger, conquered 30,000 -Arabs, attacking them with only one hundred knights. - -It was one of Jane’s pet romances, the career of this landless youngest -son of a small French noble carving out with sword and brain “the most -brilliant of European Kingdoms,” leaving a dominion to his successors -with power stretching far beyond Sicily as long as they governed upon -his principles. The young conqueror, unspoiled by his dazzling success, -ruled with justice, mercy, and genius, making Sicily united and -prosperous; the freest country in the world at that time; the only one -where all religions were tolerated, where men of different creeds and -tongues could live side by side, each in his own way; each governed -justly and liberally according to his own laws—French statutes for -Normans, the Koran for Mussulmen, the Lombard laws for Italians, and the -old Roman Code for the natives. - -“Peripatetica,” Jane burst out. “Roger must have been a delightful -person—‘so good, _so dear_, so great a king!’ Don’t you think there is -something very appealing in a king’s being called ‘so dear’? It is much -easier for them to be ‘great.’” - -“Normans are too modern for me now,” said Peripatetica, whose own -enthusiasm was commencing to catch fire. “We are coming to the spot of -all the Greek beginnings, where their very first settlement began—do you -realize that?” - -And Jane, who had been hard at work with her histories, could see it -clearly. The little narrow viking-like boats of Theocles, the Greek -merchant, driven before the sudden northeast storm they could not beat -up against nor lie to, straight upon the coast of this dread land. It -had always been a land awesome and mysterious to the Greeks. They had -imagined half the dramas of their mythology as happening there. It was -sacred ground, too sacred to be explored by profane foot; and was -besides the home of fierce cannibals, as they believed the Sikilians to -be, and of all manner of monstrous and half divine beings. But, -desperately choosing before certain destruction at sea the unknown -perils of the shore, Theocles had rounded the point and beached his -boats safely on that strip of yellow sand that still fringes the cove -below Taormina. - -He and his companions, who feared to adventure no perils of the -treacherous Mediterranean in their tiny crafts, but feared very much the -monsters of their imagination in this haunted country, built to Apollo -an altar of the sea-worn rocks, and sacrificed on it their last meal and -wine, praying him for protection and help to save them from the -Læstrygones, from Polyphemus, and Hephæstos at his nearby smoking forge. -And Apollo must have found it good, the savour of that his first -sacrifice on Sicilian land, for straightway succour came. The natives, -drawn down from the hillsides in curiosity at that strange fire on the -shore, were not raging cannibals but peaceful and friendly farmer folk, -who looked kindly on the shipwrecked merchants, and gladly bartered food -and rich dark wine for Greek goods. And through the days of the storm -the Greeks lived unmolested on the shore, impressed by all that met -their eyes; the goodness of that “fairest place in the world.” When at -last came favourable winds and the Greeks could set sail again, Theocles -vowed to return to that fertile shore, and if Apollo, protector of -colonists and giver of victory, should favour his enterprise, to build -there a shrine in his honour. - -But in Athens none would believe his accounts of the rich land and the -mild natives. They said that even so it would be unwise to disturb -Polyphemus, or to run the risk of angering Hephæstos, and that it was no -proper site for a colony any way! Theocles did not falter at -discouragement; he took his tale to other cities and over in Eubœa the -Chalcydians were won to him. After the oracle of Apollo had promised -them his protection and all good fortune, more Ionians and some Dorians -joined them; and in the spring they set forth, a great fleet of vessels -laden with all necessary things to found a colony. Theocles piloted them -to the spot of his first sheltering; and there on the red rock horns of -the point above the beach they founded Naxos, and built the great shrine -of Apollo Archagates, founder and beginner, with that wonderful statue -which is spoken of as still existing in the time of Augustus, 36 B.C. - -Naxos itself had no such length of life. It knew prosperous centuries of -growth and importance, of busy commerce and smiling wealth. Then came -Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, subdued the mother city to his jealous -power and absolutely exterminated it, killing or carrying off into -slavery all its population. “The buildings were swept away, and the site -of Naxos given back to the native Sikilians. They never returned, and -for twenty-two centuries no man has dwelt there.” Of all the shrines and -palaces of Naxos not one stone remains upon another, not one surviving -trace to identify now the exact site even of the Mother of all Greek -cities in Sicily. But from her sprang Taormina. - -Such of her population as managed to escape from Dionysius, climbed up -to those steep rocks above and there, sheltering with the Sikilians, out -of tyrants’ reach in that inaccessible mountain nest, Greek and Sikilian -mingling produced a breed of eagles that with fierce strugglings has -held fast its own on those peaks through all the centuries. - -But these shipwrecks and temples and sieges grew dim behind the gritty -cloud of railroad cinders. Jane felt the past melt away from her and -fade entirely into the cold discomfort of the present. She subsided into -limp weariness in a corner of the carriage, incapable of interest in -anything, while Peripatetica’s spirits revived, approaching the tracks -of her adored Greeks, and her imagination took fire and burst into -words. - -“Oh those wonderful days!” she cried. “If one could only have seen that -civilization, that beauty, with actual eyes. Jane, wouldn’t you give -anything to get back into the Past even for a moment?” - -“No, I’d rather get somewhere in the now—and to breakfast,” grumbled -Jane with hopeless materialism as she vainly tried to stay her hunger on -stale chocolate. So Peripatetica saw visions alone, Jane only knowing -dimly that miles and miles of orange groves, and of a sea a little paled -and faded from its Calabrian blue, were slipping by. - -A box of a station announced itself as Giardini-Taormina. A red-cheeked -porter bore the legend “Hotel San Domenico” on his cap; and much luggage -and two travellers fell upon him. But, ah, that hoodoo! - -“Desolated, but the hotel was full. Yes, their letter had been received, -but it had been impossible to reserve rooms,” said the cheerful porter -heartlessly; “no doubt other hotels could accommodate them.” He didn’t -seem to feel his cheerfulness in the least diminished by the dismay -pictured in the dusty faces before him. - -“Oh, well,” said Jane bravely, “picturesque monasteries are all very -well, but modern comfort does count in the end. We will probably like -the Castel-a-Mare, and if we don’t, there is the Timeo.” - -A small man buzzing “Metropole, Metropole! Come with me, -Ladies—beautiful rooms—my omnibus is just going!” hung upon their -skirts, but they brushed him sternly aside, and permitted the -rosy-cheeked porter to pile them and the mountains of their -motoring-luggage into a dusty cab, and sing “Castel-a-Mare” cheerily to -its driver. - -“We will go there first as it’s nearest,” they agreed, “but if the rooms -aren’t very nice, then the Timeo—the royalties all prefer the Timeo.” - -The road was twisting up and up a bare hillside. They roused themselves -to think that they were approaching Taormina, the crown of Sicily’s -beauty, the climax of all earthly loveliness, the spot apostrophised -alike with dying breath by German poets and English statesmen, as being -the fairest of all that their eyes had beheld on earth, place of -“glories far worthier seraph’s eyes” than anything sinful man ought to -expect in this blighted world according to Cardinal Newman. - -But where was it, that glamour of beauty? Underneath was a leaden -stretch of sea, overhead a cold, clouded sky, jagged into by forbidding -peaks. The grey road wound up and folded back upon itself, and slowly—oh -dear departed Berliet, how slowly!—up they crawled. It was all grey, -receding sea and rocky hillside, grey dust thick on parched bushes and -plants, greyer still on grey olives and cactus, and what—those other -dingy trees—could they be _almonds_!—those shrivelled and pallid ghosts -of rosy bloom shivering in the icy wind? Was it all but a chill shadow, -that for which they had left home and roaring fires and good steam heat? - -A furry grey head surmounted a dust wave, a donkey and a small square -cart emerged behind him, following a line of others even greyer and -dustier. Jane looked listlessly at the forlorn procession until her eyes -discerned colour and figures dim beneath the dirt on the cart’s sides, -and underneath fantastic mud gobs what appeared to be carvings. Could -these be the famous Painted Carts, the “walking picture books” of a -romance and colour loving people, the pride of a Sicilian peasant, -frescoed and wrought, though the owner lived in a cave—the asses hung -with velvet and glittering bits of mirrors though he himself walked in -rags? Was everything hoped for in Sicily to prove a delusion? - -Up whirled the San Domenico porter in a cloud of dust, his empty -carriage passing their laden one. - -“You might try the ‘Pension Bellevue,’ ladies—beautiful outlook—opposite -the Castel-a-Mare, if you are not suited there,” he called out as he -rolled by. - -They thanked him coldly, with spines stiffening in spite of fatigue. - -A pension? Never! If they could not have ascetic cells at San Domenico -or the flowery loggias of the Castel-a-Mare, then at least the chambers -that had sheltered a German Empress! - -Gardens and flowers began to appear behind the dust; a wave-fretted -promontory ran into the sea below, a towering peak crowned with a brown -rim loomed overhead. In a few more dusty twists of road the -Castel-a-Mare was reached, and two large rooms with the best view -carelessly demanded. - -The Concierge looked troubled and sent for a bland proprietor. Rooms? He -had none! wouldn’t have for a month—could give one room just for that -very night—that was all! - -To the Timeo then. - -More dusty road, a quaint gateway, a narrow street with all the town’s -population walking in the middle of it, a stop in front of a delightful -bit of garden. A stern and decided concierge this time—_No rooms!_ - -In the mile and a half from the Castel-a-Mare at the end of one -promontory, to the Internationale at the extreme end of the other, that -dusty cab stopped at every hotel and, oh lost pride! at every pension in -the town and out. The same stern refusal everywhere; no one wanted the -weary freight. They felt their faces taking on the meek wistfulness of -lost puppies vainly trying to ingratiate themselves into homes with -bones. - -“Does no one in the world want us?” wailed Peripatetica. “Can’t any one -see how nice we really are and give us a mat and a crust?” - -“The Metropole man did want us,” reminded Jane hopefully. “He even -begged for us. Let’s go there!” - -That had been the one and only place passed by, the Domenico porter had -seemed so scornful of its claim at the station, but now they would -condescend to any roof, and thought gratefully of that only welcome -offered them in all Taormina. - -How pleased the little porter would be to have them coming to his -beautiful rooms after all! Their meek faces became proud again. They -looked with approving proprietorship on the waving palm in front of the -Metropole, and the old bell tower rising above it. - -Peripatetica’s foot was on the carriage step ready to alight and Jane -was gathering up wraps and beloved Kodak when out came a languid -concierge and the usual words knelled in their ears—“_No rooms!_” - -They refused to believe. “But your porter said you had.” - -“Yes, an hour ago, but now they are taken.” - -A merciful daze fell upon Peripatetica and Jane.... - -How they returned to the “Castel-a-Mare” and got themselves and their -mountain of luggage into the one room in all Taormina they might call -theirs for as much as a night, they never knew; when consciousness came -back they were sitting in front of food in a bright dining-room, and -knew by each other’s faces that hot water and soap must have happened in -the interval. - -Speech came back to Peripatetica, and she announced that she was never -going to travel more, except to reach some place where she might stay on -and on forever. Jane might tour through Sicily if she liked, but as for -her, Syracuse and Girgenti and all could remain mere words on the map, -and Cook keep her tickets—if she had to move on again on the morrow, she -would go straight to Palermo and there stay! - -Jane admitted to congenial feelings, and resigned all intervening Sicily -without a pang. There would be no place in inhospitable Taormina for -Persephone to squeeze into any way! - -They went to question the Concierge of trains to Palermo. He took it as -a personal grief that they must leave Taormina so soon. “The air of -Palermo is not like ours.” They hoped it was not, as they shivered in a -cold blast from the open door, and put it to him that they could hardly -live on air alone, and that Taormina offered them nothing more. But he -had something to suggest—furnished rooms that he had heard that a German -shop-keeper wished to let. Peripatetica did not take to the suggestion -kindly, in fact her aristocratic nose quite curled up at it. But she -assented dejectedly that they might as well walk there as anywhere, and -give the place a look. - -Through the dust and shrivelled almond blossoms they trailed back into -town. The sun was still behind grey clouds and an icy wind whipped up -the dust. - -“Too late for the almond bloom, too early for warmth. What _is_ the -right moment for Sicily?” murmured Peripatetica. - -The mountains with their sweeping curves into the sea were undeniably -beautiful; the narrow town street they entered through the battlemented -gate was full of gay colour, but it left them cold and homesick for -Calabria. A little old Saracen palace, with some delicate Moorish -windows and mouldings still undefaced, held the antiquity shop of the -Frau Schuler. Brisk and rosy she seemed indeed the “trustable person” of -the Concierge’s description. - -Yes, indeed, she had rooms and hoped they might please the ladies. Her -niece would show them. A white-haired loafer was beckoned from the -Square, and Peripatetica and Jane turned over to his guidance. Behind -his faded blue linen back they threaded their way between the swarming -tourists, children, panniered donkeys, and painted carts. - -Suddenly the old man vanished into a crack between two houses, which -turned out to be an alley, half stair, half gutter, dropping down to -lower levels. Everything no longer needed in the kitchen economy of the -houses on either side had been cast into the alley—the bones of -yesterday’s dinners, vegetable parings of to-day’s, the baby’s bath, the -father’s old shoes lay in a rich ooze through which chickens clucked and -squabbled. At the bottom of the crack a high wall and a pink gateway ... -they were in a delicious garden, descending a pergola of roses and -grapes. Violets and freesias, geraniums and heliotrope spread in a -dazzle of colour and sweetness under gnarled olives and almonds and -blossoming plums; stone benches, bits of old marbles, a violet-fringed -pool and a terrace leading down to a square white house, a smiling young -German girl inviting them in, and then a view—dazzling to even their -fatigued, dulled eyes. - -In front a terrace, and then nothing but the sea, 700 feet below, the -surf-rimmed coast line melting on and off indefinitely to the right in -great soft curves of up-springing mountains, a deep ravine, then the San -Domenico point with the old convent and church rising out of its -gardens. On the left the ruins of the Greek theatre hanging over their -heads; and on the very edge of the terrace an old almond-tree with -chairs and a table under it, all waiting for tea. - -Fortunately the villa’s interior showed comfortable rooms, clean, airy, -and spacious. But the terrace settled it. They would have slept anywhere -to belong to that. No longer outcast tramps but semi-proprietors of a -villa, a terrace, a garden, and a balcony, they returned beaming to the -friendly Concierge. - -And all Taormina looked different now. The brocades and laces waved -enticingly at the “antichita’s” doors, old jewels and enamels gleamed -temptingly; mountains rose more majestic, the sea seemed less -disappointingly lacking in Calabrian colour.... And as for the tourists, -so disgustingly superior in the morning with their clean faces and -unrumpled clothes, assured beds and table d’hôtes; now, how the balance -had changed! They were mere tourists. What a superior thing to be an -inhabitant, with a terrace all one’s own! - -Life at the Villa Schuler was inaugurated in a pouring rain. But even -that did not dim its charm; though to descend the Scesa Morgana—as the -gutter-alley called itself—was like shooting a polluted Niagara, and the -stone floors of the villa itself were damply chill, and American bones -ached for once despised steam heat. Yet smiling little Sicilian maids, -serving with an ardour of willingness that never American maid knew, -with radiant smiles staggered through the rain bearing big pieces of -luggage, carried in huge pitchers of that acqua calda the forestieri had -such a strange passion for, and then, as if it were the merriest play in -the world, pulled about heavy pieces of furniture to rearrange the rooms -according to American ideas, which demanded that dressing-tables should -have light on their mirrors, and sofas not be barriered behind the -immemorial German tables. - -Maria of the beaming smile, and Carola of the gentle eyes, what genius -was yours? Two dumb forestieri, who had never learned your beautiful -tongue, found that they had no more need of words to express their wants -than a baby has to tell his to knowing mother and nurses. Did they have -a wish, all they had to do was to call “Maria!”—smile and stutter, look -into her sympathetic face, and somehow from the depths of their eyes she -drew out their desire.... - -“Si, si, Signora!” - -She was off and back again with a smile still more beaming. - -“Questo?” - -Yes, “questo” was always the desired article! - -At first they did make efforts at articulate speech, and with many -turnings over of dictionary and phrase-book attempted to translate their -meaning. But that was fatal. Compilers of phrase-books may be able to -converse with each other, but theirs is a language apart—of their own, -apparently—known to no other living Italians. They soar in cloudy -regions of politeness, those phrase-books, all flourishes and -unnecessary compliments; but when it comes to the solid substantials of -existence they are nowhere! Towels are not towels to them, nor butter, -butter. - -At first two trusting forestieri loyally believed in them, and book in -hand read out confidently to Maria their yearnings for a clean table -cloth, or a spoon. But a dictionary spoon never was a spoon to -Maria—dazed for once she would look at them blankly until meaning dawned -on her from their eyes; then “ah!” and she would exclaim an entirely -different word from the dictionary’s, and produce the article at last. - -But then according to Maria’s vocabulary “_questo?_” “_qui!_” were the -only really vital and necessary words in all the Italian language. It -merely depended upon how you inflected these to make them express any -human need or emotion. “Questo” meant everything from mosquito-bars to -vegetables; and the combination of the two words with a sprinkling of -“si’s” and “non’s” were all one needed to define any shade of -feeling—pride, surprise, delight, regret, apology, sadness. From the -time Maria brought in the breakfast trays in the mornings to the -hot-water bottles at night it rang through the villa all day long; for -the intricacies of her duties, the demands of the lodgers, scoldings -from the Fraulein, chatter with other maids, “questo! qui!” sounded near -and echoed from the distance like a repeated birdnote. - -No nurse ever showed more pride in a precocious infant’s lispings than -did Maria when they caught up her phrases and repeated them to her—when -the right words to express the arrangement of tub and dinner table were -remembered and stammered out. She seemed to feel that there might be -hope of her charges eventually developing into rational articulate -beings, and “questo-ed” every article about to them, with all the -enthusiasm of a kindergartner. - - * * * * * - -Next morning the sun had come out, and so had Ætna. There it suddenly -was, towering over the terrace, a great looming presence dominating -everything; incredibly high and white, its glittering cone clear cut as -steel against the blue morning sky, rising far above the clouds which -still clung in tatters of drapery about the immense purple flanks. -Enceladus for once lay quiet upon his fiery bed; no tortured breathings -of steam floated about the icy clearness of the summit. It was a vision -all of frozen majestic peace, yet awesomely full of menace, of the times -when the prisoned Titan turned and groaned and shook the earth with his -struggles, and poured out tears of blood in floods of burning -destruction over all the smiling orchards and vineyards and soft green -valleys. - -Suddenly, Germans armed with easels and palettes sprang up fully -equipped at every vantage viewpoint. The terrace produced a fertile crop -of them, solemnly reducing the wonderful vision to mathematical dabs of -purple and mauve and grey upon yellow canvas. One felt it comforting to -know that even if Ætna never pierced the clouds again all Germany might -feast its eyes on the colored snap shots then being made of that -morning’s aspect of the Great Presence amid a patronising chorus of -“Kolossals” and “achs reizends.” But once seen, it remained impressed on -sense and spirit, that vision—whether visible or not. It was always with -one, dominating all imaginings as it did every actual circumstance of -life at Taormina, the weather, the temperature, the colour of every -prospect. Though the sky behind San Domenico might be a blank and empty -grey, _one knew it was there_, that mysterious and wonderful presence. -And when it stood out, a Pillar of Heaven indeed, all clear and fair in -white garment of fresh-fallen snow, it was still a menace to the -blossoming land below, whether from its summit were sent down icy winds -and grey mists or shrivelling fire and black pall of lava. - -[Illustration: “A PLACE WHERE THE PAST REVEALS ITSELF”] - -Equal in importance with this vision of Ætna was the appearance of -Domenica—both events happening in the same day. Domenica too began as a -bland outline. Small, middle-aged, and primly shawled; a smooth black -head, gold earrings, and a bearing and nose of such Roman dignity and -ability that two weary forestieri yearned at once to put themselves and -their undarned stockings into the charge of her capable little hands. -She respectfully asserted her willingness to serve them; they could make -that out—but how tell her their requirements and the routine of the -service they wished? It was seen to be beyond the powers of any -phrase-book or even of Maria, presiding over the interview with beaming -interest, and carefully repeating with louder tone and hopeful smile all -Domenica’s words. No mutual understanding could be reached. They gave it -up, and regretfully saw the shining black head bow itself out. But -Domenica had to be. Their fancy clamoured for her, and all their poor -clothes, full of the dust of travel and the rents of ruthless -washerwoman, demanded her insistently. A more competent interpreter was -found, and their needs explained at length. Domenica’s eyes sparkled -with willing intelligence; she professed herself capable of doing -anything and everything they asked of her; and mutual delight gilded the -scene until the question of terms came up. What would the ladies pay? -They mentioned a little more than the Frau Schuler had told them would -be expected, and waited for the pleased response to their generosity—but -what was happening? The grey shawl was tossed from shoulders that -suddenly shrugged, and arms that flew about wildly; fierce lightnings -flashed from the black eyes, a torrent of ever faster and shriller words -rose almost into shrieks. - -Peripatetica and Jane shrank aghast, expecting to see a stiletto plunged -into the stolid form of their interpreter, bravely breasting the fury. - -“What _is_ the matter?” they cried. - -“Oh nothing,” smiled the interpreter, “she is saying it isn’t enough; -that the ladies at the hotels pay their maids more, and her husband -wouldn’t permit her to take so little.” - -Dear me, she need not! they certainly would not want such a fury. - -The fury had subsided into tragic melancholy, and subdued -after-mutterings of the storm rumbled up from the reshawled bosom. - -“She says she will talk it over with her husband to-night,” said the -gentle interpreter with a meaning wink. “She is really good and able; -the ladies will find her a brave woman.” - -They didn’t exactly feel that bravery was needed on her side as much as -on theirs after that storm, but they had liked no other applicant, and -again the imposing nose and capable appearance asserted their charm, and -they remembered their stockings. Their offer still stood, they said, but -it must be accepted or declined at once; they wanted a maid that very -evening. Renewed flashes—she dared not accept such a pittance without -consulting her husband.... Very well, other maids had applied, expecting -less. A change of aspect dawned—she would like to serve the ladies, -would they not give half of what she asked for? Consultation with the -interpreter—ten cents more a day offered only—instant breaking out of -smiles and such delighted bobbings and bowings as she departed that it -seemed impossible to believe that furious transformation had ever really -happened. - -They felt a little uneasy. Had they caught a Tartar? Remembering all the -tales of Sicilian temper it seemed scarcely comfortable to have a maid -who might draw a stiletto should one give her an unpleasing order. They -awaited the beginning of her service a bit doubtfully. But when that -grey shawl was hung inside the villa door, the only fierceness its owner -showed was in her energy for work. The black eyes never flashed again, -until ... but that comes later. They beamed almost as happy and instant -a comprehension of all needs as Maria’s. And her capacity for work was -appalling. At first they watched its effects with mutual -congratulations; such an accumulation of the dilapidations of travel as -was theirs had seemed to them quite hopeless ever to catch up with, but -now the great heaps of tattered stockings turned into neat-folded pairs -in their drawers, under-linen coquetted into ribbons again, and all -their abused belongings straightened into freshness and neatness once -more. Domenica’s energy was as fiery as Ætna’s during an eruption, only -unlike the mountains it never seemed to know a surcease. Dust departed -from skirts instantly at the fierce onslaught of her brushings; things -flew into their places; sewing seemed to get itself done as if at the -wave of a magician’s wand. Accustomed to the dilatoriness of Irish -Abigails at home, Peripatetica and Jane were quite dazzled with delight -at first—but then incredibly soon came the time when there was nothing -left undone; when the little personal waiting on they needed could not -possibly fill Domenica’s days, and it became a menace, the sight of that -little grey-clad figure asking with empty hands, “what next, Signora?” - -“The Demon,” they began calling her instead of Domenica, and felt that -like Michael Scott and his demon servant, they would be obliged to set -her to weaving ropes of sand, the keeping her supplied with normal tasks -seemed so impossible. It became almost a pleasure to find a gown too -loose or too tight, that she might alter it, or to spot or tear one, and -as for ripped skirt bindings or torn petticoat ruffles, they looked at -each other in delight and cried exultantly, “a job for the Demon!” -Tea-basket kettles to scour they gave her, silver to clean, errands to -do, fine things to wash, their entire wardrobes to press out; yet still -the little figure sat in her corner reproachfully idle, looking at them -questioningly, and sighing like a furnace until some new task was -procured her. Desperately they took to giving her afternoons off, and -invariably dismissed her before the bargained time in the evening. But -still to find grist for the mill of her industry kept them racking their -brains unsuccessfully through all their Taormina days. - - * * * * * - -Home comforts and maid once secured they could turn to Taormina itself -with open minds, and plunge into a flood of beauty and queernesses and -history. Of the guide-books some say that Taormina was the acropolis of -Naxos, an off-shoot of that first Greek town, others that it, like Mola, -was a Sikilian stronghold long before the days of the Greeks. Jane’s -private theory was that neither Greeks nor Sikilians had been its -founders, that eagles alone would ever first have built on that dizzy -windy perch! - -On the very ridge of a mountain spine with higher peaks overhanging, -Taormina twists its one real street, houses climbing up or slipping down -hill as best they may, all clinging tight, and holding hands fast along -the street to balance themselves there at all. Dark stairway cracks -between lead up or down, and overhead flying arches or linked stories -keep the clasp unbroken. Here and there a little street manages to twist -off and find a few curves for itself on another level, or the street -widens into a wee square, or a terrace beside an old church is edged -with a stone-benched balustrade where ancient loafers may sun themselves -and look down at the tiny busy specks of fishing boats in the sea far -below. - -Every hour of the day the Street is a variety show with the mixed life -passing through it, and acting its dramas there. Flocks of goats -squeezing through on their way to pasture; donkeys carrying distorted -wine skins or gay glazed pottery protruding from their panniers; women -going to the fountain, balancing slender Greekish water jars on their -heads; the painted carts carrying up the tourists’ luggage; the tourists -themselves in veils and goggles bargaining at enticing shop doorways, or -peering into the windowless room of Taormina’s kindergarten, where a -dozen or more infants are primly ranged, every mother’s daughter with -knitting pins in hand and silky brown curls knotted on top of head like -little old women, sitting solemnly in the scant light of the open door, -acquiring from a gentle old crone the art of creating their own -stockings. There the barber strums his guitar on a stool outside the -“Salone” door while he waits for custom; the Polichinello man obstructs -traffic with the delighted crowds of boys collected by Punch’s nasal -chantings and the shrill squeaks of “Il Diavolo.” There come the golden -loads of oranges and lemons; green glistening lettuces and feathery -finochi; bread hot from the bakers in queer twists and rings; live -chickens borne squawking from market, and poor little kids going to the -butchers. The busy tide of every-day life never ebbed its colourful flow -from the beginning of the street at the arch of one old gateway until -its end at the arch of the other. Buying and selling, learning, working, -and idling, the Present surged there, but a step aside into any of the -backways, and one was instantly in the Past. Old women spinning in -doorways with the very same twirling spindles as those of two thousand -years ago. The very same old women, one had almost said, their hawk-like -dried faces were so unimaginably far removed from youth, from all -modernness. - -The very names of the streets spell history and drama. History rises up -and becomes alive. - -In the Street of Timoleon one hears the clank of armour—the Great Leader -and his Corinthians swing down the road. Only a few days ago they had -landed at the beach of ruined Naxos in answer to the call of -Andromachus, Taormenium’s ruler. They have been warmly entertained at -his palace, have there rested, learning from him of the lay of the land -and state of affairs; now they set out to begin the campaign. The -staring people stand watching the march of these strong new friends, -murmuring among themselves in awestruck whispers of the portents -attending the setting forth of these allies. How great Demeter and -Persephone herself had appeared to the servitors of their temple, -promising divine assistance and protection to this expedition for the -succour of their island—a rumour too that Apollo had dropped the laurel -wreath of victory from his statue at Delphi upon Timoleon’s head; a -marvel, not a rumour, for it was beheld with very eyes by some amongst -themselves. How the ships bringing these deliverers had come in through -the night to the harbour below with mysterious unearthly fires hovering -in front of them and hanging in balls at the masthead, to light them on -the way! - -In the midst of the soldiers is a taller figure—or one that seems so—a -face like Jupiter’s own, of such majesty and sternness and calm. The -crowd surges and thrills and shouts with all its heart and soul and -stout Sicilian lungs. - -“Who is that?” ask the children. - -“Timoleon! Timoleon, the Freer!” they are answered when the shouting is -over. “Remember all your life long that you have seen him.” - -And when years later those boys, grown to manhood in a free prosperous -Sicily, hear of the almost divine honours that grateful Syracuse is -paying to her adored deliverer, of the impassioned crowds thronging the -theatre, mad with excitement at every appearance of the great old blind -man, they too thrill to know that their eyes too have seen “The -Liberator,” greatest and simplest of men. - -It is the Street of the Pro-Consulo Romano. Here comes Verres, cruelest -of tyrants, most rapacious of robbers. The people shrink out of the way, -out of sight as fast as may be, at the first gleam of the helmets of the -Pro-Consul’s guard, when “carried by eight stalwart slaves in a litter, -lying upon cushions stuffed with rose leaves, clad in transparent gauze -and Maltese lace, with garlands of roses on his head and round his neck, -and delicately sniffing at a little net filled with roses lest any other -odour should offend his nostrils,” the sybarite tyrant is borne along, -passing the statue of himself he has just had erected in the Forum, on -his way to the theatre. - -The Street of Cicero; it is only necessary to close one’s eyes to see -that lean, long-nosed Roman lawyer. A fixed, silent sleuth-hound on this -same Verres’ track; following, following close, nose fixed to the trail, -for all the cunning doublings and roundings of the fox, questing all -over Sicily, gathering everywhere evidence, building up his case, -silently, inexorably; until at last his quarry is cornered, no squirming -tricks of further avail. Verres is caught by the throat, exposed, -denounced; so passionately, that as long as man’s appreciation of logic -and eloquence endures the great lawyer’s pleading of that case is -remembered and quoted. - -Children are playing in the Via Sextus Pompeius, but one sees instead a -gleam of golden armour, of white kilts swinging from polished limbs—the -proud figure of Pompey; splendid perfumed young dandy who, the fair -naughty ladies say, is the “sweetest-smelling man in Rome.” - -Here, with instinctive climb to the heights, he is desperately watching -the surge of that great new power flooding, foaming, submerging all the -world; rising up to him even here, the bubbling wave started by that -other Roman dandy, the young man Julius Cæsar, who knotted his girdle so -exquisitely.... - -The street from which the Villa Schuler’s pink door opened was that of -the Bastiones, where the town’s fortified wall had once been. -Corkscrewing dizzily down the sheer hillside among the cacti and rocks -ran a narrow little trail. Jane had settled it to her own satisfaction -that this was the scene of Roger’s adventure when besieging Taormina, -then Saracen Muezza—last stronghold on the East coast to hold out -against him; as it had two hundred years ago been one of the last in -succumbing to the Moslems. - -Roger had completely surrounded the strong place with works outside its -walls, and was slowly reducing it by starvation. Going the rounds one -day, with his usual reckless courage almost unaccompanied, he is caught -in a narrow way by a strong party of the enemy. The odds are -overwhelming, even to Normans, on that steep hillside. Roger must -retreat or be cut down. For attackers and pursued the only foothold is -the one narrow path. Evisand, devoted follower of Roger, is quick to see -the advantage of that—one man alone may delay a whole host for a few -important minutes there, and he offers up his life to cover his master’s -escape. Alone, on the narrow way he makes a stand against all the Moslem -swarm, with such mighty wielding of sword that it is five minutes before -the crooked Moslem blades can clear that impediment from their way. -Roger, who has had time to reach safety before the brave heart succumbs -to innumerable wounds, dashes back with reinforcements, wins the day, -recovers his loyal servitor’s body, buries it with royal honours, and -afterwards builds a church in memory of this preservation, and for the -soul of his preserver. And Taormina, yielding to Roger and starvation, -regains her name and the Cross.... - -Picking their way one morning up through the puddles and hens of their -own alleyway, Peripatetica, raising her eyes an instant from the slime -to look at the label on the house corner, said: - -“Who could have been the Morgana this scandal of a street ever stole its -name from? ... you don’t suppose....” - -“What?” - -“Why, that it could have been the Fata Morgana? Her island first -appeared somewhere off the Sicilian coast.” - -“Oh, Peripatetica! how could a fairy, lovely and enchanting, ever have -become associated with this!” - -Peripatetica had a fine newborn theory on her tongue’s tip, but ere she -could voice it, a nervous hen above them suddenly decided there was no -room on that road for two to pass on foot, and took to her wings with -wild squawk and a lunge straight at Peripatetica’s face in an attempt to -pass overhead. Peripatetica ducked and safely dodged all the succeeding -hens whom the first dame’s hysteria instantly infected to like -behaviour. By the time she caught her breath again in safety at the -street’s level, the theory was lost, but another more interesting one -was born to her as they proceeded. - -“‘Street of Apollo Archagates,’—Jane, do you see meaning in that? The -Greeks always put their greatest temples _on the heights_—Athens, -Girgenti, Eryx, wherever there were hills the Great Shrine was on the -Acropolis. Taormina must have been the Acropolis of those Naxos -people—they certainly never stayed on the unprotected shore below -without mounting to these heights. I believe Apollo’s temple stood up -here, not below. Here they built it, dominating the city, shining far -out to sea, a mark for miles to all their ships and to the sailormen -worshipping Apollo, Protector of Commerce.” - -“No one has ever suggested that,” said Jane. - -“What if they haven’t? It’s just as apt to be true, though even -tradition has left no trace of it now but the name of this dirty little -street. I for one am going to believe it, and that was why the statue -survived until the time of the Romans.” - -And so it was that every step they took stirred up wraiths of myth and -history. Even on the Street in the midst of all its humming bustle, -rotund German tourists and donkeys, all the modern life would suddenly -melt away, and they would resurrect old St. Elio, attired only in chains -and his drawers, kneeling in front of the Catania gate, exhorting the -Byzantine soldiers to cleanse themselves from their sins before -destruction came from the Saracens then raging like mad wolves outside -the devoted town’s walls, in a fury that it alone—save Rometta—of all -Christian Sicily should still hold out against them. Then the air would -fill with the screaming and strugglings of those old fierce eagle -fights, and the donkey boys’ cries of “A-ah-ee!” would change to the -fierce triumphant shouts of “Allah Akbar!” with which Ibrahim’s cruel -soldiery finally broke in to massacre garrison and townsfolk. - -Although Taormina sat apart on her mountain eyrie with no epoch-making -events finding room on her perch to happen, the stream of all Sicily’s -history, from first Greek settlement to the revolts of modern days -against King Bomba’s tyranny, have surged around and through her. An -American living in Taormina did a kindness to her native cook, for which -in grateful return the cook insisted on presenting her a quantity of old -coins, which her husband had turned up through the years in their little -garden. Showing them to the Curator of a Museum, “Madame,” he said to -the fortunate recipient of the gift, “you have a complete epitome of all -Sicilian history in these coins.” - -All the different races and dynasties dominating Sicily from her -beginning, all the great cities that rose into local power were -represented in these treasure troves from the silt of the centuries, dug -by a peasant from the soil of one little garden. - -It was the Greek theatre which first revealed the Sicily of their dreams -to Peripatetica and Jane; consoling for the vague disappointment of -those first days of dust and rain by the glamour of its presentment of -the loveliness of nature and the majesty of the past. - -Greek that wonderful ruin still essentially is, for all its Roman -remodelling and incrusting of brick. Only the Greeks could have so -lovingly and instinctively combined with nature and seized so -harmoniously all nature’s fairest to enhance their own creation. The -place, the setting, the spirit of it is Greek; what matter if the actual -material shape now is Roman, with the Greek form only glimmering through -like a body of the old statuesque beauty cramped and hidden under -distorting modern dress? Not that the theatre’s Roman clothing is -ugly—the warm red brick, contrasting with the creamy marble fragments, -has an undeniable charm, Greek and Roman together. It is an exquisite -ruin of human conceivings, contrived to have blue sea and curving shore -and Ætna’s snowy cone as the background of the open stage arches, and in -the foyer, the arcaded walk back and behind the top tiers of the -auditorium, all the differing panorama of beauty of the northern coast -line. - -Nature from the beginning did more than man for the building, and now -she has taken it back to herself again, blending Greek and Roman in -binding of vine and flower and moss; twining all the stone-seated tiers -into an herb and flower garden, and putting the song of birds into the -vaulted halls of the Greek Chorus. - -An enchanting place, where the Past seems to reveal itself in all that -it had most of beauty and splendour. Peripatetica and Jane thought -themselves fortunate to live under its wings; actually in its shadow, -and so be on intimate calling terms at any hour of the day, learning its -beauty familiarly through every changing transformation of light, cool -morning’s grey and glowing noon’s gold, fiery sunsets, blue twilights, -and early moonrise—mountains and sea and wide-flung sky dissolving -magically and mysteriously into ever different pictures. - -They wandered through chorus halls and dressing-rooms, the obscure -regions under the stage and the dizzy ones on top of it; strolled in the -outside arcade on top of the auditorium, where the loveliness of the -view was a fresh wonder every time it burst on them, sat in the top rows -and the bottom ones on the flowery sod now covering all the seats, -looking from every angle at that most charming of marble stage settings -and most wonderful of all backgrounds, trying to imagine the times when -the surrounding tiers had been filled with 4,000 eager spectators, and -the walls had echoed to the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and -Euripides. - -Looking wonderingly at the curious drains and holes and underground -passages below the stage, they wondered if Æschylus, that eminent stage -manager as well as poet, had not himself perhaps contrived some of them -on his visit to Sicily, to introduce new thrills of stage effects into -the performances of his tragedies here. Æschylus, who was inventor of -stage realism, first to introduce rich costuming, accessories, and stage -machinery, the mutter of stage thunder, shrieks, and sounds from behind -the scenes suggestive of the deeds considered too shocking to happen in -the audience’s sight—inventor of the “Deus ex Machina,” that obliging -god popping from out his trap-door to divinely straighten out a -situation snarled past natural conclusion. - -As one sat there in the calm splendour of the setting of earth and sky, -sun, and great winds streaming overhead, it became easier to understand -the spirit of the old Greek plays; how the drama had been to them not -mere amusement but almost a form of religion, and an expounding of their -beliefs, an attempt to “justify the ways of God to man.” If perhaps such -settings had not instinctively formed the differing tendencies of their -great play-writers; Æschylus to represent suffering as the punishment of -sin; Sophocles to justify the law of God against the presumption of man; -and in these spacious open-air settings if the great rugged elementary -simplicity of their plays had not been necessary and inevitable. - -“In the Greek tragedy the general point of view predominates over -particular persons. It is human nature that is represented in the broad, -not this or that highly specialized variation.... To the realization of -this general aim the whole form of the Greek drama was admirably -adapted. It consisted very largely of conversations between two persons -representing two opposed points of view, and giving occasion for an -almost scientific discussion of every problem of action raised in the -play; and between these conversations were inserted lyric odes in which -the chorus commented on the situation, bestowed advice or warning, -praise or blame, and finally summed up the moral of the whole.” - -More akin to an opera than to a play in our modern sense, the Greek -drama had as its basis music. The song and stately dance of its mimetic -chorus being the binding cord of the whole, “bringing home in music to -the passion of the heart the idea embodied in lyric verse, the verse -transfigured by song, and song and verse reflecting as in a mirror to -the eye by the swing and beat of the limbs they stirred to consonance of -motion.” - -Sitting in the thyme-scented breeze Peripatetica and Jane read Euripides -until they seemed to become a part of a breathless audience waiting for -his tragedies to be performed before their eyes, waiting for the first -gleam of the purple and saffron robes of the chorus, sweeping out from -their halls in chanting procession. And it would all seem to take place -once more on the stage in front of them, that feast for the eye and ear -and intelligence at once. It became clear that across such great -unroofed space the actors could not rely on “acting,” in our sense, for -their results. It must be something bigger and simpler than any exact -realism of petty actions; play of facial expression, subtle changes of -voice and gesture would be ineffectually lost there. So, though at first -the stage conventions of a different age seemed strange to these modern -spectators, the actors raised above their natural height on stilted -boots, their faces covered by masks, their voices mechanically -magnified; yet in wonderful effects of statuesque posings the meaning -came clear to the eye, and the chanting intonation brought out every -beautiful measure of the rolling majestic verse which a realistic -conversational delivery would have obscured. So the representation -became “moving sculpture to the eye, and to the ear, as it were, a sleep -of music between the intenser intervals of the chorus,” and the -spectators found themselves “without being drawn away by an imitative -realism from the calm of impassioned contemplation into the fever and -fret of a veritable actor on the scene,” receiving all the beautiful -lucid thought and sentiment of the text, heightened by the accompanying -appeal to the senses of perfect groupings of forms and colours, of -swaying dance, and song and recitative, until it all blended into one -perfect satisfying whole—perhaps the most wonderful form of art -production that has ever existed. - -And then some German tourist would scream, “Ach Minna, komm mal her! ’s -doch famos hier oben!” and they would be waked from their day dream of -old harmonies into the shrill bustling present again. - -“It is like all really great fresco painting,” said Peripatetica on one -of these comings back, “kept in the flat. Anything huge has to be -treated so as to make its meaning tell; it has to be done in flat -outline to stay in the picture, to make the whole effective. All the -great imposing frescoes are like that; when the seventeenth century -tried to heighten its effects by moulding out arms and legs in the -round, its pictures dropped to pieces; any idea it was trying to express -became lost. One is conscious of nothing but the nearest sprawling -realistic limb thrusting out at one. Oh, those delicious marvellous -Greeks! everything that is beautiful and perfect they did first, and -anything good that has ever been done since is only copying them.” - -Jane had a deep respect for the Greeks herself, but she sometimes turned -against too much laudation of them. - -“Do you suppose the æsthetic effect of their tragedies was really -greater than that of a Wagner opera, well given? That the lament for -Iphigenia could be more deeply thrilling than Siegfried’s funeral -march?” - -Peripatetica almost bounded from her seat. - -“But that’s just it!” she cried. “Wagner operas are a revival of the -Greek ideal! the only modern analogy of their drama! He had the same -idea of painting on a huge canvas great heroic figures in the flat, -keeping them in the picture without rounding out into petty realism. And -he has attempted exactly what they did, to present his dramatic theme in -a mingling of music, poetry, picture, and dance, every branch of art -combined!” - -“That’s interesting, and perhaps true, my dear, but if you discourse on -about King Charles’ head, we shall get caught by that shower racing down -the coast. There is just time to beat it to home and Vesuvius!” - -Vesuvius was, after Domenica, their greatest acquisition, and the one -that most soothingly spread about an atmosphere of home comfort. Until -he came life had been a thing of shivers and sneezes, of days spent in -ceaseless trampings to keep their chilled blood in circulation, and of -evenings sitting swathed in fur coats and steamer rugs, with feet raised -high above the cold drafts of the floor. - -Fireplaces, or any means of artificial heating were unknown to the -villa. They had waited patiently for the Southern sun to come and do his -duty, but he didn’t; and a day came when Jane took to bed as the only -hope of warmth, when even Domenica sneezed and said it was “_molto -freddo_,” and then Peripatetica sallied forth determined to find some -warmth nearer than Ætna. “Vesuvius” was the result of her quest. Not -much was he to look at outwardly. Small was his round black form; oh, -pitifully small he seemed at first view to those whose only hope he was. -A mere rusty tin lantern on three little feet, he looked—but when his -warm heart began to glow and to send delicious hot rays percolating -through the holes of his sides and pointed lid, the charms of his fiery -nature won respect at once. He made his small presence felt incredibly, -from stone floor to high ceiling. Shawls and coats could be shed, feet -lowered and at once frozen spines relaxed into long-forgotten comfort. - -His breath was not pleasant to be sure, his charcoal fumes troubled at -first, but when a Sicilian oracle had recommended the laying of sliced -lemons on his head, all fumes were absorbed, he breathed only refreshing -incense and became altogether a joy. Every day, except on rainy ones, -when his company was called for earlier, he made his appearance at six -of the evening—and how eagerly the sight of Maria bearing him in used to -be waited for! Then with feet toasting and backs relaxing in delightful -warmth, Peripatetica and Jane sat over his little glowing holes with -quite the thrill and comfort of a real hearthstone. - -Ardent fire worshippers they found themselves becoming in this -supposedly Southern land. If Persephone had ever been as cold as they, -they doubted if that _enlèvement_ to Pluto’s warm, furnace-heated realm -could have been so distasteful after all! - - * * * * * - -Paddling out in the rain to hotels for meals was at first a drawback to -life in the Villa Schuler. To sit with damp ankles through the endless -procession of table d’hôte meals, and afterwards have the odoriferous -bespatterings of the Scesa Morgana as dessert, was not an enjoyable -feature of local colour. Frau Schuler was implored to feed her lodgers. - -“But we are simple people; our plain cooking would not satisfy the -ladies,” she protested, distressed. But the ladies felt that a crust and -an egg in their own sitting-room would be more satisfying than all the -triumphs of hotel chefs out in the wet. And to bread and eggs they -resigned themselves. Instead came a five-course banquet, served by -beaming Butler Maria in a dazzling new grass-green bodice—soup and -macaroni, meat and vegetables, perfect in seasoning and succulence, -crisp salad from the garden, and with it the demanded poached eggs which -were to have constituted the whole dinner, almond pudding with a -wondrous sauce; dates, oranges, sugary figs beaded on slivers of bamboo, -mellow red wine. It seemed a very elastic two lire which could cover all -that, as Frau Schuler said it did! Truly the Fraulein Niece was an -artist. Peripatetica and Jane thereafter dined at home in tea gowns and -luxury—and the pudding sauces grew more bland and wonderful every night. -Also eggs continued to give originality by the vagaries of their -appearance. As Peripatetica said, “they just ran along anyhow, and -jumped on at any course they took a fancy to!” And to see where they -were going to land—in the soup, the vegetables, the salad, the stewed -fruit of dessert—or what still other and stranger companionships they -might form, lent a sort of prize-packet excitement to each succeeding -course. Dinner at the Villa Schuler, with little Vesuvius glowing -warmingly through all his fiery eyes and steaming out spicy incense of -lemon and mandarin peel, the soft low lamplight, the gleam of Maria’s -smile and green bodice, the blessed remoteness from all tourist gabble, -was truly a cosy function. They took to making elaborate toilets in -honour of it, adding their Taormina acquisitions of old lace and jewels -to Maria’s round-eyed amazement. When Jane burst out in an Empire -diadem, and Peripatetica not to be outdone donned a ravishing lace cap, -their status as good republicans was forever lost in the villa. Maria -spread the tale of this splendour abroad, firmly convinced that these -lodgers were incognito members of the most exalted nobility of distant -“Nuova Yorka.” The tongues which could not pronounce their harsh foreign -names insisted on labelling them the “Big and Little Princess”—and no -protests could bring their rank down lower than “the most gentle -Countesses,” upon their washing-bills. - -It amused them in fine weather to try the various hotels for lunch. In -mid-town was the Hotel Victoria, the haunt of artists and gourmets, -famous for its food and for its garden, which climbed the hillside in -blooming terraces and loggias, all stairways, springing bridges, and -queer little passages leading to buildings and courts on different -levels. Peripatetica and Jane wandered into it almost by accident. They -noticed the name over a dingy door as they were strolling aimlessly one -day, and Peripatetica remembered having heard of a picturesque garden -within. Penetrating through empty hall and up various winding stairways -they came to a charming garden court. There appeared the proprietor, and -in Parisian French treated their curiosity as a boon and a pleasure. A -little man, the Padrone, with nothing large about him but the checks of -his trousers and the soft black eyes which turned upon the gay colour -about him with gentle melancholy. He did the honours of the place with -all the courtesy and dignity of Louis XIV showing Versailles. When they -admired the aviary of Sicilian and tropical birds, the budding roses -clambering everywhere, the strange feathery-fringed irises like gaudy -little cockatoos, the delicate bits of Moorish carving and arches built -into the hotel walls, he accepted all their enthusiasm for the charms of -his property with no sign of pride, but rather with the pensive -melancholy of one whose soul was above such things, as of one who knew -the hollowness of earthly delights. Courteously he exhibited everything, -taking them to still higher and more glowing terraces where his laden -orange trees were burnished green and gold, and his violets sheets of -deepest, royalest purple underneath. - -A pair of monkeys lived in cage up there, and while the Signor deftly -fed them for the amusement of his visitors he warmed up into caustic -philosophic comment upon human and monkey nature, comment not unspiced -with wit. Peripatetica, always ready for philosophy, immediately plunged -into the depths of her French vocabulary and responded in kind. The -discussion grew warm and fluent, and the little Padrone became a new -man. With kindling eye and a pathetic eagerness he kept the ball rolling -in polished Voltairian periods, intoxicated apparently with the joy of -mental intercourse. He snatched and clung to it, inventing new pretexts -to detain them, new things to exhibit, while the talk rolled on. - -But Peripatetica, whose next passion to Philosophy is Floriculture, -broke off to exclaim at the violets as they passed a bed of purple -marvels. Emperors they were among violets. The Padrone immediately -proffered some, setting two contadini to picking more. Peripatetica -contemplating gluttonously the wonderful spread of the deep purple -calyx, the long firm stems of those in her hand, and at the profusion of -others sweetening the air, cried from her heart, “Oh, Monsieur, what -luxury to have such a garden! You should be one of the happiest -creatures in the world to be able to grow such flowers as these!” - -The Padrone, from his knees, picking more violets, glanced up, and gloom -fell over him again. - -“Madame,” he inquired bitterly, “does happiness ever consist in what one -possesses of material things? Contentment, perhaps—but happiness? Not -the most beautiful garden in the world can grow that,” and with dark -Byronic mystery, “Ah, one can live amid brightness and yet be very -miserable.” - -They parted with much friendliness, the Padrone hoping the ladies would -do his hotel the honour of visiting it again. Surely, yes, they said; -they would give themselves the pleasure of lunching there some day.... -Upon that it seemed as if his gloom grew darker, but he implied -courteously that that would do him too much honour, but if they did -venture as much he would do his best to content them. His was but a -rough little place, but it had been wont to be the haunt of artists and -“they, you know, are always ‘_un peu gourmet!_’” - -“What do you suppose is the story of that man?” they asked each other; -and amused themselves inventing romantic pretexts to explain his air of -blighted hopes and poetic pain. - -Before long their curiosity impelled them to try the Victoria’s cuisine. -They were a half hour before the time. No guests had yet gathered. They -stood again in front of the aviary, but no polite philosopher made his -appearance. A little yellow-haired maid in a frock as brightly purple as -the violets, carrying decanters into the empty dining-room, was the only -creature about. The sitting room offered them shelter from the wind, and -for entertainment heaps of German novels and innumerable sketches of -Sicilian scenery and types, which they hoped the Victoria’s artist -patrons had not given in settlement of their hotel bills. A bell rang, -and people streamed in until every seat in the clean, bare dining-room -had its occupant. Not the artists Peripatetica and Jane were looking -for, but types fixed and amusing, such as they had never before -encountered in such numbers and contrasts. Rosy, bland English curates -and their meek little wives; flashy fat Austrians, with powdered ladies -of unappetizing look; limp English spinsters of the primmest propriety; -seedy old men with dyed moustaches and loud clothes, diffusing an aroma -of shady gambling-rooms. Scholarly old English professors; and Germans, -Germans, Germans of all varying degrees of fatness, shininess, and -loud-voicedness, but all united in double-action feeding power of knife -and fork. - -An expectant hush held them all for a while before empty plates. Then -the little purple-gowned maid, and a sister one in ultramarine blue, -with the same brilliant yellow hair knotted on top of her head, appeared -with omelettes. Omelettes of such melting perfection as to explain the -solemn expectancy of the waiting faces. - -Followed a meal in which every course—fish, vegetables, meat, and salad, -in a land where the tourist expects to subsist alone on oranges and -scenery—was of a deliciousness to have made a Parisian epicure -compliment the chef of his pet restaurant. - -The Germans were explained; lovers of feeding and of thrift, of course, -they had come in their hordes to this modest Inn. And how they made the -most of it! Back they called the little maids for two and three helpings -of each delicious platter. Food was piled upon plates in mountains, but -before Peripatetica and Jane could more than nibble at their own share, -the German plates would be polished clean, and the little maids called -for another supply. The caraffes of strong new Sicilian claret were -emptied too, until Tedeschi faces grew very red, and tongues more than -ever loud. - -Peripatetica and Jane dared not meet each other’s eyes. Next to them sat -an elderly maiden lady from Hamburg “doing” Sicily without luggage, -prepared for any and every occasion in black silk bodice and cloth -skirt, which could be made short or long by one of the mysterious -arrangements of loops and strings the female German mind adores. With -maiden shyness but German persistence she firmly insisted on human -intercourse with the French commercial traveller across the table. He -clung manfully to the traditional gallantry of his race, though the -Hamburgian’s accent in his mother tongue threw him into wildest -confusion as to the lady’s meaning. When he confided his wife’s -confinement to bed with a cold, and his ineffectual struggles to get the -proper drugs for her in Taormina, the German lady announced the theory -that violent exercise followed by a bath was better cure for a cold than -any drugs, “the bath the main point,” she said. “The exercise and the -_transpiration_ without that being of no use.” - -“A _bath_! with a _cold_! Not a complete wash all over?” protested the -startled Frenchman. - -“Yes, indeed, one must wash one’s self entirely—though it might be done -a bit at a time—but completely, all over, with water and soap,” insisted -the German, which daring hygienic theory so convinced the Frenchman that -its propounder’s reason must be unhinged that stammering and trembling -he gulped down his wine and fled from the table without waiting for the -sweets. - -All this time Peripatetica and Jane had caught no glimpse of their -friend, the Padrone. They wondered, but decided that his poetic nature -soared above the materialities of hotel keeping. - -The meal had reached the sweet course—a pudding of delectableness no -words can describe. It inspired even the gorged Germans with emotion. -Thoroughly stuffed as they already were they still demanded more of its -ambrosia and the purple-frocked one flew back to the kitchen, leaving -the door open.... Alas! their philosopher of the garden, in cook’s -apron, was pouring sauce on more pudding for the waiting maid! - -Ah, poor Philosopher! This the secret of his blighted being. The poet -driven to cooking-pots, the artistic temperament expending itself in -omelettes and puddings for hungry tourists. How wonder at the irony with -which he had watched the monkeys feed! - - * * * * * - -Maria and Vesuvius were not the only possessors of ardent temperaments -in the Villa. Another existed in a round soft ball of tan and white -fuzz. - -The Puppy! - -He of the innocent grey eyes, black nose with pink tongue-trimming, and -the most open and trusting heart in the world. On friends and strangers -alike his smiles and warm licks fell. He bounded into every room all -a-quiver of joy to be with such delightful people in such an altogether -charming world. And never could it enter his generous thoughts that -others might not equally yearn for his society; that Jane might object -to having a liberal donation of fleas and mud left on the tail of her -gown; that at 6 A.M. Peripatetica might not be enchanted to have a -friendly call and a boisterous worry of her slippers all over the stone -floor; or Fraulein might prefer the front of the stove entirely to -herself during sacredest rites of cooking. He could not be brought to -understand. He was cheerfully confident that every one loved him as much -as he loved them, and that nothing could possibly be accomplished in -that family without his valuable assistance. Many times a day loud wails -rose to heaven, announcing that he had come to grief in the course of -his labours; had encountered some one’s foot or hand, or had some door -shut in his face; but in the midst of grief he would see in the distance -something being accomplished without him—charcoal being carried in, the -hall swept, or the garden watered—and he would rise from his tears and -offer his enthusiastic assistance once more, all undaunted, and continue -to give encouraging chews to the worker’s ankles, and stimulating barks -of advice entirely undeterred by being called “an _injurienza_ puppy!” - -Peripatetica claimed that his grey eyes showed that he was Norman -descent, as Jane insisted they did in all the grey-eyed children of -Taormina. But Fraulein, appealed to on that question, said he was of the -colley race, and she revealed the dark and dreadful destiny laid upon -him—that he was to grow up into a fierce and suspicious watch-dog; to -live chained on the upper terrace, a menace to all intruders, a terror -to frighten thieves from the garden plums! - -And alas for natural bent of temperament when it must yield to contrary -training. The grey-eyed one’s fate soon overtook him. Wild and indignant -wails and shrieks woke Jane one sunny morning, and continued steadily in -mounting crescendo all the while she clothed herself in haste to go to -the rescue. Following the wails to the top of the garden she found the -Puppy, a red ribbon around his soft neck, and from that a string -attaching him to a pole. Nearby stood the Fraulein admonishing him that -it was time his duties in life should begin, and he must commence to -learn the routine of his profession without so much repining. In spite -of Jane’s protests she insisted on leaving him there; and in vain all -that quarter of Taormina rang with the wails of protesting indignation -that welled from the confined one’s heart in the bewilderment of being -left in loneliness, separated from all his friends and their doings. -Every day after that he had to undergo his hour or two of schooling in -the stern training of his grim profession. Soft-hearted Jane released -him whenever she could, but Fraulein inexorably put him back, and even -his playfellow Maria sternly held him to his duties. Between times he -mixed with the family again on the old footing, but it was pathetic to -see how soon nature was affected by the mould into which it was pressed, -how soon he acquired the mannerisms and habits of his profession—curbing -his exuberance of sociability, imposing on himself a post on the door -mat, when strangers appeared, confining all welcome to his tail end, -which would still wag friendlily though head did its duty in theatrical -staccato growls. - - * * * * * - -In Taormina everything happens in the street. Houses are merely dark -damp holes in which to take shelter at night, but life is lived outside -them. Food is prepared in the street, clothes are mended there, hair is -combed and arranged, neighbours gossiped with, lace and drawn-work made. -The cobbler soles his shoes in the street, the tinsmith does his -hammering and soldering there. It is the poultry run of hens and -turkeys, the pasture grounds for goats and kids, the dance hall for -light-footed children to tarantelle in, the old men’s club, the general -living-room of all Taormina. Peripatetica and Jane found endless -amusement there, though they seldom tarried in town. Like Demeter they -wandered all day in meadow and mountain seeking Persephone, and found -her not. Preparation for her beloved coming Mother Demeter seemed to be -making everywhere; grass springing green when once the cold rain ceased, -and carpets of opening blossoms spreading in orchards and fields for the -little white feet to press. Every night they said, “She will come -to-morrow,”—but still Demeter’s loneliness dissolved into cold tears -hiding the face of the sun, and the chill winds told of nothing but -Ætna’s snow, and the Lost One did not return. - -But though they searched for her in vain in the setting of sunshine and -blossom their fancy had pictured, Peripatetica and Jane found much else -on their rambles—idyls of Theocritus still being lived, quaint little -adventures, bits of local colour, new friends and old acquaintances -among contadini, animals and flowers, and always and all about, the -Bones of the Past. Everywhere obscured under the work-a-day uses of the -Present, or rising out of them in beauty; half hidden among flowers in -lonely fields or a part of squalid modern huts, they stumbled upon those -remains of antiquity, debased and crumbled and inexplicable often, but -beautiful with a lost strange charm, sad and haunting. - -Taormina prides herself more on scenery than antiquities, but they found -many of the latter in their scrambles on rough little mountain trails, -learning all sorts of charms and secrets undreamed of by luxurious -tourists rolling dustily in landaus along the one high road. Theirs was -an unhurried leisure to take each day as it came. Without plans or -guides they merely wandered wherever interest beckoned, until gradually -they learned all the town and its setting of mountain and shore by -heart. - -They sallied forth untrammelled of fixed destination, ready to take up -with the first adventure that offered—and one always did offer to -adventurers of such receptive natures. They made plans only to break -them; for inevitably they were distracted by something of interest more -vital than the thing they had set out to see. - -They might start, staff in hand, on a pilgrimage to the Madonna of Rocca -Bella, whose brown shrine nestled dizzily on one of the strange peaks -shooting their distorted summits threateningly above their own Villa, -those peaks so vividly described by another Idle Woman in Sicily: -“Behind, wildly flinging themselves upwards, rise three tall peaks, as -of mountains altogether gone mad and raving.... The nearest peak of a -yellow-grey, splintered and cleft like a lump of spar, and so upright -that it becomes a question how it supports itself, is divided into two -heads—one thrusting itself forward headlong over the town and crowned -with the battlements of a ruined Saracenic-Norman castle; the other in -the rear carrying the outline of a little church, and the vague vestige -of a house or two; Saracenic-Norman castle and church (Madonna della -Rocca) both so precisely the tint of the rock that it requires time and -patience to disentangle each, and not to put the whole down as a further -evidence of mountain insanity.”... - -When Jane sat herself, muffled in furs and rugs, to read or sew in one -of the quaint tile-encrusted arbours of the garden, those jagged peaks -fell out of the sky overhead so menacingly, coming ever nearer and -nearer to her shrinking head, that for all the sweetness of the flowers -and birds she never could stay there long, but always, panic-struck, -fled to the bare sea-terrace, and the prospect of calm and distant Ætna. - -But to go back to Our Lady of Rocca Bella, which Peripatetica and Jane -never managed to see, there were so many distractions on that path! Did -they start with the firmest of pilgrim intentions, a new garden opened -unexplored paths of sweetness, or a brown old sea-dog, Phrygian-capped, -smiled a “buon giorno” on his bare-footed way up from the shore, showed -them the strange sea creatures gleaming under the seaweed in his basket, -and enticed them down to the shore. There on the golden beach of -Theocles’ landing place, they embarked in a heavy boat pulled by their -friend, and another old gold-earringed mariner, to the “_grotte molto -interessante_” in the Isola Bella. They poked their heads between waves -into coral caves where the light filtering through the bright water was -dyed almost as intense an azure as in the famous Capri Blue Grotto, and -the whole coast line of mountains came to them in a new revelation of -beauty from the level of wide-stretching sea. And beside the queer bits -of coral presented by the sea-dogs as souvenirs, they carried away -salt-water whetted appetites of wonderful keenness, and pictures, -bestowed safely behind their eyes, of deliciously moulded mountain sides -rising straight from clear green seas, of wave-carved fantasies in -sun-bathed coral rocks, of red nets being stretched on yellow sands by -bare-legged, graceful fisher folk; memories they would not have -exchanged for any wide map-like vista the Madonna could have given them -from her high-perched eyrie. - -It was the same story with the Fontana Vecchia. If they had persisted in -reaching its clear spring they might have heard the nightingales singing -in the wooded dell, but they would never have known Carmela and her -sunny mountain meadow. - -It was a day of shifting clouds and cold winds. Peripatetica was -depressed. Her energies wilted in the cold, and she had only gone forth -to walk because the salon was too icily vaultlike for habitation. Jane -tried to cheer her with prospect of hot tea at the Fontana, but her -spirit refused to respond to any material comforting. She complained of -what had been troubling her for some time, a sense of feeling a mere -ghost herself in these Past-pervaded spots; a cold and shivering ghost -aimlessly blown about in the wind, pressed upon by all the thronging -crowds of other ghosts haunting these places where through the centuries -each succeeding throng of beings had struggled and laboured, laughed and -suffered. Living among ghosts in these days of idleness, her own -existence cut off from the real living and doing of the world, from the -duties and responsibilities of her own place in life, from the warm -clutching hands of the people dependent on her, she had come to seem to -herself entirely vague and ineffectual. She felt a mere errant, -disembodied spirit, she said, and it was a bleak and dreary feeling. - -Jane said she thought a disembodied spirit, able to soar over the sharp -cobbles of that road, an exceedingly enviable thing to be at that -moment; but she quite understood, and was herself affected by the same -sense of chill aloofness from actual, vital human living. - -And then they saw Carmela—a little old Sibyl twirling her distaff at an -open gate that looked out on the quiet road. Sitting in the sun with -cotton kerchief, bodice, and apron all faded into soft harmonies of -colour, she made such a picture through the arch of the gate’s break in -the dull stone wall, with the green of the garden behind her, that they -stopped a moment to look. - -“Buon giorno”—the picture smiled, her little round face breaking into -friendly wrinkles. She rose to her bare feet, and with graceful gesture -invited them in—wouldn’t they like to see the farm? she asked. There was -a _molto bella vista_ beyond. Always welcoming the unexpected they at -once accepted, and found themselves passing through olive and orange -groves. The property was not hers, their hostess explained; she was -merely a servant; it all belonged to a _molto vecchia_ lady, Donna -Teresa by name. Though owning no part of it, Carmela pointed out the old -vines, the thriving newly planted young vineyard, the grafts on the -almond trees, with proud proprietorship. - -Donna Teresa made her appearance; a tiny bent crone, bare-footed like -her maid and dressed in cottons as faded if not as patched, but showing -traces of a refined type of beauty in the delicate features of her old -face and the soft fine white hair curling still like grape tendrils -about her well-shaped head. She accepted her maid’s explanation of the -strangers’ presence, and proceeded to outdo her in hospitality. They -must do more than see the vista—must pick some flowers too. With cordial -toothless chatter, of which the friendly meaning was the only thing they -could entirely understand, she led through the farmyard court where blue -and white doves cooed on the carved stone well-head, and a solemn white -goat, his shaggy neck hung about with charms and amulets, attached -himself to the party and followed down the stone stairs to a lower -terrace. There was a view entrancing indeed, also a strange little old -round building resembling a Roman tomb. Carmela could tell no more than -that it was _cosa di molto antichita_ and very useful to store roots in. -Under a sheltering wall was a purple bank of violets to which the old -Donna led them with much pride, inviting them to pick for themselves. -When they did so too modestly to suit her, she fell on her knees and -gathered great handfuls, thrusting on them besides all the oranges and -mandarins they could carry, until her lavishments became an -embarrassment. For all her bare feet and poor rags there was that in the -grace of her hospitality they felt they could not offer money to. All -they could do was to press francs into the maid’s hand, offer the Donna, -as curiosities from distant America, the maple sugar drops Jane had -filled her pocket with before starting, and try to make smiles fill the -gaps in thanks of their halting Italian. - -Carmela showed redoubled friendliness from the moment America was -mentioned. She still clung to them after her mistress bade them goodby -at the gate, and offered to show them another vista still more -beautiful. They would rather have continued their interrupted way, but -the little round face falling sadly changed their protestations into -thanks, and she trotted happily beside them, smiling at their -compliments on the even thread she spun as she walked, confiding how -much it brought her a hank, what she could spin in a day, and that Donna -Teresa was a good mistress, but a little weakened in her head by age. - -She pattered along, her bare feet skimming carelessly over the -sharp-cobbled road, spindle steadily whirling, past the Campo Santo, -where at the top of a sudden ravine the road forked and strings of -panniered donkeys and straight, graceful girls with piles of linen on -their heads were going down to a hidden stream tinkling below. They -longed to follow, but Carmela took them on around a curve, through a -door in a high wall, past a deserted barn, along a grassy path under -almond trees, and they found themselves in a spot that made them catch -breath with delight. - -The crown of a mountain spur dropped in terraced orchards and gardens to -the sea below. Taormina was hidden behind intervening heights. Below, an -opal sea divided Sicily from wraiths of the Calabrian mountains drifting -along the horizon, and curves of yellow sand and white, surf-frothed -rocks outlined the far indentations of the Island’s mountainous coast -spreading blue and rosy-purple on their left. Fringed with blossoming -plum and yellow gorse, the spur on which they stood dropped sheer to the -river ravine, and above still towered Mola and Monte Venere. - -It was a world of sun and colour and sweet silence. The cold, moaning -wind was shut off by the heights behind them, and turned full to the -glowing South, a real warmth of sun bathed the sheltered spot and had -spread a carpet of flowers of more brilliant and harmonious arabesques -than any of Oriental weaving. Of purple and puce and gold, coral and -white and orange, of blues faint and deep, of rose and sharp crimson, it -was woven exquisitely through the warp of young spring green. Even -without the view, nothing so sweet and really springlike as that bit of -mountain meadow had Peripatetica and Jane yet seen. They cried out in -joy and sat them down among all the unknown bewitching flowers. - -Carmela’s face lit up at their appreciation. She too sat down, let her -spindle fall, and gazed about as if her eyes loved what they rested -upon; then looking from one strange face to the other: - -“You are really from America?” she asked, and let her pathetic little -story pour out. Nine children she had borne, and all but one dead. She -told how that one, a splendid youth, had gone to America three years ago -to make a fortune for himself and her, and at first had written to her -that he was doing well; but for two years she had spent her hard -earnings to have letters written to him, and had prayed with tears at -the Madonna’s shrine, but for two long years now—no answer. - -Her round little old, yet childlike, face fell into tragic lines. With -work-scarred hands clasping her knees across her patched apron she sat, -a creature of simple and dignified pathos, opening her heart in brief -and poignant words to the response in Peripatetica’s eyes. Among the -blossoms and the bees the three women of such different lives and -experiences, with the barrier of a strange tongue between them, came -into close touch for a moment in the elementary humanity of that pain -known to all women—Goddess Demeter and ragged peasant alike—when their -dearest has gone forth from the longing shelter of their arms and theirs -is the part of passive loneliness and waiting. - -“Yes, life was _brutta_,” said Carmela simply, “but one had always one’s -work.” - -Picking up the spindle, winding again her even thread, smilingly she -bade these strange friends “_a rivedercela_,” and departed, a certain -tragic dignity clinging to the square little figure going sturdily, yet -with head drooping, back to her life of hard and lonely labour. Whether -that moment of sympathetic intercourse had meant anything to her or not, -to the two idle ones that trusting touch of the life about them meant -much. It pulled them out of the world of ghosts, from the empty sense of -being outside of any connection with other lives, and by that contact of -living, pitiful drama they came back into realities. - - * * * * * - -For all the tiny extent of Taormina’s boundaries, the discoveries of its -antiquities seemed never ending; the cella of a Greek temple hidden in -San Pancrazio’s church; the tiny Roman theatre, a section of its pit and -auditorium with seats still in perfect rows sticking out from another -old church whose greediness had only succeeded in half swallowing it; -the enormous Roman baths whose old pools and conduits a thriving lemon -orchard is now enjoying; the Roman pavement next to the Hotel Victoria; -that bit of Greek inscription hospitably let into church walls, exciting -imagination with its record that the “people of Tauromenium accord these -honours to Olympis, son of Olympis” for having gained the prize in horse -racing at the Pythian games. - -The wall of the loveliest garden in Taormina is honeycombed with ancient -tombs. The slender cypresses, like exclamation points emphasizing its -rhythms of colour, have their roots among the very bones of antiquity. -In this garden Protestant worship has succeeded Catholic in the old -Chapel of the delicious little Twelfth Century Convent whose cloisters -are now an English lady’s villa—and who knows in how many earlier -shrines man’s groping faith has prayed in this very spot? - -All over Taormina fragments of old marbles and carvings and columns -appear in the most unlikely places; a marble mask from the theatre over -the door of a modest little “Sarta” in a back alleyway, bits of porphyry -columns supporting the steps of a peasant’s hovel. The traces of Norman -and Saracen embellishment are, of course, even more numerous, almost -every house on the street breaking out into some odd and delicate bit. -The façade of the palace in which dwelt the Frau Schuler’s antiquity -shop is freaked with charming old lava inlays and queer forked -“merluzzi” battlements. Forcing one’s way through the chickens into its -courtyard, one finds a vivid Fourteenth Century relief of the story of -Eve’s creation, temptation, and punishment climbing up the stone -stairway, and an inscription “_Est mihi i locu refugii_,” which -tradition says was placed by John of Aragon taking refuge here once in -the days when it was a Palace of the Aragonese Kings. Beyond that -inscription with its legend, and some few Spanish-looking iron -balconies, the Spaniard has left no trace of his dominion in Taormina. -The Norman printed himself on churches and convents, but it is the -Greeks and Romans, and above all the Saracens, who have stamped -themselves indelibly upon Taormina. Moorish workmen must have been -employed by their conquerors for centuries to build them palaces and -convents, baths and even churches. And the Arab blood still shows -strongly in hawk-like, keen-eyed faces passing through Taormina’s -streets as haughtily as in the days when their progenitors ruled there -with hand of iron upon the dogs of Christians. - -In those Moslem days much liberty in the practice of religion was -allowed to such of the Christians as did not show the cross in public, -read the gospel loud enough to penetrate to Moslem ears, or ring their -church bells “furiously.” How often in Sicily one wishes that last -regulation were still in force! They might go on worshipping freely in -all existing churches and convents, though to build new ones was not -allowed. In matters of religion the Arab was strangely liberal, but in -civil matters he reduced the conquered people to a sort of serfdom. -Christians were not allowed to carry arms, to ride on horseback, or even -donkeyback, to build houses as high as the Mussulman’s, to drink wine in -public, to accompany their dead to burial with any pomp or mourning. -Christian women might not enter the public baths when Moslem women were -there, nor remain if they came in. Christians must give way to Moslems -on the street; indoors they must rise whenever a man of the conquering -race came in or went out. “And that they might never forget their -inferiority, they had to have a mark on the doors of their houses and -one on their clothes.” They were bid wear turbans of different fashion -and colour from Moslems, and particular girdles of leather. - -Yet many good gifts these Eastern conquerors brought—introduction of -silkworms and the mulberry, of sugar-cane and new kinds of olives and -vines; new ways of preserving and salting fish; new processes of -agriculture and commerce; their wonderful methods of irrigation; the -clear Arabic numeration; advance in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, -all sciences; and even “the slaves in Sicily under the Moslem rule were -better off than the Italian populations of the mainland under the -Lombards and Franks.” - - * * * * * - -Jane and Peripatetica were taking tea in the San Domenico gardens—a -flowery terrace dizzily flung out to sea, and almost as high as their -own. There is nothing prettier in Taormina than that garden; tile-paved, -mossy stone pergolas of dense shade still breathing of quiet monkish -meditations; open, yet sheltered, nooks to bask in the sun, and the -loveliness of the outlook on Ætna and his sweeping foothills, and the -milky-streaked green sea; mats of fragrant sweetness, purple and ivory, -of violets and freesias; royal splash of bougainvilla against the buff -stucco of old convent walls; coast steamers, white yachts, and tiny -black fishing boats far, far below, the only hint of the world’s bustle; -here in the garden was only slumberous quiet and fragrant peace. - - “On his terrace high in air - Nothing doth the good monk care - For such worldly themes as these. - From the garden just below - Little puffs of perfume blow, - And a sound is in his ears - Of the murmur of the bees - In the shimmering chestnut trees. - Nothing else he heeds or hears. - All the landscape seems to swoon - In the happy afternoon.” - -Little has been changed since the good monk really dozed there. The -charm of his peaceful days still lingers in cloister and garden, and the -conventual atmosphere still asserts itself in spite of the frivolous -swarm of tourists, who leave innovation trunks in the stone-flagged -corridors. But that same tourist sits in the monk’s painted wooden -stalls, has a beflowered little shrine and altar perhaps opposite his -own bedroom door; walks under saintly frescoes, hangs his hat on the -Father’s carved towel-frame outside the Refectory door, and eats his -dinner under pictures of martyrdoms. The chapel in the midst of the -modern caravanserai is still the parish church, the vaulted stone -corridors echo to the solemn boom of its organ many times a day—a wrong -turn on the way to the dining-room and the tourist finds himself not in -gas-lit, soup-redolent, salle-à-manger, but among the dim, carved -stalls, taper-lit altars, and incense-sweet air of the chapel. - -It was the one place which ever caused Peripatetica and Jane to think -ungratefully of their villa. Whenever they wandered through either of -the vine-draped old cloisters; looked up the delightfully twisted stone -stairways, and along mysterious Gothic passages, they wished that they -too might have had a “belonging” door in one of the arches of that quiet -incense-perfumed corridor, such sense of unhurried calm reigned there; -the frescoed saints over each cell door looked so peacefully benignant. - -“Jane,” queried Peripatetica, “do you notice that these Saints are all -women?—a gentle lady saint over every Brother’s door! even where no -living woman was allowed to penetrate they still clung to some memory of -the Eternal Feminine!” - -Tea was seeming unusually good that afternoon after hours passed amid -the excitements and wonderful finds and bargains of the beguiling -antiquity shops of Taormina’s main street. Now, the pot drained to the -last drop, the last crumb of bread and honey eaten, they sat tranquilly -watching the shadows lengthen in the garden. - -“This is the only really peaceful spot in Taormina,” said Jane. “What a -relief to escape from all that old overwhelming Past for once and just -be soothingly lulled in this placid monkish calm. I know nothing ever -happened here more exciting than the scandal of some fat Brother’s -unduly prolonging his siesta in a sheltered nook, and so missing -Vespers.” - -A boy appeared at her elbow; one of the little shy fauns of Von -Gloëden’s photographs. He pulled a cactus leaf out of one pocket, a -penknife out of another, and trimming off the cactus prickles tossed the -leaf out into space in such deft way that in graceful curves and -birdlike swoops it whirled slowly down to the far bottom of the cliff. -Jane leaned over the gratefully substantial stone parapet and watched, -fascinated, as he proceeded to send yet another and another after it in -more elaborate curves each time. The boy’s shyness melted under her -admiration of his trick and the coppers it was expressed in; he showed -white teeth in much merriment when she too attempted to toss the green -discs only to have them drop persistently without any whirling. He began -to chatter. - -“Yes, it was very high that cliff, and of much interest to pitch things -over and watch them fall. In the old days they had pitched men over -it—yes indeed, prigionieri; many hundreds of them.” - -“Oh Peripatetica! black dramas even here! what can he mean?” - -“The insurgent slaves of the Servile War, perhaps. Their whole garrison -was hurled alive over some cliff here—native tradition may have it this -one.” - -Jane remembered. Eight hundred men thus treated by Publius Rupilius, -Roman Consul in 132 B.C. - -The dark flood of old cruelty surged back to her. Sicily was a country -of great landowners holding estates of eighty miles round and more; -working them by slave labour; owning slaves in thousands. Twenty -thousand slaves was not an exaggerated number for a great noble to own, -two hundred a fair allowance for an ordinary citizen. Two-thirds of -Sicily’s population were then slaves. - -Of course the human live-stock possessed in such indistinguishable -hordes, like cattle, had to be branded with the owner’s mark. They did -their work in irons, to be safely under their overseer’s power; were -lodged in holes under ground; their daily rations but one pound of -barley or wheat, and a little salt and oil. Against atrocious cruelties -they revolt at last. All over Sicily they rise, two hundred thousand men -soon finding arms and power to mete to masters the same cruelties that -had been shown them. For six years all the might of Rome cannot crush -them, but eventually her iron claw closes in upon them—only impregnable -Enna and Taormina still remain in the hands of the slave army. It is a -struggle to test all Rome’s mettle. These slaves too are of the eagle’s -blood. Men free-born and bred, most of them; Greeks and Franks from the -mainland, prisoners of war or of debt. Fiercely, indomitably, they cling -to their rocky eyries. But in Taormina starvation fights direfully -against them. There was not one grain, one blade of grass even, left. -Still the garrison clings and strikes back at the Romans. They devour -their own children, next the women, then at last eat one another—but -still hold out. - -Commanus, the slave commander, weakens and tries to escape from the -horrors. He creeps alone from the city, but is captured and brought -before the Consul. He knows what methods will be tried to make him give -information of the town’s condition—can his weakness hold out against -torture? With apparent acquiescence he appears willing to answer all -Roman questions, but bends his head and draws his cloak over it as if -shielding his eyes to better collect his thoughts.... Under the cloak he -grips his throat between his fingers and with the last remnant of once -phenomenal physical strength crushes his own windpipe, and falls safely -silent at the Consul’s feet. - -But the horrors of Taormina in that siege are too much for another -slave—a Syrian. He betrays the town to the Romans ... and Publius -disposes of all the remaining garrison over the edge of the cliff. - - * * * * * - -Shopping is an important part of a stay in Taormina. Surely no other -street of its length anywhere in the world has so many beguilements to -part the tourist from his coin. The dark little shops spilling their -goods out upon the pavement; things so bizarre, so good, so cheap, the -lire of the forestieri flow away in torrents. Beautiful inlaid -furniture; lovely old jewelry of flawed rubies and emeralds set amid the -famous antique Sicilian pearl-work and enamelling. Old Spanish paste in -delightful designs; red Catanian amber, little Roman intaglios, delicate -old cameos, enamelled orders; necklaces, rings, pendants; earrings in -odd and charming settings; delightful old trinkets in richer assortment -of variety and quality here than any other place in Italy. Old Sicilian -thread lace, coarse but effective, in shawls and scarfs of many charming -old designs; old altar lace too in great abundance; better laces, as one -may have luck to find them, or to be on the spot when gleanings from -churches and convents in the interior are brought in—bundles containing -varied treasures, from brocades and embroideries and splendid lace of -priestly vestments, to drawn-work altar cloths and the lace cottas -little choirboys’ restless arms have worn sad holes in. Churchly silver -too, reliquaries and ornaments and old medals, abound in Taormina for -scarcely more than the value of the silver’s weight. Old coins dug up in -its gardens, the old porcelains bought from its impoverished nobles; old -drawn-work, on heavy hand-woven linen, still firmly carrying its -processions of marvellous beasts and birds and personages in wide -lace-like bands. Beasts conceived by the same imagination that evolved -the gargoyles of Gothic cathedrals, such wonderful mixtures of animal -and bird and human as Adam never named in Garden of Eden. These horned -birds and winged animals processioning around churchly altar cloths are -old, old pagan Siculian luck charms—protectors against the evil eye. -Peripatetica and Jane instantly proceeded to combat their Hoodoo with -valiant processions of fat little many-horned stags romping around -throat and wrist—and of all the many exorcisms they had tried this truly -seemed the most effective! - -Taormina’s naïve native pottery, too, drapes the outside walls of shops -and doorways in bright garlands of strange shapes of fishes and fruits -and beasts, is stacked in shining heaps of colour, jugs and pots and -platters of every possible form and design. Some of it reminiscent of -Sevillian pottery in elaborate Renaissance decoration, but for the most -part rough little shapes of clay, covered with hard bright glaze and no -two ever exactly alike in either shape or tint. The favourite model -being a gay Sicilian Lady Godiva, riding either a stag or a cock, -attired proudly in a crown and a floating blue ribbon! - -Day after day, all through March, the sun moped behind clouds, the wind -lashed the sea against the rocks, and milky foam bands streaked the -turbid green. Rain beat on the Villa windows, and even through them, to -the great amusement of Maria, who appeared to consider mopping up the -streaming floors a merry contest with the elements. - -But when the rare sun burst out and revealed a fresh-washed sky, a land -shimmering through thinnest gauze of mist, or the moon could escape from -the clouds and rise behind the theatre ruins to hang, hugely bright over -the gleaming sea floor so far, far below, it seemed a fair world all -prepared to greet its radiant returning goddess. - -On such days no shop could beguile. Even the old dames weaving towels on -hand looms by their open doors, always so ready for friendly chat with -these forestieri, would be passed with only a smile, for the breath of -the fields called loudly to hillside and orchard, “where all fair herbs -bloom, red goat-wort and endive, and fragrant bees-wort”; the only sound -breaking the sunny calm being the notes of a shepherd boy on a -neighbouring hill, piping as if his reed flute held the very spirit of -youth, the bubbling notes sparkling like a little fountain of joy -flinging its spray on the spring breeze. Or on a day like this to wander -far afield; or else in the high hillside orchards where the birds sang -“Sicily! Sicily! Sicily!” or called mockingly “Who are you? Who are -you?” - -On such a day they adventured to Mola and the heights of Monte Venere’s -peak in the company of those brave _asinelli_ Giovanino and Francesco, -and in the charge of Domenico, Sheik of guides, whose particular -exploitation they had long ago become. - -Loafing in the fountain square, watching the women filling jars at the -fountain, and speculating as usual over the history of its presiding -deity (who as St. Taypotem is the local genius and emblem of the town, a -saint utterly unknown to churchly calendar)—a lady centaur, and a -two-legged one at that, uprearing her plump person on two neat little -hoofed heels raised high above the four archaic beasts spouting -water—Peripatetica and Jane fell a prey to a genial Arab, a beguiling -smile wrinkling his dark hawk-like face. Wouldn’t they like a donkey -ride? The best donkeys in all Sicily were his—Domenico’s—guide No. 5, -beloved of all tourists, as they could see by reading his book. A dingy -little worn note-book was fluttered under their noses, an eager brown -finger pointed to this and that page of English writing, all singing the -praises of Domenico and his beasts on many an expedition. More -influenced by the smile than the testimonials they promised that he -should conduct them to Mola. From that instant Domenico’s wing was -spread over them in brooding solicitude. Yes, the weather was too -threatening to ride out anywhere that afternoon, but did they know all -the sights of the town? he inquired. Had they seen the Bagni Saraceni? -No, they admitted. Oh, that was _molto interessante_ and close at hand; -he would show them! Hypnotized by the smile they followed meekly, though -the Bagni turned out to be the Norman Moorish ruins of the San Stefano -Palace with which they were already familiar. But not as it was shown by -Domenico. The surly old contadina in charge, bullied into offering the -choicest of the oranges and flowers growing among the ruins, the smile -gilding all the dark corners of antiquity and lighting up the vaulted -cellar in which by graphic pantomime of jumps into its biggest holes -they were shown exactly how the Saracens had once bathed, much as more -modern folk did, it seemed. - -After that days came and went of such greyness and cold wind or rain, -that Domenico and his donkeys attended in vain at the pink gateway to -take Peripatetica and Jane excursioning. But not for that did they lose -the sunniness of the smile. Like a benevolent spider, Domenico was to be -always lying in wait to pounce around any corner with friendly greeting, -to give them the news of the town in his patois of mixed Italian, -English, and pantomime; to suggest carrying home their bundles for them -if they were on a shopping tour, to point out an antiquity or garden to -inspect if they seemed planless, or a lift home on the painted cart -whose driver he had been enlivening with merry quips, when met on the -high road outside town. And once, oh blessed time, when he encountered -Jane at the Catania gate, her tongue hanging out with thirst and fatigue -after a long mountain climb, he haled her straightway into a friend’s -garden to refresh herself with juicy oranges from the trees. - -Finally the long waited-for day came, when not a cloud threatened and -the mountains beckoned through crystalline, sunny air. So Francesco and -Giovanino laden with Peripatetica and Jane, Domenico and a brown young -hawkling of the Domenican brood laden with lunch, they climbed upwards. -Ætna stood out in glistening, freshly renewed snow mantle, icy sharp -against the most perfect of blue skies. Taormina dropped far below, a -tiny huddled human nest of brown among the green, green hilltops. Mola, -which for so long had loomed far over their heads on its beetling crags, -now too sank below. The pink mountain villa where Hichens had written -“The Call of the Blood,” the vineyards and the orchards, all dropped -away. Only Ætna, high and white, soared against the sky, remote and -inaccessible. The trail grew steeper and steeper, but Francesco and -Giovanino, noble pair, with unbroken wind and gloomy energy picked their -way unfalteringly among the rolling stones, and both Domenicos, like -two-legged flies, seemed to take to the perpendicular as easily as the -horizontal. - -Francesco, tall and grey and of a loquacious turn of mind, made all the -mountains echo to his voice whenever a fellow _asinello_ was encountered -on the trail. Giovanino, small and brown, attended strictly to the -business of finding secure places for his tiny hoofs among the stones, -but developed two idiosyncrasies rather dismaying to his rider. Whenever -the path led along a precipice’s edge, on the very outside edge of it -would his four obstinate little feet go, with Jane’s feet dangling -horribly over empty space; whenever it skirted a stone wall his furry -sides insisted upon rubbing it clingingly, sternly regardless of his -rider’s toes. The path ceased being a path. It became a stairway -climbing up the mountains’ bare marble side in rough stone steps a foot -or more in height. - -“But we can’t ride up _that_!” cries the appalled Peripatetica in the -lead. In vain Domenico assures her that she can, that people do it every -day. She looks at its dizzy turns and insists on taking to her own feet. -Jane, having acquired a reverential confidence in Giovanino’s powers -after their mutual tussles, puts more faith in his head and knees than -in her own, and goes on, clutchingly. Young Domenico, hanging like a -balance weight to Giovanino’s tail, keeps up a chorus of “Ah-ees” and -assurances that the Signorina need have no fear, he is there to guide -her! In reality he knows that his small person could no more interfere -with the orbit of Giovanino’s movements than with those of the planets, -but also that there is no more need that he should—Giovanino’s grey head -holds a perfect chart of the way, with the safest hoof-placings plainly -marked out on it, and he follows it imperturbably. - -Travellers to Monte Venere do not know much of what they are passing the -last forty minutes. They are too busy wondering whether each minute will -not be their last—on those daunting stairs of living rock and rolling -stones. Breathless, dizzy, speechless, they at last realize a firm level -terrace is under foot, and reel against the comforting solid walls of -the little _tratoria_. The donkeys are quite unruffled and unheated, -less dejected than when they started. The young Domenico, who has pulled -himself on shuffling small bare feet thrust in his father’s heavy boots -all up that mountain wall, is as unflushed of face, unshortened of -breath, as if he had come on wings! Old Domenico, escorting an exhausted -Peripatetica, is bubbling faster than ever with vehement chatter. He -cannot understand why his charges insist on rest, on holding fast to the -solid house. It fills him with surprised distress that they will not go -on to the top. “The view over all Sicily awaits them there, and it is -such a clear day. Corragio! only one-half hour more!”... - -But Peripatetica and Jane plant their feet on that little level platform -with more than donkey obstinacy—with reeling heads they look out into -the great blue gulfs of air and over the green ripples of mountain tops. -This is high enough for them, they pant, feeling like quivering -earth-worms clinging to the top of a telegraph pole and invited to go -out along the wires. Shivering in the wind which, in spite of sun, is -icy keen at this height, they proceed to eat their cold lunch; the -tratoria offering only tables and crockery, wine, goat’s milk, and -coffee to its patrons. Between two infants of the house begging for -tidbits, three skeleton dogs so long unacquainted with food they -snatched greedily even at egg shells, a starved cat, and the two -Domenicos, who, it seems, also expect to lunch on their leavings, -Peripatetica and Jane have themselves no heart to eat. Wishing they had -brought another _asinello_ laden only with food, that all the -inhabitants of this hungry height might for once be filled, they divide -their own meal as evenly as possible among all its aspirants and try to -sustain themselves on the view. Peripatetica looked on the far expanse -of hills and sea below, sourly asserting her fixed lowlander’s -conviction that mountains are only beautiful looked up to, and that a -bird’s-eye-view is no view. But when a comforting concoction of hot -goat’s milk and something called coffee had been swallowed, and numbed -fingers thawed out over the tiny fire of grapevine prunings in the -tratoria kitchen, they succumbed to Domenico’s insistence about the view -it is their duty to see, and climbed higher. - -The crest of Monte Venere is a green knoll rising above rock walls. -Around and below it enough mountains to fill a whole world roll -confusedly on every side. They felt more than ever like earth-worms too -far removed from friendly earth, and stayed only to listen to the -pipings of a curly-headed goatherd flinging trills out into space; while -Domenico, pained at their indifference to his vaunted coup d’état of -“bella vistas,” but benevolent still, clambered about like a goat -himself, gathering for them the “mountain violets” as he called the -delicate mauve flowers starring the sod. - -So soon they were back at the tratoria that Francesco and Giovanino had -not half chewed their little handfuls of hay, and young Domenico’s red -tongue was still delightedly polishing off the interior of their tin of -potted chicken, while the lean dogs watched enviously, waiting for their -chance at this queer bone. Another personage was lunching luxuriously, -stretched at his ease on the steep hillside, a large sleek white goat, -munching solemnly at grass and blossom, wagging his beard and rolling -watery pink-rimmed eyes with such evangelical air of pious complacence -Peripatetica and Jane instantly recognized him as an incarnation of a -New England country deacon, and sat down respectfully to pass the time -of day with him. - -Going down even Jane takes to her own feet. Slipping, sliding, jumping, -the worst is somehow past with bones still unbroken. The mountainside is -yet like the wall of a house, but Domenico, with more cries of -“corragio,” and proverbs as to those who “Va piano, va sano,” urges them -to mount, and Jane, quite confident that four legs have more clinging -power than two, is glad to lie back along Giovanino’s tail while he -balances himself on his nose, with young Domenico serving as a brake on -his tail, and so slides and hitches calmly down hill. - -Mola is a climb again, the narrow path twisting up the one accessible -ledge to its sharp peak. One wonders why human beings ever first climbed -there to build, and even more why they still live in its cramped -buildings, and with what toil they can find ways to squeeze daily bread -out of the bleak rocks. Yet before the first Greek colonists landed at -Naxos, Mola was already a town. It looked down on infant Taormina when -the Naxos refugees fled to its heights. It loomed above, still Siculian -and intact, on its bare unassailable crags, through all the squabbles -and screamings below of the different eagle broods taking possession of -Taormina’s nest. The conqueror who tried to take Mola had usually only -his trouble for his pains. Even Dionysius, with all Sicily clutched in -his cruel hand, failed in his snatch at Mola. His attempt to steal into -it by surprise one dark winter’s night ended in an ignominious, -breakneck, hurling repulse of tyrant and all his victory-wonted -veterans. And Mola still lives to-day. All its huddled houses seem to be -inhabited, though only bent old men, palsied crones, black pigs, and -babies are to be met with in its steep narrow alleys. Domenico said -scornfully that there was nothing to be seen in it, but led the way to -the tiny town-square terrace beside the church, and had a brown finger -ready to emphasize all points of interest in the spread of country and -sea stretching below its parapet. Once Mola had a sister town, he told, -on another crag across the valley; but Ætna opened a sudden mouth and -lava rivers pouring down to the sea flowed over it and swallowed it -completely. Whether this is actual history or Domenican invention -remains in doubt. No other historian mentions the lost town. But then, -as Domenico said, there is Ætna, and there the lava mound still black -and ugly, as proof! - - * * * * * - -Again it rained, and Ætna sulked behind a cloudy mantle. Vesuvius worked -all day long, yet fur coats were a necessary house dress. The poor Demon -took the influenza and coughed, and shivered in spite of her hot -energies; turned livid yellow and feverish, and had to be sent to a -doctor. Scarcely able to hold her head up, but protesting to the end, -she gave in to going home to bed and staying there. But first she -reappeared, pale but proud, with a fashionably dressed young lady of -fourteen, her _figlia_ Adalina, to whom she had shown and told -everything, and who could do all the ladies’ service quite as well as -herself. - -Adalina was very high as to pompadour and equally high as to the French -heels on the tight boots which finished off the plump legs emerging from -her smart kilted skirt—but height of intelligence was not in her; none -of her mother’s quickness and energy seemed to have passed into the head -under the high rolling thatch of hair. Feet were Adalina’s strong point, -and she knew it. There was probably not another such grand pair of real -French boots as hers in all Taormina! So her life consisted in showing -them off. She arranged Peripatetica’s and Jane’s belongings, and brushed -their clothes, as Mother had shown her, but with pirouettings and side -steps—one, two, three, all the best dancing positions—between every -touch of brush or laying out of garment. It absorbed so much time to -keep her feet arranged in the most perfect placings to exhibit pointed -toes that very little else could be expected of her in the course of the -day. She opened her mouth wide at Peripatetica’s and Jane’s broken -babblings, but no sense from them ever penetrated her intelligence. -Maria had to be called to interpret everything, and usually to do it -too. A charm seemed to have departed from the villa with no Demon to -keep them comfortable and uncomfortable at once. - -“Why should we wait and shiver here any longer?” asked Peripatetica. -“Persephone is surely coming first on the other side of Ætna.” - -“Why should we? Let us start on,” said Jane. - -Domenica returned to them, a pale yellow Demon, but bustling as ever, -too late to affect their decision. Trunks were packed, towering -packing-cases stuffed with their Taormina acquisitions. Fraulein’s last -wonderful pudding eaten, Ætna seen looming vapory white above the -terrace for the last time, Old Nina had carried down through the garden -from the well, in a Greek jar on her grey head, the water for their last -tub, Maria had peeped her last “Questo,” Frau Schuler and her polite -son, the Fraulein, Maria, and Carola, had all presented fragrant -nosegays, Adalina, too, with pompadour more aggressive than ever, -appeared to offer them violets and hint a receptivity to a parting -douceur herself. Every one was bidding them regretful farewells. -Touched, and themselves regretful to leave so much kindness and charm, -with melting heart the last goodby of all was said to Domenica, and her -wages for the last two weeks pressed into her palm. - -“You have served us so well, we have made no deduction for the days you -were first ill, and we had no one; nor for the days when we had your -little girl instead,” said Jane. - -Oh! had Ætna burst into eruption? The whole smiling morning landscape -was darkened by the wild black figure pouring down shrill volleys of -wrathful Italian on their devoted heads. This Fury threatening with -flashing eyes and wild gesture was their gentle Domenica—now a demon -indeed! - -They shrank aghast unable to catch a word in the rapid torrent. - -“What _is_ the matter?” they cried to Frau Schuler. - -With Teuton phlegm she dropped a word into the flood. - -“You have not paid her for the hour she has been here this morning.” - -“No, because we have paid her just the same for the days on which we had -no one and the ten days on which we had only that stupid child—and have -given the precious Adalina a _mancia_ too. But good gracious, we will -pay her more if she feels that way!” - -“Indeed, you must not!” said the Frau briskly. “It is an abominable -imposition. She has been much overpaid now, that is the trouble, she -thinks you easy game. Listen, my woman, and shame yourself,” she turned -to Domenica, “you disgrace your town to these good Signorine, who have -acted so generously to you!” - -The raging demon looked into her calm face and at the two astounded -American ones, and the storm quieted as quickly as it had come ... in an -instant’s metamorphosis she was again the amiable little person of all -the weeks of service, saying: - -“Many, many thanks to the ladies, and a pleasant journey, and might they -come back again soon to Taormina!” - -She snatched Peripatetica’s coat away from Maria, and Jane’s kodak from -out her hand, and bore them off to the carriage with all her usual -assiduous energy. - -One last pat to the puppy, graduated this very morning to real collar -and chain attaching him to new huge kennel, the warring friendliness of -his heart and the conscientious effort to live up to his -responsibilities struggling more pathetically than ever in his grey -eyes, and they passed up the pergola for the last time, and out of the -pink gate to continue their quest. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - - - - CHAPTER III - - ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS - - - “Where he fell there he lay down and died.” - -SIR JOHN LUBBOCK tells a story—and this story teaches an obvious -lesson—of certain red warrior ants, who capture black fellow pismires, -and hold them as slaves; an outrage which must certainly shock all true -pismitarian ants. The captors become in time so dependent upon their -negro servants that, when deprived of their attendants, they are unable -to feed or clean themselves, and lie helplessly upon their backs, feebly -waving their paws in the air!... - -Peripatetica, having but recently suffered the loss of a maiden slave of -a dozen years’ standing, had suffered a like moral disintegration, and -she violently lost her taste for travel whenever it became necessary to -move from one place to another, attempting to deal with her packing by a -mere series of helpless paw-wavings, most picturesque to observe, but -which for all practical purposes were highly inefficient. So when she -and Jane dropped down and down the zigzags to Giardini—each of those -famous views self-consciously presenting itself in turn for the last -time—the light figure which hurled itself boldly down the steeps by a -short cut, springing along the daring descent with the sure-footed -confidence of a goat, proved to be not a wing-heeled Mercury conveying -an affectionate message from the gods, but merely a boy from the villa -fetching Peripatetica’s left-behind nail brush, hot-water bottle, and -umbrella.... - -From Giardini a spacious plain curves all the way to Syracuse. This -broken level is built upon a foundation of inky lava cast out from -Hephæstos’ forge in Ætna, in whose wrinkled crevices of black and broken -stone has been caught and held all the stored richness of the denuded -mountains so long ago stripped of trees; and in this plain grain and -flowers and trees innumerable find food and footing. Peripatetica, bred -in deep-soiled, fertile fields with wide horizons, drew, as they passed -into the open vistas, deep breaths of refreshment and joy. The fierce, -soaring aridity of Taormina had oppressed her with a restless sense of -imprisonment. Her elbows were as passionate lovers of liberty as the -Spartans, and she demanded proper space in which to move them. What she -called a view was a _view_, not merely more mountains climbing, blind -and obstinate, between the eye and the landscape. Being, too, of a race -always worshippers of Demeter—a race which had spent generations in her -service, which considered the cultivation of the soil the only possible -occupation of a gentleman, and all other businesses the mere wretched -astonishing fate of the unfortunate—she rejoiced loudly and fatiguingly -over the blessedness of a return to a sweet land of farms. - -“I don’t call that Taormina window-box-gardening on tiny stone ledges a -thousand feet up in the air _farming_,” she scoffed. - -“If your tongue was a spade what crops you would raise!” sniffed Jane. - -“Well, I raise big harvests of diversion in my own spirit,” retorted the -unsuppressed chatterer. “Besides, it’s now my turn to talk. You have -done a lot of elaborate speechifying about Taormina. I made you a -present of the whole jaggèd, attitudinizing old place, and for the -moment I mean to flow unchecked! You needn’t listen if you don’t like. I -enjoy hearing myself speak, whether anyone pays the smallest attention -or not.” - -Which was why, while Jane settled down comfortably to a copy of -Theocritus, Peripatetica continued to entertain her own soul with spoken -and unspoken comments as to a certain restful letting down of tension -which resulted from sliding away from the dazzling, lofty Olympianism of -Taormina into a region Cyclopean, perhaps, but with a dawning suggestion -of coming humanity. For here, in this plain, succeeding those bright -presences that were the elementary forces of nature—forces of the earth -and sea and sun, of fire and dew, of thunder, wind, and rain, of the -shining day, and the night with its changing moon—first came the -primitive earth-spirits, rude and rugged, or delicate and vapourous. -Creatures not gods—no longer immutable and immortal, but stronger, -older, greater than man, who was yet to come. Creatures partaking -somewhat of the nature of both gods and men, but subject to -transformation into stream and fountain, into tree and flower; very near -to the earth, yet swayed by human passions, by human sorrows and joys. - -This plain was the home of nymph and oread, of dryad and faun. Here had -the Cyclops and the Titans wrought—first of the great race of Armourers -and Smiths—under the tutelage of Vulcan, shaping the beams of the -heavens, and the ribs of the earth; arming the gods and forging the -lightning. - -Ulysses, the earliest of impassioned tourists, had had dealings on this -very spot with the last of the Cyclops. A degenerate scion of the great -old race, as the last of a great race is apt to be, Polyphemus had sunk -to the mere keeping of sheep, and according to Ulysses’ own story he got -the better of Polyphemus, and related, upon returning home, the triumph -of his superior cunning, with the same naïve relish with which the -modern Cookie retails his supposed outwitting of the native curio -dealer. Very near to the train, as it ran by the sea’s edge, lay the -huge fragments of lava which the blinded Cyclop had cast in futile rage -after the escaping Greeks. He was a great stone-thrower, was Polyphemus, -for further along the coast lay the boulders he had flung at Acis, the -beautiful young shepherd. Polyphemus having still an eye in those days, -his aim was truer, and the shepherd was killed, but who may baffle true -love? The dead boy melted away beneath the stones and was transformed to -the bright and racing river Acis (which they crossed just then), and the -river, flowing round the stones, runs still across the plain to fling -itself into the arms of the sea-nymph Galatea. So the two still meet as -of old, and play laughingly together in and out among the huge rocks, -which certainly might have been flung there by Ætna in one of her -volcanic furies, but which, if one may believe the Greek story, were -really the gigantic weapons of a cruel jealousy. - -Jane and Peripatetica could put their heads out of the windows and study -history and legend at their ease, the train ambling amiably and not too -rapidly through the lovely land, where the near return of Persephone was -foreshadowed in the delicate rosy clouds of the Judas trees drifting -across the black green of dense carobs. It was foretold, too, by the -broad yellow mustard fields blooming under the shadow of silver-grey -olive orchards; Fields-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold they were, about which -Spring was pitching white tents of plum flowers in which to sign royal -alliance with Summer. They saw old Sicilian farm-steadings here and -there crowning the rising ground on either hand, freaked and lichened -with years, and showing among their spiring cypresses the square towers -to which the inhabitants had fled for safety in the old days of -Levantine piracy. Many of these houses were very old, six or eight -hundred years old, it was said. Orange and lemon groves on either side -the way still hung heavy with fruit, plainly feeling it a duty laid upon -them to look like the trees in Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes; like the -trees of all the Old Masters’ backgrounds. Invariably being round, close -clumps of green set thick with golden balls, quite unlike the orange -trees in America, which have never had proper decorative and artistic -models set for their copying, and therefore grow carelessly and less -beautifully. - -As far as the eye could reach the whole land was furred with the tender -green of sprouting corn. For this was once Europe’s granary, and the -place of Rome’s bread; here Demeter first taught man to sow and reap, -and despite Ætna’s fires, despite the destruction and ravaging of a -thousand wars, and thousands of years of careless unrestorative use of -the soil, corn still grows on this plain, so hard, so perfect, and so -nourishing of grain that no Sicilian can afford to eat it, selling his -own crop to macaroni manufacturers, and contenting himself with a poorer -imported wheat for his dark daily bread. - -In these rich meadows, too, replacing the frigid little -Evangelical-looking goat of Taormina, browsed fat flocks in snowy silken -fleeces, and with long wavy horns. Flocks that were tended by shepherds -draped in faded blue or brown hooded cloaks, wearing sheep’s wool bound -about their cross-gartered legs, their feet shod with hairy goat-skin -shoes. They leaned in contemplative attitudes on long staves—as every -right-minded shepherd should—so old a picture, so unchanged from -far-off, pastoral days! Just so had they shown themselves to Theocritus, -when that sweet young singer of the early time had wandered here among -the herdsmen, the fishers, and the delvers in the good brown earth, in -the days when the Greeks still lived and ruled here, so long and long -ago. - -“I wish they would pipe,” said Peripatetica. “It only needs to complete -the picture that innocent sweet trilling of the shepherd’s reed that is -like the voices of the birds and of the cicalas.” - -“Oh, they daren’t do it here in high noon,” remonstrated Jane. “For fear -of Pan, you know.” And she turned back the pages of her little book to -read aloud the sweetest and perfectest of the Idyls.... - -THYRSIS. Sweet, meseems, is the whispering sound of yonder pine tree, -goatherd, that murmureth by the wells of water; and sweet are thy -pipings. After Pan the second prize shalt thou bear away, and if he take -the horned goat, the she-goat shalt thou win; but if he choose the -she-goat for his meed, the kid falls to thee, and dainty is the flesh of -kids ere the age when thou milkest them. - -THE GOATHERD. Sweeter, O shepherd, is thy song than the music of yonder -water that is poured from the high face of the rock! Yea, if the Muses -take the young ewe for their gift, a stall-fed lamb shalt thou receive -for thy meed; but if it please them to take the lamb, thou shalt lead -away the ewe for the second prize. - -THYRSIS. Wilt thou, goatherd, in the nymphs’ name, wilt thou sit thee -down here, among the tamarisks, on this sloping knoll, and pipe while in -this place I watch thy flocks? - -[Illustration: “PAN’S GOAT HERD”] - -GOATHERD. Nay, shepherd, it may not be; we may not pipe in the noontide. -’Tis Pan we dread, who truly at this hour rests weary from the chase; -and bitter of mood is he, the keen wrath sitting ever at his nostrils. -But, Thyrsis, for that thou surely wert wont to sing _The Affliction of -Daphnis_, and hast most deeply meditated the pastoral muse, come hither, -and beneath yonder elm let us sit down, in face of Priapus and the -fountain fairies, where is that resting-place of the shepherds, and -where the oak trees are. Ah! if thou wilt but sing as on that day thou -sangest in thy match with Chromis out of Libya, I will let thee milk, -ay, three times, a goat that is the mother of twins, and even when she -has suckled her kids her milk doth fill two pails. A deep bowl of -ivy-wood, too, I will give thee, rubbed with sweet bees’-wax, a -two-eared bowl newly wrought, smacking still of the knife of the graver. -Round its upper edges goes the ivy winding, ivy besprent with golden -flowers; and about it is a tendril twisted that joys in its saffron -fruit. Within is designed a maiden, as fair a thing as the gods could -fashion, arrayed in a sweeping robe, and a snood on her head. Beside her -two youths with fair love-locks are contending from either side, with -alternate speech, but her heart thereby is all untouched. And now on one -she glances, smiling, and anon she lightly flings the other a thought, -while by reason of the long vigils of love their eyes are heavy, but -their labour is all in vain. - -Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are fashioned, a rugged -rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags a great net for his -cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldst say that he is fishing -with all the might of his limbs, so big the sinews swell all about his -neck, grey-haired though he be, but his strength is as the strength of -youth. Now divided but a little space from the sea-worn old man is a -vineyard laden well with fire-red clusters, and on the rough wall a -little lad watches the vineyard, sitting there. Round him two she-foxes -are skulking, and one goes along the vine-rows to devour the ripe -grapes, and the other brings all her cunning to bear against the scrip, -and vows she will never leave the lad, till she strand him bare and -breakfastless. But the boy is plaiting a pretty locust-cage with stalks -of asphodel, and fitting it with reeds, and less care of his scrip has -he, and of the vines, than delight in his plaiting. - -All about the cup is spread the soft acanthus, a miracle of varied work, -a thing for thee to marvel on. For this bowl I paid to a Calydonian -ferryman a goat and a great white cream cheese. Never has its lip -touched mine, but it still lies maiden for me. Gladly with this cup -would I gain thee to my desire, if thou, my friend, wilt sing me that -delightful song. Nay, I grudge it thee not at all. Begin, my friend, for -be sure thou canst in no wise carry thy song with thee to Hades, that -puts all things out of mind! - - _The Song of Thyrsis._ - -_Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ Thyrsis of Ætna am I, -and this is the voice of Thyrsis. Where, ah! where were ye when Daphnis -was languishing; ye Nymphs, where were ye? By Peneus’ beautiful dells, -or by dells of Pindus? for surely ye dwelt not by the great stream of -the river Anapus, nor on the watch-tower of Ætna, nor by the sacred -water of Acis. - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -For him the jackals, for him the wolves did cry; for him did even the -lion out of the forest lament. Kine and bulls by his feet right many, -and heifers plenty, with the young calves bewailed him. - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -Came Hermes first from the hill, and said, “Daphnis, who is it that -torments thee; child, whom dost thou love with so great desire?” The -neatherds came, and the shepherds; the goatherds came; all they asked -what ailed him. Came also Priapus,— - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -And said: “Unhappy Daphnis, wherefore dost thou languish, while for thee -the maiden by all the fountains, through all the glades is fleeting, in -search of thee? Ah! thou art too laggard a lover, and thou nothing -availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now thou art like the -goatherd.” - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -“For the goatherd, when he marks the young goats at their pastime, looks -on with yearning eyes, and fain would be even as they; and thou, when -thou beholdest the laughter of maidens, dost gaze with yearning eyes, -for that thou dost not join their dances.” - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -Yet these the herdsman answered not again, but he bare his bitter love -to the end, yea, to the fated end he bare it. - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -Ay, but she too came, the sweetly smiling Cypris, craftily smiling she -came, yet keeping her heavy anger; and she spake, saying: “Daphnis, -methinks thou didst boast that thou wouldst throw Love a fall, nay, is -it not thyself that hast been thrown by grievous Love?” - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -But to her Daphnis answered again: “Implacable Cypris, Cypris terrible, -Cypris of mortals detested, already dost thou deem that my latest sun -has set; nay, Daphnis even in Hades shall prove great sorrow to Love. - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -“Get thee to Ida, get thee to Anchises! There are oak trees—here only -galingale blows, here sweetly hum the bees about the hives! - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -“Thine Adonis, too, is in his bloom, for he heards the sheep and slays -the hares, and he chases all the wild beasts. Nay, go and confront -Diomedes again, and say, ‘The herdsman Daphnis I conquered, do thou join -battle with me.’” - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -“Ye wolves, ye jackals, and ye bears in the mountain caves, farewell! -The herdsman Daphnis ye never shall see again, no more in the dells, no -more in the groves, no more in the woodlands. Farewell Arethusa, ye -rivers good-night, that pour down Thymbris your beautiful waters. - - _Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!_ - -“That Daphnis am I who here do herd the kine, Daphnis who water here the -bulls and calves. - -“O Pan, Pan! whether thou art on the high hills of Lycæus, or rangest -mighty Mænalus, haste hither to the Sicilian isle! Leave the tomb of -Helice, leave that high cairn of the son of Lycæon, which seems wondrous -fair, even in the eyes of the blessed. - - _Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_ - -“Come hither, my prince, and take this fair pipe, honey-breathed with -wax-stopped joints; and well it fits thy lip; for verily I, even I, by -Love am now haled to Hades. - - _Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_ - -“Now violets bear, ye brambles, ye thorns bear violets and let fair -narcissus bloom on the boughs of juniper! Let all things with all be -confounded—from pines let men gather pears, for Daphnis is dying! Let -the stag drag down the hounds, let owls from the hills contend in song -with the nightingales.” - - _Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_ - -So Daphnis spake, and ended; but fain would Aphrodite have given him -back to life. Nay, spun was all the thread that the Fates assigned, and -Daphnis went down the stream. The whirling wave closed over the man the -Muses loved, the man not hated of the nymphs. - - _Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!_ - -And thou, give me the bowl, and the she-goat, that I may milk her and -pour forth a libation to the Muses. Farewell, oh, farewells manifold, ye -Muses, and I, some future day, will sing you yet a sweeter song. - -_The Goatherd._ Filled may thy fair mouth be with honey, Thyrsis, and -filled with the honeycomb; and the sweet dried fig mayest thou eat of -Ægilus, for thou vanquishest the cicala in song! Lo, here is thy cup, -see, my friend, of how pleasant a savour! Thou wilt think it has been -dipped in the well-spring of the Hours. Hither, hither, Cissætha: do -thou milk her, Thyrsis. And you young she-goats, wanton not so wildly -lest you bring up the he-goat against you. - - * * * * * - -“What a crowded place Sicily is!” cried Jane, heaving an oppressed -breath. - -“Isn’t it?” sympathized Peripatetica. “Here we are on our way to the -very fountain, as it seems, of history—Syracuse, where nearly everything -happened that ever did happen, and yet one has to mentally push one’s -way through a swarming crowd of events to get there, because almost -everything that didn’t happen in Syracuse occurred in these Sicilian -plains. When you think of the layer on layer of human life, like -geologic strata, that lies all over this place, you realize that it -would take half a lifetime to come to some understanding of the -significance of it all, and that it’s foolish to go on until one can get -some hold upon the meaning of what lies right here.” - -This “simple but first-class conversation” took place in the -eating-station at Catania which the two had all to themselves, most of -the Tedeschi tourists frugally remaining in the train and staying their -pangs from bottles, and with odds and ends out of paper parcels, from -which feasts they emerged later replete but crumby. - -Poor Catania! sunk to a mere feeding-trough for passing tourists. She, -the great city sitting blandly among her temples and towers, wooed for -her money bags by all the warlike neighbours. For whenever her -neighbours squabbled with one another, which was pretty nearly all the -time—or whenever an outsider intervened—each strove to engage the aid of -this rich landholder, sending embassies and emissaries to bully or -cajole Catania. As rich folk will, she always tried to protect herself -by taking neither side completely, speaking fair to each, and, like all -Laodiceans, she made thereby two enemies instead of one, and was -considered fair prey by both. - -That splendid, dangerous dandy, Alcibiades, was one of these -ambassadors. Almost under the feet of Jane and Peripatetica, as they sat -with their mouths full of crisp delectable little tarts, had the wily -Athenian spoken in the Catanian theatre. The older men enjoyed his -eloquent, graceful Greek, but they were quite determined not to be -persuaded by it to let his fleet enter their harbour, his army enter -their city, or to be used as a base from which to strike the -Syracusians. The Catanians didn’t like Syracuse, but they didn’t mean to -embroil themselves with her. They secretly hoped the Athenians would -reduce that dangerous neighbour to despair, but if either destroyed the -other—why, then it would be well to be able to show the victor their -clean hands. - -Alcibiades was quite aware he was not convincing them, but he enjoyed -turning brilliant periods in public, and was meanwhile pleasantly -conscious of the young men in the audience admiring the chasing of his -buckles, the artful folds of his gold-embroidered chalmyde, the -exquisite angle at which he knotted his fillet, privately resolving to -readjust their own provincial toilets by the model of this famous glass -of fashion. And when they all poured out of the theatre after his -brilliantly preferred request had been politely refused, he could afford -to smile calmly, for, behold! there was the Athenian fleet in the -harbour, the Athenian army in the city. He had not been using those -well-turned phrases for mere idleness. They had availed to keep the -authorities occupied while his subordinates had executed his commands. - -And their caution was of no avail whatever, for in due time, when -Alcibiades was in exile and the Athenians rotting in the Latomiæ, -Syracuse duly turned and “took it out of” Catania. Took it out good and -hard too. - -There was no use stopping over a train to see the old theatre and -realize for themselves this curious bit of history; it only meant -crawling through black passages by the light of a smoky candle, for Ætna -in 1669—in a fit of ennui with poor Catania—had pitched down thousands -of tons of lava upon her and hid all the rich city’s ancient glories -from the sun. - -It was from Catania that another interesting Greek had set out upon his -last journey. A journey to the crest of that volcano which has been -constantly taking a hand in the destinies of Sicily, with what—in its -careless malice, its malignant furies—seems almost like the personal -wickedness of some demon; that incalculable mountain whose soaring -outlines had been coming out at Jane and Peripatetica all day whenever -the train turned a corner, as if to reassure them that they couldn’t -lose her if they tried. Ætna was from the very beginning the pre-eminent -fact in this part of Sicily. - -First Zeus—who always had a cheerful disregard of any rules of chivalry -in dealing with his enemies—tied down the unlucky Titan Enceladus upon -this very spot, and, gathering up enough of Sicily to make a mountain -the size of Ætna, heaped it on top of him, probably congratulating -himself the while that he had put a complete end to that particular -annoyance. But quite a number of rulers since Zeus have discovered that -in a rebellious temperament there reside resources of annoyingness which -even a god cannot entirely foresee or provide against, and the Titan -still heaves restlessly at his load from time to time, rocking the whole -island with his struggles, toppling towers, engulfing cities, tearing -the earth apart in his furies. - -Some of the myths accuse Demeter herself of having set Ætna alight in -her frenzy, that all Sicily might thus be illumined to aid her in the -search for Persephone, and that never since that reckless day has she -been able to extinguish it, but must fight, with rain and dews and snows -to save her people’s bread from the flames forever threatening to -destroy it. The fire pours forth from time to time, spreading cruel -ruin, but ever, aided by her, man creeps up and up once more. Up to -Randazzo; up to Brontë, the “thunder town,” given to Lord Nelson by -Marie Antoinette’s sister, then Queen of the Two Sicilies, where the -Dukes of Brontë, Nelson’s descendants, still live part of each year in -their wild eyrie. - -The vine and the olive climb and climb after each catastrophe. They -cover the old scars of the eruptions, perch in crevices where a goat can -scarce stand, and wring from the rich crumbs of soil “wine that maketh -glad the heart of man, and oil that causeth his countenance to shine.” - -Up to the top of this Ætna—ten thousand feet up—on the last journey from -Catania climbed Empedocles, that strange figure who passes with ringing -brazen sandals through the history of Sicily. Empedocles, clothed in -purple, crowned with a wreath of golden leaves, followed by thousands to -whom he taught some strange, half Pythagorean worship, the form and -meaning of which have vanished with time, save for some hints of a sort -of mental healing practised upon his followers. Empedocles, composing -vast poems of thousands of lines, and vaunting himself as a Super-man, -saying: - -“An immortal god, and no longer a mortal man, I wander among you; -honoured by all, adorned with priestly diadems and blooming wreaths. -Into whatever illustrious towns I enter men and women pay me reverence, -and I am accompanied by thousands who thirst for their advantage; some -being desirous to know the future, and others, tormented by long and -terrible disease, waiting to hear the spells that soothe suffering.” - -Whether his following fell away; whether he became the victim of some -wild melancholy, some corroding _welt-schmerz_—unable to cure the ills -of his own soul with his own doctrines—no one knows, but the dramatic -manner of his exit printed his name indelibly upon the memory of the -world from which he fled. - -Deserting late at night a feast in Catania, he mounted a mule, climbed -the rough steeps, threaded the dusky oak woods, dismissed his last -follower, and—after lingering a moment to listen to the boy-harper -Callicles singing in the dawn at the edge of the forest—he passed on -upward through the snows, and was seen no more by human eye. Only the -brazen sandal was found beside the crater, into whose unutterable -furnace—urged by some divine despair—he had flung himself: all that had -been that aspiring, passionate life vanishing in an instant in a hiss of -steam, a puff of gas, upon the most stupendous funeral pyre ever chosen -by man. - - * * * * * - -There was endless history waiting to be looked into at Catania; -frightful passagings and scufflings, massacres and exilings, murders, -conspiracies and poisonings, and every other uncomfortable exhibition of -“man’s inhumanity to man”—accompanied, of course, by heroisms, patriotic -self-sacrifice, and a thousand humble, unremembered kindnesses and -virtues, such as forever form warp and woof of the web of life and time. -But railway schedules, even in Sicily, are almost heartlessly -indifferent to tradition, and when the last tartlet was consumed the two -seekers for Persephone were dragged Syracuse-ward, along with the crumby -Tedeschi, divided during the long afternoon between increasing -drowsiness and reproachful Baedekers. At last came sea marshes, where -salt-pans evaporated in the sun, and toward sunset the train dumped them -all promiscuously into station omnibuses at the capital of history; too -grubby and fatigued to care whether the first class in historical -research was called or not. - -The Tedeschi, after their frugal fashion, went in search of cheap -pensions in the city, and only Jane and Peripatetica entered the wheeled -tender of the Villa Politi, along with a young Italian pair, obviously -engaged upon a honeymoon. A pair who never ceased to look unutterable -things at each other out of fine eyes bistred with railway grime, nor -ceased to murmur soft nothings from lips surrounded with the shadows of -railway soot, undaunted by the frank interest of the hotel portier -hanging on to the step, nor by the joltings of the dusty white road that -led, through the noisy building of many ugly new villas, up to bare, -wind-swept heights. - -Strong in the possession of a note from the proprietor promising -accommodation, with which, this time, the wayfarers had had the prudence -to arm themselves, Jane and Peripatetica swept languidly up the steps, -ordering that their luggage be placed in their rooms and tea served -immediately upon the terrace. - -But there were no rooms. No rooms of any kind, single or double! - -The note was produced. There it was, down in black and white! - -The young Signor Antonio drew a similar weapon—more black and white -promises! - -The Padrone raised eyes and hands in a gesture almost consoling in its -histrionic effectiveness. - -Could he _make_ guests depart at the time they said they would depart? - -Could he cast them out neck and crop when they found Syracuse so -attractive that they changed their minds about going away and vacating -rooms promised to others? - -He left it to Jane. He left it to Peripatetica. He left it to Signor -Antonio. He left it to Signor Antonio’s beautiful bride, his “bellissima -sposa.” _Could_ he? He asked that!... - -The two seekers were sternly sarcastic. Signor Antonio imitated the -histrionic attitude. The Bellissima Sposa simply smiled fatuously. -Beloved Antonio now held her destinies in his strong hand. Was it a -royal suite? Well and good. Was it a corner of a stone wall under an -umbrella? It was still well and good, for would she not still be with -her Antonio? - -The honeyed submissiveness of this was too much for even the wicked -obduracy of the Padrone. - -There _was_ a billiard room—for the night. To-morrow some one must keep -his promise and go. They could choose among themselves. - -The bride was led away to the billiard room, still gazing upon her -Antonio with intoxicated content, and two cross females, shaking the -dust of the Villa Politi’s glowing garden and vine-wreathed terraces -from their feet, jolted back again indignantly along the bare, windy -heights fretted by the clamour of a sirocco-tortured sea. Past the -gritty precincts of the ugly building villas, to the gaunt precincts of -an hotel within the shrunken town. There to climb early into beds of the -sloping pitch and rugged surface of a couple of tiled roofs; to lay -their heads upon pillows undoubtedly stuffed with the obdurate skulls of -all Syracuse’s myriad dead, and to listen in the wakefulness thereby -induced to the dull sickening thuds about the floor which they knew, for -good and sufficient reasons, to be the nocturnal hopping of the mighty -Syracusan flea.... - -“Fancy anyone being tempted to remain over _here_!” sneered -Peripatetica. - -This was in the morning. They had compared the bleatings of the goats; -the raucous early cries of the population; the effects of sirocco; the -devices by which, clinging with teeth and nails, they had succeeded in -maintaining their perch on the tile roofs; had boasted of their shikarry -among the hopping, devouring monsters of the dark. - -“Talk of history!” mourned Jane. “Who could be the adequate Herodotus of -last night?” - -They were on their way to the Temple of Minerva. The route led by a wide -sea-street, half of whose length gave upon that famous Inner Harbour so -often filled with hostile fleets, so often barred by great chains, so -often echoing with clanging battles, with the bubbling shrieks of the -drowning. Now the sparkling waters rolled untinged with blood, the clean -salt air swept unhindered across their path, for half of the huge -sea-wall had been recently demolished to let in wind and sun, though -part still towered grimly, darkening the way, shutting out the light -from the opposite dwellings. - -The path turned at right angles and wound through narrow foot-pathless -cracks, between houses; cracks that served the older Syracuse in lieu of -streets, where swarmed in the dingy narrownesses the everlasting goat, -the ever pervasive child. Very different children these from those -cherub heads, with busy little legs growing out of them, who formed the -rising population of Taormina. Taormina, who has solved that whole -question of educating children; a question which still so puzzles the -unintelligent rest of mankind. For weeks they had walked the ancient -ways of that high-perched town, picking careful steps amid its infant -hordes, and never once had they heard a cry, or seen a discontented -child. - -“Occupation was the secret of all that cherubic goodness, I think,” said -Peripatetica reflectively. “Don’t you remember that every single one of -them had a job?” - -“Of course, I remember,” said Jane crossly. “You needn’t remind _me_. It -was only twenty-four hours ago we were there—though it seems ages since -we fell out of the tender protecting care of dear ‘Questo-qui.’ You can -put it all in the book if you feel you must talk about it.” - -“Jane, your usually charming temper has been spoiled by a night on a -roof. It has made a cat of you,” persisted Peripatetica as she calmly -circled round a goat. When the fount of her eloquence was unsealed it -was not to be choked by the mere casting of a stony snub into it. - -“I devoted some of the dark hours on my tiles to profound philosophic -reflection upon the Taorminian methods with children,” she continued. “I -have often thought the ennui suffered by children and pet animals was -the cause of much of their restless fretfulness. Even the most -undeveloped nature feels the difference between a real occupation and an -imitation one; feels the importance of being an economic factor. Now -those Taormina children from the age of two years are made to feel they -are really important and necessary members of the family. They knit as -soon as they can walk; they sew, they do drawn-work, at five. They sit -in the streets at little tables and help cobble shoes or mend -teakettles. They shop for busy parents; they fetch and carry. They pull -out of the gardens and orchards weeds as tall as themselves, and -everywhere are calm and self-respecting, and receive from their parents -and their grown-up neighbours that serious courtesy and consideration -due to useful and well-behaved citizens. One does not slap or jerk or -scold valuable and important members of the community, and no youthful -Taorminian would permit such an unjustifiable liberty from a parent.” - -Borne on this flood of words they suddenly flowed out into a big -irregular square where stood one of the most curious buildings in the -world; the great temple of Pallas of the Syracusans. The enormous fluted -Doric columns were sunk into the walls of a Cathedral, for Zosimus, -bishop of Syracuse in the Seventh Century, had seized the columned frame -and had plastered his church upon it—but so great was the diameter of -the pillars that their sides and capitals protruded through the walls -inside and out like the prodigious stone ribs of some huge skeleton. The -Saracens had come later, and, after slaughtering the priests and women -who clung shrieking to the altars, had added battlements to the roof, -and the Eighteenth Century, being unable, of course, to keep its finger -out of even the most reverend pie, had gummed upon the portal a flaring -baroque façade of yellow stone. But through all disfigurements and -defacements the temple still showed its soaring majesty, and -Peripatetica, at sight of it, cried: - -“One dead in the fields!”... - -For suddenly was revealed to the two the meaning of what they had been -journeying to see—it was the dead body of a great civilization. - -Here, nearly three thousand years since, had come Archias, the rich -Heraclid of Corinth. He had gathered sullenly into little ships his -wealth, his family, and his servants, and had fled far down the horizon, -an execrated fugitive because of the slaying of beautiful Actæon. And, -finding on the coast of the distant God’s-land a reproduction of the -bays and straits of the Corinth which had cast him out, he founded there -a city. A city that was to have a life like the life of some gifted, -powerful man, growing from timid infancy to a lusty youth full of dreams -and passions and vague towering ambitions; struggling with and -conquering his fellows; grasping at power and glory, heaping up riches -unbelievable, decking himself in purple and gold, living long and -gloriously and tumultuously; and who was to know rise and fall, defeats -and triumphs, and finally was to die on the battlefield, and be left -there by the victor to rot. So that all the flesh would drop from the -long frame, the muscles dry and fall apart, the eyes be sightless, and -the brain dark; and the little busy insects of the earth would carry -away the fragments bit by bit, and on the field where he lay would be -found at last only the hollow skull once so full of proud purpose; only -the slack white bones of the arm that had wielded the strong sword, the -vast arch of the gaunt ribs that once had sheltered the brave heart of -Syracuse. And among these dry bones little curious creatures would come -to peep and peer and build their homes; spiders spinning webs over the -empty eye sockets, mice weaving their nests among the wide-flung -knuckles.... - -One little spider, about ten minutes old, lay in wait for these two -tourist flies at the side door of the Cathedral with an offer to guide -them, and though they sternly endeavoured to brush the insect aside, -doubting his infantile capacity to direct their older intelligences, the -Spider was not of the to-be-brushed-aside variety and knew better than -they what they really needed. While they wandered through the vulgar -uglinesses of Zosimus’ shrine, trying to recall Cicero’s glowing picture -of the temple in its glory, he never took his claws off of them. While -they talked of the great doors inlaid with gold and ivory, of the brazen -spears, of the cella walls frescoed with the portraits and the battles -of the Sikel Kings, of the pedestals between each column bearing images -of the gods in ivory, silver, and bronze, the Spider was patient and -merely murmured “Greco” or “molto antico” by way of encouraging chorus. -He let them babble unchecked of the tall image of armed Pallas standing -behind the altar, with plumed helmet and robe of Tyrian purple, grasping -her great spear in her right hand and resting the left hand upon the -golden shield that bore a sculptured Medusa head. Upon her pedestal was -carved the cock, the dragon, and the serpent, and the altar before her -was heaped with fresh olive boughs about the smouldering spices sending -up wavering clouds of scented smoke that coiled among the ceiling’s -gilded plates. Without, upon the roof, stood another great shield of -gilded bronze, a beacon for sailors who, setting out upon long voyages, -carried a cup of burning ashes from her altar to sprinkle on the waves -as the glittering landmark faded down the sky. - -But when these reminiscences of the “molto antico” finally exhausted -themselves, the Spider rose to his occasion. He was vague about Minerva, -but Santa Lucia was his trump card. He was eminently capable of guiding -any number of travellers to the chapel of that big swarthy idol adorned -with wire-and-cotton wreaths, and hung about with votive silver hands -and hearts, arms and legs, in grateful testimony of the limbs and organs -cured by her mercy and power. He could pour out in burning Sicilian, -illustrated by superb spidery gestures, a thrilling description of the -yearly _villegiatura_ of Syracuse’s patron saint. How twice in a -twelvemonth she feels the need of change of air, and all the town -attends her visit of a few days to the church beyond the bridge, she -being escorted by priests and censors, and blaring bands, and wearing -her finest jewels and toilet, as befits a lady on ceremonial travels. It -is a festa for all Syracuse, Spider explains, with much good eating and -“molto buono vino.” - -Jane, always a molten mass of useful information, interjects sotto voce -into the flood of his narrative that precisely the same ceremony was -used for the image of Diana when she was the patron goddess of the -Syracusans, and the very same molto buono vino so overcame the populace -at one of Diana’s festas that Marcellus, the Roman, after a siege of -three years, captured the long and fiercely defended city that very -night. - -The Spider took them later to see the handful of fragments alone -remaining of Diana’s fane—broken columns sunk in a fosse between two -houses—though once a temple as splendid as Minerva’s. A temple served by -many priestesses, and surrounded by a great grove sloping down to the -fountain of Arethusa. Among these trees the Oceanides herded the -sacrificial deer, and troops of just such silken-coated, wavy-horned -goats as feed to-day upon the Catanian plain. And to this grove came -young girls, offering up, to please the great Huntress, their abandoned -childish toys of baked clay. For oddly enough the wild, arrowy goddess -who loved to shed the blood of beasts, adored children, and was a -special patron of theirs, and would even listen favourably to the -petitions of barren wives. - -There seemed some strange vagueness, some shadowy inexplicableness in -the worship of Diana. All the other gods typified some force of nature, -some resultant struggle and passion of man caught in nature’s web, but -of the moon they knew only that it influenced tides and the growing of -plants. What is one to make then of this fierce ivory-skinned Maid who -sweeps, crescent-crowned, through the moonlit glades of the deep -primitive forests, with bayings of lean questing hounds and echoing call -of silver horns, hard on the track of crashing boar, of leaping deer? -There is something as glimmeringly elusive, as magically haunting in the -personality and the worship of Diana as in the moon itself. - -They offered the web of this conundrum to the Spider, but he wisely -refused to allow himself to be entangled in it. This, however, is -anticipating the real course of events. - -Already, before leaving the Cathedral, another conundrum had been asked -and not answered. - -High on opposite sides of the walls of the nave Jane and Peripatetica -had observed two ornate glass and gilt coffins. The one on the left -contained the half-mummy, half-skeleton of a man. A young, beardless -face it was, the still fair skin drawn tight over the features; the -still blond hair clustering about it in curls of dusty gold. The -fleshless visage was handsome, and though strange and ghostly, not -repulsive. The skeleton body was clothed in velvet and gold, and the -bony, gloved fingers clasped a splendid silver-scabbarded sword; an -empty dagger case was hanging from an embroidered baldrick across the -dead man’s breast. He lay on his side in an uneasy attitude, looking -through the transparent pane of his last home toward the opposite -crystal sarcophagus. This opposite coffin contained a half-mummied, -half-skeleton woman—a woman also young and fair-haired; artfully -coiffed, her tresses wrapped with pearls. Neither was _her_ face -repulsive; some strange process had preserved a dry whiteness in the -skin stretched smooth and unwrinkled upon the bones and integuments, -though all the flesh was gone. She too was clothed in gold and silk in a -fashion centuries old. Through the lace of the sleeves showed the white -polished bones of what must once have been warm rounded arms. She too -was gloved; she too crouched upon her side uneasily, but she did not -face her companion. Her head was thrown back as if in pain; and plunged -through the pointed silk corselet—just where there must once have beat a -young heart—was the gold-handled dagger from the empty dagger case hung -to the embroidered baldrick. - -Who were they? - -What tragedy was this? why did they lie here in their crystal -sepulchres—was it the record of some strange crime, preserved with -meticulous care for all the world to see? - -The Spider could not tell. They had always been there. He did not know -their names or their story. He could not refer to anyone who did. -Baedeker was equally indifferent and uncommunicative; he made no mention -of them. Hare was silent. Sladen ignored them. No questioning of -guide-books or guides ever unravelled that mystery. - - * * * * * - -From the temple of Diana the Spider led Jane and Peripatetica through -more narrow, crooked streets thronged with rough, fierce Syracusan -children, to see the Sixteenth Century palace of the Montaltos, now -fallen on grimy days. The windows with their ogives and delicate twisted -columns were crumbling, and the noble court—through which silken guests -and mailed retainers had passed to mount the great stairs and throng the -long balconies—was now full of squalid, squalling populace, and flocks -of evil-savoured brown goats being milked for the evening meal. - -For some unexplained reason the mere presence of the Spider was an -offence to the lowering boys who laired in this court. His grown-up air -of being capably in charge of two female forestieri stank in their -resentful nostrils, but Spider was an insect of his hands, landing those -hands resoundingly upon the cheeks of his buffeters and hustlers until -an enraged mother took the part of one of her discomfited offspring, and -under her fierce cuffings the Spider melted into outraged tears. - -Peripatetica had already discovered that angry English had a -demoralizing effect upon the natives. Its crisp consonants seemed as -daunting as blows to the vowelled Sicilian; armed with which, and a -parasol, the Spider was rescued and borne half way to the fountain of -Arethusa before he could control his sniffles and his protesting -fingers, upon which he offered passionate illustration that even -Hercules could not overcome the odds of ten to one, and that tears under -the circumstances left no smirch upon nascent manhood. - -Jane, with her usual large grasp of financial questions, applied a lire -to the wounded heart with the happiest results, and it was a once more -united and cheerful trio which leaned over Arethusa’s inadequate little -fount with its green scum and its frowzy papyrus plants. Poor Nymph! She -of the rainbow, and the “couch of snows”—she whose “footsteps were paved -with green.” Flying from the gross wooing of Alpheus she comes all the -way from Elis under the sea to take refuge with moon-crowned -Artemis—Artemis “the protectress”—and for safety is turned into a -sparkling pool which feeds all Syracuse with its sweet waters. Now -Artemis is dead. Her cool groves have given way to acres of arid stone -convents; earthquakes have cracked Arethusa’s basin, letting the sea in -and the sweet water out; modern bad taste has walled her vulgarly about, -and the poor old nymph can only gurgle reiterantly, “I was once a -beauty; long ago, long ago!” with not the smallest hope that any tourist -will believe it. - - * * * * * - -The Spider has retired to his web. _Pranzo_ has been discussed, and Jane -and Peripatetica, refreshed, are taking another nibble at the vast -mouthful of Syracuse’s past. - -It was a thrilling _pranzo_. Not because of the food, nor of its -partakers. The food was the same old stereotyped menu. Gnocchi with -cheese. Vegetables, divorced from the meats—they cannot apparently -occupy the same course in any part of Italy. More cheese—a _jardinière_ -of pomegranates, oranges, dates, and almonds. Wine under a new name, but -with the same delicate perfumed savour of all the other wines they have -drunk. - -No more did the guests offer any startling variety. The same tall -condescending English woman; elderly, manacled with bracelets, clanking -with chains; domineering a plain, red cheek-boned, flat-chested daughter -obviously needing a lot of marrying off on Mamma’s part; dominating also -a nervous, impetuous husband—the travelling Englishman being much given -to nervous impetuosity. A few fat, greasy Italians with napkin corners -planted deeply into their collars, and scintillating the gross joys of -gluttony. Two dark-faced melancholy-eyed _foreigners_, not easily placed -as to nationality. All types of feminine Americans. If it were possible -to see only their eyes they would be recognizable as Americans from -their glance of bold, alert self-confidence and cheerfulness, very -noticeable by contrast with the European eye. Also if one could see only -that inevitable ready-made silk bodice the wearers would be recognizable -as fellow countrywomen. The man who manufactures that type of bodice at -home must be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. - -No; the thrill of the _pranzo_ was due to invisible causes. - -Behind the door from which the hopelessly estranged meat and vegetables -emerged there arose a clash and murmur as of some domestic storm, and -the waiters passed the spinach course with an air so tense and distrait -that the crunching horde felt their forks strain with curiosity in their -hands. Even the fat Italians paused in their gorging to stare. Even the -foreigners’ melancholy dark eyes grew interested. - -After the spinach course ensued a long interval; the waiters lingering -about with empty platters and furtive pretences of occupation, plainly -not daring to enter that door, behind which ever waxed the loud rumour -of domestic war. - -The interval increased in length. The clamour rose and rose, and someone -went in search of the Padrone. - -Ours was a splendid Padrone; clothed upon with a _redingote_ and an -historic and romantic dignity. For had not Guy de Maupassant mentioned -him with respectful affection in “La Vie Errante”? The memory of which -artistic appreciation still surrounded him with an aura. The Padrone -entered that fateful door with calm, stern purpose, while the guests -crumbled their bread in patient hope. - -The domestic storm drew breath for one terrible moment, then suddenly -rose to the fury of a cyclone, and the Padrone was shot convulsively -forth into our midst, the romantic aura hanging in tragic tatters about -him. Holding to the wall he swallowed hard several times, seeking -composure, then passed, with knees wabbling nervously beneath the -stately redingote, to the office, where could be witnessed his -passionately protesting gestures and whispers poured into the -sympathetic bosom of the concierge. - -The cyclone had expended itself; the courses resumed their course, but -what had taken place behind that closed door was never known. It -remained another Syracusan mystery. - - * * * * * - -The Museo at Syracuse, though small, is the best in Europe, for here, as -on an open page, is written the whole history of the island of -Sicily—not a gap or a break in the story of more than three thousand -years; of perhaps five thousand years, for it antedates all the certain -dates of history. Here are cases full of the stone and obsidian tools -and weapons of the autochthonous Sikels; their crude pottery, their -rough burial urns, their bone ornaments, and feathery wisps of their -woven stuffs. These are all curiously like the relics of the -Mound-builders of America, now in the Smithsonian Institution. -Apparently the Stone Age was as deadeningly similar everywhere as is our -own Age of Steel. - -Follows the rude metal working of the Siculians, who, having some -knowledge of the use of iron, can build boats, and come across the -narrow strait at Messina and drive out the Sikels. So long ago as that -the old process of “assimilation” begins. The Siculians begin to work in -colour, to ornament their pottery, to dye their stuffs, to mark their -silver and iron with rough chisel patterns—patterns and colours again -astonishingly like those of our own Pueblo Indians. - -There are fragments of Phœnician work here and there—the traders from -Tyre and Sidon are beginning to cruise along the coast and barter their -superior wares with the inhabitants. - -All at once the arts make a great spring upward. The Greeks have -appeared. Rude, archaic, Dorian, these arts at first, but strong, and -showing a new spirit. The potteries have a glaze, the patterns grow more -intricate, the reliefs show a plastic striving for grace and life, the -ornaments are of gold as well as silver and bronze, and steel has -appeared. Follows a splendid flowering; an apogee of beauty is reached. -Vases of exquisite contours covered with spirited paintings, pictures of -life and death, of war and love. Coins that are unrivaled in numismatic -beauty; struck frequently with the quadriga to celebrate the winning of -the chariot race at the Olympic games; a triumph valued as greatly by -the Greeks of Sicily as is the winning of the Derby by English horsemen. -Tools, jewels, arms, all adorned with infinite taste and skill. Statues -of such subtle grace and loveliness as this famous “Nymph,” the -long-buried marble now grown to tints of blond pearl. Figurines of baked -clay, reproducing the costumes, the ornaments, the physiology of the -passing generations—faces arch, lovely, full of gay humour. Splendid -sarcophagi, and burial urns still holding ashes and calcined bones, and -tiny clay reproductions of the death masks of the departed, full of -tender human individuality, or else heads of the gods, such as that -enchanting tinted and crowned Artemis, that still lies in one of the -great sarcophagi amid a handful of burned bones. - -Punic and Roman remains begin to show themselves, recording that -tremendous struggle between Europe and Africa for dominion in the -midland sea, under the impact of which the Greek civilization is to be -crushed. Byzantine ornament appears. Africa makes another struggle and -is for a while triumphant, leaving record of the Moorish domination in -damascened arms, in deep-tinted tiles. - -The Goths and Normans fuse with the Saracen arts at first, but soon -dominate the Eastern influence and shake it off, developing an art -inferior only to the Greek. The Spanish follow, baroque, sumptuous, -pseudo-classical. All the story of all the conquerors is here. - -“Oh!” sighs Peripatetica. “What an illustrated history; I could go on -turning its pages for days.” - -“Well, you’ll turn them alone!” snapped Jane, clutching frantically at -her side, and adding in a dreadful whisper: “There are _fleas_ hopping -all over these historical pages. Come away this instant.” - -But they linger a moment on the way out to look again at the famous -headless Venus Landolina. - -“There is only one real Venus,” commented Peripatetica contemptuously. -“The Melian. All the rest are only plump ladies about to step into their -baths. I detest these fat women with insufficient clothing who sprawl -all over Europe calling themselves the goddesses of love. Goddesses -indeed! They look more like soft white chestnut worms. That great -dominating, irresistible lady of the Louvre is a deity, if you like—Our -Lady of Beauty—besides, this little person’s calf is flat on the inner -side.” - -“Iss it not righd dat her calve should be vlat on de inside?” queried an -elderly Swiss, also looking, and showing all her handsome porcelain -teeth in a smile of anxious uncertainty. “I dink dat must be righd, -because Baedeker marks her wid a ztar.” - -“Don’t allow your opinions to be unsettled by this lady’s,” consoled -Jane sweetly. “She isn’t really an authority. It would be wiser perhaps -and more comfortable to be guided by Baedeker.” - -“Bud she has no head,” grieved the Swiss. “How can Baedeker mark her wid -a ztar w’en she has no head?” - -How indeed? But then, there is such a lot of body!... - -It is some days later. They have “done” the river Amapus; have been -rowed among the towering feathery papyrus plants, the original roots of -which were sent to Heiro I. by Ptolemy, and which still flourish in -Sicily though all the parent plants have vanished out of Egypt. - -They have looked down into the clear depths of La Pisma’s spring. Jane -says it is less beautiful than the Silver Spring in Florida out which -the Ocklawaha river rises, but that fountain of a tropical -forest—transparent as air, and held in a great argent bowl—has no -history, while La Pisma was the playmate of fair Persephone, and on -seeing her ravished away by fiery Pluto melted quite away into a flood -of bright tears. And it was she who, having caught up Persephone’s -dropped veil, floated it to the feet of Demeter, and told her where to -look for the lost daughter. La Pisma and Anapus her lover were, too, the -real guardians of Syracuse, for as one after another of the armies of -invading enemies camped on their oozy plain they sapped the invaders’ -strength, and blighted their courage with fevers from the miasmatic -breaths exhaled upon the foes as they slept. - -Jane and Peripatetica have found another mystery. Syracuse, it appears, -is full of mysteries. This last is known as the Castle of Euryalus, and -they must take horse and drive to it, six miles from the hotel, though -still within the walls of the original city, once twenty-two miles -about; shrunk in these later days to less than three. This six miles of -pilgrimage gives ample time to search the guide-books for information as -to this thing they have come out for to see. But the guide-books palter, -and shuffle and evade, as they are prone to do about anything really -interesting. Euryalus, solid enough to their eyes and to their sense of -touch, seems as illusive in history as the cloudy towers of the Fata -Morgana—now you see it, and now you don’t. It seems to come from -nowhere. No one can tell when or by whom it was built, but it always -turns up in the history of Syracuse in moments of stress—much like those -Christian patron-saints who used suddenly to descend in shining armour -to turn the tide of battle. One hears of Dionysius strengthening it when -news comes that the dread Himilcon is on his way from Carthage with two -hundred triremes accompanied by rafts, galleys, and transports -innumerable. Dionysius makes Euryalus the key of a surprise he prepares -for the Carthagenians, for when the latter come sailing into the -harbour—“A forest of black masts and dark sails, with transports filled -with elephants trumpeting at the smell of land,” and from the West -“comes trampling across the plain by the Helorian road and the banks of -the Anapus, the Punic army 300,000 strong, with 3,000 horse led by -Himilcon in person,”—there stands waiting for them one of the most -amazing works ever wrought by the will of a single man. - -Dionysius in twenty days has built a wall three miles long barring -Himilcon’s ingress at the only weak point. Seventy thousand of the -inhabitants of Syracuse had worked at this building. Forty thousand -slaves had been in the Latomiæ cutting the blocks of easily hewn -sandstone, which six thousand oxen carried to the wall, while other -armies of men had been upon the slopes of Ætna ravaging the oak woods -for huge beams. When Himilcon comes the wall is complete. - -Then there are more appearings and disappearings through the years, and -suddenly Euryalus fills the foreground again. Archimedes is helping -Hieronymus to fortify it against Marcellus—is designing veiled sally -ports, and oblique apertures from which his “scorpions” and other -curious war engines may hurl stones, is placing there the burning -glasses with which he will set the Roman galleys on fire by means of the -sun’s heat. But though the Carthagenians were terrible the Roman is more -terrible still, and in spite of Archimedes they get into Syracuse after -a three years’ siege. While the furies of final capture are raging -Archimedes sits calmly drawing figures upon the sand. A Roman soldier -rushing by carelessly smears them with his foot. Archimedes is angry, -and “uses language.” The soldier, angry in his turn—no doubt “language” -in Greek sounded especially insulting—shortens his sword and stabs “the -greatest man then living in the world.” - -Marcellus sheds tears when he hears it, and buries the father of -mathematics with splendid honours, marking the tombstone—as Archimedes -had wished—with no name, with only a sphere and a cylinder. He spared -Syracuse too; left her temples and splendours intact, and forbid the -usual plundering and massacres. Marcellus was, it seems, in every way a -very decent person, and Peripatetica grieved that those frigid Romans -wouldn’t let him have a triumph when he went home, and Jane breathed a -hope that he used more language to that murderous soldier.... - -Later comes Cicero to Syracuse, hunting evidence against Verres, who -had, as pro-consul, robbed the city of all the treasures Marcellus had -spared, and the great lawyer takes time from his examination of -witnesses to look out Archimedes’ resting place. He finds it overgrown -with thistles and brambles, but recognizes it by the sphere and -cylinder, and sets it once more in order. - - “So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of time, - On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime, - Where at his feet in honoured dust disclosed - The immortal Sage of Syracuse reposed.” - -“You cribbed that from one of the guide-books,” jeered Jane. - -“Of course I did,” admitted Peripatetica with calm unblushingness. “Do -you imagine I go around with samples of formal Eighteenth Century -Pope-ry concealed about my person?” - - * * * * * - -They are on their way to the theatre, passing by the ancient site of the -Forum, which site is now a mere dusty, down-at-heels field where goats -browse and donkeys graze, and where squads of awkward recruits are being -trained to take cover behind a couple of grass blades, to fire their -empty rifles with some pretence at unanimity. - -The road winds between walled orange and lemon groves, in which -contadini are drying and packing miles of pungent golden peel for -transportation to French and English confectioners. The air is redolent -with it. - -Themistocles—Jane doubts his sponsors in baptism having had any hand in -this, but the grubby card he presented with so pleasant a glance, so -fine a gesture at the time of striking a bargain for the day, bore it -printed as plain as plain—Themistocles, then, dismounts before a small -drinking shop lying at the foot of an elevation. With one broad sweep of -his hand he signifies that he is making them free of history, and yields -them to the care of a nobleman in gold and blue; a nobleman possessing a -pleasing manner and one of those plangent, golden-strung voices which -the lucky possessors always so enjoy using. - -The two demand the Latomia Paradiso; the name having seduced their -sentimental imaginations. The peer intimates that the name is -misleading, but with gentle firmness they drop down the path which -descends into the quarries from which Dionysius hurriedly snatched the -material for his wall; material (almost as easy to cut as cheese, but -hardening in the air) which has been dug, scooped, and riven away as -fantastically as if sculptured by the capricious flow of water, leaving -caverns, towers, massy columns, arches, a thousand freaked shapes. Now -all this is draped with swaying curtains of ivy, with climbing roses -heavy with unblown buds, with trailing geraniums hanging from crannies, -with wild flowers innumerable. Lemon and fig trees grow upon the -quarries’ floor, mosses and ferns carpet the shady places, black-green -caroba trees huddle in neglected corners. - -The nobleman, however, is impatient to show other wonders. He leads the -way into caverns through whose openings shafts of sunlight steal, -turning the dusk within to a blond gloom, caverns where rope-makers walk -to and fro twisting long strands, twirling wheels, with a cheerful -chatter that booms hollowly back to them from the vaulted darkness over -their heads; where the birds who flit in and out hear their twitterings -reflected enormously, with a curious effect; where even the sound of -dripping moisture is magnified into a large solemnity. - -He has saved the best for the last. Here an arch soars a hundred feet, -giving entrance to a lofty narrow cave. Where the sides of the arch meet -is a small channel of chiselled smoothness, ending in an orifice through -which a glimpse of the sky shows like a tiny blue gem. It is the Ear of -Dionysius. In this cave, so the story runs, the Tyrant confined -suspected conspirators, for this is a natural whispering gallery, and -the lowest of confidential talk within it would mount the walls, each -lightest word would run along that smooth channel, as through the tube -of an ear, and reach the listener at the orifice. For the uneasy -Dictator knows that his turbulent Greek subjects, who cannot rule -themselves, are equally unable to bear placidly the rule of another, and -it would have been interesting, and at times exciting, to have been -permitted to watch that stern, bent face as the rebellious protests -climbed in whispers to the greedy ear a hundred feet above. - -A wonderful echo lives in this cave. Now it is plain why the guide has -such large and vibrant tones—he was chosen because of that natural gift. - -“Addio!” he cries gaily. “_Addio_,” calls the darkness, a little sadly -and wistfully. The guide sings a stave, and all the dusk is full of -melodious chorus. He intones a sonorous verse, and golden words roll -down to them through the gloom. - -“Speak! speak!” the nobleman urges, and Jane and Peripatetica meekly -breathe a few banalities in level American tones. Not a sound returns; -their syllables are swallowed by the silence. - -“Staccato! staccato!” remonstrates the guide, and when they comply, -light laughing voices vouchsafe answers. - -“I think,” says Peripatetica reflectively, as they leave the Latomia, -“that one has to address life like that if one is to get a clear -reply—to address it crisply, definitely, with quick inflections. Level, -flat indefiniteness will awake no echoes.” - -“‘How true’! as the ladies write on the margins of circulating library -books,” comments Jane with unveiled sarcasm. - -The guide has lots more up his gold-braided sleeve. He opens a gate and -displays to them with a flourish the largest altar in the world. Six -hundred feet one way, sixty feet the other; cut partly from solid rock, -made in part of masonry. Hiero II. thought he knew a trick of governing -worth any amount of listening at doors. Those who are fed and amused are -slack conspirators. So this huge altar to Zeus is built, and here every -year he sacrifices 450 oxen to the ruler of heaven. - -“It must have rather run into money for him,” says Jane thoughtfully, -“but he probably considered it cheaper to sacrifice oxen than be -sacrificed himself.” - -“Yes,” says Peripatetica, who has just been consulting the guide-book. -“It must have been rather like the barbecues the American politicians -used to give to their constituents half a century ago, for only the -choicest bits were burnt before the gods, sprinkled with oil and wine -and sweet-smelling spices, and the populace, I suppose, carried home the -rest. No doubt Hiero found it a paying investment.” - -The theatre, when reached, is found, of course, to have a beautiful -situation. All Greek theatres have. They were a people who liked to open -all the doors of enjoyment at once, and when they filled this enormous -semicircle (24,000 could sit there) cut from the living rock upon the -hillside, they could not only listen to the rolling, organ-like Greek of -the great poets, and have their souls shaken with the “pity and terror” -of tragedy, or laugh at the gay mockery of comedy, but by merely lifting -their eyes they could look out upon the blue Ionian sea, the smiling -flowered land, and in the distance the purple hills dappled with flying -shadows. In their time all the surrounding eminences were crowned with -great temples, and behind them—this was a contrast very Greek—lay the -Street of Tombs. For they had not a shuddering horror of death, -hastening their departed into remote isolation from their own daily -life. They liked to pass to their occupations and amusements among the -beautiful receptacles made for the ashes of those they had loved. - -In this theatre Syracuse saw not only the great dramas, but the great -dramatists and poets. Æschylus, sitting beside Hiero I., saw all his -plays produced here; “The Ætnaiai” and “The Persians” were written for -this stage. Pindar was often here; so were Bacchylides and Simonides, -and a host of lesser playwrights. Indeed, no theatre has ever known such -famous auditors. Theocritus, Pythagoras, Sappho, Empedocles, Archimedes, -Plato, Cicero, have all sat here. - -Plato was long in Syracuse; called by Dionysius to train his son Dion, -he labours with such poor success that Dion is driven from the power -inherited from his father, by the citizens outraged at the grossness of -his vices. Before this fall Plato has left him in disgust, Dion -remarking with careless insolence: - -“I fear you will not speak kindly of me in Athens.” - -To which the philosopher, with still more insolent sarcasm, replies: - -“We are little likely to be so in want of a topic in Athens as to speak -of you at all.” - -Yet it would seem as if no good effort was ever wholly lost, for when -Dion, earning his bread in exile as an obscure schoolmaster, is -sneeringly asked what he ever learned from Plato, his dignified answer -is, “He taught me to bear misfortune with resignation.” - - * * * * * - -Themistocles has conducted them, with much cracking of his whip, much -irrelevant conversation, quite to the other side of what once was -Syracuse, and has deposited them before a little low gate that pierces a -high wall. Inside this gate is a tiny garden cultivated by two monks who -do the work by means of short-handled double-ended hoes; a -laborious-looking Sicilian implement. The garden is full of pansies -growing between low hedges of sweet-smelling thyme and rosemary. At the -same moment there debarks a carriage load of touring Germans. Typical -touring Germans; solid, rosy, set four-square to the winds; all clinging -to Baedekers encased in covers of red and yellow cross stitch of Berlin -wool, all breathing a fixed intention of seeing everything worth seeing -in the thorough-going German fashion. The monks openly squabble as to -the division of the parties who have come to see the church and the -catacombs, and eventually the big, shaggy, red-haired one, who might be -some ancient savage Gaul come to life, sullenly carries off the Teutons. -It is somewhat of a shock to Jane and Peripatetica when their slim, -supple, handsome Sicilian explains to them that this contest has its -reason not in their personal charm, but is owing to a reluctance to -guide the hated Tedeschi. - -There is something inexplicable in this universal unpopularity of the -Teuton in Italy. Germany has been dotingly sentimental about Italy for -generations. - - “Kennst du das Land” - -has hovered immanent on every lip from beyond the Rhine ever since the -days of Goethe. They passionately study her language, her literature, -her monuments, and her history. They make pilgrimages to worship at all -her shrines, pouring in reverent Pan-Germanic hordes across the Alps to -do it, and despite their extreme and skilful frugality they must -necessarily leave in the Peninsula hundreds of thousands of their -hard-earned, laboriously hoarded marks, which they have not grudged to -spend in the service of beauty. Yet Italy seems possessed of a sullen -repugnance to the entire race. - -“Tedeschi!” hisses the monk. “Tutto ‘_Ja! Ja! Wunderschön!_’” with a -deliriously funny imitation of their accent and gestures, as he steers -swiftly around a corner to prevent the two parties fusing into one. - -The church of San Giovanni is, of course, founded upon a Greek -temple—most Sicilian churches are, and—of all places!—this one stands -upon a ruin of a temple of Bacchus—the fragments of which poke up all -through the tiny garden. The church, equally, of course, has been -Eighteenth Centuried, but happily not wholly; remaining a great wheel -window, and beautiful bits here and there of Twelfth Century Gothic in -the outer walls, though the interior is in the usual dusty and neglected -gaunt desuetude. The whole place is in decay, even the attendant -monastery is crumbling, the number of monks shrunk to a mere handful, -despite the fact that this is a spot of special sanctity, for when they -descend into the massive chapel of the crypt there is pointed out to -them the little altar before which Saint Paul preached when he was in -Syracuse. - -“Of course, St. Paul was here,” said Jane. “Everybody who was anybody -came to Syracuse sooner or later—including ourselves.” - -The guide is firm as to the altar having stood in this very chapel when -that remarkable Hebrew poured out to the Syracusans his strange new -message of democracy, but this is clearly the usual fine monkish -superiority to cramping probabilities, for such rib-vaultings as these -were as yet undreamed of by the architects of Paul’s day. - -The altar is Greek, and no doubt was standing in the fane of Bacchus -when the Jew spoke by it. The Greeks were interested and tolerant about -new religions, and the life and death which Paul described would hardly -have seemed strange to them, spoken in that place. That birth and death, -the blood turned to wine, the sacred flesh eaten in hope of -regeneration, having so many and such curious resemblances to the -legends, and to the worship of the Vine God celebrated on that very -spot. “At Thebes alone,” had said Sophocles, speaking of the birth of -Bacchus, “mortal women bear immortal gods.” The violent death, the -descent into hell, the resurrection, were all familiar to them, and what -a natural echo would be found in their hearts to the saying, “I am the -true Vine.”... - -The monk only smiles bitterly when it is demanded of him to explain why -a spot of so reverent an association should be abandoned to dust and -decay, and to the interest of curious tourists, when the mere apocryphal -vision of an hysterical peasant girl should draw hordes of -miracle-seeking pilgrims to Lourdes. - -Perhaps there was something typical in that anguished Christ painted -upon the great flat wooden crucifix that hung over the altar in the -crypt; a Christ fading slowly into a mere grey shadow; the dim, hardly -visible ghost of a once living agony.... - -The monk goes before, the flickering candle which he shades with his -fingers throwing a fan of yellow rays around his tonsured head. These -are the Catacombs of Syracuse. - - “On every hand the roads begin.” - -Roads underground, these, leading away endlessly into darkness. At long -intervals they widen into lofty domed chapels rudely hewn, as is all -this place, directly from the rock. Here and there a narrow shaft is cut -upward through the earth, letting in faint gleams of sunshine through a -fringe of grass and ferns, showing sometimes an oxalis drooping its pale -little golden face to peer over the shaft’s edge into the gloom below. -And in all these roads—miles and miles of roads, extending as far as -Catania it is said; roads under roads three tiers deep—and in all these -roads and chapels are only open graves. Graves in the floor beneath -one’s feet; graves in every inch of the walls; graves over graves, -graves behind graves. Great family graves cut ten feet back into the -rock, containing narrow niches for half a dozen bodies—graves where four -generations have slept side by side. Graves that are mere shallow -scoopings hardly more than three spans in length, where newborn babies -must have slept alone. Tombs innumerable beyond reckoning, all hewn from -the solid rock, and each and all vacant. An incredibly vast city of the -dead from which all the dead inhabitants have departed. - -This is the crowning mystery of mysterious Syracuse. Who were this vast -army of the buried? And where have their dead bodies gone?... -Christians, everyone says. - -“But why,” clamours Peripatetica, “should Christians have had these -peculiar mole-like habits?” - -The monk merely shrugs. - -“Oh, I know,” she goes on quickly before Jane can get her mouth open. -“Persecution is the explanation always given, but will you tell me how -you can successfully persecute a population of this size? There must be -half a million of graves, at least, in this place, and there would have -to be a good many living to bury the dead, and Syracuse in its best days -hadn’t a million inhabitants. Now, you can’t successfully martyrize -nine-tenths of the population, even if it is as meek and sheep-like as -the early Christians pretended to be.” - -“They didn’t all die at once,” suggests Jane helpfully. “This took -years.” - -“I should think it did! Years? It took generations, or else the -Christians died like flies, and proved that piety was dreadfully -undermining to the health. No wonder the pagans wouldn’t accept anything -so fatal. But populations as large as this one must have been to furnish -so many dead, don’t go on burrowing underground for generations. They -come out and impose their beliefs upon the rest. And, besides, how can -the stories of their worshipping and burying in secret be true when the -mass of material taken out of these excavations would have to be put -somewhere? And how could the presence or the removal of all that refuse -stone escape attention? The persecuted Christian theory doesn’t explain -the mystery.” - -Even Peripatetica had to pause sometimes for breath, and then Jane got -her innings. - -“Equally mysterious, in my opinion,” she said, “is the rifling of all -these graves. The monk tells me ‘the Saracens did it,’ but the Saracens -were in Syracuse less than two hundred years, and of all these myriad -graves only two or three have been found intact, and these two or three -were graves beneath graves. Every other one for sixty miles, from the -largest to the smallest, has been opened and entirely emptied. The -Saracen population in Syracuse was never very large. It consisted in -greater part of the ruling classes. The bulk of the people were natives -and Christians, who would regard this grave-rifling as the horridest -sacrilege, and if the Saracens undertook alone this enormous task they -would have had, even in two hundred years, time for nothing else. The -opening of the graves is as strange a puzzle as the making of them.” - -“Perhaps some last trump was blown over Syracuse alone,” hazarded -Peripatetica, “and all the dead here rose and left their graves behind -them empty.” - -“Come up into the air and sunlight,” said Jane. “Your mind shows the -need of it.” - -At the little gate sat one of the monastery dependents, whose perquisite -was a permission to sell post-cards, and such coins and bits of pottery -as he could retrieve by grubbing in the rubbish of the empty graves. He -had a few tiny earthenware lamps, marked with a cross and still -smoke-blackened, some so-called tear jugs, and one or two small clay -masks which, from the closed eyelids and smooth sunken contours, must -have been modelled in miniature from real death masks. Among these they -found Arsinoë—or so they named her—whose face was touched with that -strange, secret archness, that sweet smiling scorn so often seen on -faces one day dead. The broad brow with its drooping hair, the full -tender lips so instinct with vivid personality, went with them, and -became to them like the record of some one seen long ago and dimly -remembered, though the lovely benignant original must have been mere -dust of dust for more than a thousand years. - - * * * * * - -A nun in a faded blue gown has been showing them the relics of Santa -Lucia. She has also been telling them how the Saint, when a young man -admired her eyes, snatched them out of her head with her own hands and -handed them to the young man on a plate. - -“What a very rude and unpleasant thing to do!” comments Jane in English. -“But invariably saints seem so lamentably deficient in amiability and -social charm.” - -The nun unlocks the gate of the Cappucini Latomia, and Jane and -Peripatetica descend the long stair cut in the rocks. They are seeking -the place where the remnant of that army Alcibiades so skilfully -introduced into Catania, finally perished. - -They have been reading tales of the Athenians’ long siege of Syracuse, -of their final frightful despairing struggle, so full of anguish, -terror, and fierce courage—“when Greek met Greek”—and they have come to -look at the spot where those seven thousand unhappy prisoners finally -found an end. When they were driven into this quarry they were all that -remained of the tremendous expedition which Athens had drained her best -blood to send. Alcibiades had fled long ago, and was in exile. Nicias -and Demosthenes, who had surrendered them, were now dead; fallen on -their own swords. The harbour of Syracuse was strewn with the charred -wrecks of their fleet. The marshes of Anapus were rotting with their -comrades, the fountain of Cyane choked with them. They themselves were -wounded to a man, shuddering with fevers, starving, demoralised with -long fighting and the horrible final _débâcle_ when they were thrust all -together into this Latomia; not as now a glorious garden with thyme and -mint and rosemary beneath their feet, ivy-hung, full of groves and -orchards, but raw, glaring, shaled with chipped stone, the staring -yellow sides towering smoothly up for a hundred feet to the burning blue -of the Sicilian sky. There in that waterless furnace for seventy days -they died and died. Died of wounds, of thirst, of starvation; died of -the poisonings of those already dead. - -And the populace of Syracuse came day by day, holding lemons to their -noses, to look down at them curiously, until there was not one movement, -not one sound from any one of the seven thousand. - -There is but one human gleam in the whole demoniacal story—a touch -characteristically Greek. Some of the prisoners had beguiled the tedium -of dying by chanting the noble choruses of Euripides’ newest play, which -Syracuse had not yet heard, and these had been at once drawn up from -among their fellows and treated with every kindness. They were entreated -to repeat as much as they could remember of the poet’s lines again and -again, and were finally sent back to Athens with presents and much -honour. - -Not a trace of the tragedy remains. The only record of death now in -those lovely wild, deep-sunken gardens is a banal monument to Mazzini, -and a tomb hollowed out of the wall in one of the caves. A tomb closed -with a marble slab, upon which was cut an epitaph telling, in the -pompous formal language of that day, of the young American naval -lieutenant who died here suddenly on his ship in the first decade of the -Nineteenth Century, and because he was a Protestant, and therefore could -not occupy any Catholic graveyard, was laid to rest alone in this place -of hideous memories. - -Poor lad! Sleeping so far from his own people, and thrust away here by -himself, since he must, of course, not expect to lie near those who had -been baptised with a different motion of the fingers. Seeing which -isolation Peripatetica quoted that amused saying of an ironic old Pagan -world, “Behold, how these Christians love one another!” - - * * * * * - -It is the terrace of the Villa Politi. They have finally forgiven the -villa, and have climbed up here from the Latomia to sit on its lovely -terrace, to drink tea and eat the honey of Hybla, to look down on one -side into the blossom-hung depths of the Athenians’ prison, on the other -out to the mauve and silver of the twilight sea. - -“Peripatetica,” says Jane with great firmness, “I am suffering from an -indigestion of history. I am going away somewhere. All these spirits of -the past block up the place so that I’ve no freedom of movement. It’s an -oppression to feel that every time one puts a foot down it’s in the -track of thousands and thousands of dead feet, and that one’s stirring -up the dust of bones with every step we take. Everything we look at is -covered so thick with layer on layer of passion and pain that I’ve got -an historic heartache. _I_ leave to-morrow.” - -Peripatetica didn’t answer at first. She was looking out over the dusky -sea, from which breathed a soft slow wind. - -The change had come while they were in the Latomia; had come suddenly. -That bleak unkindness in the atmosphere—of which they were always -conscious even in the sun—had all at once disappeared. Even though the -sun was gone a mild sweetness seemed to exhale from the earth, as from a -heart at last content. - -“Jane,” said Peripatetica, turning shining eyes upon her, “Persephone -has returned. Let us go to Enna and meet her!” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - - CHAPTER IV - - THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE - - “God’s three chief gifts, Man’s bread and oil and wine.” - -No doubt the usual things that happen to travellers happened to Jane and -Peripatetica at Enna-Castrogiovanni, and on their way to it. Things -annoying and amusing, tiresome or delightful, but they have no memory of -these things, all lesser matters having been swallowed up in the final -satisfaction of their quest. - -Memory is an artist who works in mosaic, and all the fantastic jumble -and contrast of the experiences of travel she heaps pell-mell together -in her bag. Bits of sights but half seen, but half understood; vague -memories of other things seen before and seemingly but slightly related -to these new impressions, mere faint associations but partly realised, -along with keen emotions and strong pleasures; all tumbled in together -and rubbing corners with petty vexations, small inconveniences, -practical details. Memory gathers them all without discrimination and -carries them along with her, a most unsatisfactory-looking mess at first -sight, out of which it would seem nothing much could be made. But give -her time. While one’s attention is occupied with other matters she is -busy—sorting, arranging, rejecting here, adding there. Recollections -that bulked large at first she often files down to a mere point; much -that appeared but dull rubbish with no colour she finds valuable when -pushed into the background, because its neutral tones serve to bring out -more clearly the outlines of the design. Dark bits are skilfully -employed for the sake of the contrast, and to intensify the warm tones -of richer fragments. The shadowy associations give body and modelling to -impressions otherwise flat and ineffective. All at once the picture is -seen; a complete delineation of an episode, taking form and warmth, and -vivid life; and over the whole she spreads the magic bloom of distance, -which transforms the crude materials, hides the joinings of the mosaic, -and makes of it a treasure of the soul. - -Something of this sort she did for Castrogiovanni. ’Tis but an -impressionist picture. They only see, looking back to it, two great, -divine shadows breathing such passion and pain, such essential, -heart-stirring loveliness that the eye hardly observes the wreathed -border about the picture, a border which serves merely as a frame for -those two significant figures revived from the dreams of primitive man. - -Here is an incident taken from the unimportant frame of the picture.... - -Jane and Peripatetica are in the train. It seems quaint to be finding -one’s way to the “Plutonian Shore” in a little puffing, racketting -Sicilian train. To be properly in the picture they should have been -included in a band of pilgrim shepherds piping in the hills as they -wander upward to the great shrine of Demeter, to give thanks for the -increase of their flocks, to offer her white curds, and goat cheeses, -and the snowy wool of washed fleeces. Pilgrims who are weeks upon the -road; climbing higher and higher each day through the steady sunshine, -and sleeping at night under the large stars, with the little olive-wood -fire, that cooked the evening meal, winking and smouldering beside them -in the dewy darkness. Resting here and there at the Greek farms, where -new pilgrims are waiting to add themselves to the pious band. - -Jane, who consults her Theocritus oftener in Sicily than her -Baedeker—for she says she finds that Theocritus has on the whole a -better literary style—is the one who suggests this idyllic alternative. - -“Just listen to him!” she cries. “This would be travel really worth -while recording. He is telling of just such a journey, and of the pause -at one of the hill farms: - -“‘So I, and Eucritus, and the fair Amyntichus, turned aside into the -house of Phrasidamus, and lay down with delight in beds of sweet -tamarisk and fresh cuttings from the vines, strewed on the ground. Many -poplars and elm trees were waving over our heads, and not far off the -running of the sacred water from the cave of the nymphs warbled to us; -in the shimmering grass the sunburnt grasshoppers were busy with their -talk, and from afar the owl cried softly out of the tangled thorns of -the blackberry. The larks were singing and the hedge birds, and the -turtle dove moaned; the bees flew round and round the fountains, -murmuring softly. The scent of late summer and the fall of the year was -everywhere; the pears fell from the trees at our feet, and apples in -number rolled down at our sides, and the young plum trees bent to the -earth with the weight of their fruit. - -“‘The wax, four years old, was loosed from the heads of the wine jars. -O! nymphs of Castalia, who dwell on the steeps of Parnassus, tell me, I -pray you, was it a draught like this that the aged Chiron placed before -Hercules, in the stony cave of Phulus? Was it nectar like this that made -that mighty shepherd on Anapus’ shore, Polyphemus, who flung the rocks -upon Ulysses’ ships, dance among his sheep-folds? A cup like this ye -poured out now upon the altar of Demeter, who presides over the -threshing floor. May it be mine once more to dig my big winnowing-fan -through her heaps of corn; and may I see her smile upon me, holding -poppies and handfuls of corn in her two hands!’” - - * * * * * - -Instead of being accompanied on their arcadian journey by Eucritus and -the fair Amyntichus, they have as companions in the little carriage of -the Regie Ferrovia the two dark foreigners from Syracuse, upon whose -nationality they have speculated at idle moments. They prove to be -Poles. Two gentlemen from Cracow, escaped for a moment from its snows to -make a little “giro” in the Sicilian sunshine. - -Conversation develops around Ætna—of all places! Peripatetica catches -sight of it, as the train rounds a curve, sees it suddenly looming -against the sky, a glittering cone of silver swimming upon a base of -misty hyacinth-blue. By a gesture she calls everyone’s attention to this -new and charming pose of that ever spectacular mountain. - -Jane glances up from her book and signifies a condescending approval, -but the sight has a most startling and electrifying effect upon the -Poles. They miss, in their enthusiasm, flinging themselves from the -carriage window merely by a hair’s breadth, and crying, “Ætna! Ætna!” -with passionate satisfaction, not only solemnly clasp hands with one -another, but also grasp and shake the limply astonished hands of Jane -and Peripatetica. Transpires that the foreigners have been three weeks -in Sicily without once having caught a glimpse of the ever present, ever -dominant mountain, since, with sulky coquetry, whenever they were within -sight it promptly hid in veils of mist, and now they are bound for -Cracow, via Palermo, facing uneasily the confession at home of having -been to the play and missed seeing the star. - -They hang from the window in eager endeavour to cram all lost -opportunities into one, and rend the heavens with lamentations when the -carriage comes to rest immediately opposite a tiny station whose solid -minuteness is sufficient to blot from sight all that distant majesty. - -“It is like life,” the taller foreigner wails, sinking back baffled from -an attempt to pierce the obdurate masonry with a yearning eye. “One -little ugly emotion close by can shut out from one’s sight all the -loftiest beauties of existence!” - -This fine generalization gathers acuity from the fact that a sharp turn -soon after leaving the station piles up elevations that quickly rob them -of their long-sought opportunity, but for the rest of the time that the -paths of the four lie together the Poles insist upon attributing to the -direct intervention of Jane and Peripatetica the wiping of this blot -from their travelling ’scutcheon—an attitude which Jane and Peripatetica -find both soothing and refreshing, and they affect a large familiarity -and possessiveness with the Volcano, which the Poles bear with polite -and grateful respect; the more so, no doubt, as the two seekers -possess—as Americans—a novelty almost more startling and intense than -Ætna. The gentlemen from Cracow have never met Americans until now, and -make no attempt to disguise the exhilaration of so unwonted a -spectacle—confessing that in their turn they too have been speculating -upon the racial identity of “the foreign ladies,” whose nationality they -were unable to guess. They are consumed with an inexhaustible curiosity -to get the “natives’” point of view, and exchange secret glances of -surprise and pleasure at the exhibition of human intelligence in a -people so remote from Cracow. When the necessary change of train -detaches them from their eager investigations Peripatetica is still -futilely engaged in her persistent endeavour to combat in the European -mind its strange delusion as to the real relations of the sexes in her -own land. - -... “No; the American man in no respect resembles the Sicilian donkey -... no; he does not ordinarily spend his life toiling humbly under the -intolerable loads laid upon him by his imperious mate.... No; he is not -a dull unintelligent drudge wholly unworthy of the radiant beings who -permit him to surround them with an incredible luxury.... No; the -American woman is not his intellectual superior. In everything of real -practical importance _he_ is immensely the superior.... No; he isn’t -this.... No; he isn’t that.... He isn’t any one of the things the -European thinks he is and—good bye!” - -The mountains all this while have been peaking up; mounting, climbing, -rolling more wildly, and at last two of them soar splendidly, sweep up -close on to three thousand feet into the sky ... Castrogiovanni and -Calascibetta, and the train drops Jane and Peripatetica at their feet. - -Memory has cast out, or has pushed into the background, the long weary -jolting up to the wild little wind-swept town; makes no record of the -hotel or the fellow tourists; has jotted down a certain straight wild -beauty in the inhabitants, who have eagle-like Saracen profiles, but -grey Norman eyes. Has left well in the foreground a dark castle, and a -cluster of half-ruined towers. All else of modern details she has -rejected, except a great wash of blue, a vast vista of tumbling broken -landscape, huge and stern, for she has been busy with a picture of the -past; building up an imagination of vanished gods moving about their -mighty affairs, playing out Olympian dramas in this lofty land. Here is -the very centre of the God’s-land, the “umbilicus Siciliæ,” the Key of -Sicily, Enna “the inexpugnable,” the strongest natural fortress in the -world, which no one ever took except by treachery; which the Saracens -besieged in vain for thirty-one years, and when they finally got it, -through a treason, the Normans in their turn could not dislodge them -until all Sicily had been theirs for a quarter of a century, and then -only through another betrayal. In the great slave war Eunus, the serf, -held it against the whole power of Rome for two years until he too was -betrayed. - -Broken and wild as is the land it is still cultivated; the olive still -climbs up to where the clouds come down, but where are the magnificent -forests, the wonder and joy of antiquity? Where the brooks and streams -and lakes, whose dropping waters sang all through the records of the -elder world? Where are those fields so blessed by Demeter that they -offered to the hands of men illimitable floods of golden grain? Where -are the vines that wreathed the mountains’ brows with green and purple -grapes, as if it had been the brow of Dionysius the wine god? Where, -too, are the meadows so thick with flowers that for the richness of the -perfume the hounds could not hold the scent of the game? Meadows where -the bees wantoned in such honeyed delight that the air vibrated with -their murmuring as with the vibrating of multitudinous harp strings?... - -Listen to the story, which, when it was told was only a prophecy and a -warning, but a warning never heeded. - -Erysicthon cuts down the grove sacred to Demeter. A grove so thick “that -an arrow could hardly pass through; its pines and fruit trees and tall -poplars within, and the water like pale gold running through the -conduits.” One of the poplars receives the first stroke, and Demeter, -hearing the ringing of the axe, appears, stern and awful, hooded and -veiled, and carrying poppies in her hand. To the ravager of her groves -she threatens a divine curse of an everlasting thirst, of an insatiable, -unsatisfied hunger, and the workmen, awed, depart, leaving the axes -sticking in the trees, but Erysicthon drives them to their task again -with blows, and soon the grove is levelled, and the heat of the day -enters where once all was sweet shade. Erysicthon laughs at the futile -curse of the goddess; he has had his will and nothing has happened. The -water still runs and he can slake his drought, but the water escapes as -he stoops for it, sinking into the earth before his eyes, leaving upon -his lips only choking dust. No one can safely ignore the warnings of the -gods, and he wanders, whipped by intolerable longings, and dies -dreadfully, raving of his own folly. - -Neither Greeks, Romans, Saracens, nor Norman heed this parable, told -ages and ages before the meaning of the loss of forests was understood. -All over the land the clothing of oaks, chestnuts, and pines was -stripped from the hills, and slowly but surely the curse of Demeter has -turned it into a place of thirst. To-day less than five per cent of the -whole island contains timber, and these high lands, these “fields which -in the days of the Greeks returned one hundred times the amount of seed -sowed, now yield but seven-fold, and only one-ninth of all the land is -productive.” This is the story of the ravaging of Enna, once the true -garden of Paradise, and now a rocky waste burned to the bone. - - * * * * * - -[Illustration: “ÆTNA, THE SALIENT FACT OF SICILY”] - -Always from the very earliest records the goddess of the harvest was -worshipped in this place. Long before the coming of the Greeks the -Siculians had here a shrine to Gaia, the Earth Mother, from whose brown -breast man sucked his life and food. And the Siculians had traditions of -the Sikels making pilgrimages to Enna to give thanks to a goddess -representing some principle of fertility, by whose power the earth was -made blessed to its children. Very vague and shadowy are the traditions -of the worship of this Bread-giver. There are hints of a great cave with -a rude dark figure within, this idol having, curiously, a head roughly -resembling the head of a horse, where the people timidly laid their -offerings of the first fruits of their primitive culture. This figure is -heard of later at Eleusis, to which the Greeks transpose the image and -the worship, but the myth, so sympathetic to the Greek nature, becomes -refined and spiritualized; takes on many new plays of thought and -colour, and when the great temple of Demeter is built here the story has -cleared and defined itself, and is hung about with the garlands of a -thousand gracious imaginings. - -Our Lady of Bread—daughter herself of Zeus, the overarching sky—has one -child, Persephone, the spirit of Spring, that dear vernal impulse which -rejuvenates all the world and “puts a spirit of life in everything”; -that is forever sweetly renewing hope of happiness. Persephone’s -playmates are the maiden goddesses, Pallas and Artemis, and also those -light spirits of the fields, the water and the air—the nymphs, the -oreads, and the oceanides—but she is not without duties and labours too, -for “Proserpina, filling the house soothingly with her low song, was -working a gift against the return of her mother, with labour all to be -in vain. In it she marked out with her needle the houses of the gods and -the series of the elements, showing by what law nature, the parent of -all, settled the strife of ancient times.... The lighter elements are -borne aloft; the air grows bright with heat; the sea flows; the earth -hangs in its place. And there were divers colours in it; she illuminated -the stars with gold, infused a purple shade into the water, and -heightened the shore with gems of flowers; and under her skilful hand -the threads with their inwrought lustre swell up in counterfeit of the -waves; you might think the sea wind caused them to creep over the rocks -and sands. She put in the fire zones, marking with a red ground the -midmost zone possessed by burning heat; on either side lay the two zones -proper for human life, and at the extremes she drew the twin zones of -numbing cold, making her work dun and sad with the lines of perpetual -frost. She works in, too, the sacred places of Dis and the Manes so -fatal to her. And an omen of her doom was not wanting, for as she -worked, as if with foreknowledge of the future, her face became wet with -a sudden burst of tears. And now in the utmost border of the tissue she -had begun to wind in the wavy line of the Ocean that goes round about -all, but the door sounds on its hinges, and she perceives the goddesses -coming; the unfinished work drops from her hands and a ruddy blush -lights her clear and snow-white face.”... - -Leaving her needle in the many-coloured web, she wanders down the -mountain side to Lake Pergusa, then lying like a blue jewel in enamelled -meads, but ever since that tragic day dark and sulphurous, as with fumes -of hell. - -This is the story of the ravishment, as told in the great Homeric Hymn -that was sung in honour of the Mother of Corn. - -“I begin the song of Demeter. The song of Demeter and her daughter -Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away as she played apart from her -mother with the deep-bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers -in a meadow of soft grass—roses and the crocus and the fair violets and -flags and hyacinths, and above all the strange flower of the narcissus, -which the Earth, favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth for the -first time to snare the footsteps of the flower-like girl. A hundred -heads of blossom grew up from the roots of it, and the sky and the earth -and the salt wave of the sea were glad at the scent thereof. She -stretched forth her hands to take the flower; thereupon the earth opened -and the King of the great nation of the Dead sprang out with his -immortal horses. He seized the unwilling girl, and bore her away weeping -on his golden chariot. She uttered a shrill cry, calling upon Zeus; but -neither man nor god heard her voice, nor even the nymphs of the meadow -where she played; except Hecate only, sitting as ever in her cave, half -veiled with a shining veil, and thinking delicate thoughts, she, and the -Sun also, heard her. - -“So long as Persephone could still see the earth and the sky and the sea -with the great waves moving, and the beams of the sun, and still thought -to see again her mother, and the race of the ever-living gods, so long -hope soothed her in the midst of her grief. The peaks of the hills and -the depths of the sea echoed her cry. And the Mother heard it. A sharp -pain seized her at the heart; she plucked the veil from her hair, and -cast down the blue hood from her shoulders, and fled forth like a bird, -seeking her daughter over dry land and sea. - -“Nine days she wandered up and down upon the earth, having blazing -torches in her hands, and in her great sorrow she refused to taste of -ambrosia, or of the cup of the sweet nectar, nor washed her face. But -when the tenth morning came Hecate met her, having a light in her hands. -But Hecate had heard the voice only, and had seen no one, and could not -tell Demeter who had borne the girl away. And Demeter said not a word, -but fled away swiftly with Hecate, having the blazing torches in her -hands, till they came to the Sun, the watchman of Gods and men; and the -goddess questioned him, and the Sun told her the whole story.”... - -What a picture the Greek singer makes of the melancholy earth calling -for comfort to the moon! for Hecate was not Artemis, but a vaguer, -vaster principle of the night; an impersonalized shadow of the Huntress, -as Hertha was the shadow, formless and tremendous, of Demeter. Hecate -was a pale luminous force, “half veiled with a shining veil, and -thinking delicate thoughts,” and ten days later, having rounded to the -full, the bereaved mother meets her “bearing a light in her hands,” -though the night is nearing morning, and moon and earth turn together -toward the coming sun. - -The Homeric Hymn tells much of the wandering and grieving mother; of her -disguises; of her nursing of the sick child Demophoon, whose own mother -snatched him back from the immortality which the goddess was ensuring by -passing him through the fire—as many a loving and timid mother since has -held her son back from the fires that confer immortality. The Hymn tells -of her teaching of Triptolemus of the winged feet, instructing him in -Eleusinian mysteries—“those mysteries which no tongue may speak. Only -blessed is he whose eyes have seen them; his lot after death is not as -the lot of other men!” - -But Jane and Peripatetica loved more the story of the ending of her -vigil, when Hermes descended into Hell in his chariot. - -“And Persephone ascended into it, and Hermes took the reins in his hands -and drove out through the infernal halls; and they two passed quickly -over the ways of that long journey, neither the waters of the sea, nor -of the rivers, and the deep ravines of the hills, nor the cliffs of the -shore resisting them; till at last Hermes placed Persephone before the -door of the temple where her mother was, who, seeing her, ran out -quickly to meet her, like a Mænad coming down a mountain side dusky with -woods.” - -So these two saw Persephone come home; saw the spring return to the -earth in the high places of the gods. Saw the land, even though no -longer a paradise, yet—despite Erysicthon’s foolish waste of the sacred -trees—saw it “laden with leaves and flowers and the waving corn,” and, -having seen it, they passed on through Sicily satisfied. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - - CHAPTER V - - A CITY OF TEMPLES - - “’Tis right for him - To touch the threshold of the gods.” - -THEY were running swiftly through the dark. On either hand was a dim and -gloomy land of bare, shrivelled peaks, grey cinder heaps, and sulphurous -smells. Intermittently visible by the strange subterranean glowings rose -black, glowering mountains in the background, and nearer at hand were -shadowy shapes of men and asses bringing sulphur from the mines. Within, -the garlic-reeking tongue of a flickering gas-lamp vaguely illumined the -dusk of the railway carriage. - -“This is Pluto’s own realm,” declared Jane, removing her nose from the -window-pane, through which she had been endeavouring to peer into the -outer gloom. “If it’s not the very threshold of the infernal regions it -ought to be. Peripatetica, you might spare me a glimmer or two from your -Baedeker. Were there no temples to Pluto here? These are surely the very -surroundings in which he should have been worshipped.” - -“A temple to Pluto?” replied Peripatetica sleepily. “Where?... I never -heard of one that I can remember; have you?” - -Jane suddenly realized that her recollections held no account of any -spot where that dark King of the Under World had been honoured under the -sun; it was another mystery of the past, to which there was no answer, -though Peripatetica gave up her nap in the effort to solve it—why had -Pluto, supreme in the Under World as Zeus in the Upper one, beneath -whose sway all men born must come, remained so unhonoured among living -men? - -The Greeks did believe in a future life; the spirit expiating or -rewarded for deeds done in the flesh. Those were facts which men thought -they knew, which were an integral axis of their faith—how so believing, -did they treat it thus unconcernedly, seeing things in such different -proportions from ourselves? So much concern for the fulness of life in -the present, so little for the shadowy hereafter—shrines and temples and -sacrifices on every hillside to the Deities of Life, of Birth, and -Fertility; nothing for the God of Death. - -Death and Life—they touched as closely in ancient days as now, perhaps -more closely. The Greeks did not push away their dead to a dim, silent -oblivion. Near to the warm heart of life they were held in bright, -oft-invoked memory. In the busiest centres of life were placed the tombs -of their dead; close to the theatre—to the Forum—wherever the living -most thronged the Road of Tombs was; one where all the busiest tide of -life flowed. Invocations and offerings and sweet ceremonies of -remembrance were given to their dead more often than tears. And -constantly the living turned to the dear and honoured dead—“much -frequented” was the Greek adjective which went oftenest with the tomb. -But the grim God of Death was apparently not for living man to make his -spirit “sick and sorry” by worshipping. It was Life—glorious, glowing -fulness of life to the uttermost—that was important to the Greek; Life -that governed Death and made it either honoured and reposeful, or a -state of shadowy wanderings and endless regret. - -To the modern mind, still tinged with mediæval morbidity, groping back -into the clear serenity of those golden days, it seemed to be life, -life, only life that preoccupied the Greeks, and yet, they too had -hearts to feel Death’s sting even as we—to be aware of the underlying -sadness of all the joy upon this rolling world. They too could deeply -feel the inexorable mingling of delight and pain, of life and loss.... - -Their great Earth Mother, blond and sunny as her golden grain, the deity -of all fruitfulness and beneficent increase, is also _Ceres Deserta_—the -Mater Dolorosa—shrouded in the dark blue robe of all earth’s shadows, -haggard with tears of wasting desolation—“the type of divine sorrow,” as -well as of joyous fruition ... her emblem the blood-red poppy, symbol in -its drowsy juices, of sleep and death, as in its multitudinous seeds the -symbol of life and resurrection. - -And her daughter, like herself the most specially and intimately beloved -by the Greeks among all their deities, had even more the dual -quality—Goddess of Spring, of resurrection, and rejuvenescence, and yet -too, Queen of the dark Under World. She was the impulse of all spring’s -teeming life, and yet herself “compact of sleep and death and narcotic -flowers bearing always in the swallowed pomegranate seeds the secret of -ultimate decay, of return to the grave.” - -Korè, the maiden, the incarnation of all fresh and sweet and innocent -joyousness, was also symbol of its evanescence—“a helpless plucked -flower in the arms of Aidoneus,” so that upon the sarcophagi of women -who had died in early youth the Greeks were wont to carve Pluto’s -stealing of Persephone, picturing the Divine Maiden with the likeness of -the dear dead one’s face. - - * * * * * - -Dark, blurred shapes in Greek-like drapery of many-folded cape and -shawl, appeared now and then in shifting crowds upon station platforms, -like the uneasy shades of Pluto’s kingdom seeking escape. - -To Peripatetica and Jane it began to seem as if their quest for the Lost -Spring had taken them into the Under World of her imprisonment to behold -with thrills of half pity, half awe, in “that dim land where all things -are forgotten” her transformation into the mate of gloomy Dis, no longer -bright, golden-haired girl-flower, but veiled _Proserpina Despœna_, the -Queen of the Dead, where now: - - “Pale, beyond porch and portal, - Crowned with calm leaves, she stands, - Who gathers all things mortal - With cold immortal hands; - - She waits for each and other, - She waits for all men born, - Forgets the Earth, her mother, - The life of fruits and corn.” - - * * * * * - -Escaping at last from the sulphur fumes, the strange glares and the -Hades visions, they found themselves standing under a clear star-strewn -sky with a gentle air blowing in their faces. In an open carriage they -were whirled off, they knew not where, into the night, stars bright -overhead and lights like fallen stars on a high hill to the right, the -soft wind of the darkness breathing of spring and green growing things. - -Suddenly there was the welcoming door of the Hotel des Temples, and then -little white bedrooms and quick oblivion. - - * * * * * - -There is a pounding on Jane’s door. - -“Hurry, you sluggard!” says Peripatetica’s voice. “Come out and see what -a delicious place this is!” and she enters radiant. “There’s no mistake -about spring this time; everything is riotous with it—and it’s real -country. Not mere theatrical scenery like Taormina, nor mere bones and -stones like Syracuse, but real dear Arcadian country, with trees, -actually _trees_! and there are great golden temples rising out of the -trees, with the sea and the hills behind, and nothing but sweet peaceful -meadows and orchards all around us—I want to stay here forever.” - -When Jane too stood upon the hotel terrace drinking in all the fairness -of the outlook which Peripatetica silently but proudly displayed, in the -proprietorship of earlier rising, she was quite ready to echo the wish. -Billowy orchards of almonds in tenderest leafage, hoary groves of -olives, the silver and white of wind-stirred bean-fields in blossom, -vivid emerald of young wheat, crimson meadows of lupine rolling down to -a peacock sea glittering to a wide horizon. - -Soft mountains, not too high; old stone pines black against the azure -sky; brown walls of convents, and bell towers emerging from the dark -green of oranges and pines; and rising out of all this Arcadian -sweetness of meadow and grove the tawny columns of the Temples. - -“Oh, let’s get to them at once!” cried Jane, and guideless and impatient -they went, as the bird flies, straight across the intervening country, -towards those beckoning golden pillars. Plunging down the hillside in -front, garden-orchard, ploughed field, dusty highroad—all were merely a -road between them and those temples of Lost Gods still rising -unsubmerged above the tree tops. Little boys digging in the fields shyly -offered them fossil shells and the bits of pottery their shovels had -turned up, old women at garden gates called invitations to come in and -pick oranges or inspect the ruins of “Casa Greco’s,” but they held -straight on through olive groves seemingly old as the temples -themselves, through velvety young wheat and flowery meadows. The -distance was greater than had appeared from above. Sometimes the gleam -of columns through the green beckoned illusively to impossible short -cuts, as when a tempting grass path seemed to run straight to the feet -of the nearest temple and instead led into a farmyard inhabited by -fiercely barking dogs. A noise that called out the farm people to -explain as politely as if these were the first strangers who had ever -made the intrusive mistake, that an impassable wall made it impossible -to reach the Temples through their property, and to detail a wee, -starry-eyed bronze faun in tattered blue rags to put them upon the -correct but roundabout road. - -In the glowing sun of the spring morning—the old world renewing itself -in blooming freshness all about—songs of birds and petals of -fruit-blossoms in the air, against the shimmering blue of sky and sea -and the new green of the earth’s breast, was upreared the saffron mass -of Concordia—shrine of a Peace twenty centuries old. - -It looked its name, did Concord, standing with all its amber columns -worn but perfect, in unbroken accord, still upholding architrave and -tympanum. - -Intact in all but roof, on its platform of steep, worn steps it -stands—in the midst of fields and groves that were once a clanging stone -city, close beside the dusty highroad along which come the landau loads -of hurried tourists—with its calm still unbroken. It embodies the -permanence of peace through all the evanescent life of the flowing -years. Unaltered through all the changes of time, its Doric columns -rise, tranquil and fair, and hospitably it offers welcome to all who -come. - -[Illustration: “THE SAFFRON MASS OF CONCORDIA”] - -As of old one may climb its steps to worship and admire. The road winds -to its very base, and it stands as free to all comers as to the sun and -wind. It alone of all the glories of once magnificent Akragas remains in -its original shape. Other shrines were greater, larger, more splendid in -their day. The high house of Zeus, with its mammoth columns, was nearly -three times the height of Concord; it had an enclosure of three hundred -and seventy-two feet to Concord’s one hundred and thirty-eight, and must -once have looked scornfully on its little neighbour. Hercules, with his -marvels of sculpture and painting; Juno, with her statue-enriched -“thymele” terrace extending her precincts around its out-door altar and -her renowned picture by Zeuxis, for whose composite beauty the five -loveliest girls of the city had been models, probably outranked simple -Concord. No record of its holding venerated treasures of beauty has come -down from the days of its prime. Yet it alone has survived whole; -emerging intact from the storms of war and nature, as if its own -distilled atmosphere of serenity has acted as a preservative against -Time. Even the Middle Ages treated it gently. St. Gregory of the Turnips -took it for a shrine, and a gentle, serene saint he must have been; one -able to dwell in the abode of Peace without feeling any desire to alter -and rebuild, glad to look out of its open peristyle and watch his -turnips in the sunny fields, wisely refraining from choking the pillars -into walls and plaster like poor Minerva’s at Syracuse. Concordia’s -cella seemed to have been just a cosy fit for St. Gregory and he a -careful tenant, leaving only the two arched openings in its walls to -mark his occupancy. And so the Temple is to-day the best preserved in -existence—shorn of all its statues, stucco, and decoration, a little -blurred and worn in outline, as if Time’s maw, while refraining from -crushing, has yet mumbled it over gently. - -It was apparently this completeness of preservation which had so -enamoured Goethe that he dared to speak lightly of the stern majesty of -the temple of Pæstum by comparison. Poseidon’s great fane he thought as -inferior to Concord’s as a hero is inferior to a god. - -“A god to a hero,” quoted Jane with a resentful sniff. “It was just like -that pompous, stodgy old German to be carried away by mere preservation, -and to prefer this sugary-slightly-melted-vanilla-caramel temple to that -solemn splendour of Pæstum.” - -“What an abominable simile you’ve used for this lovely thing,” scolded -Peripatetica. “You’re even worse than Goethe—if possible.” - -“It isn’t an abominable simile,” protested Jane flippantly. “It _is_ -exactly the colour of a good vanilla caramel, and moreover it looks like -one licked all over by some giant tongue.” - -Having said an outrageous thing she pretended to defend it and believe -it, but her heart smote her for irreverence as she and Peripatetica -strolled about the peristyle, gazing through the columns at the pictures -their tawny flutings framed, and she grudgingly admitted that the -situation at least was divine. - -Perched on the crest of a sheer-dropping rocky cliff, Concordia faces -the west. To the south dark blue sea, and to the north billowy woods and -fields in all the gamut of spring greens surge up to the apricot-tinted -town, which is the last shrunken remnant of old Akragas. Beneath the -cliff green meadows stretch smooth to the African Sea. Eastwards, on a -neighbouring knoll, Juno lifts her exquisite columns against the blue, -and softly moulded hills melt into the distant ruggedness of -Castrogiovanni’s mountains. To the north lie fields and groves and -orchards, with dottings of farmhouse and church, up to the top of the -Rupe Athena, where, with her usual passion for conspicuousness, high -Athena had once kept watch in her Temple, that now, according to the so -frequent fate of the mighty, is fallen into nothingness. - -How worshipful his blithe gods of Sun and Abundance must have here -appeared to the Greek; how good the world spread out for him in all its -fairness; the citadel-crowned hill protecting his rich city, the shining -sea carrying his commerce; the mountains of the bounteous Earth Mother’s -home encircling the rolling groves and meadowland she blessed so -fruitfully, and the triumphs of his own handiwork in the marvellous -temples and buildings of this splendid Akragas, “fairest of mortal -cities,” as even the poets of Greece admitted. - -The Plutonian shore of the previous night seemed very far away, now that -Persephone was back in her own “belonging” country again; the dark -terrors of Hades had grown dim. Naturally the gods of Light and Day were -the only ones worshipped; they were supreme for life—and after—ah well! -“the dark Fate which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated by -any rites, and must be encountered manfully as one meets the -inevitable.”... - -“Of course there were no temples to Pluto, they wouldn’t have known how -to build one,” said Peripatetica, looking from the enclosed cella to the -sunlit peristyle outside. “I never quite realized before the cheerful, -self-possessed publicity of Greek worship; their temples standing always -in these open elevated sites; open themselves to the light and -air—majestically simple. There is just the little enclosure to shelter -the statue of the god, and all the rest is clear openness, where the -worshippers stood under glowing sun and sky, or looking out into it. -It’s essentially an out-of-door building, the Greek Temple, spreading -its beauty to light and air like a flower. Pluto would have had to -evolve a type of his own, he never could have fitted into this calm -cheerfulness.” - -“No,” pondered Jane, “there is no room for superstitious terrors in the -sunshine. I wonder does superstition turn naturally to caves and gloom, -or do dark holes in the ground breed it? There is all the space of light -and darkness between the sermon preached on the Mount, all beatitudes -and tenderness, and the theology of the monks in the Middle Ages after -the Christians had made their churches in such catacombs as those of -Syracuse.”... - -All Girgenti’s temples are wrought from this native chrome-yellow tufa; -a sort of solidified sea-beach—compacted sand, pebbles, and fossil -shells. The original snow-white stucco, made of marble dust, has flaked -away, save here and there in some protected niche. The dry sirocco gnaws -into the soft sandstone, and on the seaside of the columns show the long -deep scorings of its viewless teeth, sunk in places nearly half through -the huge diameter of the pillars. - -Peripatetica was in two minds as to whether the temples had not been -even more lovely in their original virgin whiteness. “After all,” she -mourned, “they are but a frame without the pictures; for the Greek -temple existed primarily to be a setting for its sculpture. Sculpture -was an essential part of its planning, not a mere decoration, and -without it pediment, metopes, frieze, and pedestals are meaningless -forms. That sculpture that stood and walked on the pediments and gave -life to the frieze; that animated the exterior, or sat calm and strong -in the central shrine. To a Greek even this wonderfully preserved -Concordia, bare of sculpture, would seem but a melancholy skeleton of a -once fair shrine.” - -But Jane was obstinately sure that nothing could be better than the -natural harmonies of the naked stone. - -“Nothing,” she insisted with bland firmness, “not even your blind -conviction that everything the Greeks did was exactly right—just because -they did it—will persuade me that they improved these temples by any -marble plaster. Come over here and look at the warm red gold of those -soaring fluted stems against the vivid blue! It is as if the splendour -of sunset glowed upon them all day long. As if they had soaked in so -much sun through all the bright centuries that now even the very stones -gave it out again.” - -Peripatetica had been half inclined to believe this herself at first, -but of course Jane’s opposition clinched her wavering suffrages for the -stucco. - -“You lack in imagination,” she announced loftily. “You see only what you -see. Try to realize what the marble background meant to the -saffron-robed, flower-garlanded priests, and to the worshippers massed -on the steps and in the peristyles in delicate-tinted chiton and -chamyle—crocus, daffodil, violet-rose, ivory—like a living flower wreath -from out the spring meadows encircling the white temple’s base—” - -“Oh, do stop trying to be Pater-esque!” scoffed Jane, “and let’s go to -luncheon. That sounds too much like sublimated guide-book, and the hotel -looks miles away to my unimaginative eye.” - - * * * * * - -“We won’t, will we?” said Jane half an hour later, with her irreverent -mouth full. - -Peripatetica knew what she meant. - -“Go on to-morrow? No, indeed. We’ll telegraph Cook to send our mail here -until further notice—the idea of being told there was nothing to linger -for at Girgenti! It’s the nicest place we’ve yet found in Sicily.” - -The room was full of the munching of tourists. From the talk in German, -English, and French, could be gathered they had one and all “done” the -five temples, the tombs, and San Niccola that morning—would “take in” -the town sights that afternoon and pass on that evening or the next -morning. The two Seekers, to whom the morning had not been long enough -in which to dream and dispute over one temple, felt their heads growing -dizzy at the rush with which the tourist stream flowed along its -Cook-dug channels, and they gladly resolved to leave the current and -climb up high and dry on the bank of this inviting little backwater. - -The announcement of their intention to stay on seemed to give the polite -young proprietor of the hotel a strange shock. He offered better rooms -looking on the terrace, and _pension_ rates if they stayed more than -three days, instead of the usual week for which that reduction is -commonly made. A flutter of excitement at their behaviour passed at once -through all the personnel of the hotel. - -First came the concierge. “You are really not leaving to-morrow morning, -ladies? For what day do you wish me to get your tickets stamped?” He was -startledly incredulous when told that the day was still too far in the -future for a date to be fixed. The porter came to ask at what time he -was to carry out their luggage in the morning—the head waiter to know -for which train they wished to be called. The stolid chambermaid’s mouth -fell open in surprise when asked to move their things to other rooms. -The two-foot-high Buttons shifted about chairs four times his own size -in the lobby to get a chance to gaze satisfactorily at such peculiar -ladies, and by tea-time the German waiters were staring as they carried -about tea-trays, and pointing out to one another the strangely behaving -two who were not leaving the next day! - -The pretty little hotel was like a railway restaurant. Successive sets -of hurried tourists appeared, made a one-meal or a one-night stop, and -rushed on, leaving their places to others. In a week’s time so many sets -had come and gone that Peripatetica and Jane began to take on the air of -pre-historic aborigines; as if they had been sitting on their sunny bank -watching all the invading hordes of nations since the Carthagenians made -their first raid. - -By way of emphasizing the superior intelligence of their own methods -they savoured slowly and lingeringly Girgenti’s endless charms. Loafing -placidly on the flowery terrace for an hour after breakfast to enjoy the -distant view of the golden temples, or to watch the patient labours of -ancient brown Orlando and his ancient grey ass Carlo, who spent all -their waking hours in climbing down, down the precipitous road to the -Fonte dei Greci with empty water-barrels, and toilsomely bringing them -up full and dripping to be emptied into the terrace well with its lovely -carved well head. Or they retired to the niche below the terrace stairs -under the feathery pepper tree, and sat amid a blaze of poppies and -mauve to write letters, punctuated by frequent pauses to look across the -olive orchards and young wheat fields to the wide blue fields of the -sea. And every day they strolled away through the orchard footpaths -towards the temples, which were ever their goal, though they might be -hours in reaching that goal because of being led away by adventures on -the road. - -It was by way of this footpath that they first fell into the hands of -Fortunato. They were forever falling into some one’s hands and finding -the results agreeable, for they kept their minds open to suggestion and -abjured all hard and fast lines of intention, being wise enough to -realize that what is known as “a good traveller” usually misses all the -good of travel by the cut-and-driedness of his aims. - -Fortunato was sure that he could “spika da Englishy,” though what led -him to suppose so, other than a large command of illuminative gesture, -never became clear. Some half-dozen words—adorned with superfluous -vowels to a point of unrecognizability—he did possess; the rest was -Sicilian, sympathy, and vivid intelligence, which sufficed to make him -the perfectly delightful guide he explained himself to be. His age he -declared to be fourteen, he looked all of ten, but his knowledge of the -world, of life, of history, and of the graces of conversation could -hardly have been acquired by any one less than forty. Within twenty -minutes he had made them free of such short and simple annals of his -career as he judged to be suited to their limited forestieri minds, -having first firmly assumed the burden of all their small -impedimenta—jackets, kodaks, and parasols. He was one of fifteen, he -explained, and also the main staff of his parents’ declining years; the -six staffs younger than himself being somewhat too short for that filial -office. The other eight had been removed from this service by the -combined ravages of marriage, the army, and emigration. When time and -the growth of his juniors enabled him to lay down his absorbing duties -he had the intention of joining in Nuova Yorka a distinguished barber, -who enjoyed the privilege of being his elder brother. Nuova Yorka, he -had been given to understand by this brother, boasted no such mountains -as these of Girgenti, but its streets were filled for months with hills -of ice and snow, and this information Peripatetica and Jane were -regretfully obliged to confirm. - -No matter! even such rigours could not check his ambition to “barb,” and -as his brother had explained how necessary it was that he should be -complete master of Englishy before landing in Nuova Yorka if he hoped to -escape being “plucked” (great business of illuminating gestures of -rapacity) he employed in guiding Americans such brief hours as he could -snatch from school. - -They discovered later that Fortunato snatched from school just seven -entire days every week. - -It had been the intention of the two to spend the morning among the -gigantic ruins of the temple of Zeus, and yet when Fortunato put -pressure upon their ever flexible impulses at the gate of the strange -old Panitteri garden, they found themselves instead under the walls of -the church of San Niccola, where the gillyflowers and wild mignonette -rioted from every crevice. Meekly they climbed a great stone terrace -adorned with crumbling statues and Corinthian entablatures. Meekly they -examined the great baths, and delighted in the shining panorama of sea -and plain and hill, with golden Concordia seen in its most lovely aspect -between two gigantic stone pines. - -Still sternly shepherded by the small guide they climbed down again to -make a closer acquaintance with the Oratory of Phalaris. Phalaris of the -infamous legend of the brazen bull, into whose heated body were cast the -enemies of the ancient Tyrant of Akragas, because that humorous -gentleman’s fancy was highly diverted by the similarity of their -moanings, as they slowly roasted, to the lowing of kine. It is said that -he fretted a good deal because nobody else appeared to think the thing -as good a joke as it seemed to him, but then taste in jests _will_ -differ, unfortunately. The Carthagenians when they came over and -conquered Sicily were quite delighted with the ingenious toy, and -carried it off triumphantly to Africa. They were finished artists in -torture themselves, and appreciated a valuable new idea. Scipio found -the bull in Carthage, when he made a final end of that city, and he -returned it to Akragas, but appetite for really poignant fun appears to -have died out by that time, and Fortunato, whom they consulted, seemed -to think it was probably eventually broken up for the purpose of -manufacturing braziers, or possibly warming-pans. - -Memory of the Bull almost obscured the fact that the Oratory was a -beautiful Greek chapel, such as was used to hold some statue of a god, -and the memorials of ancestors, and served for private daily devotions -without need of a priest. The Normans had the same habit of private -family chapels, so the Oratory had served them in turn, being pierced by -a Norman window and the square-headed entrance door fitted with an arch. - -Half a dozen races and centuries had each had a hand in the Church and -Convent of San Niccola too, apparently. It was built from stones filched -from that vast ruin of the Temple of Zeus they were on their roundabout -way to see, and which has always been an exhaustless quarry for -Girgenti. So late as in the last century the huge stones that formed the -Porto Empedocle, a long mole from which the sulphur is shipped, were -stolen from poor Zeus. Doors, windows, roofs, arches, had been added or -changed in San Niccola, just as each generation needed, and each in the -taste of the period. The holy-water stoup at the entrance, for example, -was an enormous marble hand, taken from one of the temples. For the -Greeks too had fonts of holy water, consecrated by plunging into it a -burning torch from the altar, and as the worshippers entered they were -asperged with a branch of laurel. - -The poor Saint was not in flourishing circumstances in these later days, -it would seem, judging by the bareness of his sanctuary, and the torn -cotton lace upon the altars, and yet he was an industrious healer, if -one might reason from the votives that hung about his picture. A few -were wrought in silver, but more in wax, or carved and painted wood, -reproducing with hideous fidelity the swollen limbs, the cancerous -breasts, the goitered throats, the injured eyes, the carbuncles and -abcesses he had healed through his miraculous intervention. Indeed, he -was a general jobber in miracles, for the naïve, rude little paintings -on the wall showed a spirited donkey running away with a painted cart, -the terrified occupant frantically making signals of distress to San -Niccola in heaven, who was preparing promptly to check the raging ass. -Or he was drawing a chrome-yellow petitioner from a cobalt sea, or -turning a Mafia dagger aside, or finding a lost child in the mountains. -He certainly “studied to please,” and it did seem a pity he should be -housed in so bare and poverty-stricken a shrine. Many less active saints -lived amid welters of gilding and luxury. - -In spite of Fortunato dragging them aside later to see a little “Casa -Greco,” where they could trace delicate tesselated pavements and the -bases of the columns of the atrium amid the grass, they still succeeded -in arriving that same afternoon at their original goal. - -Only the temple of Diana at Ephesus was larger than this great shrine to -the spirit of the overarching sky, and even yet, though moles and -churches and villas have been wrought from its remains, the gigantic -ruin daunts the imagination with its colossal fragments, its huge tumble -of stone, its fallen mountains of masonry. Each triglyph alone weighed -twelve tons, and the enormous columns around the whole length of its -three hundred and seventy-two feet were more than sixty feet high. -Theron, the benevolent despot of Akragas, built it with the labours of -his Carthagenian captives, and no doubt a memory of their frightful -toilings in the Sicilian noons inspired the Carthagenians, when they -captured the city, to their fury of destruction against the fane they -themselves had wrought. It would seem as if only some convulsion of -nature could have brought down that prodigious construction, but still -visible upon the bases of the fallen pillars are the cuts made by the -Punic conquerors, sufficient to disturb the equilibrium of even these -monster columns. When their rage had at last expended itself nothing of -all that incredible mass of masonry remained standing save three of the -enormous Telamone—the male caryatids—that had supported the entablature. -And so firmly were these built that they stood there for fifteen -centuries more before time and a quaking of the earth at last brought -them down. - -Now the last of these lies in the centre of the ruin, perhaps the most -impressive figure wrought by man’s hands, so like does it seem—blurred, -vague, tremendous—to some effort to symbolize in stone the whole human -race—the very frame of the world itself. Shoulder and breast an upheaved -mountain range, down which the mighty muscles pour like leaping rivers -to the plain of the enormous loins and thighs. Rough-hewn locks cluster -about the frowning brows, as a gnarled forest grips a cliff’s edge, from -beneath which stare darkly the caverned eyes. Primeval, prehistoric in -form, overrun by gnawing lichens, smeared by lapse of time to a mere -vast adumbration of the human form. - -This temple had been the supreme effort of Akragas, the richest and most -beautiful city the Greeks ever built. The stories of its wealth, of its -luxury, of its gardens, palaces, theatres, baths, its gaieties, and its -pomps, sound like a description of Rome under the Empire, and would be -incredible if such ruins as this did not exist to attest to the facts. - -Far more characteristic of the Greek were those twin temples of Castor -and Pollux - - —“These be the great Twin Brethren - To whom the Dorians pray”— - -to which Fortunato turned their steps as a refreshing counteraction of -the stern immensities of Zeus. Light, delicate, gracious fragments they -were, lifting themselves airily from a sea of flowers on the edge of the -ravine-like Piscina, once the reservoir for the city’s water, but now -full of lemon orchards, and fringed by immense dark carouba trees.... - -Another day, conducted by Fortunato always, they pilgrimed to the temple -of Hercules, oldest and most archaic of them all, containing still in -the cella remains of the pedestal on which stood that famous bronze -statue of the muscular hero and demigod. The statue which that -unscrupulous collector, Verres, tried to remove and thereby provoked a -riot in the city. In this temple too had hung Zeuxis’ renowned painting -of Hercules’ mother, Alcmena. - -It was on still another day that Fortunato led through olive groves and -bowery lanes to the temple of Juno Lacina, beguiling the way with light -songs—some of them distinctly light—and scintillating conversation upon -all matters in the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters -under the earth. He mimicked deliciously the characteristics of English, -French, German, and American tourists, differentiating their national -peculiarities with delicate acuity. He made no effort to disguise that -he had pondered much upon the sexes, and opined, with a shrug, that -there was a hopeless and lifelong irreconcilability in their two points -of view. Marriage, he frankly conceded to be a necessity, but considered -it a lamentable one. Of course one must come to it soon or late, but, -for a man, how sad a fate! Then he broke off to sing of undying passion, -and interrupted himself to ask if the donkeys in Nuova Yorka were as -quick and strong as those of Sicily; he supposed the streets must be -crowded with them, where the needs of commerce were so great. - -Eventually he brought them out upon the lovely eminence of the temple of -the Mother of Heaven—Juno Lacina, special deity of mothers, which crowns -the edge of a sheer cliff of orange-yellow tufa four hundred feet above -the sea. The sea had washed close under the cliff when the temple was -first built, but now at its foot the alluvial plains stretch level and -rich, bearing orchards and meadows and vineyards more fertile than any -old Akragas knew, though this very shrine was built from the proceeds of -exportation of oil to Carthage. - -Earthquakes had shaken down more than half the tall, slim columns. -Sirocco has bitten deep into those still standing, and into the fallen -fragments which strew the landward slope; fragments lying among gnarled -olives, seemingly as wind-eaten and ancient as themselves. Among these -fluted fragments grew wild pansies and crimson lupins, from which little -Fortunato gathered nosegays, as he shrilled, in his boyish falsetto, -songs of love and sorrow—or sat and kicked his heels upon the margin of -an old bottle-shaped cistern. Tourists whirled up dustily for a cursory -inspection—Baedeker in hand—and whirled as quickly away, bent on getting -through the sights and passing on; but still Peripatetica and Jane -lingered and dreamed among the ruins until Fortunato, visibly bored, -suggested a short cut back to the hotel. It led them by fields of lupin, -spread like crimson velvet mantles on the hillside, where the contadini -cut the glowing crop, heaping it upon asses until they seemed but a -moving mass of blossom trotting home on brown legs. Goats, Fortunato -volunteered, detested—for some curious goatish reason he could not -explain—this picturesque food, but donkeys! ah, to donkeys it was—in a -burst of superlative explanation—“the donkey macaroni.” - -This short cut led, too—apparently to Fortunato’s surprise and -dismay—directly through a walled farmyard surrounding a frowning, -half-ruined casa, nail-studded of door and barred of window, and with an -air of ancient and secretive menace. It was the sort of place travellers -in such books as “The Mysteries of Udolpho” used to come upon at -nightfall, far from any other habitation, with a thunderstorm about to -break among the mountains, and the leader of their four-horsed -travelling carriage hopelessly lame, so that the delicate and shrinking -heroine must, willy nilly, beg for a night’s accommodation and the surly -inhabitant’s sinister hospitality. Curiously enough the dwellers in this -casa were, it seemed, of the exact Udolpho variety. Ringing the -correctly rusty bell, and battering upon the massive gate with their -parasol handles aroused a storm of deep-mouthed baying of dogs within, -and a fierce brown face finally appeared at a small wooden shutter to -demand the cause of the intrusion. Fortunato’s heart and legs plainly -turned to water at the sight of this person, but realizing that he had -got Jane and Peripatetica into a hole and must get them out, he wheedled -in such honeyed and persuasive Sicilian, that at last, and reluctantly, -the heavy portal - - “Ground its teeth to let them pass,” - -the furious dogs having first been chained. Very arid and ruined and -poor this jealously guarded dwelling seemed. Nothing was visible the -protection of which required those four big wolf-like dogs that shrieked -and bounded and tore at their chains as the intruders passed; nor that -the lean fierce man and his leaner and fiercer wife and children should -accompany them like a jailer’s guard to the exit. Fortunately this -nether door was unbarred before the lean man demanded money for having -permitted them to cross his land, and having a sense of Fortunato’s -imploring eyes upon them they made the gift a lire instead of a copper, -and pushing through the door fled as for their lives. - -“So there really was an Italy like the Italy of the romantic Georgian -novel!” said Jane wonderingly, as soon as she could catch breath. - -“It’s only another proof,” gasped Peripatetica, “that travellers really -do tell the truth. It’s the ignorant stay-at-homes who can’t believe -anything they haven’t seen themselves. Fortunato,” she demanded sternly, -“who are those people, and why do they behave so absurdly? What are they -concealing?” - -But no explanation was to be had from that erstwhile fluent and -expansive _homme du monde_. He was frightened, he was vague, and simply -darkened counsel. - -“I strongly suspect there is some Mafia business behind all this—you -naughty boy!” said Jane reprovingly, but Fortunato only pulled his cap -over his eyes and slunk away without claiming his day’s wage. - -Because of this episode Fortunato found his offered services frigidly -dispensed with the next day when he presented himself, Jane and -Peripatetica setting out alone to explore the town of Girgenti. They -were quite sure they could themselves discover a short cut to the small -city which would be much more amusing than the dusty highway. It seemed -but a stone’s throw distant, and surely by striking down this footpath, -and rounding that rise.... - -An hour later, panting, dripping, and disgusted, they climbed into the -rear of the town, having stumbled through the boulders of dry -water-courses, struggled over the huge old rugged pavements of ancient -Akragas—washed out of their concealment by winter torrents—skirted -outlying villas, and laboured up steps. The short cut had proved the -longest way round they could possibly have taken to the inadequate, -shabby little museum they had set out to see in this modern successor of -the great Greek city. Girgenti, though one of the most thriving of -Sicilian towns, thanks to its sulphur mines, only manages to fill one -small corner of the hill acropolis of that ancient city, which once -covered all the miles stretching between this and the temple-crowned -ridge of the southern boundary of cliffs. Akragas found space for nearly -a million of inhabitants where Girgenti nourishes but twenty thousand or -so. - -It was not till 580 B.C. that this Rhodian colony was founded, so -Akragas was a century and a half younger than her great rival, -Syracuse—the offspring of Corinth. But that site on the steep river-girt -hill, rising from such fertile country, proved so favourable to life and -commerce; trade with the opposite coast of Africa developed so richly, -that Akragas’ rise to wealth and power was rapid, and she was soon -pressing Syracuse hard for the place of first city. Her temples were the -greatest of all Sicily, almost of all Greece. The city’s magnificence -became a bye-word, and accounts of the wealth and prodigality of its -private citizens read like Arabian Nights imaginings. In the public -gymnasium the people used golden strigils and gold vessels for oil. One -rich Akragantine kept slaves in waiting all day at the door of his great -mansion to invite every passing stranger in to feast and repose in his -spacious courts, where there were baths and fresh garments always -waiting and slaves to entertain with dance and music; flower garlands -and food and wine unlimited at his call. There was wine in the cellars -by the reservoir full—three hundred reservoirs of nine hundred gallons -each—hewn in the solid rock! This same genial Gelleas, when five hundred -riders came at once from Gela, took them all in, and, it being the dead -of winter, presented each man with new warm garments. - -They delighted in pageants and splendid public festivals, these -splendour-loving Akragantines, of whom their philosopher Empedocles said -that they “built as if they were to live forever and feasted as if they -were to die on the morrow!” We know they went out to welcome young -Exainetos, victor at the Olympian Games, with three hundred glittering -chariots drawn all by milk-white horses; we know of the wonderful -illuminations that lit all the city, from the monuments of the high -Acropolis to the temple-crowned sea-rampart, when a noble bride passed -at night to her new home, with flutings and chorus, and an escort of -eight hundred carriages and riders innumerable. - -Now the town seemed to be mostly a winding tangle of steep stairs—with -houses for walls—and these stairs were bestrewn with ancient remnants of -vegetables that had outlived their usefulness, and a swarming population -of children. Fazelli mentions an Agrigentian woman of his time who -brought forth seventy-three children at thirty-three births, and judging -from the appearance of the streets that rabbit-like practice still -maintains. Way could hardly be made through the swarm of juvenile pests, -clamouring for pennies and offering themselves as guides, until a boy in -slightly cleaner rags was chosen to show the way to the Cathedral. Once -given an official position he furiously put his competitors to flight, -and with goat-footed lightness flitted before up the ladder-like alleys, -while the two panted after until it seemed as if they should be able -easily to step off into the sky. - -A queer old Fourteenth Century campanile, with Norman ogives and Moorish -balconies, still gives character to the exterior of this -thousand-foot-long Cathedral of San Gerlando perched aloft in the windy -blue, but inside the Eighteenth Century had done its worst. Baroque -rampant; colossal stucco mermaids and cupids, interspersed with gilded -whorls and scrolls as thick as shells upon the “shell-work” boxes of the -seaside booths. A giant finger could flick out a dozen cupids anywhere -without their ever being missed. Yet it stands upon the ruins of a -temple to Jove, and here for more than two thousand years have prayers -and praise and incense gone up to the gods of the overarching blue that -looks so near, so that even stucco and gilding cannot render it -irreverent or lessen its power to brood the children of earth beneath -its wings. - -[Illustration: TEMPLES OF CASTOR AND POLLUX, GIRGENTI “LIFTING -THEMSELVES AIRILY FROM A SEA OF FLOWERS”] Even so it seemed to-day, for -merrily and thickly as the throngs of naked little stucco cupids chased -each other on the walls, infants of flesh and blood in gay rags and -heavy hob-nailed shoes swarmed over the marble floor. As if it were a -kindergarten small boys played games of tag around the columns, small -girls trotted about more demurely, or flocked like rows of perching -sparrows around the numerous altars. The church resounded with the hum -of their voices and the patter of their feet; yet the old women at -prayer continued their devotions, quite undisturbed, and no passing -priest or sacristan did more than shake a gentle finger at some -especially boisterous youngster. - -The sacristy holds the jewel of the Cathedral, a ravished jewel which -does not belong at all in this ecclesiastical setting—the lovely Greek -sarcophagus portraying the passionate story of Hippolytus and Phædra. -This is the one remnant now left to Akragas out of all her treasures of -Greek art. Found in the temple of Concord, where the gentle St. Gregory -had probably cherished it, the Girgentians offered it to their -Cathedral, and in that most tolerant of churches it served for long as -the High Altar until influx of the outer world made some sense of its -incongruity felt even here. At one end of the tomb Phædra swoons -amourously among her maidens, their delicate little round child-like -faces and soft-draped forms melting into the background in exquisite low -relief. Two of a more stately beauty hold up the Queen’s limp arms and -support her as she confesses to her old nurse the secret passion -consuming her for that god-like boy, son of her own husband, whom with -all her fiery blood she had once hated as illegitimate rival to her own -children, but now had come to find so dear that she “loved the very -touch of his fleecy coat”—that simple grey-and-white homespun his Amazon -mother’s loving fingers had woven. In high bold relief of interlacing -trees Hippolytus on the other side hunts as joyously as his patroness -Artemis herself. Opposite, arrested among his dogs and companions, he -stands in the clear purity of his young beauty, like “the water from the -brook or the wild flowers of the morning, or the beams of the morning -star turned to human flesh,” turning away his head from the bent -shrunken form of the old nurse pleading her shameful embassy. And on the -other end is carved the tragedy of his death, the revenge of Aphrodite -in anger at his obduracy against herself and her votary Phædra. “Through -all the perils of darkness he had guided the chariot safely along the -curved shore; the dawn was come, and a little breeze astir as the grey -level spaces parted delicately into white and blue, when angry Aphrodite -awoke from the deep betimes, rent the tranquil surface; a great wave -leapt suddenly into the placid distance of the little shore, and was -surging here to the very necks of the plunging horses, a moment since -enjoying so pleasantly with him the caress of the morning air, but now, -wholly forgetful of their old affectionate habit of obedience, dragging -their leader headlong over the rough pavements.” - -Life seemed to breathe from the ivory-coloured marble. So vividly had -its creator’s hand carried out the conception of his brain that all the -elapsed centuries since the vision of beauty had come to him were but as -drifting mists. Races, dynasties, powers, the very form of the earth -itself, had altered, in the changing ages, but the grace of this little -dream was still a living force. - - “Oh Attic shape! Fair Attitude! with brede - Of marble men and maidens, over wrought - With forest branches and the trodden weed; - Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought - As doth eternity; Cold Pastoral! - When old age shall this generation waile - Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe - Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, - ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all - Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” - - * * * * * - -On the steps of the Cathedral they witnessed a pretty sight. - -“Peripatetica,” announced Jane, “I will not walk back to the hotel! It -may be only one mile from town, by the high road, but it was certainly -four by that short cut, and all this hill-climbing on slippery cobbles -has turned my knees to tissue paper. The boy must get us a cab—how does -one say it? You tell him.” - -The boy hesitated at first at Peripatetica’s request, but went off in -obedience to the firm command of her tone. - -Accustomed to the ubiquitous, ever present and ever-pestering cab of -Taormina and Syracuse, they expected his instant return. But the minutes -passed and passed, and sitting on the parapet of the Cathedral steps -they had long opportunity to watch the world wag on. Apparently it was -“Children’s Day” at the Cathedral, to which they were being mustered for -catechism. The swarms inside were now explained. Though it had seemed as -if every child in town must already be there, they were still flocking -in. - -Mites of every size and sort between the ages of two and ten, small -things with no accompanying elders, came toiling up the steep streets -Cathedralwards, climbing the long flights of steps and boldly shoving -into the great doorway. - -But the different manner of their coming! The unfaltering steady advance -of the devout—heads brushed, shirts and frocks clean, faces set and -solemn, no words or smiles for their companions, minds fixed on duty. -Little girls came in bands, tongues going like mill-hoppers even as they -plunged within the sacred portal. Little boys enlivened their pilgrimage -with chasings and scuffles. Wee tots, timidly attached to the hand of -some patriarch of eight or nine; receiving therefrom protecting -encouragement, or being ruthlessly dragged along at the top speed of -chubby legs, regardless of their streaming tears. Loiterers arriving -with panting pink tongues, stockings half off and dragging, clothes all -in disarray from some too delightful game on the way, plodding -breathless up the steps with worried rubbings on clothes of dirty little -paws; still casting reluctant looks at the sunshine before they made the -plunge behind the dark leather curtain. Reprobates, at the very last -refusing to enter at all; refusing to exchange the outer darkness of -play and sunshine for the inner light of wax tapers and the Catechism; -giving themselves boldly over to sin on the very Cathedral steps in -merry games of tag and loud jeerings and floutings of the old beggar men -who had given up their sunny posts at the doors in attempts to drive -these backsliders in. And the Reluctant, coming with slow and dragging -feet; heads turned back to all the mundane charms of the streets, -lingering as long as possible before final hesitating entrance. For -these last it was very hard that, straight in their way, just in front -of the Cathedral, a brother Girgentian, whose very tender age still -rendered him immune from religious duties, was thrillingly disporting -himself with an iron barrel-hoop tied to a string, the leg of a chicken, -and two most delightful mud-puddles. The care-free sportings and -delicious condition of dirt of this Blessed Being made their own soaped -and brushed virtue most cruelly unsatisfying to many of the Pilgrims. -But there was the Infant Example, who, with crisp short skirts rustling -complacency, and Mother’s large Prayer-book clasped firmly to her bosom, -climbed the steps with eyes rolled raptly heavenwards and little black -pig-tails vibrating piety. And some little boys with both stockings -firmly gartered, jackets irreproachably buttoned, and a consciousness of -all the answers to the Catechism safely bestowed in their sleek little -heads, made their way in eagerly, wrapped in the “showing off” -excitement. These little Lambs passed coldly and disapprovingly through -those who had chosen to be goats in the outer sunshine. But many small -ewes sent glances of fearful admiration from soft dark eyes at those -bold flouters of authority, and many proper youths looked sidewise at -them so longingly it was plain that only the fear of evil report taken -home by sisters in tow, kept them from joining the Abandoned Ones. - -Peripatetica, amused and interested, forgot the flight of time. Jane, -suddenly realizing it, cried: - -“That boy has been gone a half hour—do you suppose you really told him -to get a cab? I believe you must have said something wild and strange -which the poor thing will spend the rest of his life questing while we -turn into lichens on this parapet.” - -Peripatetica, indignantly denying this slur on her Italian, insisted she -had clearly and correctly demanded a cab, and a cab only. - -“I remember,” she reflected, “the boy looked very troubled as he went -off—and now that I come to think of it, we haven’t met a horse in this -town to-day. The Romans must have looted all the conveyances in their -last sack of the city; the only one left is now kept in the Museum in a -glass case, and allowed out for no less a person than the German -Emperor—but I _won’t_ walk back. I should suppose the boy had deserted -us, except that he hasn’t been paid.” - -“Poor little wretch! That was why he looked so troubled,” exclaimed -Jane. “He knew the long and difficult search he was being sent upon, and -perhaps thought it was a mere Barbarian ruse to shake him off, so that -we could get away without paying him.” - -As she spoke the sound of thudding hoofs echoed from the walls of the -Cathedral, and the white anxious face of their guide appeared on flying -legs. The reassurance that changed his expression into a beaming smile -at sight of the two still there, made it clear that Jane’s supposition -had been correct. He had evidently feared to find both his clients and -the silver rewards of his labours vanished. The relief with which he -gasped out his explanation of having had to go all the way down into the -valley to the railway station to get a carriage which was now on its way -while he had dashed ahead on foot up a short cut, was so pathetic they -gave him double pay to console him for his worry. - -And then with a noise between the rumble of a thunderstorm and the -clatter of a tinman’s wagon came their “carrozza.” Its cushions were in -rags, the harness almost all rope, one door was off a hinge and swung -merrily useless—but two lean steeds drew this noble barouche and two men -in rags sat solemnly on its ricketty box with such an air of importance -its passengers felt as if they were being conducted homeward in a -chariot of state. - - * * * * * - -Fortunato, restored to favour, was leading them up the Rupe Athena, that -rose steeply immediately behind their hotel; he was leading them not -straight up, but by a series of long “biases”—as Jane expressed it. The -end of the first bias reached the little lonely church of San Biago, -dreary and uninteresting enough in its solitary perch, save for the fact -that it stood upon the site of a temple to Demeter and Persephone: - - “Our Lady of the Sheaves, - And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet - Of Enna” - -placed here no doubt because this high spur was the only point in -Girgenti from which one could catch a glimpse of the lofty steeps of -Enna-Castrogiovanni. - -Turning at a sharp angle again they went slanting up across the bare -hillside, the wild thyme sending up a keen sweet incense beneath their -climbing feet, until they came to the verge of the great yellow broken -cliff that shot up more than a thousand feet from the valley below. Some -crumpling of the earth’s crust, ages ago, had forced up this sheer mass -of sandstone, hung now with cactus, thyme, and vines, which served as -one of the natural defences of Akragas, behind whose unscalable heights -the unwarlike city had been enabled peacefully to pursue its gathering -of wealth and luxury. - -Fortunato, leaning over the marge, clapped his hands suddenly, and a -cloud of rock pigeons flew forth from the crevices, to wheel and flutter -and settle again among the vines. Probably descendants of those pigeons -who lived in these same crevices in the days of the monster Phalaris, -and helped to compass his death. - -Pythagoras—that strange wanderer and mystic, whose outlines loom so -beautiful and so incomprehensible through the vagueness of legend, was -first flattered and then threatened by the Tyrant, who feared the -philosopher’s teachings of freedom and justice. At one of those public -discussions, so impossible in any other country ruled despotically, and -yet so characteristically Greek—Pythagoras rounded a burst of eloquence -by pointing to a flock of these pigeons fleeing before a hawk. - -“See what a vile fear is capable of,” he cried. “If but one of these -pigeons dared to resist he would save his companions, who would have -time to flee.” - -Fired by the suggestion the old Telemachus threw a stone at the Tyrant -and despite the efforts of his guards, Phalaris was ground to a bloody -paste by the stones and fury of the suddenly enfranchised Akragantines. - - * * * * * - -“It is our last day,” Jane had said; “we will go and bid the temples -good-bye.” - -Which was why she and Peripatetica were scaling in the sunset the golden -cliffs which Concordia crowned, having come to it by a détour to -Theron’s tomb. - -They drew themselves laboriously up to the crest, and sank breathlessly -upon the verge among the crumbled grave pits, where the Greeks buried -their dead along the great Temple road. Not only their beloved human -companions they interred here, but the horses who had been Olympian -victors, their faithful dogs, and their pet birds. It was in rifling -these graves, in search of jewels and treasure, that the greedy -Carthagenians had reaped a hideous pestilence as a price of their -impiety. Now the graves were but empty grass-grown troughs, and one -might sit among them safely to watch the skyey glories flush across the -sapphire sea, and redden the hill where the little shrunken Girgenti -sent down the soft pealing of Cathedral chimes from her airy distance. -Beside them Concordia’s columns deepened to tints of beaten gold in the -last rays, and across the level plain far below—already dusk—the people -streamed home from their long day’s labour. Flocks of silky, antlered -goats strayed and cropped as they moved byre-wards, urged by brown -goatherds who piped the old country tunes as they went. The same tunes -Theocritus listened to in the dusk thousands of summers since, or that -Empedocles, purple-clad, and golden-crowned, might have heard vaguely -fluting through his dreams of life and destiny as he meditated beneath -these temple shadows as night came down. - -Asses pattered and tinkled towards the farms, laden with crimson burdens -of sweet-smelling lupin. Painted carts rattled by with oil or wine; and -cries and laughter and song came faintly up to them as the evening grew -grey. - -“How little it changes,” said Peripatetica wistfully. “We will pass and -vanish as all these did on whose tombs we rest, and hundreds of years -from now there will be the same colours and the same songs to widen the -new eyes with delight.” - -“Let us be grateful for the joys of Theocritus, and for our joys and for -the same joy in the same old beauties of those to come,” said Jane, -sententiously. “And let us go home, for the moon is rising.” - -Large and golden it came out of the rosy east, the west still -smouldering with the dying fires of the ended day. - -Their way led through the olive orchards, grown argent in the faint -light, and taking on fresh fantasies of gnarling, and of ghostly -resemblances to twisted, convoluted human forms. Among the misty olives -the blooming pear-trees showed like delicate silvery-veiled brides in -the paling dark, and with the falling dew arose the poignant incense of -ripening lemons, of blossoming weeds, and of earth freshly tilled. - -Wandering a little from the faintly traced path, grown invisible in the -vagueness of the diffused moon-radiance, they called for help to a young -shepherd going lightly homeward, with his cloak draped in long classic -folds from one shoulder, and singing under his breath. A shepherd who -may have been merely a commonplace, handsome young Sicilian by day, but -who in this magic shining dusk was the shepherd of all pastoral verse, -strayed for a moment from Arcady. Following his swift light feet they -were set at last into the broad road among the herds and the asses and -the homing labourers—Demeter’s well-beloved children. - - “E’en now the distant farms send up their smoke, - And shadows lengthen from the lofty hills. - - * * * * * - - —Now the gloaming star - Bids fold the flock and duly tell their tale, - And moves unwelcome up the wistful sky. - . . . . . . Go home, my full-fed goats, - Cometh the Evening Star, my goats, go home.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - [Illustration: Decoration] - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - THE GOLDEN SHELL - - - “_Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blüh’n?_” - -WHEN Ulysses Grant had ended the Civil War in America and was made -President, he turned from uttering his solemn oath of office before the -cheering multitudes and said under his breath to his wife who stood -beside him, in that tone of half-resentful, half-weary patience the -American husband usually adopts in speaking to his mate, “Well, now, -Julia, I hope you’re satisfied!” - -There was the same exasperated patience in Jane’s voice as she climbed -into the railway carriage for Palermo and, throwing herself back upon -the cushions, exclaimed: - -“Well, now, Peripatetica, I hope you’ve had enough of the Greeks! For my -part I go on to the next course; something a little more modern. Tombs -and goddesses and columns and myths cloy as a steady diet for months, -and even the ridiculous pompous old Eighteenth Century would seem rather -home-like and comfy as a change. I could find it in my heart to relish a -bit of the odious decadence of _l’art nouveau_ simply by way of -contrast.” - -Peripatetica treated this shameful outburst with all the stern contempt -it so truly merited, as she was engaged in making the acquaintance of a -descendant of that great race of Northmen who had made history all over -Sicily and the rest of Europe. He too was a conqueror, though his weapon -was a paint-brush and a modelling tool instead of a sword, and kings -received him with all the honours due an acknowledged ruler of a realm. -He dwelt by a great lake far to the north in that “nursery of kings” in -a home built five hundred years ago of huge fir-trees; logs so sound and -clean-fibred that the centuries had left the wood still as firm as -stone. Making his play of resurrection of the old wild melodies of the -North, of the old costumes and industries of the people from whose loins -had sprung half the rulers of the continent. The Sea Rover’s blood was -strong in him too, driving him to wander in a boat no bigger than those -of his Viking ancestors along the stormy fjords and fierce coasts to the -still more distant north. - -For the adornment of the log-built home Sicily had yielded to his wise -searching various relics of antiquity, Greek, Norman, Saracen, and -Spanish, and in the ensuing days in which Jane and Peripatetica were -permitted to tread the same path with the Northman and his beautiful -wife, these treasures came out of pockets to be fitted with dates and -history, and even, in the delightful instance of one small ghostly -grotesque, to change owners. - -While the two seekers of Persephone were gathering and savouring this -refreshing tang of the cold salt of the northern seas, this large vista -of the gay, poised strength of a mighty race—their train was looping and -coiling through summer hills to the seat of summer—cherry and apple, -peach and pear trees tossed wreaths of rose and white from amid the grey -of olives and the green of citron, for this was the land of Mignon’s -homesick dream—“das Land, wo die Citronen blüh’n.” - -Miles and miles and miles of orange and lemon groves ran beside their -path; climbing the hills and creeping down to the edge of the tideless -sea. Trees that were nurtured like babies; each orchard gathered about -old grey or rose-washed tanks holding the precious water which is the -life-blood of all this golden culture during the rainless summer. Tanks -moist and dripping and fringed with ferns, mirroring the overhanging -yellow fruit, or the pink geraniums that peeped over the shoulders of -the broad-bladed cacti to blush happily at their own reflections in the -water. - -An exquisite form of orcharding, this, as delicate and perfect as a -hot-house, with every inch of the soil utilized for the vegetables set -about the trees’ roots, and the trees themselves growing in unbelievable -numbers to the acre. For not one superfluous leaf or branch was -there—just the requisite number to carry and nourish the greatest -possible quantity of fruit. In consequence of which the whole land was -as if touched by some vegetable Midas and turned all to gold. Millions -and millions of the yellow globes hung still unpicked, though already -the trees were swelling the buds which within ten days were to break -forth into a far-flung bridal wreath, and intoxicate all the land with -honeyed perfumes. - -And, mark you, how nations are influenced by their trees! In the bad old -days of constant war and turmoil the isolated family was never secure, -and the people clung to the towns, but modern careful culture of the -orange has forced orchardists to live close by their charges, and the -population is being slowly pushed back into rural life, with the result -of better health, better morals, and a great decrease of homicides. One -has really no convenient time for sticking knives into one’s friends -when one is showing lemon-trees how to earn $400 an acre and -orange-trees half as much.... - -“It is the most beautiful town in the whole world,” said Peripatetica in -that tiresomely dogmatic way she has of expressing the most obvious -fact. - -They had wandered out of their hotel, and through a pair of stately iron -gates crowned with armorial beasts. Beyond the gates lay a garden. But a -garden! Acres of garden, laced by sweeping avenues, shadowed by cypress -and stone pines, by ilex and laurel. From the avenues dipped paths which -wound through _boscoes_, looped under bridges veiled with curtains of -wisteria and yellow banksias, climbed again to pass through pleached -walks; paths that tied themselves about shadowy pools where swans -floated in the gloom of palm groves, or debouched across emerald lawns -where clumps of forget-me-nots and cinerarias made splashes of bold -colour in the grass. - -“They do these things so well in Europe,” remarked Peripatetica -approvingly, as a splendid functionary, in a long blue coat and carrying -a silver-headed staff, lifted his cockaded hat to them as they entered -the gates. “Now where at home would one find one of our park guardians -with such a manner, and looking so like a nobleman’s servant? This,” she -went on, in an instructive tone, being newly arisen from a guide-book, -“is the Giardino Inglese; one of the public parks, and it has exactly -the air of loved and carefully tended private possession.” - -They lounged over the parapets of the carved bridges, with their elbows -set among roses, to look down into the little ravines where small -runnels flowed among the soft pink-purple clouds of Judas-trees. They -were tempted into allées bordered their whole length with the white -fountains of blossoming spireas, or hedged on both sides by pink -hermosas. They strolled past clumps of feathery bamboos to gaze along -the shadowy vistas of four broad avenues meeting at a bright circle -where a sculptured fountain tossed its waters in the sun. They lingered -in paths where tea-roses were garlanded from tree to tree, or by walls -curtained by Maréchale Niels. They inspected the nurseries and admired -the greenhouse. They came with delight upon a double ring of giant -cypresses lifting dark spires into the dazzling blue of the sky, and sat -to rest happily upon a great curved marble seat whose back had lettered -upon it a reminder to the “Shadowed Soul” that wisdom comes only in -shade and peace. - - “E La Sagezza Vieni Solo - Nel’ Ombra E Pace.” - -And finally they mounted the little tiled and columned belvedere hanging -at the corner of the garden’s lofty wall to gaze upon a view unrivalled -of this most beautifully placed city. - -Palermo lay stretched before them in its plain of the Conca d’Oro—the -golden shell. Round it as a garland rose a semicircle of vapoury -mountains like rosy-purple clouds, bending on beyond the plain on either -side to clasp a bay of dazzling violet whose waters glowed at the city’s -feet; the city itself warmly cream-tinted and roofed with dull red -tiles. A city towered, columned, arched; with here the ruddy bubbles of -San Giovanni degli Eremiti’s domes, there the tall spires and fretted -crest of the Cathedral; and flowing through it all, or resting here and -there in pools, the green of orange groves, the flushing mist of -Judas-trees, the long stream of verdant parks and gardens. - -“Not only is this the loveliest city in the whole world,” said Jane, -“but this is also the sweetest of all gardens, and a curious thing is -that we seem to have it quite to ourselves. You’d suppose all Palermo -would want to come here for at least half of every day, but not a soul -have we met except those two dear, queer old gardeners sitting on the -tank’s edge playing a game with orange seeds.” - -“Well, if the Palermians haven’t intelligence enough to use such a -garden, we have,” announced Peripatetica. “And we will come here every -day.” - -Which they did for a while; bringing their fountain pens to write -letters in the bosco, or resting after sight-seeing in the cool shade of -the cypress ring. And it might have served them to the end as their -intimate joy had it not been for Peripatetica’s insane passion for -gardening. - -[Illustration: “SICILY’S PICTURE-BOOK, THE PAINTED CART”] - -All about the edge of the long _tapis vert_ which lay before the -handsome building at the end of the garden—a building which they -supposed housed some lucky park official—stood at intervals fine -standard roses. Now one unlucky day Peripatetica descried aphides upon -the delicate shoots and young buds of these standards. That was -sufficient. An aphis, to her rose-growing mind, is a noxious wild beast, -and promptly stripping off her gloves she ravened among them. - -“Perhaps you’d better leave them alone,” warned Jane in a whisper. “The -gardeners look so surprised.” - -“By no means!” objected Peripatetica in lofty obstinacy, with a backward -glance of contempt at the visibly astonished attendants. “The city no -doubt pays them well to grow roses, and I mean to shame them for this -indecent neglect of their duties. Besides, I am enjoying it immensely; -I’ve been hungering and thirsting for a little gardening.” - -That very day it was conveyed to their intelligence—or their lack of -it—that they had not been enjoying the Giardino Inglese, a dull park -which lay almost opposite, but had been calmly annexing the private -grounds of Prince Travia. He, however, being a model of princely -courtesy, was glad to have the foreign ladies amuse themselves there as -much as they liked. Only once more did they see it; on the day of -departure, when they blushingly left a tip in the hands of the handsome -old silver-staffed portiere, who had truly looked like a nobleman’s -servant, and behaved like one as he saluted them with unprotesting -dignity each time they had passed in and out of that beauteous spot in -which they had no right to be. - -There were many other gardens in Palermo, but none so fair. The green -world was so enchanting in this glowing spring that a day of -_villegiatura_ was necessary between every two days of sight-seeing, and -having been banished from the Travia garden by their own innate sense of -decency, they took lunch in their pockets and set out for the famous -Villa Giulia which had aroused such enthusiasm in Goethe. - -The Villa Giulia, as they might have foreseen, was just the sort of -thing Goethe would have liked—and they had been violently disagreeing -with Goethe all over Sicily. An untouched example of the most tiresome -form of Eighteenth Century gardening—a cross between a wedding cake and -a German Noah’s Ark. All rigid, glaring, gravelly little allées, with -trees as denuded of natural luxuriance as a picked chicken; sugar-icing -grottoes; baroque fountains; gaudy music kiosks; cages of frowzy birds -and mangy monkeys; and posé busts in self-conscious bowers. Not here -could these Eden-exiled Eves lunch, nor yet in the untidy, uninteresting -Botanic Gardens next door—a wilderness of potted specimens and obtrusive -labels—but wandering melancholily around a vast egregious gas tank, they -came upon a long, neglected avenue of great trees; all that was left of -some once lovely villa swept out of existence by the gas works. And here -upon a stone bench in the glimmering shade they fed at the feet of a -feeble little knock-kneed marble King. One of the Spanish monarchs of -Sicily it was, thus commemorated in marble Roman armour and a curled -marble wig, and his rickety, anæmic majesty moved them to smiling pity, -so feeble and miserable he looked, forgotten and overshadowed by modern -gas tanks, his boneless legs ready to give under him, and his peevish -face smeared with creeping lichens. The green tunnel of the trees framed -a blazing sapphire at the other end—a glimpse of the bay—and ragged pink -roses, and neglected purple iris bloomed together along the path. Ere -another year the blight of the gas works will have swept away the airy -avenue, the wilding flowers, the poor spineless little King, and the two -bid it all a wistfully smiling farewell, knowing they should never again -eat an April day’s bread and cheese under those sweet auspices. - -... Will travellers from the roaring cities of Central Africa come a -couple of centuries hence and mark with regret the last bit of some now -flourishing boscage being eaten away by Twenty-Second Century progress, -and smile indulgently at one of our foolishly feeble statues, in granite -frock coats, tottering to lichened oblivion? No doubt. Palermo has seen -so many changes since the Phœnicians used to trade and build along this -coast. For this was the Carthagenian “sphere of influence” from the -first, and the Greeks were here but little, and have left no traces in -Palermo, though in the long wars between Carthagenian and Greek it was -captured by the latter from time to time, and held for a space. The -Greeks called it Panormous—meaning all harbour, for in their day deep -water curved well up into the town, where are now streets and palaces -and hotels. Of course Rome held it for a while, as she held pretty -nearly everything. Held it for close upon a thousand years—with the -Goths for its masters at one interval—but there are few traces of Rome -either, and then the Arabs took it and set their seal so deep, in less -than two centuries, that after the lapse of nearly another thousand -years their occupation is still visible at every turn. For under the -Saracens it was a capital, and after their destruction of Syracuse, -which ended Greek domination in the Island, it gained a pre-eminence -among Sicilian cities never afterwards lost. - -That garrulous old traveller from Bagdad, Ibn Haukal, writing in 943, -says that Palermo then had a most formidable nine-gated wall, a -population of close upon half a million, and many mosques. He also says -that near where the Cathedral now stands was a great swamp full of -papyrus plants, serving not only for paper but for the manufacture of -rope. - -Already Sicily was beginning to suffer from the scarcity of water, and -the merchant from Bagdad, accustomed to the abundant pools and conduits -of his own city, makes severe comments upon the lack of these in -Palermo. It could only have been by contrast, however, that the -Palermians could have seemed to Haukal dirty, because Jane and -Peripatetica, going to see a part of the old Moorish quarter, in process -of demolition, found multitudinous water-pipes in the houses, entering -almost every chamber. Haukal says that the Greek philosopher Aristotle -was buried in one of the mosques of Palermo, and he opines that the most -serious defect of the citizens was their universal consumption of -onions. Peripatetica—to whom that repulsive vegetable is a hissing and -an astonishment—read aloud in clamant sympathy this outburst of -Haukal’s: - -“There is not a person among them, high or low, who does not eat them in -his house daily, both in the morning and at evening. This is what has -ruined their intelligence and affected their brains and degraded their -senses and distracted their faculties and crushed their spirits and -spoiled their complexions, and so altogether changed their temperaments -that everything, or almost everything, appears to them quite different -from what it is.” - -“That gentleman from Bagdad is a man after my own heart,” she declared -triumphantly. “I have always been sure that people who eat onions must -be those to whom ‘almost everything appears quite different from what it -is,’ for if they had the slightest idea of ‘what it is’ for other people -to be near them after they have indulged that meretricious appetite they -would certainly never do it!” - -This Arab impress, though visible everywhere, is more a general -atmosphere than definite remains; for with but few exceptions their -creations are so overlaid and modified by subsequent Occidental work -that it glows through this overlay rather than defines itself. It was -while searching for Moorish fragments that Jane and Peripatetica came -upon La Ziza. The guide-books unanimously asserted that Al Aziz—La -Ziza—was the work of the Norman King, William I., but the guide-books, -they had long since discerned, were as prone to jump to unwarranted -conclusions, and, having jumped, to be as aggravatingly cocksure in -sticking to their mistakes as was Peripatetica herself. So they took -leave to doubt this assertion, and concluded that William probably -seized the lovely country-house of some Moorish magnate, adding to it -sufficiently to make of it a “lordly pleasure dome” for himself in the -wide orange gardens, but the core of the place was wholly Moorish in -character; well worth the annexing, well worth its name Al Aziz—The -Beloved. - -They came through the hot, white sunshine up wide, low steps, through a -huge grille in an enormous archway, to find a windowless room where the -glaring day paled to glaucous shadow against the green tiles of a lofty -chamber, as cool and glistening as a sea cave. And the sound of rippling -water echoed from the lucent sides and honeycomb vaultings, for a -shining fountain gushed from the wall into a tiled channel of irregular -levels, artfully planned to chafe the sliding water into music before it -slept for awhile in a pool, and then slipped again through another -channel to another pool, and so passed from the chamber—having glinted -over its shining path of gold and green and blue, and having filled the -place with cool moisture and clear song. - - “With fierce noons beaming, - Moons of glory gleaming, - Full conduits streaming - Where fair bathers lie—” - -Quoted Peripatetica—who might be safely counted on to have a tag of -verse concealed about her person for every possible occasion. - -“Did you ever see anything that so adequately embodied the Arab -conception of pleasure? Coolness, moisture, the singing of water, noble -proportions, and clean colour wrought into grave and continent devices? -Was there ever anything,” she went on, “so curious as the contradictions -of racial instincts? Who could suppose that this would be the home-ideal -of those wild desert dwellers who always loved and fought like demons; -who were the most voluptuous, the most cruel, the most poetic and the -‘so fightingest’ race the world has probably ever seen!” - -“Oh, contradictions!” laughed Jane. “Here’s a flat contradiction, if you -like. Please contemplate the delicious, the exquisite absurdities of -these frescoes.” - -For, needless to say, the Eighteenth Century had not allowed to escape -so exquisite an opportunity to make an ass of itself, and had spread -over the clean, composed patterns of the tiled walls a layer of -lime-wash on which it had proceeded to paint in coarse, bright colours -indecently unclad goddesses, all flushed blowzy and beribboned; all -lolloping amourously about on clouds or in chariots, or falling into the -arms of be-wigged deities of war or of love. Fortunately the greater -part of these gross conceptions had been diligently scrubbed away, but -enough remained to make Peripatetica splutter indignantly: - -“Well, of all the hideous barbarians! The Eighteenth Century was really -the darkest of dark ages.” - -“My dear,” Jane explained contemptuously, “the Eighteenth Century wasn’t -a period of time. It was merely a deplorable state of mind. And the mind -seems to have been slightly tipsy, it was so fantastic and ridiculous, -and yet so gravely self-satisfied.” - -La Cuba, another Saracenic relic, was so obliterated into the mere -military barrack to which it had been transformed that there was nothing -for it but to pass on to the Normans, and to great Roger de Hauteville, -a fit companion of the Paladins, so heavy a “Hammer of the Moors” was -he—so knightly, so romantic, so beautiful. - -Not until twelve years after that bold attempt at Messina to conquer a -kingdom with only sixty companions was Roger able to enter Palermo, and -he and his nephews chose for themselves “delectable gardens abounding -with fruit and water, and the knights were royally lodged in an earthly -paradise.” - -No hideous massacre or sack followed the taking of Palermo, for though -Roger had conquered the island for himself he was a true mirror of -chivalry, and was never cruel. He was chivalrous not only to the -defeated, but to those other helpless creatures, women, who in his day -were mere pawns in the great military and political games played by the -men; married whether they would or no, and unmarried without heed of any -protest from them; thrust into convents against their wishes, and haled -out of convents if they were needed. And swept ruthlessly from the board -when they had served their purpose, or when they got in the way of those -fierce pieces passaging back and forth across the chequered squares of -the field of life. Roger loved the Norman maid Eremberga from his early -boyhood, it appears, and as soon as his hazardous fortunes would permit -she was had out from Normandy, and the history of the great soldier is -full of his devotion, and of her fidelity and courage. As at the siege -of Troina, when the two were reduced by hunger and cold to the greatest -extremities, sharing one cloak between them, so that finally Roger, -rendered desperate by his wife’s sufferings, burst through the ring of -Saracens, leaving her to defend the fortress with unshaken valour until -he returned with a force adequate to save her, and raise the siege. - -There is an amusing story of Roger and his eldest brother, that ruthless -old fox, Robert Guiscard. They were fighting one another at the time, -and Roger’s soldiers captured Robert, who was disguised and spying. He -with difficulty rescued Robert from the angry captors, took him to a -private room, kissed him, helped him to escape, and promptly next day -fell upon his forces with such fury that Robert was glad to make peace -and fulfil the broken promises which had caused the dispute.... - -It was not Roger, the great Count—he had little time in his busy life -for building—but his son Roger the King, who raised the great pile at -Monreale which Jane and Peripatetica were on their way to see. Not by -way of the winding rocky road which for centuries the pious pilgrims had -climbed, but whisked up the heights by an electric tram which pretended -it was a moving-picture machine, displaying from its windows an ever -widening panorama of burning blue sea, of pink and purple mountains, of -valleys down which flowed rivers of orange groves, of a domed and spired -city in the plain, and a foreground freaked with an astonishing carpet -of flowers. - -“If you were to see that in a picture you wouldn’t believe it,” quoted -Jane from the famous Book of Bromides, writhing her neck like an uneasy -serpent in an endeavour to see it all at once. - -“No, of course, you wouldn’t,” said Peripatetica resentfully. “And when -we try to tell it to people at home they’ll simply say our style is -‘plushy.’ There’s nothing so resented as an attempt to carry back in -words to a pale-coloured country the incredible splendours of the south. -The critics always call it ‘orchid and cockatoo writing,’ and sulkily -declare, whenever they do have a fairly nice colourful day, that they -are sure the tropics have nothing finer, whereas, if they only knew, it -is but an echo of an echo of the real thing, and—” but words failed even -Peripatetica. - -On the breezy height, dominating all the deep-toned landscape, stood the -Abbey church of Monreale—truly a royal mount, crowned by one of the -finest shrines in Europe. The famous bronze doors of the main entrance -had been oxidised by time and weather with a patine of greens and blues -that lent subtle values to the bold delicate modelling of the metal, -framed in a toothed doorway of warm, cream-tinted stone, whose magic -harmony of colour was a fitting preliminary to the lofty glories of the -interior. An unbelievable interior! faced throughout its three hundred -and thirty-three feet of length with millions upon millions of tiny -stones, gold and red and blue—stones of every colour. For all the -interior they found, up to the very roof, was of this dim, glowing, -gold-mosaic set with pictures of the Christian faith—the creation of -Adam and Eve, the temptation by the Serpent, the casting out from Eden, -the wrestling of Jacob, the whole Bible history, culminating above the -altar in a gigantic Christ. More than 700,000 square feet of pictures -made of bits of stone; and around and about pulpit, ambo, and altar, -across steps and pavement, and enclosing every window and door, lovely -mosaic patterns and devices, no two alike.... - -Brown-faced old peasants pushed aside the leathern curtain at the -entrance and knelt, crossing themselves, in the shadow of enormous -pillars, as their forebears had knelt and crossed themselves there for a -thousand years. A mass droned from a side altar. Groups of young -priests-in-the-making sauntered gossipping in whispers, or coming and -going on ecclesiastic errands. Knots of tourists stared and wandered -about the great spaces, and from behind the high altar rose boys’ voices -at choir practice, echoing thin and pure from the painted roof. - -Of all the Norman print upon Sicily nothing gave like this great church -a sense of the potency of Tancred de Hauteville and his mighty brood. -For no defacing hand has been laid upon this monument to their piety and -power. It stands as they wrought, tremendous, glorious; commemorating -the winning of the kingship of the Land of the Gods. A story as strange -as any of the myths of the mythic world. And perhaps thousands of years -hence the historians will relegate the Norman story, too, to the -catalogue of the incredible—to the list of the sun-myths; and Tancred -will be thought of as a principle of life and fecundity—his twelve -strong sons be held to be merely signs of months and seasons. - -Of the great Benedictine Abbey founded by William in connection with the -Cathedral almost nothing remains unaltered except the delicious -cloistered court with its fountain, and its two hundred and sixteen -delicate, paired columns, no two alike, and with endless variations of -freakish capitals. - -All this freshness and richness of invention resulted from the mingling -of the Saracen with the Norman, all this early work being wrought by -Moslem hands under Norman direction, since King Roger and King William -were no bigots, and, giving respect and security to their Saracen -subjects, could command in return their skilled service and fine taste. -So that this bold, springing, early Norman architecture, Gothic in -outward form, is adorned by the chaste, delicate minuteness of the grave -Arab ornament. - -... It is Palm Sunday, and Jane and Peripatetica are at a -reception—otherwise a Sicilian high mass. They have come, still on the -trail of their beloved Normans, who have almost ousted the Greeks in -their affections, to the Cappella Palatina in the Royal Palace. The -chapel is less than a third as large as Monreale but is even more -golden, more dimly splendid, more richly beautiful than the Abbey -Church. It is crowded to the doors. Everywhere candles wink and drip in -the blue clouds of incense. The voices of boys soar in a poignant -treble, and the organ tones of men answer antiphonally. The priests -mutter and drone, and occasionally take snuff. Mass goes on at a dozen -side altars, oblivious of the more stately ceremonies conducted in the -chancel. The congregation comes and goes. A family with all the -children, including baby and _nounou_, enter and pray and later go out. -Aristocrats and their servants kneel side by side. The crowd thickens -and melts again, and companions separate to choose different altars and -different masses, according to taste. All are familiar, friendly, at -ease. The divine powers are holding a reception, and worshippers, having -paid their respects, feel free to leave when they like. Long palm -branches are carried to the altar from time to time by arriving -visitors, each branch more splendid than the last. Palms braided and -knotted, fluttering with ribbons, tied with rosettes of scarlet and -blue, wrought with elaborate intricacies—hundreds of branches, which are -solemnly sanctified, asperged, censed, with many genuflections. Priests -in gold, in white, in scarlet, accompanied by candles, swinging censors -and chanting, take up the palms and make a circuit of all the altars -among the kneeling worshippers, and finally distribute the branches to -their owners who bear their treasures away proudly. - -With them go Jane and Peripatetica, joining a group, who, having paid -their respects to heaven, are now ambitious to inspect the state -chambers in the palace of their earthly sovereign. These prove to be the -usual dull, uninviting apartments—flaring with gilt, and with the satins -of _criard_ colours which modern royalty always affect. There are the -usual waxed floors, the usual uncomfortable _fauteuils_ ranged stiffly -against walls hung with inferior pictures, that are so tediously -characteristic of palaces, and it is with relief and delight that Jane -and Peripatetica find sandwiched amid these vulgar rooms two small -chambers that by some miracle have escaped the ravages of the -upholsterer. Two chambers, left intact from Norman days, that are like -jewel caskets. Walls panelled with long smooth slabs of marble, grown -straw-coloured with age, the delicate graining of the stone being -matched like the graining of fine wood; panels set about with rich -mosaics of fantastic birds and imaginary beasts framed in graceful -arabesques. These are the Stanza Ruggiero; the rooms occupied by King -Roger, the furnishings, such scant bits as there are, being also of his -time. - -“In Roger’s day,” commented Jane, “kings were not content with housings -and plenishings of the ‘Early Pullman, or Late Hamburg-American School’; -they knew how to be kingly in their surroundings.” - -“It’s a curious fact,” agreed Peripatetica, “that there isn’t a modern -palace in Europe that a self-respecting American millionaire wouldn’t -blush to live in. No one ever hears of great artists being called upon -to design or beautify a modern royal residence. Bad taste in furnishing -seems universal among latter-day kings, who appear to form their ideas -of domestic decoration from second-rate German hotels. Fancy any one -seeing the high purity and beauty of Roger’s chambers and then ordering -such ruthless splashings of gilt and cotton satin! Why, even ‘the best -families’ of Podunk or Kalamazoo would gibe at the contrast, and as for -the Wheat and Pork Kings of Denver or Chicago—they would have the whole -place made _époque_ in a week, if they had to corner the lard market, or -form a breakfast-food trust to be able to afford it!” - - * * * * * - -“God made the day to be followed by the night. The moon and stars are at -His command. Has He not created all things? Is He not Lord of all? -Blessed be the Everlasting God!” - -Jane was reading aloud from her guide-book. - -They had been to Cefalu, looking for Count Roger in the great Cathedral -built by his son, but found that he had vanished long ago, and his -sarcophagus was in Naples. They had found instead traces of Sikel, -Greek, and Roman; had lingered long before the splendid church, so noble -even in decay, and now they were back again in Palermo, still on the -track of their Normans. What Jane read from her book was also inscribed -over the portal of Palermo’s Cathedral before which they stood, but -being carved in Cufic script, and Jane’s Cufic being—to put it -politely—not fluent enough to be idiomatic, she preferred to use the -guide-book’s translation rather than deal with the original. - -[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT PALERMO—“THE LAST RESTING PLACE OF QUEEN -CONSTANCE”] They had been skirting about the Duomo for days, for it -dominated all Palermo with its bigness. Seated in a wide Piazza that was -dotted about with mussy-looking marble saints and bishops, and a great -statue of Santa Rosalia, the city’s patron, the Cathedral was flanked by -the huge Archepiscopal Palace, by enormous convents and public -buildings, so that one couldn’t hope to ignore or escape it. Yet they -had deferred the Duomo from day to day because they knew their pet -abomination, the Eighteenth Century, had been there before them, and -that they would find it but an extremely mitigated joy in consequence. - -They knew that the swamp full of pxapyrus plants of Haukal’s time had -given way to the “Friday Mosque” which the two Rogers and William the -Bad had left undisturbed, but which had been pulled down by William the -Good—being somewhat ruinous, and also seeing that William was “the Good” -in the eyes of his ecclesiastic historians because he reversed the old -Norman liberality to his Moslem subjects. Then Walter of the Mill, an -Englishman, built the Cathedral, making it glorious within and without, -and time and additions only made it more lovely until the modern -tinkering began. A foolish, unsuitable dome was thrust among its -delicate towers, and the whole interior ravaged and vulgarised. - -Still, if one were hunting Normans, the Cathedral must be seen, and most -of all they wished to find the last resting-place of Constance, around -whose memory hung a drama and a mystery, and drama and mystery were as -the very breath of their nostrils to Jane and Peripatetica. - -The interior was impressive for size despite all the scrolled and -writhed and gilded mud pies with which Ferdinand Fuga, the Neapolitan, -had plastered it by way of decoration, and here and there still lingered -things worth seeing. Such as the delicious bas reliefs of Gagini, -Sicily’s greatest native sculptor; his statues of the Apostles and the -fine old choir stalls, only making clearer by their ancient beauty how -much that was beautiful had been swept away. Also there was the splendid -silver sarcophagus of Santa Rosalia, weighing more than a thousand -pounds, and other such matters, but the real attraction of the Cathedral -was the great porphyry tombs of the Kings—huge coffers of ensanguined -stone, as massive and tremendous as the mummy cases of the Pharaohs. -Here lay Roger the King in the sternest and plainest of them, under a -fretted Gothic canopy. In one more ornate, his daughter Constance, and -near at hand her husband Henry VI. of Germany, and their son, the -Emperor Frederick the Second. - -Jane and Peripatetica longed that Constance, like Hamlet’s Father might - - “ope those ponderous and marble jaws” - -and come forth to tell them the real story of her strange life. For she -too had been one of those hapless feminine pawns used so recklessly in -the game of kingdoms played by the men about her; yet a whisper still -lingered that this pawn had not been always passive, but had reached out -her white hand and lifted the king from the board, and thus altered the -whole course of the game! - -Constance, King Roger’s daughter, had early made her choice for peace -and safety by retiring into the veiled seclusion of the convent. But -even the coif of the religieuse was no sure guard if the woman who wore -it was an heiress, or of royal blood, and, the German alliance being -needed after her father’s death, she was plucked forth by her brother, -and in spite of her vows wedded to Henry of Hohenstaufen, son of -Frederick Barbarossa, a man of such nature she must have hated him from -the first. She bore him one son, and when her brother and her -nephew—William the Bad and William the Good—were both dead without -heirs, Henry Hohenstaufen immediately laid claim to the Sicilian crown -in the name of his son. The Sicilians, however, had no mind to be ruled -by the Germans, and chose instead Tancred, son of the House of de -Hauteville, though with a bar sinister upon his shield. Tancred—a good -and able sovereign—fought off Henry for five years, but then he too was -dead, and only his widow and infant son stood between Henry, now Emperor -of Germany, and the much-lusted-after throne of Sicily. Against the wish -of Constance, who would have gladly abjured her rights, the German -invaded the island and after incredible cruelties and ravagings reduced -the widow and baby King to such straits that they negotiated an -honourable surrender. But no sooner were they in Henry’s hands than the -child was murdered, and there ensued a reign of abominable oppressions -and furious revolts, stamped out each time with blood and fire, and -followed by still bitterer injustice and plunderings. When matters had -reached a stage of desperation Henry died suddenly while besieging a -rebellious town. - -Now in the Middle Ages no charge was so frequently and lightly made as -that of poisoning. Nearly all sudden deaths not wrought by cold steel -were attributed to some secret malfeasance by drugs. The fear of it -fairly obsessed the mediæval mind, and gave rise to legends of poisoned -gloves and rings, deadly smelling-balls and pounce boxes, and fatal -chalices. A whole series of myths grew around it. Modern bacteriological -discoveries, and a knowledge of ptomaines, incline the modern mind to -believe that many a poor wretch brutally done to death for the crime of -poisoning really died an innocent martyr to medical ignorance. Yet -Henry’s taking off was so welcome and so opportune, and that Constance -had struggled to protect her fellow countrymen and kinspeople from his -cruelties was so well known, it began to be breathed about that she was -a second Judith who had reached out in agony to protect her people, even -though the blow fell upon the father of her child. At all events, -whatever the truth may have been, she, when she buried Henry with -imperial pomp, cut off her magnificent hair and laid it in his tomb. -Then, sending away the Germans, she ruled “in peace with great honour” -until the son she had trained to mercy and virtue was ready to take her -place. - -Now they all lie here together under their pompous canopies, and -whatever may be the real dramas of those fierce and turbulent lives, the -great porphyry sarcophagi combine to turn a face of cynical and haughty -silence to the importunate questioning of peeping tourists. - -In 1781 the tombs were opened by the Spanish King Ferdinand I., who -found Constance’s son Frederick robed and crowned, with sword and orb -beside his pillow, and almost lifelike in preservation. Henry too was -almost unchanged by the six hundred years that had passed in such change -and turmoil beyond the walls of his silent tomb, and he lay wrapped from -head to heel in yellow silk with the heavy blond tresses of his wife -laid upon his breast, still golden despite the lapse of long centuries, -but “nulle ne peut dire si c’est le dernier sacrifice d’une femme -dévouée, ou l’homage ironique d’une reine contrainte à choisir entre -deux devoirs; placée entre son époux et son peuple, entre sa famille et -sa patrie.” - - * * * * * - -Gaspero was a gift—a priceless parting gift from the Northman, who had -gone farther south to the Punic shores from whence had come the first -settlers of the Palermian Coast. And to console Jane and Peripatetica -for the loss of his charming boyish gaiety he had made over to them that -treasure. For Gaspero not only drove the smartest and most comfortable -of all the victorias on hire to the public, but he was an artist in the -matter of sight-seeing. A true gastronome, mingling flavours with -delicate wisdom; keeping delicious surprises up his sleeve lest one’s -spirit might pall, and mingling tombs and sunshine, crypts and “molto -bella vistas,” history and the colourful daily life of the people, with -a masterhand. And all so fused in the warm atmosphere of his own -sympathetic and indulgent spirit that “touristing” became a feast of the -soul unknown to those not guided by his discreet and skilful judgment. -He knew where one might purchase honey which bees had brewed from orange -flowers into a sublimated perfume; and he introduced them to certain -patisseries at Cafleisch’s that gave afternoon tea a new meaning. - -It was Gaspero who took them to the lofty shrine of Santa Rosalia on -Monte Pellegrino; that grotto where lived the royal maiden hermit, and -where lie her bones within the tomb on which Gregorio Tedeschi has made -an image of her in marble with a golden robe, glowing dimly in the light -of a hundred lamps. On that rosy height, dominating the beautiful -landscape, Gaspero told them the story of the niece of William the Good, -whose asceticism and devotion set so deep a seal of reverence upon the -people of Palermo that they enshrined her as the city’s patron saint, -and still celebrate her memory every year with a great festival. All the -population climb the hill in July to say a prayer in her windy eyrie, -and the enormous car bearing her image is dragged through the city’s -streets, so towering in its gilded glories that one of the city gates -has been unroofed to permit of its entrance. At that time the Marina—the -wide sea-front street—instead of being merely a solemn Corso for the -staid afternoon drive of the upper classes, becomes the scene of a sort -of Pagan Saturnalia. The Galoppo takes place then—races of unmounted -free horses—delicious races, Gaspero says, in which there can be no -jockeying, and in which the generous-blooded animals strive madly to -distance each other from sheer love of the sport and the rivalry. A gay -people’s revel, this, of flying hoofs and tossing manes; of dancing -feet; of cries and songs; mandolins, pipes, and guitars fluting and -twittering. The water-sellers with their glittering carts and delicate -bubble-like bottles crying _acqua fredda_, offering golden orange juice, -and the beloved pink anisette. The Polichinello booths, the open-air -puppet shows, the toy-sellers with their tall poles hung with sparkling -trifles, the tables spread with dainties of rosy sugar, with melting -pastries, with straw-covered flasks of wine. All perspiring, talking, -laughing, guzzling, gormandising in honour of the anæmic, ascetic girl -who passed long, lonely, silent days and nights in passionate ecstasies -and visions in those high, voiceless solitudes. Gaspero made it all very -vivid, with hands, lips, eyes. He was possessed with the drama and -strange irony of it. - - * * * * * - -“Have the Signorine ever seen a Sicilian puppet show?” Gaspero demanded, -à propos of nothing in particular, turning from a brown study on the box -to inquire. - -He plainly intended that this should be a memorable day. - -No; the Signorine had not seen a puppet show. If they properly should -see one then they would see one. It was for Gaspero to judge. Very well, -then. He would come for them at half past eight that evening—at least, -he added with proud modesty, if the Signorine would not object to his -wearing his best clothes. His festa garments, and not the uniform of his -calling. - -Object! On the contrary, they would be flattered. Gaspero settled back -to his duties with the triumphant expression of the artist who by sudden -inspiration has added the crowning touch to his picture. He composed the -days for them on his mental palette, and this one he plainly considered -one of his masterpieces. - -Yesterday had been a failure. Jane and Peripatetica had waked full of -plans, but before the breakfast trays had departed they were aware of a -heavy sense of languor and ennui which made the pleasantest plans a -prospect of weariness and disgust. - -“If you sit around in a dressing-gown all day we’ll never get anything -done,” suggested Peripatetica crossly, as Jane lounged in unsympathetic -silence at the window. - -“Considering that you’ve been half an hour dawdling over your hair and -have got it up crooked at last, I wouldn’t talk about others,” snapped -Jane over her shoulder without changing her attitude. - -A strained silence ensued. Peripatetica slammed down a hand mirror and -spilled a whole paper of hairpins, which she contemplated stonily, with -no movement to recover them. - -A hot wind whirled up a spiral of dust in the street. - -“My arms are so tired I can’t make a coiffure,” wailed Peripatetica. - -Jane merely laid her head on the window sill and rolled a feeble, -melancholy eye at the disregarded hairpins. - -The wind sent up another curtain of hot dust. - -“I don’t know what’s the matter,” complained Jane, “but I don’t feel as -if I wanted to see another sight—ever—as long as I live.” - -“Perhaps this is the sirocco one hears of,” piped Peripatetica weakly. -“The guide-book says ‘the effect of it is to occasion a difficulty in -breathing, and a lassitude which unfits one for work, especially of a -mental nature.’” - -By this time there could be no doubt of the sirocco. A hot, dry tempest -raged, whipping the rattling palms, driving clouds of dust before it, so -that Jane could only dimly discern an occasional scurrying cab, or an -overtaken pedestrian pursuing an invisible hat through the roaring fog -of flying sand. The day had turned to a brown and tempestuous dusk, and -the voice of a hoarse Saharan wind shouted around the corners. - -But that was yesterday. To-day was golden and gracious. Rain in the -night had cooled and effaced all memory of the sirocco, and Gaspero was -outdoing himself in astonishing and piquant contrasts. - -He drove them to the Cappucini Convent by the devious route of the -Street of the Washerwomen. This roundabout way of reaching the Convent -was one of Gaspero’s artful devices. - -Down each side of the broad tree-shadowed way, bordered on either hand -by the little stone-built cubicles washed pink or white or blue, in -which lived the multitudinous laundresses, ran a clear rushing brook. -These brooks flowed through a sort of shallow tunnel with a wide orifice -before each dwelling, and in every one of these openings was standing a -bare-legged blanchisseuse, dealing strenuously with Palermian linen, -with skirts tucked up above sturdy knees that were pink and fresh from -the rush of the bright water. Vigorous girls trotted back and forth with -large baskets heaped with wet garments, and bent, but still energetic, -granddams spread the garments to dry. Hung them from the tree branches, -swung them from the low eaves of the little dwellings, threaded them on -lines that laced and crossed like spiderwebs, so that the whole vista -was a flutter of fabrics—rose and white and green—dancing in the breeze. -A human and homely scene, with play of brown arms and bright eyes amid -the flying linen and laces; with sounds of rippling leaves, of calls and -laughter, and the gurgling of quick water—drudgery that was half a -frolic in the cheerful sunshine. - -Now behold Gaspero’s sense of dramatic contrast! - -A plain, frigid façade, guarded by a bearded and rather grubby monk in a -brown robe. The eye does not linger upon the grubby monk, being led away -instantly by the vista through the arched doorway behind him of a -cloistered court; a court solemn with the dark spires of towering -cypresses, and brilliant with roses—roses wine-coloured, golden, pink. -Behind this screen of flowers and trees lies the bit of ground -possessing the peculiar property of quickly desiccating and mummifying -the human bodies buried in it. Many hundreds have been laid in this -earth for awhile, and then removed to the convent crypts to make room -for others. It is to these crypts another monk leads the way. A -saturnine person this, handing his charges over to another, still more -gloomy, who sits at the foot of the stairs and watches at the crypt’s -entrance. A perfectly comprehensible depression, his, when one reflects -that all the sunshiny hours of these golden Sicilian days he sits at the -shadowed door of a great tomb, mounting guard over surely the most -grisly charge the mind can conceive; over Death’s bitterest jest at -Life. - -The walls of the high, clean corridors are lined with glass cases like a -library, but instead of printed books the shelves are crammed with -ghastly phantoms of humanity, all grinning in horrible, silent amusement -as at a mordant, unutterable joke. - -Jane and Peripatetica gasp and clutch one another’s hand at the grey -disorder of this soundless merriment—breathless, fixed, perpetual. - -Here and there a monk, crowded for lack of space from the shelves, hangs -from a hook in limp, dishevelled leanness, his head drooped mockingly -sidewise, his shrunken lips twisted in a dusty fatuous leer, a lid -drooped over a withered eye in a hideous wink. Others huddle in -fantastic postures within their contracted receptacles, as if convulsed -by some obscenely wicked jest which forces them to throw back their -heads, to fling out their hands, to writhe their limbs into unseemly -attitudes of amusement. One lies flat, with rigid patience in every line -of the meagre body, a rictus of speechless agony pinching back the -mouldy cheeks. - -Coffins are heaped about the floor everywhere. Through the glass tops -the occupants grin in weary scorn from amid the brown and crumbling -flowers that have dried around their faces. - -The ghastliest section of this ghastly place is that where the women -crouch in their cases, clad in the fripperies of old fashions. Earrings -swing from dusty ears; necklaces clasp lean grey throats; faded hair is -tortured into elaborate coiffures; laces, silks, and ribbons swathe the -tragic ruins of beauty. And these women, too, all simper horribly, -voicelessly, remembering perhaps how dear these faded gauds once were -before they passed beyond thought of “tires and crisping pins.” - -“Why do they do it?” demanded Peripatetica in whispered disgust. “What -strange passion for publicity prompts them thus to flout and outrage the -decent privacies of death”—for they noted that each case bore a name and -the date of decease, and that some of these dates were but of a few -years back. “Didn’t they _know_, from having seen others, how they -themselves would look in their turn? Why would any woman be willing to -come here in laces and jewels to be a disgusting nightmare of femininity -for other women to stare at?” - -“Vanity of vanities—all is vanity!” murmured Jane. “Now they all lie -here laughing at the strange vanity that brought them to this place—at -the vanity that will bring others in their turn to this incredible -hypogeum.” - -Then they turned a corner and came suddenly upon the little horribly -smiling babies, and instantly fled in simultaneous nausea and -disgust—flinging themselves at Gaspero, who with a tenderly sympathetic -manner suggested an expedition to La Favorita as a corrective of -gruesome impressions. Carrying them swiftly to it by way of the long -double boulevards of the newer Palermo, between the smiling villas of -creamy stone that were wreathed with yellow banksias and purple -wisteria, their feet set among gay beds of blossoms and facing the -cheerful street life of the town. - -“How odd these Sicilians are!” reflected Jane, as they drove. “An -incomprehensible mixture to an Anglo-Saxon. For example one finds almost -universal open-hearted gentleness and courtesy, and yet the Mafia holds -the whole land in a grip of iron—a dangerous, murderous, secret society -as widespread as the population, yet never betrayed, and uncontrollable -by any power, even so popular and so democratic a one as the present -government.” - -“Yes; their attitude to life is as puzzling as the face they turn toward -death,” agreed Peripatetica, remembering that almost every other -building in Taormina and many in Palermo wore nailed to the door a broad -strip of mourning—often old and tattered—on which was printed “Per mio -Frate,” or “Per mia Madre”—that even a newspaper kiosk had worn -weeds—“Per mio Padre.” - -At that very moment there passed a cheerful hearse, all glass and -gilding, wreathed with fresh flowers into a gay dancing nosegay, and -hung with fluttering mauve streamers which announced in golden letters -that the white coffin within enclosed all that was mortal of some one’s -beloved sister Giuseppina. It might have been a catafalque of some -Spirit of Spring, so many, so sweet, so daintily gracious were the -blooming boughs that accompanied Giuseppina to her last -resting-place.... And yet they had but just come from the grim horrors -of that crypt of the Cappuccini!... - -La Favorita, curiously, is one of the few monuments of beauty or charm -left by that long reign of the Spanish monarchs of Sicily, which, with -some mutations, lasted for about six hundred years. They loaded the land -with a weight of many churches and convents, yet what one goes to see is -what was done by the Greeks, the Moslems, and the Normans. La Favorita -is not old, as one counts age in that immemorial land of the High Gods. -A slight century or so of age it has, being built for the villegiatura -of Ferdinando IV. at the period when the Eighteenth Century affected a -taste in Chinoiseries, bought blue hawthorn jars, ate from old Pekin -plates, set up lacquered cabinets, and built Pagoda-esque pleasure -houses. The Château is but a flimsy and rather vulgar example of the -taste of the day, but the Eighteenth Century often planted delicious -gardens, and the pleached allées, the ilex avenues, the fountains and -plaisances of La Favorita, make an adorable park for modern Palermo, -having by time and the years grown into a majestic richness of -triumphant verdure. - -But Gaspero is not content with La Favorita. He has things even better -in store for Jane and Peripatetica—explaining that by giving the most -minute gratuity to the guardian of the park’s nether portal they may be -allowed to slip through into a private path that leads to the sea. They -do give the gratuity, and do slip through, winding along a rough country -road leading under the beetling red cliffs of Pellegrino; by way of -olive orchards, mistily grey as smoke, through which burn the rosy -spring fires of the Judas-trees, whose drifting pink clouds are so much -more beautiful than the over-praised almond blossoms. They skirt flowery -meadows all broad washes of gold and mauve, past a landscape as fair as -a dream of Paradise, and Gaspero draws up at last upon a beach of -shining silver upon which a sea of heaving sapphire lips softly and -without speech. A sea that strews those argent sands with shells like -rose petals, like flakes of gold, like little, curled, green leaves. And -dismounting they rest there in the sunset, forgetting “dusty death,” and -glad to be alive; glad of Gaspero’s tender indulgent joy in their -pleasure as he gathers for them the strewn sea-flowers, tells them -little Sicilian stories of the people, and makes them entirely forget -they haven’t had their tea. - -It was in returning from this place of peace that he had that crowning -inspiration about the puppet show, which is why in the darkness of that -very evening they are threading a black and greasy alleyway which smells -of garlic and raw fish. But they go cheerfully and confidently in the -dimly seen wake of Gaspero’s festa richness of attire. - -An oil torch flares and reeks before a calico curtain. This curtain, -brushed aside, shows a pigeon-hole room, nine feet high, very narrow, -and not long. On either wall hangs a frail balcony, into one of which -the three wriggle carefully and deposit themselves on a board hardly a -palm’s breadth wide. From the vantage point of these choice and -expensive seats—for which they have magnificently squandered six cents -apiece—they are enabled to look down about four inches on the heads of -the commonality standing closely packed into the narrow alley leading to -the stage. A strictly masculine commonality, for Gaspero explains in a -whisper that the gentler sex of Palermo are not expected to frequent -puppet shows, lest their delicate sensibilities may suffer shock from -the broad behaviour of the wooden dolls. Of course, he hurries to add, -handsomely, all things are permitted to forestieri, whose bold -fantasticalities are taken for granted. - -The groundlings appear to be such folk as fishpeddlers, longshoremen, -ragpickers—what you will—who smoke persistent tiny cigarettes, and -refresh themselves frequently with orange juice, or anisette and water. -These have plunged to the extent of two cents for their evening’s -amusement, and have an air of really not considering expense. The -gallery folk are of a higher class. On Peripatetica’s right hand sits -one who has the air of an unsuccessful author or artist; immediately -upon the entrance of the forestieri he carefully assumes an attitude of -sarcastic detachment, as of one who lends himself to the pleasures of -the people merely in search of material. Opposite is an unmistakable -valet who also, after a quick glance at the newcomers, buttons his -waistcoat and takes on an appearance of indulgent condescension to the -situation. - -A gay drop curtain, the size of a dinner napkin, rolls up after a -preliminary twitter from concealed mandolins. The little scene is set in -a wood. From the left enters a splendid miniature figure glittering in -armour, crowned, plumed, and robed, stepping with a high melodramatic -stride. It is King Charlemagne, the inevitable _deus ex machina_ of -every Sicilian puppet play. Taking the centre of the stage and the -spotlight, he strikes his tin-clad bosom a resounding blow with his good -right wooden hand, and bursts into passionate recitative. - -“The cursèd Moslem dogs have seized his subjects upon the high seas, and -cast them into cruellest slavery. Baptised Christians bend their backs -above the galley oars of Saracen pirate ships, and worse—oh, worst of -all!”—both hands here play an enraged tattoo upon his resounding -bosom-pan—“they have seized noble Christian maidens and haled them to -their infernal harems. - -“S’death! shall such things be? No! by his halidome, _no_! Rinaldo shall -wipe this stain from his ‘scutcheon. What ho—without there!” - -Enter hastily from right Orlando. - -“His Majesty called?” - -“Called? well rather! Go find me that good Knight Rinaldo, the great -Paladin, and get the very swiftest of moves on, or something will happen -which is likely to be distinctly unpleasant.” - -Orlando vanishes, and in a twinkling appears Rinaldo, more shining, more -resplendent, more befeathered even than the King; with an appalling -stride (varied by a robin-like hop), calculated to daunt the boldest -worm of a Moslem. - -He awaits his sovereign’s commands with ligneous dignity, but as the -King pours out the tale his legs rattle with strained attention, and -when the Christian maids come into the story his falchion flashes -uncontrollably from its sheath. - -“_Will_ he go? Will a bird fly? Will a fish swim?” - -Charlemagne retires, leaving Rinaldo to plan the campaign with Orlando. - -Enter now another person in armour, but wearing half an inch more of -length of blue petticoat, and with luxuriant locks streaming from -beneath the plumed helmet. ’Tis Bramante, the warrior maiden, who in -shrill soprano declines to be left out of any chivalric ruction. Three -six-inch swords flash in the candlelight; three vows to conquer or die -bring down the dinner napkin to tumultuous applause. - -The pit has been absorbed to the point of letting its cigarettes go out, -and the author and the valet hastily resume their forgotten -condescension. - -Every one cracks and eats melon seeds until the second act reveals the -court of a Saracen palace. - -The thumps of the three adventurers’ striding feet bring out hasty -swarms of black slaves, who fall like grain before the Christian swords. -Better metal than this must meet a Paladin! - -Turbaned warriors fling themselves into the fray, and the clash of steel -on steel rings through the palace. Orlando is down, Rinaldo and Bramante -fight side by side, though Rinaldo staggers with wounds. The crescented -turbans one by one roll in the dust, and as the two panting conquerors -lean exhausted upon their bloody swords—enter the Soldan himself! - -Now Turk meets Paladin, and comes the tug of war. - -Bramante squeaks like a mouse; hops like a sparrow. - -_Ding, dong!_ Rinaldo is beaten to his knee and the Soldan shortens his -blade for a final thrust, but—Bramante rushes in, and with one terrific -sweep of her sword shears his head so clean from his shoulders that it -rolls to the footlights and puts out one of the candles. - -_Ha! ha!_ He trusted in his false god, Mahound! - -Bramante hops violently. - -Enter suddenly, rescued Christian Maid. Also in armour; also possessing -piercing falsetto. - -Saved! saved! She falls clattering upon Rinaldo’s breast, and Bramante, -after an instant’s hesitation, falls there on top of her, with -peculiarly vicious intensity. - -More dinner napkin. More frenzied applause. Gaspero draws a long breath. -His eyes are full of tears of feeling. - -Scene in the wood again. Charlemagne has thanked Rinaldo. Has thanked -Bramante. Has blessed the Christian Maid, and has retired exhausted to -his afternoon nap! - -Christian Maid insists upon expressing _her_ gratitude to the Paladin -with her arms round his neck. - -Bramante drags her off by her back hair, a dialogue ensuing which bears -striking likeness to the interview of cats on a back fence. - -Christian Maid opines that Bramante is _no lady_, and swords are out -instantly. - -_One, two, three!—clash, slash, bang!_ - -Rinaldo hops passionately and futilely around the two contestants. - -Ladies! Ladies! he protests in agony, but blood is beginning to flow, -when, suddenly, a clap of thunder—a glitter of lightning! - -The cover of an ancient tomb in the wood rolls away, and from the black -pit rises a grisly skeleton. Six legs clatter and rattle like pie-pans; -swords fall. It is the ghost of Rinaldo’s father. Christian Maid is -really Rinaldo’s sister, he explains, carried off by Saracens in her -childhood. - -Skeleton pulls down the cover of the tomb and retires to innocuous -desuetude. - -Opportune entry of Orlando miraculously cured of his wounds. Rinaldo has -an inspiration, and bestows upon Orlando the hand of the Christian Maid. - -All the tins of the kitchen tumble at once—everybody has fallen on every -one else’s mail-clad bosom!... - -Dear Gaspero! It has been a _wonderful_ day. - - * * * * * - -A slow, fine rain falls. Vapours roll among the vapoury hills. - -It is just the day for the museum, and such a museum! Not one of those -cold and formal mausoleums built by the modern world for the beauties of -the dead past, but a fine old monastery of the Philippines with two -cloistered cortile; with a long, closed gallery for the hanging of the -pictures; with big refectories, ambulatories, and chapels for housing -the sculpture, and with its little cells crammed with gold and silver -work, with enamels, with embroideries, with jewels. A gracious casket -for the treasures of old time. - -The rain is dripping softly into the open cloister, where the wet -garlands of wisteria and heavy-clustered gold of the banksias are -distilling their mingled fragrance in the damp air. The rain makes sweet -tinklings in the old fountains and in the sculptured wellheads gathered -in the court; on the cloister walls are grouped bas-reliefs—tinted -Madonnas by Gagini; Greek fragments, stone vases standing on the floor, -twisted columns, broken but lovely torsos. - -Indeed, it is not like a museum at all. No ticketed rigidity, no -historical sequence—just treasures set about where the setting will best -accord with and display their beauties. There is not even a catalogue to -be had, which gives a delightful sense of freedom at first, but this has -its drawbacks when Jane and Peripatetica come to the tomb of Aprilis in -a side chamber, and wish to know something more of this sad little maid -sculptured into the marble of the tomb’s sunken lid—wrapped in a -straitly folded wimple, with slim crossed feet, and small head turned -half aside; smiling innocently in the sleep which has lasted so long. -Aprilis, whose April had never blossomed into May, and whose epitaph has -for five hundred years called Sicily to witness the grief of those who -lost her: - - “Sicilia, Hic Jacet Aprilis. Miseranda Puella - Unicce Quælugens Occultipa Diem 18 Otobre - XIII 1495.” - -Of course, the guide-books ignore her. Trust the guide-books to preserve -a stony silence about anything of real human interest!... - -Another court; a great basin where papyrus grows, where bananas wave -silken banners amid the delicate plumes of tall bamboo, where are more -purple wreaths of wistaria and snow-drifts of roses, and where the -treasures are mostly Greek. Very notable among these a marble tripod -draped with the supple folds of a python; the lax power of the great -snake subtly contrasted with, and emphasized by, the rigid lines of the -seat of the soothsayer. More notable still, in the Sala del Fauna, is an -archaic statue of Athene from Selinunto—like some splendid sharded -insect in her helmet and lion skin—rescued from that vast wreck of a -city. They had travelled from Palermo a few days before to see that -city, drawn by Crawford’s fine passages of description, and there they, -too, had wondered at the astonishing remains of those astonishing -Greeks. - -... “There is nothing in Europe like the ruins of Selinunto. Side by -side, not one stone upon another, as they fell at the earthquake shock, -the remains of four temples lie in the dust within the city, and still -more gigantic fragments of three others lie without the ruined walls. At -first sight the confusion looks so terrific that the whole seems as if -it might have fallen from the sky, from a destruction of the home of the -gods—as if Zeus might have hurled a city at mankind, to fall upon Sicily -in a wild wreck of senseless stone. Blocks that are Cyclopean lie like -jackstraws one upon another; sections of columns twenty-eight feet round -are tossed together upon the ground like leaves from a basket, and -fragments of cornice fifteen feet long lie across them, or stand half -upright, or lean against the enormous steps. No words can explain to the -mind the involuntary shock which the senses feel at first sight of it -all. One touches the stones in wonder, comparing one’s small human -stature with their mass, and the intellect strains hopelessly to recall -their original position; one climbs in and out among them, sometimes -mounting, sometimes descending, as one might pick one’s way through an -enormous quarry, scarcely understanding that the blocks one touches have -all been hewn into shape by human hands, and that the hills from which -men brought them are but an outline in the distance.”... - -All that quiet falling day Jane and Peripatetica wandered in the -transformed monastery, staring at the great metopes; lingering among the -Saracenic carvings and jewelled windows, poring over Phœnician seals; -over the amazing ecclesiastic needlework, the gold monstrances, the -carved gems, and last and best of all some delicious reliefs at sight of -which they forgave at once and forever their old enemy, the Eighteenth -Century, for all its disgusting crimes against beauty. They sought madly -through the books for some mention of these tall, adorable nymphs in -adorably impossible attitudes, these curled and winged and dimpled -babies, fluttering like fat little wrens sweetly ignorant of the laws of -gravitation; but as always on any subject of interest Baedeker and the -rest frigidly refused to tell the name of the man out of whose head and -hands had grown these enchanting figures. - -“Oh, dear Unknown!” cries Jane regretfully, “why is your noble name -buried in silence! I wish to make a pilgrimage to your tomb, to cover it -with Sicilian roses, and breathe a prayer for the repose of your sweet -and gracious soul.” - -“Me too!” echoes Peripatetica, in tender scorn of the stodgy rules of -English grammar. - - * * * * * - -The Paschal season is near. - -Always, in all lands of all faiths, the coming of Spring, the yearly -resurrection of life and nature, has been welcomed with gladness. The -occultation of Osiris, of Baldur, of Persephone, of the Christ, is -mourned; their coming again hailed with flowers and feasting. - -Palermo is filling with visitors; with a glory of flowers and verdure in -which the loveliest city in the world grows daily lovelier. The Conca -d’Oro—the Shell of Gold—swims in a golden sea of sunshine. - -On the Wednesday before Easter the whole population exchanges cakes. -Cakes apotheosized by surprising splendours of icing; icing, gilded, -silvered, snowily sculptured into Loves and angels and figures of -national heroes. Icing wrought into elaborate garlands tinted rose, -purple, and green; built into towers and ornate architectural devices. -Structures of confectionery three feet high are borne on big platters -between two men. Every child carries gay little cakes to be presented to -grandparents and godparents, to cousins and playmates. - -All Maundy Thursday the population moves from church to church. Masses -moan incessant in every chapel. Before the Virgins on every -street-shrine, draped in black, candles blaze and drip. Priests and -monks hurry to and fro, bent upon preparations for the great spectacle -of the morrow. - -Friday morning early all Palermo is in the streets in its best attire. -Small children dressed as little cardinals, as nuns, as priests, -bishops, angels with gilded wings, as Virgins, as John the Baptist, are -on their way to the churches from which the processions are to flow. -Monks and friars gather from outlying country convents. - -At ten o’clock a throbbing dirge begins. The first of the processions is -under way. A band plays a funeral march, and is followed by acolytes -swinging censers. Pious elderly citizens, perspiring in frock coats, -carry tall, flaming candles that drop wax upon their clothes. A few -priests, in black and purple, follow, bearing holy vessels. Behind these -a row of men in mediæval armour and carrying halberds, surround a heavy, -hand-borne bier hung with black velvet, on which rests a glass and gilt -case containing an image of the Crucified—a life-sized image, brown with -age. Presumably it has been taken from some ancient and revered Spanish -crucifix, for it is crowned with thorns, is emaciated, is writhed with -pain, painted with the dark, faded red of streaming wounds—one of those -agonised figures conceived by the pious realism of the older Spanish -sculptors. - -Immediately follows another hand-borne litter upon which is standing a -tall Virgin clothed in black hood and mantle—a pallid, narrow-faced -Virgin—also Spanish and realistic. The delicate clasped hands hold a -lace handkerchief, her breast is hung with votive silver hearts. The -features are distorted with grief, the lids, reddened with tears, are -drooped over sunken, deep-shadowed eyes, and her countenance seamed and -withered—a poignant figure of unutterable maternal woe! Burning candles -alternate with mounds of roses about the edge of the platform on which -she stands. - -As the dead Son and the mourning Mother pass, hats come off and heads -are bowed, signs of the cross are made. A few of the older peasant women -fall to their knees upon the sidewalk and mutter an Agnus Dei, a Hail -Mary, with streaming tears. A priest walks last of all, rattling a -contribution box at the end of a long stick, looking anxiously at the -balconies and windows from which the well-to-do spectators lean. For his -is but a poor church; the velvet palls and cloaks are cotton, and frayed -and faded, the bier and platform old, and so massive that the stalwart -bearers must set them down often to wipe away the sweat, which is why it -takes advantage of the unpre-empted morning hours and is early in the -field. - -Later in the day, in Gaspero’s cab and under his guidance, Jane and -Peripatetica take up a coign of vantage in a square debouching upon the -Corso Vittorio Emanuele, along which the Jesuits are to parade at four -o’clock. Here the crowd is solidly packed, the balconies and windows -crowded with the aristocracy of Palermo. The Guarda Mobili in their -splendid uniforms keep open the way for the marching fraternities and -sodalities with their crucifixes and Virgin-embroidered banners, open a -lane for the monks, for the crowds of tiny angels and cardinals who must -patter for hours in the slow-moving procession. Priests and acolytes -swarm; censers steam, hundreds of candles of all weights and heights -flare and flame, and then slowly, slowly, to the wailing music, moves -forward a splendid catafalque of crystal in which lies stretched upon a -bed of white velvet, richly wrought with gold, a fair youth. A youth -with white, naked limbs, relaxed and pure; not soiled by the grimy, -bloody agonies of martyrdom, but poetised to a picture of Love too early -dead—a charming image. And the beautiful tall Virgin is not the simple -Mother of the Carpenter convulsed with despair. She is a stately, -sorrowful Queen, crowned, hung with jewels, robed in superb royal weeds; -proudly refusing to show the full depth of her bereavement, as she -follows her dead Son amid the wax torches shining palely in the sunshine -through the white and green of the sheaves of lilies that grow about her -knees. - -The emotional effect upon the crowd is intense; one can hear like an -undertone the sound of indrawn, gulping breath. Gaspero passes his -sleeve across the tears in his dark eyes. - -This version of the tragedy is lifted above the realism of pain into a -penetrating and lovely symbolism that swells the heart with poignant and -tender emotions as the divine funeral train winds slowly away, with -perfume, with lights, and with the slow sobbing of the muffled drums. - -So had Sicilians two thousand years ago crowded every spring to see a -similar spectacle of a weeping Queen of Love following an image of a -lovely dead youth.... - -“Ah! and himself—Adonis—how beautiful to behold he lies on his silver -couch, with the first down on his cheeks, the thrice beloved -Adonis—Adonis beloved even among the dead.... O Queen, O Aphrodite, that -playest with gold, lo, from the stream eternal of Acheron they have -brought back to thee Adonis—even in the twelfth month they have brought -him, the dainty-footed Hours.... Before him lie all that the tall -tree-branches bear, and the delicate gardens, arrayed in baskets of -silver; and the golden vessels are full of the incense of Syria. And all -the dainty cakes that women fashion in the kneading-tray, mingling -blossoms manifold with the white wheaten flour, all that is wrought of -honey sweet, and in soft olive-oil, all cakes fashioned in semblance of -things that fly, and of things that creep, lo, here they are set before -him. - -“Here are built for him shadowy bowers of green, all laden with tender -anise, and children flit overhead—the little Loves—as the young -nightingales perched upon the trees fly forth and try their wings from -bough to bough.... - -“But lo, in the morning we will all of us gather with the dew, and carry -him forth among the waves that break upon the beach, and with locks -unloosed, and ungirt raiment falling to the ankles, and bosoms bare we -will begin our shrill sweet song. - -“Thou only, dear Adonis, so men tell, thou only of the demigods, dost -visit both this world and the stream of Acheron.... Dear has thine -advent been, Adonis, and dear shall it be when thou comest again.” - - * * * * * - -Gaspero never permitted Jane and Peripatetica to lose anything. Doubling -through narrow, black streets where lofty buildings nearly met above -their heads and where they snatched hurried, delighted glimpses of -intricate old grilles, of arched and wheeled windows, of splendid -hatchments and fine carved portals—he brought them out at admirable view -points for all the many similar parades in widely separated parts of the -city. - -As the purple dusk came down they found themselves in the Marina, -watching the last of the processions moving slowly down the broad avenue -to the sea-street. The crowd had thinned. The small angels and John the -Baptists went wearily upon dusty little feet, their crowns of now wilted -roses canted at dissipated angles over their flushed and tearful faces, -the heavy, half-burned wax torches wabbling dangerously near the -draggled veils and drooping gilt wings. - -The bearers of the images paused often to set down their heavy burdens. -The balconies began to blossom with tinted lights. Here and there the -Virgin with her twinkling candles was turned toward a balcony filled -with some specially faithful children of the church, and stood facing -them a moment, tall, ghostly, tragical, in the gathering darkness, -before passing onward in her long pilgrimage of mourning that was to end -within the church doors as night came down. - -“It is enough, Gaspero,” they cried, as the flickering train passed away -down the water avenue into the blue blackness of the shadowy evening, -and then they went homewards full of that strange mingled sense of -languor and refreshment—that “cleansing of the soul with pity and -terror” which is the gift of the heroic tragedies.... - -Every hour of that night the bells rang and masses sang throughout the -city. All day Saturday the churches swarmed, and the purple veils, hung -before the altar pictures throughout Lent, were rent from top to bottom -to the sound of the wailing De Profundis. Sunday the religious world -seemed to exhale itself in music and flowers and triumphant masses. -Easter Monday morning the populace hurried through the necessary -domestic duties at the earliest possible moment, for the Pasqua Flora is -the day of villegiatura for all Palermo. Every one wears new clothes. -Even the humble asinelli are, for once in the year at least, brushed and -combed, and decorated with fresh red tassels if the master is too poor -to afford more elaboration of the always elaborate harness. Those asses -who have the luck to be the property of rich contadini appear -resplendent in new caparison; with towering brass collars heavy with -scarlet chenille, flashing with mirrors and inlays of mother-of-pearl, -glittering from head to tail with brass buckles, with bells and red tags -innumerable, drawing new carts carved and painted with all the myths and -legends and history of Sicily in crude chromatic vivacity. - -Whole families stream countrywards in these carts to-day; babies clean -and starched for once, grandmothers in purple kerchiefs tied under the -chin and yellow kerchiefs crossed upon the breast, with gold hoops in -their ears; daughters in flowered cottons, their uncovered heads wrought -with fearful and wonderful pompadours, sleek and jet black. - -Along the seashore, up the sides of Pellegrino, in all the open country -about Palermo, they spread and sun themselves, eat, sleep, make love, -gossip, dance, and sing in the golden air. - -Gaspero drives slowly through the wide-spread picnic, pausing wherever a -characteristic group attracts. - -Here lies a whole family asleep; gorged with endless coils of macaroni, -saturated with sun—a mere heap of crude-coloured clothes, of brown -open-mouthed faces, of lax limbs that to-morrow must be gathered up -again for a hand-to-hand struggle for bread for another twelve-month. - -Under this tree a long table is spread with loaves, with meats, with -iced cakes, and straw-covered flasks. A rich confrère of Gaspero -celebrates the betrothal of his only daughter, a plump and solid -heiress, who beneath an inky and mighty pompadour simpers at the broad -jokes of her pursey, elderly fiancé. A solid fiancé, financially and -physically. Altogether a solid match, says Gaspero. A dashing guest -thrums his guitar and sings throatily of the joys of love and of money -in the stocking. - -Here a group of very old men watch about a boiling pot hung above a -little fire, and twitter reminiscences of youth, catching one last pale -gleam of the fast sinking sun of their meagre, toilsome lives. - -Everywhere music and laughter and the smell of flowers and food and -wine. - -A big piano-organ is playing a rouladed waltz to a ring of young -spectators, crowding to watch the elaborate steps of dancers swinging -about singly with grace-steps, with high prancings, with tarantella -flourishes. Male dancers, all. Gaspero explains that no respectable girl -would be allowed to join them, the Sicilian girl’s diversions being -distressingly limited. - -One of the boyish dancers, with the keen, bold face and square head of a -mediæval Condottiere, flourishes his light cane in fencing passes as he -swings, which challenge inspires a spectator to leap into the ring with -his own cane drawn. The newcomer, an obvious dandy in pointed -patent-leather shoes, blue-ribboned hat, and light suit of cheap -smartness, crosses canes dashingly with the would-be fencer, and the -rest of the dancers drop back to see the fun. - -The Condottiere finds in a few passes that he has met his master and -craftily begins a waiting game. Lithe and quick as a cat, he circles and -gives way, his opponent driving him round and round the ring, lunging -daringly and playing to the gallery. He flourishes unnecessarily, -pursues recklessly, assumes a contemptuous carelessness of the boy, -always circling, always on guard, always coolly thrifty of breath and -strength. - -The dandy grows tired and angry, rushes furiously to make an end of his -nimble evasive antagonist, who at last turns with cold courage and by a -twist of his weapon sends the dandy’s cane flying clean over the ring of -spectators, who scream with delight. But the Condottiere is a generous -as well as a wily foe. He offers an embrace. The dandy reluctantly -allows himself to be kissed on both cheeks, but the victor catches him -about the waist and waltzes him around madly amid the laughter and -bravas of the crowd. - - * * * * * - -It is Jane’s and Peripatetica’s last day in Sicily. Gaspero has taken -them to Santa Maria di Gesu, the Minorite Monastery, but has paused by -the way for a look at San Giovanni degli Eremiti, whose little red domes -float clear against the burning azure sky like coral-tinted bubbles, so -airily do they rise from the green of the high hill-garden with its tiny -cloisters of miniature columns and miniscule grey arches heavy with -yellow roses. And yet from this rosy, arch little fane rang the Sicilian -Vespers which gave the signal for one of the bloodiest butcheries in -history. It was Pasqua Flora, and all Palermo, as it did yesterday, was -feasting and dancing out of doors. One of the French soldiers—then in -occupation, upholding the hated House of Anjou—insulted a Sicilian girl -and was stabbed. Just then the Vesper bells rang from San Giovanni degli -Eremiti, and at the signal the conspiracy, long festering, broke into -open flame, and Palermo rose and massacred the French till the streets -ran with blood. - -The Gesu Monastery has no such sanguinary associations. The plain little -building, high on the hillside, stands buried among enormous cypresses -and clouds of roses, and surrounded by the massive marble tombs and -mortuary chapels of Palermo’s nobility and Sicily’s magnates. It is a -place of great peace and silence. A place of unutterable beauty of -outlook upon gorges feathered with pines, upon stern violet mountains -melting into more distant heights of amethyst, into outlines of -hyacinth, into silhouettes of mauve, into high ghostly shadows that -vanish into floods of aerial blue. A place which looks on sea and shore -and city, and where the chemistry of sun and air transmutes the -multitudinous tones of the landscape to an incredible witchery of tint, -to living hues like those of the colours of jewels, of flowers, of the -little burning feathers of the butterflies’ wings. - -“Doubtless God might have made a more beautiful view than this from the -Gesu, but doubtless God never did,” sighed Jane. - -But still Gaspero is not satisfied. He can never rest content with -anything less than perfection. Yes; he admits the Gesu is admirable, but -he knows a still more “molto bella vista.” - -“There is nothing better than the best,” says Jane sententiously. “I am -drenched and satiated with all the loveliness that I can bear. Any other -‘vista’ would be an anticlimax.” - -“Dear Jane,” remonstrated Peripatetica, “haven’t you yet guessed that -Gaspero is a wizard? I suspected it the very first day. Of course, you -can see that he’s no ordinary guide and cab-driver, and, as a matter of -fact, I don’t believe there _are_ any such sights as the ones we think -he has showed us. You’ve been on Broadway? Well, can you lay your hand -on your heart, and honestly affirm that when you are there again you -won’t at once realize that there never were such beauties as these we’ve -been seeing? Won’t you know then that this is all a glamour—a hypnotic -suggestion of Gaspero’s mind upon ours?” - -“Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped Jane. “What is all this rhodomontade -leading to?” - -“To a desire to follow the wizard,” answered Peripatetica recklessly. -“Whither Gaspero goeth I go! I am fully prepared to wallow in glamours, -and besides we’ve luncheon in our basket, so don’t be tiresome, Jane. -Let’s abandon the commonplace and ‘follow the Gleam.’” - -“Very well,” laughed Jane, climbing into the carriage. “Gaspero and -‘gleam’ if you like.” - -Whether the molto bella vista ever existed remains still a subject of -dispute. Peripatetica insists that it was only a pretext for leading -them to a place where Gaspero intended they should lunch, but Jane, who -always kicks against the philosophic pricks of the determinists, -contends that she exercised a certain measure of free will in the -matter. However that may be, they wound among mountain roads, by caves -Gaspero said were once the dwellings of giants, by little outlying -villages where old women span and wove in the doorways and young women -made lace; where copper-workers sat in the street and with musical clang -of little hammers beat out glittering vessels of rosy metal. They -scattered flocks of goats from their path, the shaggy white bucks -leaping nimbly upon the wall and staring at them with curious ironic, -satyr-like glances; and far, very far up, they came upon a mountain -meadow mistily shadowed by enormous gnarled olive trees—a meadow -knee-deep in flowers. A meadow that was a sea of flowers, orange, golden -and lemon, rippling and dimpling in the light and shade, breathed upon -by the faint flying airs of those high spaces: - - “In Arcady, in Arcady! - Where all the leaves are merry—” - -cried Peripatetica joyously. - -“Of course it’s Arcady,” said Jane, with conviction. “And we have come -upon it in the Age—or perhaps the moment—of Gold. Gaspero,” she -announced firmly, “we will lunch right here.” - -“But Signorina—the Vista!” protested the Wizard with a quizzical smile. - -It was really (Peripatetica is convinced) Gaspero’s subtle understanding -of Jane’s character which led him to offer just sufficient opposition to -fix her determination to stay at the very spot where he could best work -his magic, for a flowing world of shadowy purple swam about them in a -thousand suave folds down to a shining sea, and he could not have showed -them any vista more beautiful. But why attempt to shake Jane’s pleased -conviction it was really owing to her that for a few hours she and -Peripatetica could truly say, “I too have lived in Arcadia.” That it was -owing to her they cheerfully fed there, and lay cradled for long warm -hours in that perfumed flood of flowers in happy thoughtless silence, -wrapped in a fold of the Earth Mother’s—the great Demeter’s—mantle; a -fold embroidered by the fine fingers of her daughter Persephone, the -Opener of Flowers. - - * * * * * - -That night, when the full moon rose over the silky sea, far down the -horizon behind them slowly faded into the distance the ghostly silver -peaks of the enchanted Land of the Older Gods. - - - - - THE END - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - --------------------------------------------------------- - - THE COMPLETE WORKS - - OF - - WILLIAM J. LOCKE - - “LIFE IS A GLORIOUS THING.”—_W. J. Locke_ - - “If you wish to be lifted out of the petty cares of to-day, read one - of Locke’s novels. You may select any from the following titles and - be certain of meeting some new and delightful friends. His - characters are worth knowing.”—_Baltimore Sun._ - - The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne - At the Gate of Samaria - A Study in Shadows - Where Love Is - Derelicts - The Demagogue and Lady Phayre - The Beloved Vagabond - The White Dove - The Usurper - Septimus - Idols - - _12mo._ _Cloth._ _$1.50 each._ - - Eleven volumes bound in green cloth. Uniform edition in box. $16.50 - per set. Half morocco $45.00 net. Express prepaid. - -=The Belovéd Vagabond= - - “‘The Belovéd Vagabond’ is a gently-written, fascinating tale. Make - his acquaintance some dreary, rain-soaked evening and find the - vagabond nerve-thrilling in your own heart.” —_Chicago - Record-Herald._ - -=Septimus= - - “Septimus is the joy of the year.”—_American Magazine._ - -=The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne= - - “A literary event of the first importance.”—_Boston Herald._ - - “One of those rare and much-to-be-desired stories which keep one - divided between an interested impatience to get on, and an - irresistible temptation to linger for full enjoyment by the - way.”—_Life._ - -=Where Love Is= - - “A capital story told with skill.”—_New York Evening Sun._ - - “One of those unusual novels of which the end is as good as the - beginning.”—_New York Globe._ - -=The Usurper= - - “Contains the hall-mark of genius itself. The plot is masterly in - conception, the descriptions are all vivid flashes from a brilliant - pen. It is impossible to read and not marvel at the skilled - workmanship and the constant dramatic intensity of the incident, - situations and climax.”—_The Boston Herald._ - -=Derelicts= - - “Mr. Locke tells his story in a very true, a very moving, and a very - noble book. If any one can read the last chapter with dry eyes we - shall be surprised. ‘Derelicts’ is an impressive, an important book. - Yvonne is a creation that any artist might be proud of.”—_The Daily - Chronicle._ - -=Idols= - - “One of the very few distinguished novels of this present book - season.”—_The Daily Mail._ - - “A brilliantly written and eminently readable book.” —_The London - Daily Telegraph._ - -=A Study in Shadows= - - “Mr. Locke has achieved a distinct success in this novel. He has - struck many emotional chords, and struck them all with a firm, sure - hand. In the relations between Katherine and Raine he had a delicate - problem to handle, and he has handled it delicately.” —_The Daily - Chronicle._ - -=The White Dove= - - “It is an interesting story. The characters are strongly conceived - and vividly presented, and the dramatic moments are powerfully - realized.”—_The Morning Post._ - -=The Demagogue and Lady Phayre= - - “Think of Locke’s clever books. Then think of a book as different - from any of these as one can well imagine—that will be Mr. Locke’s - new book.”—_New York World._ - -=At the Gate of Samaria= - - “William J. Locke’s novels are nothing if not unusual. They are - marked by a quaint originality. The habitual novel reader inevitably - is grateful for a refreshing sense of escaping the commonplace path - of conclusion.”—_Chicago Record-Herald._ - - --------------------------------------------------------- - - POEMS WORTH HAVING - -=Stephen Phillips= - - NEW POEMS, including IOLE: A Tragedy in One Act; LAUNCELOT AND - GUINEVERE, ENDYMION, and many other hitherto unpublished poems. - - _Cloth, 12mo_ _$1.25 net_ _Half morocco, $4.00 net_ _Postage 10 - cents_ - - “I have read the ‘New Poems’ of Stephen Phillips with the greatest - interest. In my judgment it is the best volume that he has ever - published.”—Wm. Lyon Phelps of Yale University. - - _Uniform Sets._ 4 volumes, including NEW POEMS, POEMS, PAOLO AND - FRANCESCA, HEROD. - - _Cloth, $5.00 net_ _Half morocco, $15.00 net_ _Express 50 cents_ - -=Laurence Hope= - - =COMPLETE WORKS.= Uniform Edition 3 volumes, 12mo. 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