Chapter XVI: Messina (ave Atque Vale!) 466 (8)

“Come up to the little museum; it stands where the small temple over the theatre used to be. There are some good architectural fragments--bits of mosaics and inscriptions from the theatre, a good torso of Bacchus, a head of Apollo.”

Patsy introduced the _custode_, one of the characters of the place, who welcomed us and showed his few treasures with a fine pride. He spoke Italian with chiseled care.

“To hear him talk, after the _dialetto_, is like listening to Beethoven after rag-time!” said Patsy. “Do you realize how fortunate we are that the tourist season is spoiled by the earthquake? We have the theatre and the _custode_ all to ourselves? It’s too good to be true!”

The _custode_ sold him a green pamphlet, with the story of the theatre in four languages. The pair of them clambered about, map in hand, exploring the stage, the cunei, the proscenium, while I sat and tried to imagine the captives and slaves at work here, hewing this vast theatre, that could seat forty thousand people, out of the solid rock.

“The next time we want to build a new theatre,” Patsy exclaimed, we should send the architect to Taormina. The man who planned this understood theatre building. The Greeks didn’t write about scenery, but they always put their theatres and temples where they got the best view. See how simple, how practical, how grand, this must have been! There went the stairs, leading to the seats of the nobility--look, here’s the name of one cut in the pavement, Iopeia, supposed to have been a priestess. She had a good seat at the play. Imagine--she sat here, heard the Antigone of Sophocles, between the acts looked at Etna! Happy Iopeia! I hope she deserved all she got. It must have been worth while to be a stockholder in this concern. Listen to the repertory: ‘Tragedies, devoted to Dionysius, Comedies to Demeter, Satires, Spectacles, Dances.’ The place was never shut like our theatres; it was the social centre of the town. When there was no performance going on, poets and philosophers met and discussed their theories, read aloud their works; foreign ambassadors were received here. Down below is the passage leading to the arena, where the wild beasts were driven through. We don’t want to see that; it belongs to the coarser Romans, to the time when they had gladiator shows like our prize fights.”

Here a party of English people came upon the scene, the first travelers we had seen since we left Naples. They were evidently from the white yacht that lay anchored near Naxos. They scrambled about the theatre for a little, then went up to the museum.

A tall slight man, in a yachting cap, evidently the host, interested me. He had the face of an American, the voice and manners of a Britisher.

“Do find out who they are,” I said to Patsy; “I am sure he is somebody.”

“Bother somebodies!” laughed Patsy. “We don’t want to hear about anybody except Iopeia; and listen to what the _custode_ says--” he read from his floppy green pamphlet: “‘The theatre was built in the time of Andromachus. The foundations of most of Taormina’s monuments were laid under his government, as for example, the theatre, the forum, the temples, the aqueduct. He brought to this place the good taste and high culture of the Greeks of Colchis.’”

“The lady with the pretty yellow hair--look at her, Patsy--haven’t we seen the face before?”

He would not look, would only talk about Timæus, the son of Andromachus, and what a fine historian he was.

“I am sure it’s a face I know,” I persisted. Nothing would bring Patsy back to _today_; he was wandering in the golden age of Sicily. The porter of the Timeo told me about the travelers:

“The Princess Henry of Battenberg. The tall man? Sir Thomas Lipton. They came on his yacht, the ‘Erin’--there she goes, you can just see her!” The “Erin” had passed Naxos, headed for the great blue promontory sixty miles away, Syracuse!

Taormina is a fascinating town, with little Saracenic touches everywhere. The architecture is of a dozen different styles and epochs, the prevailing impression that remains is of Sicilian Gothic. Many façades are inlaid with a pretty diaper pattern of black and white lava stone. The Palazzo Corvaia has a quaint relief of the creation of Eve, the Fall, Adam digging and Eve spinning with a distaff.

“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?”

Taormina clings like a gray limpet to the gray rock; the town is built on a narrow crescent, on one side a precipice, on the other

an abrupt mountainside. The old Greek theatre stands at one point of the crescent, the Dominican convent at the other. The two face each other; between them runs the main street, perhaps a mile long. In the people we meet, there is the same bewildering contrast of types as in the architecture. Ciro is a Greek; his profile is classic as the head of Apollo on a coin fresh from the mint of Taormina; Assunta is a Roman, coarser, heavier, but with a certain force that has its charm.

We gravitated naturally to the cathedral of San Nicolò, pausing outside to look at the fountain surmounted by the oddest figure of a Minotaur, with the head of a man and the body of a bull. The fore legs are missing; the quaint emblem balances perilously on its hind legs. The old name of Taormina was Mount Taurus, so called because the two points of the hill on which it stands, from a distance, look like the horns of a bull. Later it was called Tauromenium, the abiding place of the bull. One of the architectural details that delighted us was a sort of Saracenic rose window, repeated over the main door of several of the churches.

We entered the cathedral by an enchanting door, encircled by a vine, covered with bunches of grapes, boldly carved in stone; the vine springs from a classic vase on either side the portal. Later we found this same design in other Sicilian churches. There are several at Palermo, none, however, that compare with the grape-vine at Taormina.

An old dame, who had loitered in the offing, hobbled ahead to lift the leathern curtain and earn her two sous. She was bent, wrinkled, wise looking. Of course Patsy annexed her; for him the people, no matter how dirty or dull, are always of greater interest than the place.

Before the high altar stood a carved, gilded wooden statue of San Pancrazio, the African, dressed in his best robes, wearing his finest jewels, mitre and gloves. He was mounted on a paso (platform), like those we saw at Seville in the Easter processions. Opposite stood a similar figure of San Pietro. As we were looking at them, Ciro tracked us down--when he had no fare he haunted Patsy’s footsteps. He said a sharp word in _dialetto_ to the old woman--something equivalent to “hands off”--we were his legitimate _forestieri_; had not Gasperone recommended us to him?

“San Pancrazio--_molto bello_.”

“When it comes to beauty,” said Patsy, “don’t you prefer Ciro’s style?”

Ciro, warm with running, his young face glowing, his eyes like gems, was certainly handsomer than the poor old bedizened negro saint.

“It is the _festa_ of San Pancrazio perhaps?” I asked, puzzled to account for his presence before the altar.

“No. After the earthquake San Pancrazio was brought here, and for the moment remains,” said Ciro. “Some people say, how do I know if it is true, that he caused the earthquake? He has great powers, he protects against dangers of land and sea. Lately, for one reason or another, he has been neglected--it is true, when I was a child they made far more of his _festa_ than now.”

“Maria Santa is my witness,” cried the woman passionately, “that for two years next to nothing has been spent for the patron’s _festa_! There were warnings: an old crone appeared to a _contadino_ and, waving her stick, cried three times, _acqua, acqua, acqua leggiera_, then she disappeared in the clouds. The _contadino_ from that day was seen no more. Behold! three weeks before the earthquake, the _acqua leggiera_ came--it was a cloudburst, bad enough but nothing to what came after--if we had only taken warning!”

She wiped the saint’s foot with her apron, kissed it, and wiped again as good manners demand.

* * * * *

“Behold! here is money for two candles; let me see you light them.” Patsy gave her a franc.

“May you be blessed, by Santissima Maria, by all the saints, by the Apostles! The ignorant say that San Pancrazio and San Pietro were brothers--a madness! Saint Peter was a Sicilian, white as the blessed Lord himself. San Pancrazio was a Moor, with a black skin as you see. The truth is, their mothers were sisters and they were cousins. The morning of the _terramoto_ we carried San Pancrazio to the Piazza outside there and showed him to the sea. It was a terrible sight! The water had been drawn back one hundred metres; we saw all the rocks at the bottom, the great fish leaping in the air. After a moment a big wave came high, high, and remained on the shore. It broke the boats, tore the nets; one fisherman was drowned. When the wave saw San Pancrazio, _poco à poco_, it went back to its place.”

“It was pitch-dark,” murmured Patsy, “nobody saw anything.”

“Enough, enough, nonna,” Ciro interrupted, “the signori are in haste! To San Domenico now? I will call the _custode_, he is my friend.”

“What does that strip of black cloth nailed across the shutter signify?” Patsy asked, as we walked towards San Domenico.

“Mourning,” Ciro explained. “Wherever you see it, you may know that in the house dwell refugees, or people who have lost relations in the earthquake.”

Every third house in Taormina had this mourning badge.

Waiting outside the church of San Domenico, were two gentlemen from Turin, a large urbane man, and a slight taciturn person who never spoke. Patsy, who apparently knew them, began asking questions about the church.

“I have not yet seen it,” said the urbane man, “but I hear it is the best in Taormina--“

San Domenico is a fine old church with a soft cracked bell; we liked it far better than the cathedral. The _custode_, unfortunately, was a layman; he knew his lesson well, however.

“This,” he said, pointing to a curious picture, “is San Domenico. Observe the _manta_, real silver, and the chasing--ah! there is but one finer, the _manta_ of the Madonna at the Matrice in Messina.”

The saint’s head, painted on wood or canvas, was set into the _manta_, a square of wrought silver, very Spanish in feeling, that filled the entire frame.

On a quaint old tomb a warrior in armor, a crusader from his crossed legs, lies uneasily on his side. His name was Giovanni Corvaia; he built the palace of that name.

“Come see the organ,” said Patsy, “it’s like Saint Cecilia’s in the Domenichino picture.”

The organ stands in a damp side chapel. It is of wood, painted a soft green, with gilded pipes and ornaments.

“_Molto antico_, four hundred years old and still in use,” the _custode_ declared. “Will one of the gentry be pleased to play? I will blow the bellows.”

The urbane Torinese took his seat at the organ; the _custode_ raised the lid of the keyboard. There was but one bank of yellow ivory keys, much worn by pious fingers.

“Four octaves,” said the Torinese; he measured the notes with a musician’s hand, then began to play an air from Pagliacci. The organ’s voice, like an old artist’s, was still sweet and true, though uncertain and tremulous. As he played the Torinese talked over his shoulder:

“You know this air--yes? and this? You like our Italian composers? Tell me where you will find their match! Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Boito--for me his Mefistofile is the noblest of modern operas.”

“Come!” cried Patsy, the concert over, “I have found two portraits of a jolly old monk, who spent his whole life beautifying this church. First, look at his work. This pulpit, these choir stalls--aren’t they lovely?”

When we had admired the richly carved pulpit and choir, Patsy took us to the sacristy, where the carving is even finer than in the church. The figure of San Domenico asleep on the ground, the roster of the order he founded, growing like a genealogical tree out of his side, is charming. The figures of saints and martyrs, some of them full of dignity and beauty, are held up by pairs of chubby children, playing on pipes and cymbals; meant for _angelini_, they look far more like _amorini_. The wood-carving, evidently by the same hand throughout, rises to heights in the figure of Christ in the sacristy and Saint Michael in the choir.

“_Un capo lavoro!_” cried the Torinese. “It has been shockingly neglected though; I must write to the Prince about it!”

The monk could illuminate a missal as well as carve a choir; the _custode_ assured us that the handsome parchment music-book in the choir was the work of the same monk.

“Here’s the old fellow’s signature to his magnum opus,” said Patsy, “carved on a panel of the choir: _Hoc opus fieri fecit ad deis_, etc., etc. _Fr. Joseph Alermo, 1602._ The frate’s Latin is queer, but we know what he means. Here he is young, there he is old, painted by himself. Wood-carver, illuminator, portrait-painter, well done, Fra Joseph!”

In a room leading to the sacristy hang the monk of Taormina’s two portraits of himself. The first shows a jovial full-blooded man in the Dominican habit, holding a skull in his hand; below are the words: _Junior fui et fecit illum._ The older portrait is much defaced; the motto in Fra Joseph’s queer Latin remains clear: _Eterni servi et feci istud._

“That was a man with good red blood in his veins,” said Patsy. “We have all fallen under his spell! That’s because what he did, he did with all his might. Joseph--could he have been English?”

“I believe he was German,” said the Torinese. “He must have passed his life in Taormina though, to live in this place of unparalleled beauty, to enjoy an existence devoted to art and religion--_beato lui_!”

As we left the San Domenico, Patsy and the Torinese had some discussion about paying the _custode_.

“It’s my turn,” I heard Patsy say. “You paid last night.”

“You are Americans?” the Torinese asked.

“Yes.”

“Let me do so little for the people who are doing so much for Sicily. If you come to my city, do me the favor to call--I have not a card, alas! May I write my name on yours?” Patsy had no card. I produced one of J.’s, and the Torinese wrote his name and address on the back.

Those days at Taormina slipped by as a chaplet of odd and even pearls slips between the fingers. Now and then it poured, and we would come home drenched to the skin, glad for once of the steam-heater to dry our wet garments. Those rainy days were the uneven pearls; the others were each rounded from dawn to dark to a sphere of perfect beauty. Whether Etna was all visible, or all hidden, or half revealed, we always felt the great presence, were never for one moment out of its influence.

“Hullo! this must be Mr. Wood’s studio,” said Patsy, pointing to a picturesque sign, “why not go in?”

Mr. Wood lives in a dignified old palazzo. We were made welcome, and spent a delightful afternoon, poring over a portfolio of water-colors; pictures of Etna in its countless moods, at every hour of the day, from a hundred points of view.

“No work since the earthquake,” sighed the painter.

“That’s not what they say at camp.”

“Well, no work of my own; there has been too much to do!”

As we were having tea, Mr. Bowdoin happened in; later, several English and American Taorminians dropped in. This was one of the colony’s social centres.

“All of us here,” said Mr. Wood, “had a narrow escape. We had arranged to go to Messina on the 27th of December, spend the night and hear Madame Butterfly. At the last minute the manager changed the opera to Aida; we had all heard Aida so often that we gave up going. The hotel where we would have stayed was destroyed; all the opera singers perished!”

We tried to talk of other things, a dozen subjects were started--in vain, it was impossible to get away from that all-absorbing topic, the earthquake. One and another told their experiences, letters were read, extracts from journals. With our new friends, we lived over again those dreadful days, when we in Rome were torn with anxiety about them, because no word came from Taormina.

“The Sicilians are a strange race,” said one; “they talk loud over nothing; when something really hurts, they burn dumb; at heart they are a melancholy people. Here at Taormina they had a bad earthquake, a bad tidal wave. In the beginning the poor were dazed, but the first clothing distributed was collected by a Sicilian woman, who performed an act extraordinary among people so Oriental as the Sicilians still are. She went from house to house, at the tail of a cart, gathering clothing. This lady does not leave her house alone twice a month; Sicilian women, even by daylight, mostly go out in twos and threes. Her house was turned into a factory for cutting out and making clothes and mattresses. The money I was able to get together for her, bought an incredible number of mattresses--incredible except for the fact that she and the women of Taormina made them up themselves. A sister of this woman went about the village, asking for helpers to go down with her to meet the trains. At first Sicilian men and two English women went with her. Later the _forestieri_ waked up and with their greater command of money of course accomplished much more--the work of the foreign colony here has been splendid; but it was not the foreign colony that started the work; the impulse was Sicilian.”

“I see you like the Sicilians,” I said.

“I love them,” said my new friend. “Give them three words of _dialetto_, and you will see; there are no warmer hearts in the world.”

* * * * *

Though we never saw Miss Hill, we heard of her everywhere. She had provided the necessary sewing for our camp; she had defended carloads of lumber destined for a wretched hamlet, that had been seized by the people in a larger and less needy village, One morning, when it was too wet to be out of doors, we went to see Miss Hill’s school of needlework. The names of the streets we passed through delighted Patsy,--the Lane-behind-the-nut-tree, the Alley-behind-the-Cathedral. In a pleasant workroom a bevy of girls sat at work, learning to make the lovely Sicilian drawn-work and embroidery. Before Miss Hill started her school, these industries were among the lost arts.

“The shops are full of our patterns,” said the manageress tartly. “They learn them here and then go away and make them for any one who will pay them!”

“That’s the test of the school’s usefulness, isn’t it?” I asked. Impossible to resist the lovely Sicilian embroideries and drawn-thread work, Patsy and I bought all we could afford.

Taormina is like Cornish, the chief personage in the place is the mountain. There is much rivalry among the colonists as to who has the best view. You go to make a visit, first of all you must make your respects to the mountain. I thought of dear blue Ascutney, whenever I was asked to pronounce for or against each new view of Etna, from hotel terrace or friendly garden. One of the best was from the old house on the Corso, where we went one afternoon to tea, with Dr. and Mrs. Paton. The stemma over the door bears the column of the Colonnas, the lily of the Farnese; these familiar emblems of two famous old Roman families made us feel at home at once. We had arrived punctually on the minute of half past four; so had the prince of peacocks. Walking sedately to the side of his mistress, he fed daintily from her hand, his jewelled neck shining in the sun, the splendor of his fan unfolded.

I had read Dr. Norris’s letters from Taormina in those early days, when he and Mrs. Norris were among the most active relief workers. We picked up the threads and I listened to the story of this and that family these dear people had succored. They had invited to meet me a Sicilian lady, who had escaped, almost miraculously, from Messina, a fine energetic young woman, half Italian, half German by birth. She gave me a firm grasp of the hand, and was able and willing to talk with me about her own experience.

She had waked at the first shock, put a pillow over her face to protect it from falling plaster, held firm to the sides of her bed, and the next minute found herself in the street, perfectly safe, without a scratch--her room had been in the fourth story! All her family, except one sister in Switzerland, were killed--parents, brothers, sisters; their bodies were still buried in the ruins. The sister in Switzerland had gone mad with grief.

This girl believes that the loss was harder on her sister than it had been on herself.

Dr. Norris said that the sentiments of many of the survivors were paralyzed; that everybody being in more or less the same case of having lost all their friends, they accepted it as a matter of course. It seemed part of the natural order, and easier to bear than if they alone had been singled out to bear a crushing blow. Some sense also of having been among those preserved, it often seemed miraculously, stayed them. The people who had been buried alive for three days, however, do not recover; they have a fixed look of horror. That side I cannot bear to dwell on,--the dreadful number of lingering deaths!

Some of the cultivated people we met, who have lost every one belonging to them, showed a calm, a manner of putting it all behind them that is admirable. The grief for one person, greatly loved in a family, casts a greater and longer shadow apparently than these awful catastrophes. It seems also that nothing that happens to any one else can affect us as much as what happens to ourselves. Those people who have looked death in the face and escaped seem, almost against their volition, to bloom out and to rejoice in life itself, even though they seem to have lost everything that makes life dear. I must confess that I felt this with the people who had come into property by the death of all their families, and not with those who had lost everything. I suppose this is perfectly human and natural.

Our last day at Taormina we had tea in the enchanted garden, with some of our Sicilian friends.

In an upper room of the Timeo, Tetrazzini was singing (through the Victor) the great aria from Mignon; when it was finished, Caruso sang his song from l’Africaine.

“To hear the Etna among tenors, while we are looking at Mt. Etna,” said Patsy, “gives one a faint idea of what the old Taorminians enjoyed in their theatre!” The music over, we sat talking with our friends. One of the men, a professor, lassoed and caught round the neck a little green lizard; very soon the pretty creature was quite tame.

“Be thou quiet or I shall hurt thee, little one!” said the Professor, as he cut the lasso, and the lizard ran away with a necklace round his throat. The talk ranged wide, of books, operas, artists, everything but what was at hand. Finally the Professor held up a warning finger:

“Listen, the nightingale! He never says the same thing twice--while we--” he shrugged his shoulders, picked a scarlet poppy and stuck it in his coat.

* * * * *

“That’s Luigi,” said Patsy, as we waited for the Syracuse train on the platform at Giardini, “that beautiful old fellow with the white beard! Bonanno told me about him. He was driven quite mad by the earthquake--benevolently mad, he’s perfectly good-natured. His mind is destroyed, as far as today is concerned. What’s left alive is the most interesting thing of his life--he was one of the ‘Mille;’ he sailed from here with Garibaldi for Calabria in 1860, nearly fifty years ago--he must have been a mere boy then, can’t be so very old now--looks hard as nails. The arrival of a train seems to be his link with the past. He meets them all, and marches up and down the platform, singing patriotic songs. He doesn’t beg; I tried to give him something the other day, and he would not take it.”

As the engine slowed down, the old fisherman drew himself up to his great height and saluted. A fine man, with something very Spanish in his bearing, he must have had a drop of Castilian blood in his veins. His skin was tanned as leather, his eyes blue as the sea, his hair and beard of virile silver. As the guard blew the whistle, Luigi threw up his right hand, waved it gallantly over his head, charged across the platform, with the old cry of the Hunters of the Alps:

“_Italia e Vittorio Emanuele!_”

In the railroad carriage the people laughed. Patsy looked back at the old fisherman with that odd brightening of the eye, that in a woman ends in tears.

Down at Naxos burned a brushwood fire. The thin column of smoke mounted high in the breathless air. Here stood the altar to Apollo, where the Greek mariners, before they sailed back to Hellas, lighted a sacrificial fire.

XII

SYRACUSE

The only sounds in the quarry came from over our heads; first there was a soft rushing of wings, as a flock of birds alighted in the tree-tops, then the confused twittering of their voices as they chattered busily together; a bevy of quail had halted to rest on its flight from Africa to Europe. We listened to their plans for the next stage of the journey; orders were given, questions asked, signs and counter-signs exchanged. Then came another soft whirring noise, the sky was darkened by the shadow of wings, the air filled with sounds of flight--the aerial army was gone. We were alone again in that place of agony, “the Gethsemane of a nation,” the quarry where nine thousand Athenian captives languished and perished in their prison grave. Alone? no! Shadows of the broken remnant of that great army, that came to Syracuse to conquer and to crush and was itself crushed out of existence, crowd about us. We feel their presence, as we felt the birds’, even though we cannot see them. Here in the Latomia dei Capuccini, a hundred feet below the surface of the earth, the bitterness of that defeat is tasted again. The place that heard the groans of those sorrowing and dying men still claims its tribute of tears, and will while the imperishable spirit of Hellas rules, while from generation to generation one Grecian lives to repeat the dreadful story of Thucydides.

No defeat was ever so unexpected. The Athenians, led away by the eloquence of their evil genius, Alcibiades--he was then thirty-five years old--the wittiest, bravest, handsomest, most worthless of men, had gone mad over their anticipated victory. They would become masters of Syracuse and the other Greek cities of Sicily; when Trinacria was conquered, Athens would take Italy, Carthage, the western islands of the Mediterranean. So Athens dreamt of the empire that, five centuries later, Rome built. In 415 B.C. the Athenians began the war with Syracuse that ended in such terrible destruction, and led to the downfall of Athens. The Athenians were at first successful; they built a double wall around Syracuse, they seemed on the point of reducing the city, when something happened. Some say the total eclipse of the moon frightened Nicias, the vacillating Athenian General; others that the Athenians were made prisoners between their own lines of defence by reinforcements from perfidious Sparta, at the moment when the Athenian ships under Demosthenes were cut off by sea. The overthrow was so complete that not a ship escaped, not one man went back to Greece to tell the tale. Nicias and Demosthenes happily committed suicide; those others were left to rot and die in that living tomb, where for ten weeks long the dead and the living lay together. Months after a traveling merchant told the story of the disaster to a barber in Piraeus, supposing all Greece knew it.

The glaring stone quarry, where the Athenian captives were exposed to the burning sun by day, the bitter cold at night, while the gaily dressed Syracusan ladies, scent bottle in hand, peeped over the parapets, watching their agony curiously, is now a place of extraordinary beauty. We climbed down a flight of a hundred stairs to reach this subterranean garden, a solemn and romantic spot. The primrose colored walls of the old quarry are hung with a splendid tapestry, knotted ivy, and long trailing creepers of _madre selva_, clematis, the mother of the wood. Here and there, from some cranny in the dazzling limestone, a fig tree thrusts its strong green leaves up to the sun, the flame of the pomegranate glows beside the gold of oranges and lemons, long lines of lilies stand waiting to bloom for Easter. In the midst of this sunken garden of delight stand the busts of two great men the Syracusans of today delight to honor, Archimedes of Syracuse and Mazzini of Genoa.

“Amerigo, behold! thy compatriots! _Piano_, _piano_, so; that was a good _riverenza_!”

The father of Amerigo (porter at our hotel), a smart fellow dark as a Moor, patted his son, as the child, tugging at his scarlet cap, made us a deep bow.

“Americano, yes, born in Nuova Yorka! I was butler to a great family--they paid me sixty _scudi_ a month--go back? oh, yes! We came to see our parents once more, _ma come si fà_? The schools of Sicilia are not like those of Nuova Yorka. We go back for the little ones, though I myself am content here, _è un bel paese_!”

We were the only guests at the Villa Politi, a good inn near the Latomia. I thought it melancholy to sit at meals alone in the big dining-room; Patsy argued that we were better able to “reconstruct” ancient Syracuse in solitude than if surrounded by a lot of interesting people.

The Greek Theatre gave me my first overwhelming sense of really being in Magna Grecia; the beauty of the lines of the semicircle, the tiers of seats rising one above the other; the permanent feeling of the work hewn from the bed rock, are all extraordinarily impressive. The _custode_, a serious olive-colored man, was full of serviceable knowledge. As we listened to his talk, some small creature ran over my foot.

“Have no fear, Signora, that little animal is the friend of man; I owe him my life. Sitting here alone, I sometimes fall asleep in the sun, there is danger--“

“Fever?” Patsy interrupted.

“_Ma che_, no fever here, vipers! This one, he runs before the viper and makes a noise--zzzzz--like that to give warning. If I doze he wakes me, yes, even if he has to touch my face.”

“You are a Syracusan?” I said.

“I? a Roman! Twelve long years I have served in Siracusa--an exile, Signora, they have forgotten me! Oh! to see the _cupolone_ once more--_tira, tira!_” He meant that the cupola of St. Peter’s drew him back to Rome.

Patsy mentioned Commendatore Boni; the _custode_ was on fire. He begged us to speak to the great capo at Rome, perhaps we could get him “moved on?” He himself had a friend, a gentleman of influence, if we would see him, something might come of it--one never knows.

“We have no influence, we are _forestieri_--” I began.

“_Si capisce_,” said the _custode_, “allow me at least to write the name of the gentleman.”

We had not a scrap of paper among us; I found a card of J.’s however; on the back of this the _custode_ wrote the name and address of the gentleman with influence.

I asked the _custode_ to take us to the Roman amphitheatre.

“_Patienza_,” he said, “what haste? Imagine! in this place the plays of Euripides were given, here Æschylus recited his own dramas!”

“Euripides again!” cried Patsy pulling out a book. “Listen to this: ‘Among the Athenian captives in the quarry, there were some who could repeat long passages from Euripides’ plays. These men were favored far above others; some were even freed for the poet’s sake, and long afterwards went back and found him and thanked him, branded as they were, for life and liberty.’”

The _custode_ waited patiently, then took up his thread:

“Over there,” he pointed to the Roman amphitheatre, “the Romans pitted wild beasts against each other, sometimes against men. A Spanish priest, a great _personaggio_ in the Church, had the arena excavated--you know the fanaticism of that people--on account of the Christians martyred there. The amphitheatre is not interesting--in comparison with the theatre, one understands.”

“He’s heard students talk,” said Patsy; “he’s all for Greek antiquities, has a proper scorn for Roman. Don’t you find it lonely here?” This last to the _custode_, in whose life and character he was already deeply interested.

“There are diversions,” the _custode_ told him; “in other seasons, many visitors come; I have talked with almost all the sovereigns of Europe. The learned too from all over the world--what questions they ask! For this one I collect the weeds, for that one the butterflies. This year on account of the disaster, you might say, nobody comes--behold my companions!” He pointed to a white goat with curled horns cropping the grass in the old theatre; two beautiful little black kids frisked and butted each other at her side.

“The animals belong to you?”

“To my son; he has gone to Anapo for fish, also for papyrus; it grows there as nowhere else; they say the Moros planted it. That goat is a famous milker,--even after the young ones have fed she gives half a brocca of milk!”

The ancient Via delle Tombe lies just above the Greek theatre; it led to the city and must have served as a thoroughfare for the living as well as a burial place for the dead. The road-bed is deeply furrowed with ruts of ancient chariot wheels. On either side are the tombs, rifled centuries ago; tombs, street, and theatre are all hewn out of the solid rock; the race that made them, built as no race builds today, for all time!

“Behold the depths of these ruts,” said the _custode_, “those narrow ones were made by the funeral cars.”

“It’s like Pompeii,” said Patsy;--“those old tracks hit harder than all the rest; they make the place alive as nothing else does.”

“_Ci rivedremo?_” said the _custode_ as we parted. “The Signori will come again? They should see the sunset from here. The view of Syracuse, the great harbor, the Ionian sea is famous.”

“O, yes, I shall come back,” said Patsy. “Lonely, poor old chap,” he continued, as we drove off; “I shall have to make some photographs of the theatre and the goats.”

* * * * *

All of ancient Syracuse is intensely interesting. It is filled with the great shades of the past; we felt them all about us, just as we had felt the presence of the birds in the tree-tops over the old quarry. Modern Syracuse is disappointing; a little provincial town with narrow crooked streets lighted by electricity. Could this ever have been “the largest of Greek, the most beautiful of all cities?” The splendid capital of Dionysius and Hiero, the home of Theocritus? Today Syracuse has shrunken again to the size

of Ortygia, the island where the original Greek settlement was planted. The five prosperous towns that once surrounded the central city have disappeared; the magnificent harbor alone remains unchanged; it could still hold a fleet of battleships.

“Where can we get the best view of Greater Syracuse?” Patsy wondered; “it must have been very like Greater New York. The central city built on an island in a magnificent harbor surrounded by five cities and connected by a bridge to the mainland. You can see the remaining ruins of the five cities on this map--see here they are, they correspond quite well to Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City, Staten Island and the Bronx!”

We had fixed Sunday afternoon, our last day, to deliver a letter of introduction to a lady of Syracuse; our time was so short we could not risk being tempted with hospitalities! When the hour for the visit arrived Patsy “begged off!”

“That old Greek fort of Euryelus,” he began, “I didn’t half see it the other day--the English officer I met in the catacombs says that Archimedes invented the catapult for its defence. He says it’s still so solid it could be repaired to stand a siege--an old-fashioned one of course--like the siege of Troy!”

“_You_ more interested in an old ruin than a new acquaintance?” I cried. No use, for once Patsy deserted me.

On the way to deliver the letter I stopped at the cathedral, formerly a Pagan temple. The baroque façade is disappointing. Where are the remains of the temple, of the costly treasures Verres carried off to Rome, and got soundly scolded by Cicero for, in consequence? To get back to that time you must go over step by step what has happened since then. In the seventh century the temple was turned into a Christian church by Bishop Zosimus, in the eighth it became a Mohammedan mosque; temple, mosque, cathedral, it has served its purpose of worship well! When my guide, a bright-eyed boy, rattled off his lesson, the place immediately grew interesting. I found the temple’s superb Doric columns--they are whitewashed now and hard to discover--imbedded in the cathedral walls; at the sight of them the church vanishes, a splendid temple stands in its place. Near this deep-fluted column, may have knelt Simaetha, the deserted girl, imploring help of Artemis to win back false Delphis--hark, her old cry echoes through the ages:

“Three times do I pour libation, and thrice, my Lady Moon, I speak this: Be it with a friend he lingers, be it with a leman, may he clean forget them, as Theseus of old forgot the fair-tressed Ariadne!”

“There will be a baptism,” said the boy, “if the lady cares to see the font--“

I looked at the curious baptismal font, while the sacristan lighted his candle in preparation for the rite. The font is a classic vase, resting on twelve quaint Phoenician-looking lions of green bronze; an inscription states it was a gift to Zosimus. Who was he? A god, as one book says, or the Bishop, or a pagan historian, who criticizes Christian emperors over much? Either way, it was strange to see the ancient vase used as a baptismal font, to witness the casting out of the old Adam from a new-born baby by a cross apoplectic archpriest, who so frightened the infant that it roared horribly as Adam departed.

“You are the son of the _custode_?” I said to my guide, a lad perhaps eleven years old.

“No, I am the _custode_!”

“And your father, what does he do?”

“Oh, he is a _custode_ too.”

The lady, to whom I had the letter, received me cordially. She lives in an old palace, with large high rooms, and modern furniture. I pleased her by saying how much we admired the dark Syracusan type; I did not see one blonde in Syracuse.

“Your women have superb hair,” I said; “they dress it beautifully.”

“You noticed that? I have seen women without shoes, whose coiffures were finer than those I saw in Paris. They are extravagant. Imagine! my washerwoman has her hair dressed; she pays a franc and a half a month to a hair-dresser--you should see her; her coiffure is almost as good as mine.”

“That would be difficult; your hair is magnificent.”

“All my own--see, hardly a white hair, just two or three over the temple. When I was young, it covered me like a cloak, but what can one expect at sixty?”

“Sixty--it’s not possible!”

“Yes, my _festa_ was a week ago; how old should you have said?”

“Less than forty.”

It was true, she was the youngest person for her age I ever saw. A tall shy man now came in followed by a brown lupetto dog.

My hostess introduced me. “An American lady--she brings a letter from the Contessa Q.--she would be welcome without it--we know what the Americani are doing, Signora. I myself saw the good warm clothes the American Capitano landed here. O, the Prefetto was glad of those garments and those medicines--what was the name of the ship, Arturo?”

“There were several; thou referest to the Celtico.”

“What a kind man was that captain--he spoke French like a Frenchman and the young _biondino_ who kept the lists; _tanto simpatico!_”

It was pleasant to hear of the “Celtic’s” good work in this very foreign house, of Captain Huse and of Paymaster Jordan ycleped il _biondino_!

“Did I tell thee,” said Arturo, addressing my hostess--he was too shy to speak directly to me--“that the sailors of the American fleet made up a purse of sixteen thousand francs for the families of our mariners smitten by the disaster? It is a fact of piety and comradeship not to be forgotten.”

“Thou sayest well. Hast thou not a glass of wine, a bit of cake to offer?”

Poor Arturo, thankful for any excuse to escape, lurched out of the room followed by the lupetto. He was one of those painfully shy men whose greatest intimacies are with animals, as dumb as they themselves would like to be.

“Your husband--” I began.

“No, no, my son!” she interrupted, laughing till the tears came to her eyes.

“My son, the eldest; not a good son; he has married against my wishes. Children are nothing but vexations; to be happy one must be childless!”

I tried to change the subject by asking Arturo’s profession.

“He has no profession, no ambitions. His father was in the Legislature, as was my father. Arturo is satisfied to live in the country, to make wine, to raise sheep, goats, swine. That is very well, but it is not enough. He should see the world, pass a winter in Rome; but no, he thinks only of his vineyards and his sheep, Madonna Santa, his goats--_my son_!”

Arturo returned, followed by a servant bringing refreshments. He poured the wine, held the glass to the light, handed it to me with a deep bow:

“Your health!”

“This is exquisite--so light--it’s like some Syracusan wine I had at Taormina;” I mentioned the name.

“That is not an honest wine,” he was all alive now. “I should not advise you to take it. This now is pure; be not afraid, it cannot hurt you!”

“It’s hard to get wine in Rome at any decent price nowadays,” I said.

“What do you pay a flask?”

“We are fortunate, we do not pay _forestieri_ prices, we have it from a friend for two francs--“

“If this suits the Signora, we can make an arrangement to send her a quantity, direct, not through the hands of an agent--they are all robbers!”

When I thought I had stayed long enough, I rose to go.

“It is early,” said my hostess, surprised at my haste, though we had talked for over an hour; there is more time in Syracuse than in some places.

“My cab has come--“

“The Signora will drive in the Passeggiata Aretusa? Everybody goes there Sunday afternoon; there is music, it is just the time. Shall I accompany her?”

“It would be most kind.”

“No, no, a pleasure! Take my keys, Arturo, be sure you give them to none but me.” She bustled about briskly; in a few minutes was ready for our drive. “I will show you more people worth looking at in half an hour than you would see alone in a week.”

Arturo helped us into the cab; as we drove off he bowed with a certain rustic awkwardness not without its charm; he pleased in spite of his plainness. He is not fitted for courts or capitals, but just for the country life he likes; I am sure his flocks flourish, I know his wine is good; even in Syracuse, mothers are not always the best judges of a son’s capacity.

In the Passeggiata Aretusa the band was playing Cavalleria Rusticana. The pleasant

promenade, facing the harbor front, was crowded with people dressed in their best. The Syracusans walked up and down in family groups, father and mother behind, children in front, or sat upon benches in threes, young girl, young man, and the inevitable chaperon. There were few carriages, only one with pretensions, an antique barouche lined with mulberry cloth; coachman and footman wore liveries to match; horses and harnesses were fresh and handsome, the whole turnout was of the style of fifty years ago. The scene had a strong Spanish flavor. In Italy you expect to find the population on a _festa_ afternoon assembled in a piazza, the proper social center of every Italian community; in Spain the social center is the alameda, a long shaded promenade with seats and space for people to pace and talk. In the interval “between the selections,” we paced slowly up and down. My friend was a person of distinction; all the best-dressed people bowed very low to her. At one end of the Passeggiata the crowd was so great that we halted near a pool, enclosed by an iron railing.

“_Ecco la fontana Aretusa_,” said the lady; she had been so busy bowing to right and to left, that she had hardly spoken since we entered the drive. The Fountain of Arethusa! Another of Sicily’s delicious surprises; in this fairy-land you meet old friends every moment.

Arethusa! At her very name, the opening words of Shelley’s poem ring through the memory:--

“Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains;
From cloud and from crag
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.”

Arethusa, you remember? the lovely maiden of Elis, who was seen bathing and pursued by the river god, Alpheus. The maid, appealing to Artemis, was changed to a fountain, whereupon Alpheus mingled his stream with hers, and they both sank into the earth, passed under the sea, and rose again in Ortygia:

“Like friends once parted,
Grown single-hearted

* * * * *

Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love, but live no more!”

Would you know how she looks to an artist? The next time you are at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, look at George Fuller’s lovely picture of Arethusa, and you will learn.

The fountain rises from an arch in the rock and spreads into a wide picturesque pool, where papyrus and water lilies grow.

The concert was over, the band put up their instruments, the crowd began to disperse; it was time to leave the Passeggiata Aretusa. As we drove back to the lady’s house she pointed out a large building.

“See, they have nearly finished that labor--who knows when it would have been done if it had not been for the earthquake? The American Mees Davis had a hand in that.”

“You know Miss Davis?” I asked.

“If I know her? Per Bacco, who does not? I tell you that woman is a marvel! You have heard what she accomplished after the earthquake, she and the German Dr. Colmers? We had three thousand of those poor creatures to feed, house and clothe. Magari! it would have gone hard without the help of that woman--and what influence, what power she possessed! She had but to ask, no matter what, it was granted--money, but thousands of _scudi_; work-rooms, the Sindaco gave her three in the Palazzo Municipale.”

Miss Davis! That is another story; it has been told elsewhere, will, I hope, be more fully told by Miss Davis herself. She had come to Sicily for a vacation, having so overworked herself that the trustees of her Woman’s Prison at Bedford insisted she should take a few months’ rest. The day after the earthquake she offered her services for relief work. Syracuse was fortunate in having a good Prefect, a good Mayor, doubly fortunate in having two women of power among the volunteers--Miss Davis and the Marchesa di Rudini, daughter of Mr. Labouchere, the editor of Truth. Miss Davis had with her just six hundred dollars; this she promptly spent for the relief work. Her first purchase was two hundred francs’ worth of pocket handkerchiefs. She had besides, what the American Committee in Rome had, faith unlimited in the heart of America; that is better than a bank account.

“From the point of view of actual achievement,” writes Mr. Cutting, “and also of example, Miss Davis’ feat at Syracuse seems to me the most important single contribution to the problem of rehabilitating the sufferers from the earthquake.”

This praise was borne out by all we saw and heard at Syracuse.

Miss Davis opened a hospital for the wounded; and work-rooms where all, who could sew, were employed to make clothes and bedding for the horde of almost naked refugees the Russian, English, German as well as the Italian ships brought to slumbrous Syracuse. She was one of the prime movers in the relief work at Syracuse, that the Duke of Genoa said was the best organized of all he saw. Each man was set to work at the thing he could do; the tailors made clothes, the cobblers made boots, the masons, carpenters and painters were employed to finish a large public building that stood half completed. So these poor people were enabled from the first to earn their own living, to escape the dreadful pauperization that in Rome, and almost everywhere else, confronted them. There remained the “poor things,” the men who had no skill, no trade; what work could be invented for them? Miss Davis was now entrusted with large sums of money, the spending of it was left to her judgment. From the first she maintained that among the able bodied, only those who worked could be fed. It would have been far easier to issue rations, or so much money a day to the _profughi_: those methods did not suit the “Angel of Mercy.” She looked about her, found the roads in a bad condition; organized and kept at work a road gang, mending the roads of Syracuse.

The tributes Miss Davis received are wonderfully touching. A poor organist from Messina composed a song in her honor, dedicated to the Tortorella (turtle dove); the Sindaco sent her a diploma of honor, beautifully engrossed with the coat-of-arms of the city; most precious of all is the address, signed by a long list of her _profughi_, addressed to the “_Gentile Miss_,” the sublime “Heroine of Charity,” who is saluted “in the name of the great heart of Ortygia, the center of the ancient world!”

* * * * *

“After Taormina, Girgenti is the most beautiful place in Sicily,” Patsy declared.

“Some people say Taormina is the most beautiful place on earth; if you like to measure--“

“I don’t--I couldn’t--so many places seem best! Wait till you see the temples though; there’s nothing to compare with them outside Athens.”

We had arrived at the port of Empedocles at sunset, and driven through the violet dusk up to the town, glowing like a jewelled city on the heights overlooking river and harbor. I had gone direct to the comfortable Hotel des Temples, a mile outside Girgente, where again as at Syracuse we were the only guests. When we met at breakfast, Patsy had already explored the place.

“We ought to have kept more time for this,” he said; “for us it’s even more interesting than Syracuse.”

“Girgenti--” I began.

“Call it Acragas, the Greek name, or at least Agrigentum, the Roman,” Patsy interrupted. “I’ve made friends with the _custode_ of the Temple of Zeus; he’s like the others, a superior man--here in Sicily they all seem a cut above the same sort on the mainland.”

Breakfast over, I was hurried to see the Temple of Zeus and Patsy’s new friend. He welcomed us with effusion and lamented the scarcity of tourists. Patsy asked him to what nationality the larger part of his traveling public belonged.

“German,” he said. “I always know them because they walk.”

“They are economical?”

“In part for that reason, also because they see more on foot than driving.”

“Americans all come in cabs?”