Chapter XVI: Messina (ave Atque Vale!) 466 (9)

“It is true, but they are mostly ladies. Touching those Germans, before 1870 they traveled very little; now they come in crowds. The Kaiser sets the fashion; he comes every spring to Syracuse, often to Girgenti. What a lot of German architects and men of science were here this time last year! They study, they measure, they make drawings, they return, they measure again--oh, intelligent! One cannot deny it, if not so sympathetic as others--Americani for example.”

The Temple of Zeus is a vast ruin; hardly one stone remains standing on another. The mighty pillars lie where they sank; their bases are still in place, the drums that composed them have fallen asunder; you can trace the relation of part to part as they lie forlorn and disjointed on the earth. A sandstone giant, that once upheld the roof, lies on the ground; he reminds us of the Colossus at Thebes, even more of the carved wood colossi that held up the great organ of the old Boston Music Hall. The Temple of Heracles, near the Temple of Zeus, is no better preserved; these vast ruins arouse a feeling of sadness and confusion. To what end were they erected, with such incredible labor, if they were to be so utterly destroyed? It was futile, discouraging, hopeless!

“There, there!” said Patsy, “that’s the reason I brought you here first. Now come and see the great glory!”

“Notice one thing more,” said the _custode_, pointing to a bit of cornice that lay protected from the weather by a large fragment. “You see this white coating like fine stucco? The six temples of Girgenti were all built of sandstone, yet they must look like marble. Oh! the ancients knew some things we have forgotten! White marble was brought from Greece, ground to a powder, mixed with mastic and spread over the sandstone; the temples of Girgenti shone white as the Parthenon itself.”

“I should like to think so,” sighed Patsy; “now they tell us the marble surface was painted over with blue, red and green decorations.”

“It was a protection as well,” said the _custode_. “See, the stone is friable; if it had not been for so many centuries covered with this stucco, it would have been worn away by the sirocco.”

We walked through olive and almond groves to the Temple of Juno, standing lonely and grand on the edge of a precipice. Lavender morning-glories, blue iris, yellow daisies, grow about the broad steps. After the desolate ruins we had seen, this looked, in comparison, almost a complete building. We climbed the stair to the roof; against the gray-green of the olives, the emerald of the almond trees, the flower-gemmed grass, the rich amber color of the colonnade glowed dull in the sunlight.

“It’s more like Pæstum than anything else,” said Patsy, “only I do not find the roses of Pæstum that bloom twice in the year. Will a bit of myrtle do as well?”

The Temple of Concord, even better preserved than the Juno, is the most admired. The site of the Juno is more picturesque; the staircase to the roof gives an extraordinary sense of nearness to the time when this was a living place of worship, not a dead ruin.

At the Cathedral of Girgenti instead of being made much of, we were made to feel that we were in the way--they were preparing for the services of Passion Week--no time for _forestieri_, a resolute monk gave us to understand;--we managed to steal a look at a lovely marble sarcophagus, with scenes from the tragic story of Hippolytus carved in high relief. We went to the Museum, a neglected dreamy place with a few real treasures: an archaic marble statue of Apollo, very lovely, with the fixed Æginetan smile; a gold belt, three thousand years old, with a buckle exactly like one I wore.

“The Signori are Americans?” A handsome old man, poring over a big book, looked up at us, as he asked the question of the attendant. The man whispered something in his ear; then the old gentleman closed the book and came to greet us with his faraway smile.

“That grand and majestic country, America, is not egotistical,” he explained when he had welcomed us to Girgenti. “What vibrant sympathy it has shown our country! We are egotists, it is the curse of our people; but I revere America most, for the wondrous new science that has come from there.” He beckoned us to look at his big book; an Italian translation of a vulgar work on spiritualism, illustrated with cheap spirit photographs.

“The last thing I should have expected to find in Agrigentum!” sighed Patsy.

“You have some knowledge of spiritismo?” said the stranger.

“Oh yes, we know all about it!” Patsy assured him.

“Last night I paced up and down the room for twenty minutes with the great Sesostris--it was his wish to talk with me, the medium, a wonderful woman, ascertained.”

“How did Sesostris look?”

“Majestical! He was dressed all in white; though not so tall as I, he has a noble bearing.”

“What did he say?”

Little that was new, it appeared, though the old gentleman repeated the conversation, as well as those of Plato and Socrates, with whom he often talked. While he rambled on, the attendant, a fat perspiring man, was visibly embarrassed--he too wished to talk about America. As we took our leave he found his chance.

“Behold, this came from San Francisco,” he pointed to a hideous porcelain medallion, with a photograph of a man and a woman, hanging from his buttonhole, “a portrait of my son and his wife, _non c’è male_?”

“The Signori will return?” said the old man, hovering between us and his big book. “They will let me be of some service to them?”

We would gladly have returned, our new friend is one of the most learned archeologists in Sicily; but, alas, he would only speak of materializations and controls--his book was full of the gross impostures we used to hear about years ago, before the high-grade mediums of these later days and their dupes came to the fore.

“Think of the things he could have told us!” groaned Patsy. “What a wasted opportunity!”

Not far from the Museum we passed a flaring placard with the words:

“At the Theatre of Empedocles will be presented the Cinematograph of Edison.” Here in ancient Syracuse, the ends of the earth are brought together--Empedocles and Edison; what a combination!

My last impression of Girgenti is of our visit to a little church--the name is forgotten--and of Patsy’s chatter about what we saw there.

“This,” he said, as we walked along a dusty road of “splendor-loving Acragas,” “is the Temple to Demeter and Persephone, though you wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you.”

The little church shows few traces of the ancient temple. Its chief treasure is a famous crucifix, that hangs against the wall, surrounded by votive offerings, wax models of hands, feet, breasts and stomachs (very like those of terra-cotta I saw at the Temple of Juno in Veii), the most gross things of the kind I have seen in a Christian church.

“A lady who had paralysis of the hands,” said the cripple who served as cicerone, “promised the Lord, if he would cure her, to pay him this compliment. Eccelenza, she had faith--_aimé_ if we all had her faith--she was cured. My grandmother herself saw this thing. Those two wax arms she hung up in gratitude, they cost a horror; she gave the _prete_ ten francs as well for the poor. It is a miraculous crucifix, _davvero_, but to deserve the miracle one must have faith!”

From an olive grove came the sound of a shepherd’s flute; the thin sweet music of the _pastorale_ was the only sound that broke the noontide quiet as we sat outside the old temple of Demeter and Persephone, dreaming!

“It all happened here,” said Patsy. “It was through these very fields Persephone wandered picking violets when Pluton, king of Hades, sprang from a dark cave and carried her off to his kingdom underground. Then came the mother Demeter, in her hands the sceptre, corn, and the mystic basket, searching for her lost daughter; she lighted Etna for a torch to show the way; she looked high and low, she asked all she met for news of her child. Kyane, Persephone’s playmate, alone had met Pluton carrying off the maid, and because she begged him to set free her friend, Kyane was turned into a beautiful spring (that very spring where the _custode’s_ son went for papyrus). The voice of Demeter was heard calling Persephone, Persephone, through these very fields and meadows. In vain! Persephone, even if she heard her mother’s voice in the dark kingdom of the dead, could not return; she had eaten the seed of the pomegranate, she was the wife of Pluton. There was a great to-do; Olympus was shaken to its foundations. Demeter refused to attend the counsel of the gods, she laid a spell upon the land so that it bore no fruit, no wheat, and was threatened by famine. In the end however the matter was arranged, the family became reconciled. Zeus gave Sicily to Persephone, as a wedding gift; the daughter now spends half the year in her mother’s house, and half in her husband’s.”

So he repeated the lovely old fable-allegory of the seed hidden in the earth half the year, and half the year alive again. How it echoes in the thunder of the burial service!

“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”

Paul had been at Eleusis; he knew the mysteries, had perhaps seen the ancient marble bas-relief in the temple there of Demeter laying in the hand of Triptolemus the precious grains of corn!

XIII

PALERMO

“Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput.”

As we approached Palermo the pulse of life quickened; at every station carloads of merchandise awaited transportation, golden oranges, paler gold citrons, sacks of almonds, casks of wine, vast quantities of sumach.

At Castel Termini, near the great sulphur mines, stood long freight trains laden with huge fragments of beautiful yellow sulphur.

“Remember that day the smoke lifted and we got a good look into the crater of Vesuvius?” said Patsy. “You were very much taken up with the pale yellow velvet lining of the crater, and wanted to rip it out for an opera cloak. That brimstone is exactly the same color; I suppose it’s the same stuff.”

At Acquaviva there were more freight trains loaded with blocks of sparkling rock salt.

“Salt must be cheaper here than in Rome,” said Patsy. “When I asked your Agnese for a handful to put in the electric battery, she was horrified at my extravagance.”

“Agnese buys it by the pound at the tobacconist’s; it costs like gold dust.”

Here a fat gentleman reared up from his nest of newspapers in the corner. “Salt is free in Sicily,” he said; “we do not tax it as they do in Italy. For a few _soldi_ you can buy a _kilo_ of the best, the most fine. What you see is mineral salt, virgin salt, and comes from a cave in the top of the mountain; there is none to compare with it!”

“There is no salt tax in Sicily,” said a small neat man who looked an _avvocato_. “It would be useless; each one would then make his own. You need only take water from the sea, put it in a pan, set it in the sun--_via_! the water evaporates, and leaves salt as good as this!”

“Not so good!” roared the fat man, “miserable, inferior salt!” The veins in his neck swelled with anger.

“Isn’t all salt pretty much alike?” Patsy put in soothingly.

“_Per Bacco_, no! It is all different. The salt from the sea, who knows what nastiness gets into it? This salt, pure and fresh from the bowels of the earth, has soda and other valuable minerals mixed with it; there is no comparison, _me spiego_?” (Do I explain myself?) “Here, go thou, Teodoro; bring a little bit of salt that these signori may know I speak the truth!”

Teodoro, a handsome bearded young man in high brown shooting boots, had just entered the carriage; we had noticed him walking up and down the platform with a pair of pointers in leash.

“_Va bene._” Teodoro nodded good-naturedly to the fat man, evidently his father, left the car, and walked leisurely across the tracks to the freight train, followed by a porter. He touched a cake of shining crystalline salt too big for one man to carry.

“_Pronto!_” cried the guard, lifting his horn.

“Wait,” roared the angry man, thrusting his head from the window. “_Che animale!_ don’t you see my son?”

“Break it, _corpo di Bacco_! break it,” laughed Teodoro. The porter pushed the glittering block of salt from the truck. It crashed on the pavement broken in two. Teodoro picked up the larger piece, dusted the splinters from his coat, then without a sign of haste stepped on board.

“They must be great chiefs,” murmured Patsy, as the guard tootled his horn, and the train crawled out of the station.

“A thousand thanks,” I said to Teodoro, as he put the salt in the net over our heads.

“It’s too bad to give so much trouble.”

“Nothing--a pleasure!” Teodoro had the nicest laugh, the whitest teeth. He and Patsy made friends on the spot. They sat chatting gaily by the further window while the angry father wrangled with the little _avvocato_, who exasperated him more and more every time he spoke. They were in the midst of a hot dispute when the angry man broke off to point out a trolley that runs from the top of the mountain to the station where the salt is loaded on the trains.

“_Guardi_, Signora, there is the place where this pure, this exquisite salt is excavated from the entrails of the earth. _Me spiego?_”

We had just reached a white river. Its banks were lined with nespole, palms, fig trees, gray asphodels, bushes of green carob. From the top of the mountain one cobweb line of black crossed another; two iron baskets passed each other on the aerial railway, one ascending empty, the other descending laden with shining salt.

“What a pleasure to see life, movement, activity after the desolation of Calabria and Messina!” Patsy exclaimed.

“_Davvero!_ This should be a rich country; our people are hard working, frugal. We need only a little foreign capital to restore La Sicilia to her ancient greatness. Crispi[1] saw that--if we only had a few such men today!”

“I have heard Crispi speak in the Camera--what an orator! Once at Baron Blanc’s I talked with him,” I murmured.

“As to capital,” said Patsy, “are your taxes favorable to foreign investors? I met a man last winter from New York representing a syndicate; he had five millions to invest in Sardinian mines. He looked into it, found the taxes prohibitive, and left Italy without spending a cent. All that good money is now invested in the Argentine.”

“Taxes! We do not tax lemons as you do in the United States; on the contrary in the summer, when they are necessary to the health of the people, they are sold in our great cities by the Government at less than cost!”

“Has us there!” said Patsy. “People in New York are paying forty cents a dozen for lemons while millions of them rot on the trees of Sicily because--on account of our damnable tariff--it’s not worth while to gather them!”

We were passing a small forlorn station without stopping.

“Behold!” The angry man pointed to a lemon grove that bordered the track. “What a beautiful picture!”

The trees were bowed down with the weight of lemons; the ground beneath was yellow with the precious fruit that would lie there till it had turned black with decay.

“We have to thank America for that,” said the angry man.

“Say something to that rude person,” I whispered to Patsy.

“There’s nothing to say; he has us on the hip.”

“What does it mean?”

“How can you expect a waif of the universe, just back from the Argentine, to know the ins and outs? It’s some beastly log rolling. The lemon-growers in Florida, California,--how do I know what States have swapped votes with some of the big fellows,--you protect me, I’ll protect you!”

“Politics, all politics,” roared the father of Teodoro. “_Una porcheria_, mud, mud! I know; my son here has just been defeated at the election by an animal! This one gave each voter five francs. ‘Elect me,’ he said; ‘when I am elected, come back; I will give you five francs more.’ This piggery all comes to us from America. The Signori can tell us. Is there not bribery and rioting at your elections?”

“As to bribery,” said Patsy, “I suppose that has existed since the beginning of time. Rioting? The elections go off quietly enough in our town.”

“Quietly, _per Dio_! Last night I was at the Café Greco when Z., who writes the articles signed Piff Paff, was there. Tale came in and said to him: ‘So it is you who please yourself in writing lies about me?’ This one took a chair, that one a bench--pim poom! Mirrors were smashed, bottles broken, a farce--piggery--_me spiego_?”

“The elections should have been put off,” said the small _avvocato_. “We in Sicily have enough at this moment without that business; but no, the politicians care more about keeping their men in than about their distracted country, desolated, ruined by the most consummate disaster the world has seen!”

Grudgingly Teodoro’s father agreed; he would have preferred to disagree. A man of intelligence, feeling, sentiment, not a man of power.

He had a low forehead, dark, angry eyes, a swart color that showed Saracen descent. All his good qualities--I am sure there were many--were nullified by his volcanic temper, that without rhyme or reason burst forth, devastating the hour as an eruption of Etna blasts the lovely vineyards and olive groves, and turns them into burnt lands that produce nothing.

In the silence that followed, Teodoro’s gay lilting voice was heard imparting advice to Patsy.

“For Palermitan dishes? Go to the Ristorante Trinacria, order _pasta con sarde_, _baccalà à ghiotto_, _melone d’inverno_, _zibibbi_, a _fiasco_ of Vino di Zucco--Ah, behold us arrived at Termini--here is made the best _pasta_ (macaroni) in Sicilia.”

At Trabia the little _avvocato_ hopped briskly off the train and returned carefully carrying his bandana handkerchief filled with eggs.

“They cost a horror at Palermo; my wife always asks me this favor,” he explained, as he stowed away three dozen eggs in his lawyer’s bag.

After Trabia our fellow travelers fell asleep worn out by much conversation, and we were left to enjoy the marvelous scenery as we approached the Conca d’Oro, the Golden Shell in whose midst stands Palermo, the old Panormus--all-haven--of the Greeks. The road runs between the mountains on the right and the sea on the left,--a narrow strip of land ’twixt yellow sands and gray-green hills. Now and then we caught a glimpse of some valley of paradise, with locust and Judas trees among the groves of oranges and lemons with their “golden lamps in a green night.” We passed many Saracen water-wheels with irrigating trenches running through fertile fields. Between the exquisite airy blue hills that jut out into the sea and the emerald valleys, the way crossed many _torrenti_, dry stony water-courses descending from the mountains to the shore. These _torrenti_ (the first we saw was the Torrente Zaera at Messina) are characteristic of Sicily. For a short time in early summer, when the snows on Etna and the Madonia mountains are melting, there is water in them, but for the greater part of the year they are empty ravines. J. saw them used in turn for roads--he even went through one in an automobile--for stone quarries, for gravel and sand pits, and for the washing and drying of clothes.

Sicily, the granary of the Romans, still bears three simultaneous crops in the neighborhood of Palermo. We saw olive groves planted with grape vines and wheat,--all three seeming to thrive. The suicidal destruction of the forests has had the same terrific effect upon Sicily that we saw in Spain, that we see today in the United States. After the arid, poorly cultivated regions we had passed through, it was comforting to rest our eyes on the lovely verdure, that, thanks to the Arabs, still surrounds Palermo. The innumerable wells, pumping machines, norias, the astonishing richness of the soil, reminded us at every step of Granada, the lost paradise of the Moor. Here, in the Conca d’Oro, as in Granada, the labor of those truly great agriculturalists, the Arabs, still beautifies and enriches the land they loved.

Looking down upon the Golden Shell from a height, the plain seems literally paved with the gold of oranges, lemons, mandarins and citrons. It is one immense continuous fruit grove of the orange tribe, intermixed with Japanese medlars, mulberries, almonds, figs and olives. The Conca d’Oro takes its name not only from its extraordinary fertility, but from its shape. Behind Palermo the airy mountains draw together, the plain narrows almost to a vanishing point; as it approaches the sea it widens out into what is variously called a shell or a cornucopia.

Palermo is alive! When still far off we had felt its life pulse throbbing stronger and stronger; when we were in its midst, we knew this was the heart of Sicily. We arrived at the Hotel des Palmes in good time for dinner. The fine dining-room was filled with gaily dressed Palermitans. After the loneliness of Syracuse and Girgenti it was pleasant to find ourselves again among people full of the business life. Even at the Timeo in Taormina, we had been in the shadow of the disaster; all the Sicilians there were in deepest mourning; the few foreigners were all connected in one way or another with the earthquake.

At the next table to ours sat General Mazza, his wife and their charming young son. There was much jesting, and we heard the words _Pesce d’Aprile_ continually. Across the room at another table sat a pair of beauties in blue and rose color, the center of attraction. Young Mazza was called away in the middle of dinner by a message that a lady must speak to him at the telephone. Looking very important, the boy left the room. Then the word was passed (all the guests seemed to know each other well) that this was a _Pesce d’Aprile_. The young fellow returned to find the pretty girls scoffing, the elders on a broad grin. He blushed furiously as he sat down at the table again, where the General, his father, very gorgeous in a handsome uniform, and his vivacious mother received him with jeers. He made an amusing gesture to his tormentors, hammering one thumbnail upon the other.

“Hello, it’s the first of April; _Pesce d’Aprile_ is their name for April fool!” said Patsy.

How good it was to hear their merry laughter, to see these young people brimming over with the joy of life!

After dinner we sat in the long corridor and, while the Palermitans read their papers, flirted, drank coffee, and smoked cigarettes, Patsy and I, like two traveling merchants, took account of our stock of knowledge.

“What do we know about Palermo?”

First of all we know its agony. A city, like a man, is remembered longest for what it has suffered. Sicily has had three great agonies; they loom large through the mists of history as the three promontories of Trinacria loom out through the sea mists to the sailor feeling his way around the island.

First: The Athenian defeat at Syracuse.

Second: The Sicilian Vespers at Palermo.

Third: The great earthquake at Messina.

The Sicilian Vespers is the name given to that terrible uprising of the Sicilians in the year 1282, when the people turned against their French king, Charles of Anjou. The fire of revolt had long smouldered, and it was blown to a flame on Easter Monday when a French officer named Drouet grossly insulted a Sicilian woman. Her husband avenged the outrage by killing the officer. Just as the bells of Santo Spirito, a church of Palermo, rang for the vesper service, the voice of the angry husband roused the holiday crowd:

“Now let these Frenchmen die at last!”

The cry echoed through the length and breadth of Sicily, and every French man, woman, and child in the island was massacred; the insult was wiped out in seas of blood!

Palermo, or Panormus, never amounted to much in the old Greek time when Syracuse was mistress of Sicily. It’s so alive now, because, like Rome, it has lived a long life and is still vigorous. Its greatness really began when, in the ninth century of our era, the Saracens came, saw, and conquered the island and made Palermo their capital. First the Saracen, then the Norman, last the Spaniard, have held and loved Palermo; these three have ruled her, made her what she is, left their mark upon her. We have already seen the Moor’s vivifying touch, in the springs that murmur, the fountains that dance, in the earth still bright with flower and fruit he planted, rich with the wheat he watered!

The Normans! Their conquest of Sicily is just as remarkable, quite as romantic as their

conquest of England. We know comparatively little about it, because we have not the same keen interest in what befell Sicily as in all that happened to mother England, but for their contemporaries there must have been little to choose between the importance of William the Conqueror and his strong breed, and those twelve stout sons of old Tancred de Hauteville who, from the condition of Norman squires of Cotentin, became in one generation, kings of Sicily, the richest island of the Mediterranean. The Battle of Hastings took place in 1066; in 1061 Robert Guiscard, and his brother Roger, the Great Count, sons of old Tancred, conquered Sicily and made Palermo their capital. What have the Normans left behind them? A great art: Churches, cloisters, mosaics, tombs, monuments worthy to stand on the island of the Greek temples, still reckoned among the wonders of the world.

Our first days in Palermo were mild and cloudy--good sightseeing weather; on the golden days that followed it would have been hard to remain indoors, even within such splendid interiors as the cathedral of Monreale and the church of the Martorana. We went first to the Capella Palatina in the royal palace, the finest royal chapel in Europe. A certain stately order, an aristocratic atmosphere, recalled the chapel royal in Madrid, probably because we were more familiar with that than any other. The Capella Palatina is far handsomer and as different from the Madrid chapel as possible. The walls are entirely covered with fine gold mosaics, the floor with rich marble mosaic, porphyry, serpentine, Africano, cipolino, verde antique, all our favorite marbles, inlaid and enlaced in the most entrancing patterns. “All this marble must have come from the Greek temples and the Roman palaces,” Patsy reminded me.

“Let us enjoy it where it is!”

The beautiful wooden roof covered with Arabic inscriptions is connected with the walls by a stalactite vaulting like the ceilings of the Alhambra. The gold mosaics of the walls recalled the mosaics of Ravenna; this blending of Arabic and Byzantine decorations with Norman architecture is perfectly harmonious; the result is a unique chapel, one of the jewels of Sicily, the treasure house. The good smell of incense, the low voice of a priest in the confessional muttering words of good counsel to a kneeling penitent, made the place warm, alive, part of today.

“That’s either a great swell or a great sinner,” whispered Patsy. “No one else would deserve so much attention from a royal chaplain. I wonder which it is. Not that it matters much. I once asked the verger of Salisbury cathedral if people ever came there to pray. ‘I sometimes catches ’em at it!’ he answered fiercely. That’s the spirit that makes the English cathedrals seem like so many museums! This chapel has something of the same defect; that swell or sinner just saves it!”

In Palermo we felt the influence of the Arab everywhere, in the streets as well as in churches and palaces. The gravity of the people, their stern flashing eyes, something in their bearing as if they were never without a sense of what is due them, recalls not only the Arab, but the Spaniard who has been so much influenced by him. The women of the lower class have the same magnificent black hair as the Syracusans. Few of them wear hats; there is some picturesque dressing, but the bright handkerchiefs worn over the head, and the pretty lace aprons, are the last trace of the native costume that has practically disappeared from the city. We saw few beggars. If we asked our way we were always answered with politeness, ceremony even.

In a shop where we went to buy gloves we found the same indifference of the seller to the buyer that we noticed in Madrid--a take-it-or-leave-it spirit--not encouraging to trade.

“These gloves are rather light for traveling,” I said. “Show me some darker ones.”

“They may soil,” said the dealer truculently; “they will never wear out.”

“Are they of Sicilian make?”

“They were made in this shop.”

The gloves proved all their maker claimed; indeed they still survive.

“That standoffishness is, I suppose, the result of Sicilian _omertà_!” said Patsy. “I like these people, though I don’t understand them; you miss that jolly flash of sympathy the Italian gives you. They’re very different--Sicilians; they’re not quite Italian, I think!”

We walked in the Corso every afternoon at the fashionable driving hour. Though the weather was mild the smart people all drove in closed carriages, sometimes with one window partly open as they do in Madrid. The carriages were mostly of an antiquated shape much to our liking; a sort of cross between a landau and a barouche; the coachmen all wore caps. The finest turnout we saw had blue and red wheels; the lining and liveries were brown, and coachman and footman wore caps to match with a gold crown embroidered over the visors. We were standing at the Quattro Canti, the bull’s-eye of Palermo, where the Corso and the Via Macqueda cross, when this carriage passed.

“Some one’s bowing to you!” Patsy exclaimed.

I caught a flash of spectacles from the dark interior, the flourish of a hat, nothing more.

“That,” cried Patsy, “was the father of Teodoro. I told you they were great chiefs!”

* * * * *

We went to Monreale by an electric tram; it cost ten cents to go (the distance is only five miles) and eight to return. On account, Patsy “supposed,” of Monreale standing on a high hill, and the fact that it takes more electricity to pull the car up than to let it down. The country people in the car were coldly polite to us but they argued sharply among themselves. As we passed the old city wall we noticed the washing hung out to dry. All the way to Monreale there was the same frank display of linen and underclothes. The sheets and table linen, even outside the poorer houses, were extremely handsome, often trimmed with beautiful lace. Before going into the cathedral we loitered about the little town of Monreale.

“May the lady sit here and rest a moment?” Patsy asked a tailor sewing in the doorway of his shop.

The man gravely motioned me to a chair, then asked a question.

“The Signorino is Americano? Has he ever seen Kicago?” Patsy said he knew Chicago well.

“I am thinking of going there,” said the tailor. “I have a good little business, nothing to complain of, all the best people in Monreale wear my clothes, but there is no great future, no prospect of laying anything by. My neighbor, Ludovico, has been in Kicago twenty years; he has done very well. He has merely come back here to wait till his poor father dies--the old man’s past praying for--then he

returns to Kicago. He asks me to go with him. What does the Signorino advise?”

Over a barber’s shop hung a sign with the words “Tonsorial Artist;” this evidently was the establishment of Ludovico.

Below lay the Golden Shell. As he sat at his door, the tailor could see Palermo with its domes and turrets, Monte Pellegrino, a vast blue mountain rising from the bay on one side, Monte Catalfano on the other. Behind him rose an amphitheatre of aerial blue mountains; close at hand towered the grand cathedral of Monreale, that pilgrims cross the world to visit.

“It depends,” Patsy for once spoke with hesitation, all his cocksureness gone. “Chicago is a fine city, great opportunities there, but the climate’s not just what you’re used to here; there are no mountains, no sea.”

“The matter of climate is important,” said the tailor; he waxed his thread, doubled it and began to sew a button on the coat he was making.

“As to mountains, what matters it? One cannot eat them! I have ten children--not an easy thing to fill so many mouths; they eat and they eat. I do not wish to die in the _albergo dei poveri_! Ludovico is rich! He has two stores in Kicago. When he was a boy his father could only earn ten _soldi_ a day; his poor mother could not always give her children polenta; they must often dine on dandelions and herbs of that sort! Now, when his parents are old, Ludovico takes good care of them. His father wrote that he was dying; Ludovico came back to Monreale; that was two years ago--the old man is still alive. The brother of Ludovico has a fruit store in Kicago; he takes care of the business, sends him the rent of the shops,--two hundred _scudi_ a month. I have seen the money!”

I hurried Patsy away at this point; he was becoming too much interested in the tailor’s affairs; in another minute he would be writing letters of introduction to Chicago magnates.

In the sunny space outside the barber’s door sat a silver haired patriarch wrapped in a shawl--Ludovico’s father.

“The old gaffers wear shawls here,” said Patsy, “as they do in Patras. These folk seem more like Greeks than Italians; a trifle grouty, but with a certain fibre, something bold yet reserved, that makes you want to know them better.”

“Spend the day gossiping with tailors and barbers if you like; I’m for the cathedral.” I flung off towards the church; Patsy followed slowly. It is the only way to take him when he’s in that little-friend-of-all-the-world mood.

The cathedral of Monreale, and the adjacent cloister of the old Benedictine monastery are the crowning glory of that city of wonders, Palermo.

The Capella Palatina, the cathedral of Palermo, the Martorano and the other churches of the city proper hardly prepare one for the magnificence of this gorgeous church that stands, glowing with the golden stain of time, on a hill between the Conca d’Oro and its enfolding mountains. It is the work of Saracen architects, who built for Norman Kings and Christian prelates, with Byzantine, Italian, Greek, Arab, and Norman artists and workmen to help them! The result, instead of being an architectural Babel, is the world’s most truly cosmopolitan cathedral, one of the most stupendous and glorious of existing sanctuaries. The cathedral is in the shape of a Latin cross with three apses. The façade is flanked by two square towers, handsome and imposing enough; the great beauty of the exterior, however, is the outside of the choir, at the back of the church. The lovely pattern of inlaid lava stone in two colors is the fullest, most splendid expression of this style of decoration we first saw on the façades of the palaces at Taormina.

The interior--it is a place to pass hours, days, alone. Here set ajar the door of your soul, let the wind of the ages blow through, as you have done in the Parthenon at Athens, or the great Egyptian temple of Karnak. Drink from the cup of beauty, bathe in the well of light and glory, so shall an echo of that thrill of passionate love for their art that moved the artists who wrought this gemmed casket of delight vibrate through your inmost being.

Every inch of wall space is covered by gold Byzantine mosaics with jewelled pictures representing the whole of Christian history. You may read here as in a book the great scenes from the Old Testament, the story of the life and passion of the Saviour, the history of the Virgin, and of the Apostles. The central figure that dominates the whole cathedral, that you

must look at first on entering and last on leaving, is the majestic half-length figure of Christ, over the high altar. The right hand is raised in the act of blessing; the left holds an open book, with the words in Greek and Latin: “I am the Light of the World.”

The face is severe in expression and very Oriental in type; it is the face of the judge rather than the Saviour of mankind, with nothing of that super-sweetness introduced by the Italian artists of the Renaissance who produced what we now call the Christ-like type.

In my diary for this day I find three words: “Monreale; past belief!”

Later visits made us familiar with the wonderful massively built church inlaid with Oriental stones, fretted with Oriental carving. We each found our favorite pictures in the three different series of mosaics blazing on the walls--“An open book of history, theology, and ethics for all men to read.”

For me the quaint Old Testament scenes are the most interesting. Dearest of all, the story of Noah, the first character in sacred history with whom I became acquainted. The naïve simplicity with which the story is told recalls the Noah’s ark dramas of the nursery, with the dear familiar figures of Noah, Ham, Shem, Japhet, their wives, their animals, their round green trees made of a shaving and looking like Italian stone pines. The very smell of those freshly painted animals, the taste of a certain yellow camel came back to me in the cathedral of Monreale in one lightning flash of memory. Here they are, the dear companions of childhood, the consolers of long rainy days, when the children in the nursery knew exactly how the people in the ark felt on the fortieth day of the deluge. The building of the ark is a most spirited mosaic picture; so is the taking on board of the animals. Noah walks with a horse on one side and a lion, smaller than himself, on the other. The scene when the dove is first let loose is very fascinating; you feel the crowding and fatigue of the too large family party in the ark. In the scene where the dove returns with the olive branch, the sea is depicted in delightful hummocky waves. Two swimmers, apparently sinners, are struggling in the water; on the shoulder of one perches a crow, evidently about to peck out the sinner’s eyes. The scene of the landing on Mt. Ararat is supremely spirited; the gesture of relief with which Noah lets the lion go is masterly.

Patsy’s favorite scene is Rebecca giving the camels of Abraham water from the well. One of the most haunting pictures is the expulsion from the Garden of Eden of our first parents, dressed in sheepskin. The cherubim here is lovely, and the vigorous angel driving the unhappy pair forth with a flaming sword, terrifying.

The death of the Virgin is one of the most primitive and touching of the whole series. The body of the Virgin lies on a couch surrounded by the Apostles; Peter leans over her listening to her heart--this simple human touch makes the whole scene vivid and alive, in spite of its extreme primitiveness. Beside the bed stands Christ, with Mary’s new fledged soul dressed in swaddling bands like a new born infant in his hands. As she received Him into this world, so He receives her into the next. As this picture is part of the story of the Virgin, she is made the most prominent figure. The figure of the Son is much smaller than that of his dead mother on the couch.

In the cloister of Monreale we were again possessed by haunting memories of Spain. The place is like some supremely beautiful Andalusian patio. It is surrounded by slender Arabic paired columns, some with twisted shafts, some inlaid, some of plain alabaster with amazing fretted capitals, the heads of men and animals carved in the midst of the foliage of acanthus and palm. The center is cunningly laid out by some wise gardener, monk or layman. At each corner is a mass of yellow wall-flowers with alternate clumps of white stocks, purple flags, and lavender hyacinths. Among the ornamental trees we found one new to us--the flowering peach. The blossoms are shaped like a red camellia, with softer, more gracious petals.

“The peaches?” Patsy asked the _guardiano_.

“Small and not at all good to eat,” he made a face; “sour in fact as unripe grapes. You see that other tree, with the insignificant blossoms? That bears peaches fit for the King!”

“Look at these violets!” Patsy brought me the largest Parma violets I ever saw. “This fellow says they begin to bloom in November. Here they are still going it for all they’re worth in April. One of those chaps in Taormina gave

as the reason he had chosen Sicily as a home, that the violets bloom longer here than any place he had ever known.”

Overhead the sky was a flawless sapphire vault, broken only in one corner by a mountain that looked like transparent amethyst. The perfume of the orange and the lemon blossoms was intoxicating as sweet wine; the comfortable hum of bees made a low undersong to the music of the magic fountain in the corner of the cloister. It is not Italian, it is not Sicilian. What manner of fountain can it be? Listen! Its language is softer than any now spoken in Trinacria!

“_Allah il Allah!_” The fountain still murmurs the old cry of the muezzin.

From a large basin rises a high carved shaft of rich topaz colored marble, supporting a curiously wrought ball with sculptured figures, foliage, and the alternate heads of men and lions. From their mouths drips and drips, but never spurts, a slow soft shower of diamond drops. It is as different from the noisy splurging fountains of Naples, as the slow soft-spoken tongue of the Arabian sage is different from the strident scolding of those men on the train, the father of Teodoro and the little _avvocato_.

“A place of mystery and beauty beyond belief.”

So the record of Monreale ends as it began--“past belief!”

* * * * *

“It’s good enough just to be alive today,” Patsy declared one ecstatic morning; “I’m off for the market and the Marina!”

To reach the Piazza Caraccioli, the market-place, we threaded a maze of narrow dark alleys full of Rembrandtesque lights and shadows. In the very heart of this labyrinth stands an old macaroni mill.

“We may enter and see the works?”

“_Benvenuto!_” The voice was less welcoming than the word. “They don’t make macaroni where the Signorino comes from?”

“Not like yours!” Patsy magicked the peevish proprietor into good humor, and we were free to enter the dark cavern. Two half naked fellows stood at a deep trough kneading flour and water to a paste. A pair of barefoot men, harnessed to a heavy wooden pole that turned a press, trod their weary round. The paste was put into this press, and came out in long strips. A fifth youth cut the strips into the proper lengths and hung them to dry over bamboo canes.

“These might be the serfs of Roger the Norman making _pasta_ for his army,” said Patsy; “it’s positively mediæval!”

The rude interior was like an ancient cave,--floor, walls, ceiling were all of stone; the men worked in a dull heavy-hearted way that hurt you. There was none of the joyous thrill of labor lightly carried; it was a grievous place.

“The _pasta_ made in America is villainous; I have eaten it,” said the _capo_. “It is made of wheat flour; bah! Semolina is the only flour fit to make macaroni for Christians.”

“_Un bicchiere di vino_,” Patsy gave the money to the elder of the men harnessed to that heavy pole. The fellow threw back his beautiful plume of hair out of his gray-blue eyes and thanked Patsy awkwardly.

“_Grazie, beviamo a vostro salute._”

The second-hand boot-store next door was a much gayer place than the mill.

“What can I sell you?” said the jolly proprietor, evidently the buffo of the quarter. “Riding-boots good as new? Fishermans’ boots? They will keep you dry to the knee!”

The riding-boots at once dainty and sportsman like, looked extraordinarily like Teodoro’s; the heavy hobnailed fisherman’s boots leaned fraternally against them.

“I do not buy today,” laughed Patsy; “perhaps I may sell tomorrow.”

“I will give you better prices than any man in Palermo!”

Where the market-place broadens to its widest, stands a _friggetoria_.

On its marble counter lay a vast copper basin of crisp fried fish that looked like whitebait.

“What does the Signorino desire?” asked the fishwife, a tall woman with a superb coiffure and piercing black Saracen eyes. “Scoponi? that is good to make _zuppa alla marinaia, calamaretti, gamberi_?”

“Which is the scoponi?”

She picked up a big, very handsome blood-red fish, and held it out to Patsy to show how fresh it was.

Leaving him to deal with the fishwife I passed on to the fruit stall.

It was a bad season, the _fruttaiuola_ said. Here were precious mandarins and oranges; she held one up.

“Behold; you can see the blood through the skin; they are all like this.” She showed an orange cut in half, the pulp ruby as a pomegranate. “Oh, the blood oranges of Palermo are famous, they bring a great price at Naples.”

I bought a basket like a net; my _fruttaiuola_ filled it with citrons, lemons, oranges,--adding one of those rare winter melons Teodoro had recommended. From the market we made our way to the Marina, a beautiful curving avenue with fine palaces and gardens fronting the sea.

“The Marina at Messina once looked like this,” sighed Patsy.

Beyond the fashionable Marina we came upon a little fishing village. We peeped into one poor hut; it was filled with fisherman’s tools, fishing reels, lobster pots, old nets, broken oars. On the sunny outer wall hung a tiny crate filled with orange parings.

“Every scrap of lemon, orange, or mandarin skin is saved, dried in the sun, and sold to make candied peel or mandarin liqueur,” Patsy pointed out. “Teodoro’s father was right. The Sicilian really is economical. Palermo could live on what spendthrift New York throws away!”

The nets were spread on the sand to dry; the first catch of the day had been made; two old fishermen were busy weighing the silver fish from the boat drawn up on the beach. We watched a barchetta come in; she danced prettily over the water, curtseying to the craft home before her. On her prow was painted a picture of the Madonna; the big brown sail had a red cross for luck.

“_Spugni! spugni di Trapani!_” A _gobbo_ with a crate of sponges stopped to show us his wares.

“Sponges of Trapani!” cried Patsy; “why that Trapani is Drapana, where the old Anchises died, where pious Aeneas founded the games in his memory. As we can’t get to Trapani, let’s have one of its sponges!”

He laid in a supply, not yet exhausted. How precious now is every little thing from Sicily--even the outworn gloves, even the fine pear-shaped sponge from Trapani.

“Have you noticed the street shrines?” Patsy pointed to a majolica medallion of Santa Rosalià let into the wall of a house. Two lighted candles and a mass of fresh violets stood before it.

“I have not seen one neglected shrine in all Palermo; they are better kept than in any Italian city I know; we might be in Bavaria.”

The busy gay streets of Palermo are filled with familiar names and escutcheons. Under a fine stone stemma bearing the arms of Charles the Fifth (the Pillars of Hercules and the enlacing scroll) appear the magic names of Edison and Singer.

During those first happy days at Palermo, we forgot (or pretended to) the one absorbing preoccupation of the last three months; behaved, Patsy said, as if there had never been an earthquake; inevitably we were brought back to it as children after a holiday must return to school. At the Quattro Canti we met two sandwich men parading the streets with flaming signs on their backs.

“_Seconda gita a Messina_, 8 francs!”

Luckless Messina! For eight francs the Palermitans can make a trip to see the wreck of the proud city once Palermo’s rival!

“Poor devils--to be made a spectacle of!” sighed Patsy. “Still it helps to have anybody make money! The railroad will get something out of these special trips; any movement is better than none.”

Outside a large dry-goods shop an immense placard called our attention.

“Bazar Messinesi. Bankrupt stock from Messina, to be sold out below cost.”

In the Via Marquada, a fine bustling modern street, I found my friend Palladia the milliner. She welcomed me cordially though I saw she looked ill and care-worn.

When the serious business of choosing straw, shape, and flowers for a new hat was over, we spoke of other things.

“How are thy affairs going, Palladia?”

“Badly, Signora. It is a dreadful season. No one buys anything new. See that mass of old hats my customers have brought me to make over! It is a miracle the Signora should come today; she can perhaps help me? I have had an idea. The ladies of Taormina have always served themselves at Messina (there is no serious milliner at Taormina). Now that the milliners of Messina are no more,--how if I went to Taormina with hats for Easter? Mostly mourning hats of course--but a little lighter, _via_, second mourning for the young ladies at least!”

“What a good notion!”

“If the Signora would give me two lines to one who might assist me?”

Introductions were written on the spot. Palladia, the valorous, had come from Rome to Palermo, a stranger, with only her old mother to help her, had set up her shop, and so far had “made good.” Surely she deserved what help an old customer could afford her!

Next day Patsy, insatiate sightseer, went off to Segesta and Selinus. Left alone I hunted up our friends Dr. Parlato Hopkins and his wife. Thanks to them I was translated from a lone traveler’s solitude to a cordial circle of old and new friends. It all began with the tea-party in the doctor’s study, where I met Mrs. Bishop, the wife of our Consul (an old friend), and Canon and Mrs. Skeggs of the English Church.

“What a tempting cake!” one of the party exclaimed, as we drew up to the table.

“I hope it’s good as it looks;” said Mrs. Parlato Hopkins; “for I made it.”

“Did I help?” asked the doctor. “Could you have baked that cake if I had not made the baking powder?”

Voted that it was “both of their cake,” and that the Canon should cut it. He began by “counting noses.”

“You’re too extravagant,” his wife exclaimed as the Canon cut the first slice. His triumph came when every one of us asked for a second piece.

“A little marmalade?” urged the doctor; “home-made also. My wife is a good housewife in spite of being a good doctor.”

“I can recommend that marmalade,” said the Canon’s wife; “the oranges came from our garden.”

While at table we spoke of joyous things; as the afternoon passed, the talk waxed serious, laughter ceased, faces grew earnest, voices grave. This little group of friends, exiles all, living in Palermo, bound together by a thousand kindnesses, had passed through deep waters. The faithful almoners of England and America, they too had worked early and late for the _profughi_. Here, as at Messina, and Syracuse, the most precious contribution was the moral, not the material aid. Order, discipline, in that welter of chaos were worth more than money or stores.

“These poor souls will not go to work while they are being fed, housed, and clothed by charity,” said the Canon. “When they ask me for work I am in a quandary. The working people of Palermo are all against them--naturally; there isn’t enough work to go around!” Exactly what Ignazio had said.

“Why not colonize?” I proposed. “England would do that. There must be parts of Italy where prosperous colonies might be founded. I myself have seen practically deserted villages both in the Abruzzi mountains and in the Sorrentine peninsula, where whole populations have emigrated to the Argentine Republic or to the United States.”

“This is not England!” sighed the Canon.

I said to Mrs. Bishop how much I wished to see her husband.

“Another day,” she answered. “He is still very busy with the Petrosino murder.”