Chapter II: Part 2

On this same Via Maqueda are the two large theaters. The Mássimo, or Largest Theater, is a splendid structure, well named, for it is the largest theater not only in Italy but in all Europe, a dignified adaptation of ancient Greek ideals to present day needs. A block farther on is the Politeama Garibaldi, with a Roman triumphal arch entrance, and a two-storied Greek colonnade encircling frescoed walls whose polychromatic decorations are so exceedingly Pompeiian they suggest that Palermo may be the birthplace of a new renaissance in Italian art.

The Sicilian of any class is always picturesque, always individual. He could scarcely be anything else if he tried, and the life of the masses in the city is like a show at the theater--a show, at that, in which even the supernumeraries are ever imbued with due regard for the proper setting and action of the piece. There is no more typical specimen of this condensed picturesqueness than the water-seller, whose bellow has musical quality and charm, as you discover after your first shock. He calls up Egypt and the streets of Cairo. Really, he is the survival of an ancient Arab custom. You find him everywhere, especially among the lanes of the Fiera di Pascua, the Easter Fair, a piece bitten right out of the heart of Coney Island. The Easter season, by the way, is an exceedingly fortunate time to spend in Sicily, because of the multitudinous festivities going on.

For the Fair, great bare sheds spring up overnight in the square beside the Mássimo, mushroom-like--a sunstruck Babel of crazily built and decorated shops and stalls and booths where everything imaginable is to be bought, from tinware and toys to rosaries and vegetables. About the booths eddies a jovial mob, pushing, chattering, playing practical jokes on one another, eating candy and the dubious Sicilian equivalents for frankfurters and kraut. Bands blare out fitful, horrible music from the roofs or windows of small sheds curiously mounted with painted legends or astonishing pictures in which the lack of perspective is the most prominent feature, unless it is the artist’s entire disregard for the principles of anatomy. “Barkers” in plate armor manufactured out of ancient kerosene tins from which the odor has by no means departed, vie with ridiculous clowns and short skirted dancers in proclaiming the attractions of their rival marionette and “minstrel” shows. And everybody wants to pose. Indeed, the Sicilians have a good humored mania for getting in the way of the camera, even when they know they are not wanted there and will never see a single copy of the picture.

I leveled my camera at one queer stall, and instantly the people sprang together solidly, completely obscuring the booth, each man crying to his neighbor: “_Aspett’! Aspett’! Il fotografo!_” In vain I pleaded. In vain Gualterio shouted and threatened and argued. The merrymakers laughed, and nodded, and stood like statues. In the confusion an important policeman stepped up, saluted respectfully, and said: “Excellency will be kind enough to move out into the street again. He is attracting citizens, and blocking the entire square.”

Then he began unhurriedly turning over the human kaleidoscope.

III

A NIGHT OF DISSIPATION

Palermo is chimneyless. Hovels and palaces alike have no fires, except for cooking, and among the poorer classes very little of that is done at home, the people being steady patrons of the _cucine economice_, or “economical kitchens,” especially of those in the vicinity of the great public markets.

Anxious to see these typical aspects of city life in tabloid form, we had our own dinner early one evening, and told Gualterio to take us through the poorer quarters, to show us the people getting their suppers, both at home and in the old market. Obeying literally, he drove us through countless _piccoli vicoli_ or narrow alleys, dark little canyon-like slits between the houses.

Strange shadowy forms flitted about under our horse’s very feet; black doorways gave yawning glimpses of deeper gloom beyond, lighted only by a tiny candle; here and there we passed vague silhouettes--a hungry man standing, hat on, before a table or sideboard gulping down his meager dinner, or a woman, Rembrandt-like, knitting, mending, reading, or amusing a child, in soft relief against the murk of the interior. Sharp cries from the driver warned away the children sitting in the street, so narrow that the wheels of our carriage scraped the house walls on both sides while going through; women knitting slipped their chairs momentarily back into the doorways in order to let us pass. Street lamps at long intervals twinkled feebly, and after six or eight such streets were traversed we emerged into the glare and brilliance of the slightly depressed Piazza Caraccioli, home of the Fiera Vecchia or Old Market.

Halting the victoria on one side of the square, we wandered about on foot among a bedlam more picturesque than, and fully as noisy as, the Easter Market. To describe the scene adequately is impossible--no one who has not seen it can gather more than the vaguest idea from any printed description of this vivid cross-section of lower class Sicilian customs.

Dazzling light and pitchy darkness alternate sharply, with no intermediate nuances of softer shadow, and the hurrying people rush hither and yon like so many busy ants. Adding to the confusion of the scene, the peddler and vendor shout out their wares: “Water!” “Olives!” “Artichokes!” “Fish!” A chorus of lesser cries swell into diapason invitations to buy all manner of things one does not wish and can not possibly use, and there is much good natured chaff for the _forestieri_. Men, women and children by the score are everywhere, some eating where they stand, some carrying food home.

Small pails of gleaming charcoal bear upon their heads great kettles of boiling artichokes. Steam and aroma from the cooking meats and vegetables; the smoke of lamps, candles and torches and burning fat and grease in the frying pans; escaping gases from the ranges in the “economical kitchens,” from the charcoal fires, and from the coal stoves; the innumerable smells of fresh vegetables, meat, fish, both salt and fresh, cut flowers and goats, with an additional tang of cheap wine, gushing from big casks into pails and bottles in the open shops, mingle in a composite odor by no means as unpleasant as might be thought.

The whole scene is a delight to the eye. Here is a good sized wine shop, its front entirely open, showing two rows of casks and an imposing array of copper bright as the sun; yonder a vegetable store completely covered with onions suspended in long strings, bunches and wreaths, decorated fancifully with green leaves and little rosettes which afford a background of decidedly striking type for an image of the Holy Bambino, itself of onion color, and barely discernible among the rustling strings of bulbs over the door.

Beside us a tiny restaurant, its front all gas-range, yawns enticingly, while opposite glows the fiery eye of an artichokeman’s tiny charcoal fire. Vendors of fried entrails and stomachs squat beside their frying pans and baskets, perforated ladles in their hands, exactly like our frankfurter men; while water-men with their highly colored stands full of clinking glasses swing along, bellowing cheerfully.

Great gaudy signs in blue, red and yellow proclaim the prices of empty eggs, strung on threads, or impaled upon wooden spearlets, and stuck up over the front of a shop. Evidently the Palermitan distinguishes as we do between “eggs,” “fresh eggs” and “strictly fresh eggs,” for the price varies considerably. However, the careful buyer we watched trusted not in signs or portents, but weighing each egg carefully as he bought, placed a dozen or more of the fragile things in his coat pockets despite the throng. Why a purchaser never comes home with an omelet in his clothes is a mystery, for we found it exceedingly difficult to work our way through the crowd. Yet, when I questioned the egg-seller he declared that no one ever broke an egg.

A man with a pretentious stand like the American quick lunch counters stood behind a narrow smoking counter full of hidden fire, bearing a frying pan on top. On his left a bowl of strong shredded cheese faced other dishes of butter and rolls. He was a very popular caterer, too, for while we stood watching him a number of customers came up, giving an order in the peasant dialect which we could not understand, and the proprietor with a deft turn of his hand split a roll, covered it liberally with a rich thick layer of shredded cheese looking like toothpicks, placed upon that a few scraps of the meat he was cooking below, and deluging the whole with a spoonful or two of boiling grease, served up the tit-bit to his eager customer. In Sicily the butchers sell the offal and entrails of slaughtered animals, which in America are turned over the soap manufacturers or thrown away. The kitchen-man who buys them cuts up the stuff, boils it in its own fat, and sells it in the reeking buns at a penny apiece. The sturdy Sicilian seems to enjoy and thrive on this horrible mess, and even the children come toddling up to clamor for their share.

Macaroni of all sorts, curled, fluted, twisted, frilled, chopped into squares and lead pencil lengths, woven, braided into shapes numberless, decorates several of the stalls. Other booths sell candles; others, shoes; still others, nothing but cheese. Cobblers are everywhere, although it seems impossible--in a town where so many people go barefoot--that one-tenth of the shoemakers, who work from six o’clock in the morning until nearly midnight, can find anything to do. Notwithstanding this external poverty, however, there are in the houses of the very poorest in practically every section of the town sewing-machines, whose tireless treadles throb and pulse by day and far into the night, the seamstress bending over her work lighted only by the spasmodic flickerings of a little candle.

Tiring after an hour or so of the bustle and confusion and glare, we set off again. In and out we wound, as in a dream, peopling the streets with imaginary rascals ready to rob or kidnap, until at last in a small open square we came to the brilliantly lighted wineshop and café of _Sainte Rosalie_, whose proprietor, himself partly French, thus Gallicizes the name of the town’s patron saint, and at the same time adds distinction to his café in the eyes of lower class Palermo. We stopped curiously, and the proprietor, immediately forgetting his patrons, invited us to get out and inspect the place.

Filling almost one entire side of the large front room is a huge stove built of mortar-covered brickwork, upon which bubbled a couple of cauldrons, one full of goats’ stomach, the other containing scraps of something or other. Both smelled good--but how they looked! Opposite the stove hung meat which had been fresh that morning; piles of vegetables completely filled up the counter and various tables. All the coppers and cooking utensils were spotless, and marvelous to relate, there is a real chimney, and running water, both hot and cold. Sometimes you see a house which has a genuine iron cooking stove--but it stands in the parlor and the stovepipe is thrust conveniently out into the street above the closed lower half of the front door.

The café is divided into two parts by an arch, and no curtains being hung, the diners can see perfectly how their food is being cooked. Leading us through into the _Sala di pranzo_, the proprietor, with a sweeping bow, waved us into two chairs at a table beside two native couples who were taking their belated suppers. The peasants greeted us frankly and pleasantly, the women smiling, and the men doffing their caps with a hearty “_Buona sera, signori!_”

Not knowing exactly what was expected of us, we ordered _vino e pasta_, supposing we would receive some sour, fiery fluid, and the bad Sicilian bread. Instead there was set before us a large flagon of reddish-brown, rather heavy dessert wine, a little too sweet to be palatable to Americans, but nevertheless delicious. Clean though coarse napkins and glasses accompanied it, and delicious almond sweet-cakes in far greater quantity than we could eat. The price of this refreshment was so ridiculously small that we wondered at first whether Boniface had not made a mistake.

Our trip through the market and the _piccoli vicoli_ thus pleasantly finished, I told Gualterio to take us to the theater.

That anyone would be willing to miss a minute of pleasure he must pay for was incomprehensible to his simple mind. Draining his beaker at a gulp, he nearly dropped the glass in astonishment. “_Ma--signore! É troppo tard’! Ora si finisc’ il prim’ atto!_” he exclaimed. “It is too late! The first act is surely over!”

”Oh, I did not mean the fine theaters where the rich people go, but a little theater, a theater of the people--where you go when you have an evening to yourself.”

A curious expression came over his face, but making sure that we knew what we were talking about, he drove rapidly to the door of a dirty and dilapidated looking house in a small side court. Though we did not expect marionette shows to be given in a very splendid auditorium, we were scarcely prepared for this, rather hesitating to enter.

The door was divided, the lower half closed, the upper open. Inside hung a short, flapping black curtain, while about the door loitered a little group of street urchins who dodged up when the doorkeeper’s back was turned, to peep eagerly into the slit of brilliance that revealed the stage between the upper edge of the half-door and the bottom of the curtain.

As we, too, peeped, Gualterio whispered that here was a theater whose audience numbered the very poorest and the humblest in the city, adding apologetically: “Perhaps it is too poor for Excellency. I have been here and enjoyed the performance, but Excellency is accustomed to the fine theaters, and the Signora may not like this very well.”

On the contrary, that was exactly the sort of theater we did wish to see. The glimpse we got through the open door of the auditorium however, was not reassuring; and furthermore there was not a woman present. I knew all about the custom of the Sicilian theaters, which announce two different sorts of plays--“To-night for men;” “This is a play for ladies.” Naturally, seeing no sign of the more particular sex, I jumped at the conclusion that this must be a man’s night. But disturbed by our conversation outside, the doorkeeper-proprietor and at least half of the audience politely arose and insisted that we should enter. With some misgivings we did so, paying two cents apiece for seats. Afterward I learned that the impresario had charged us exactly double what anyone else paid.

The seats consisted of a few hard wooden benches without any backs, and the one reserved place in the entire theater--which was a room perhaps thirty feet square with two galleries some five feet above the floor on both sides--was a single broken-backed kitchen chair perched upon one of the benches in the middle of the house. The only well dressed man in the room, who occupied it, gallantly sprang down at once, and with a delightfully courtly bow and smile assisted the protesting Signora to his place. The audience numbered about forty or fifty fisherman, peddlers, a cabman or two and a miscellaneous collection of as jovial looking pirates as ever scuttled a ship or slit a throat. But for all their appearance, they behaved exactly like American opera-goers, and the stir that our entrance made set every tongue chattering at a lively pace.

The stage stretched across the end of the pit at a height of perhaps three or four feet above the floor, and on a rack of some kind at the left of the place where the footlights should have been, was a quantity of wilted green vegetables. Thinking of what happens to inferior actors in the rural districts here, I inquired with some anxiety if the vegetables had been laid aside for that purpose. But the man to whom I spoke, missing the joke entirely, replied with the utmost simplicity: “Oh, no, Giuseppe laid his pack there because it was too big to place between the seats.”

How homelike it would seem to the weary street hawker in New York, could he but stop at the theater on his way home, and occasion no remark by leaving his left-over stock in trade at the feet of the actors for the time being.

As soon as La Signora was ensconced upon her uncertain “reserved seat,” the men who sat beside me on either hand began to explain the play in what they probably considered words of one syllable. The fancily dressed young man at my right seemed impatient at the remarks of my white-haired left-hand neighbor, who smelled strongly of tar, and whose sixty years and showerbath dialect made him both attractive and unintelligible to me. Both men talked at once and at high speed. In the meantime everyone else all over the house was talking cheerfully; and the play was proceeding as calmly as though there were no interruption. Between the two explanations, neither of which I could understand, I had considerable difficulty in catching the words of the play, which was being read by a gentleman whose lungs must have been rubber and whose throat brass. He stood back of the proscenium somewhere and bellowed or whispered in fine frenzy at every dramatic point, as the marionettes performed their astonishing evolutions.

The puppets were handsome armored figures about three feet high, clothed in glittering plate and chain armor, accoutered cap-à-pie, their shields properly blazoned and their surcoats faithful models of the garments worn by the ancient knights. Marching, filing and counter-filing, they made addresses to the accompaniment of stiff, clattering gestures, fought duels of deadly outcome with clashing weapons and rasping wires in the glare of half a dozen smoky oil lamps, and moved about easily, manipulated by the expert hands of operators who were standing in the wings. Every little while a human hand would burst into view, grotesquely gigantic compared with the puppet whose fate was in its keeping.

The play was one of the familiar favorites, representing the endeavors of invading Moors to convert Christian Sicilians to Mohammedanism, but the author was somewhat mixed in his history. Beside the Sicilians and Moors he worked in Frenchmen, and before the play was over, the story was that of a struggle between the two Christian nations, the Mohammedans obviously forgotten. The wicked, wicked Frenchmen were, of course, defeated, and their bloody schemes met with the noisy condemnation of the little crowd, while their opponents, the ancestors of these same street boys and hucksters and fishermen, won as hearty approval.

In the interval between the fourth and the last acts I had a chance to inquire of my neighbors why there were no women present. Both men regarded me with astonishment, and the younger answered first.

“Women? Women in the theater? Why, the theater is not good for them. I never bring my woman!”

Evidently a foreign woman was different, and none of the audience seemed to regard it as strange that one should be among them. As we came out into the fresh night air, Gualterio was apologetically solicitous, a little nervous as to the success of his experiment in bringing us to this particular theater. But our manifest satisfaction with our night of dissipation speedily reassured him, and all the way back to the hotel he sang _canzone_ to his chunky little Arab out of pure joy and thankfulness.

IV

CATHEDRALS

It has already been pointed out that the Easter season is an especially good time to be in Palermo. On Easter morning the great Court of the Lord before the Cathedral is a surprising picture. Upon the heavy stone balustrade enclosing it sixteen massive saints meditate benignly in the scented air. The great gray cement yard, flowers all colors of the rainbow, marble Santa Rosalia--patroness of Palermo--the huge church itself: all are bathed in the most brilliant sunshine imaginable. Words and pictures alike fail to give any adequate expression of it. The noise and unrest of the busy Corso are forgotten in this magic precinct; smiling, happy men, women and children stream through the yard, picturesque in their holiday attire; while from the windows drones the chant of the Mass, like the buzzing of a swarm of kindly bees hovering over the flowers. The white glare of the Egyptian desert is never more blinding than a Sicilian spring morning radiance.

Though the service calls, religion in Sicily takes small heed of the antics of foreigners, and if one chooses to stay outside in the courtyard and take photographs, it causes not the slightest comment. The main charm of the Cathedral lies in the curious blending of its different forms of architecture--Arabic, Norman, Gothic; which produces a dashing and almost whimsical effect in its fine arcades, its rich friezes and battlements, its interlacing arches, and its airy turrets outlined against the blue sky. Two graceful flying arches connect the Cathedral with the campanile or belfry which, as is often the case, is separated from the Cathedral proper--in this instance across the street. The vast structure as a whole is the very epitome of Sicily’s many sided culture and art during her high tide of glory, the Norman period. A witty Englishman has fitly remarked that the badly restored and whitewashed interior, however, is of the “railroad station type.”

In the south aisle chapels, though, are the excellent tombs of the kings, the grim and silent last homes of the marvelous Frederick, that “Wonder of the World,” of Henry VI, The Butcher, of Constance the Broken-Hearted, and of others. A great crimson porphyry sarcophagus holds the dust of King Roger, of whom it has been well said indeed that he was “one of the wisest, most renowned, most worthy, and most fortunate princes of his time” (Freeman). Kneeling Norman nobles carved in white marble upbear the simple, boxlike mass of porphyry upon their armored shoulders. What an expression of the homage of the people! The simple inscription, in Latin, reads:

IN QUIET AND PEACE, ROGER, STRENUOUS
DUKE AND OF SICILY FIRST KING,
IS DEAD IN PANORMOS, THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY
IN THE YEAR 1154.

So it would seem that we are not the first people to discover “the strenuous life!”

And King Roger’s life was certainly strenuous. But it was nothing at all compared to the career of his father, who landed stealthily in Sicily by night with a handful of trusty knights and men-at-arms, captured Messina before breakfast, and stormed on through the island, felling the Saracens like so many saplings. The Norman conquest was distinguished throughout by the most impossible feats of both personal valor and consideration; the island was ready for Roger to knit together and administer when he succeeded his father, and played the rôle of lawgiver and organizer to his fiery parent’s conquests. And young Roger rose even higher than his father. Where he had been Count, Roger made himself not only King of Sicily, but ruler of a considerable part of Southern Italy as well. What manner of man he was is shown by an ancient mosaic still on the wall of the church of the Martorana, a remarkable example in itself of Norman-Sicilian art. Notwithstanding the tremendous temporal power of the Popes in those days, this descendant of the vikings refused to be crowned by the papal legate, and the mosaic represents him placing the diadem upon his head with his own hands.

The Martorana church was built by the King’s High Admiral, Giorgios Antiochenos, a versatile gentleman indeed, who amused himself while on shore leave or duty by building bridges and churches, importing silk weavers and generally playing the constructive and highly intelligent official, whose good works have long outlived himself.

Throughout the island it is eminently proper to keep the key of a building as far away from its door as possible--it is the _custode_ of La Martorana who gives open sesame to the Scláfani Palace. As you drive over, he ticks off its history on his bony fingers with the precious key: Built in 1330; afterward a grand hospital; to-day a barrack for the Bersaglieri or mountain riflemen. Practically the only remaining evidence of its former grandeur is a tremendous fresco attributed to a long-forgotten Flemish painter, on one of the walls of the courtyard. The fresco, measuring some eighteen feet in height by about twenty-two in length, is called _Il Trionfo della Morte_, The Triumph of Death, and its name is fully borne out by its grisly realism, as the white horse and his ruthless skeleton rider trample down those who wish to live, and ignore the wretched who plead in vain for release from their misery. With the latter group stands the painter himself, palette and mahlstick in hand; it is said he was taken ill while a guest in the palace. Perhaps the painting commemorates his feelings during that unfortunate experience.

It is frankly ugly--there is no other word to express it--yet it still clings to the white wall and produces an astonishing effect, especially when one remembers that it is a faithful expression of the religious feeling of the epoch it stands for. While we were studying it, a well-fed American-in-a-hurry, evidently a person of importance Baedekering through Sicily, rushed into the court, asked abruptly if that were the great picture, thrust both hands into his pockets and, with feet wide apart, appraised it a few moments in patent disgust. It costs about a _lira_ and a half--something like thirty cents of our money--to see the fresco. Pulling out a handful of loose change to pay the custodian, the stranger glanced first at his hand, then back at the painting.

“Thirty cents! Thirty cents--that’s exactly what it looks like!” he exploded, and was off before we could get our breaths.

That Palermo had queer taste in the old days is indicated by the Scláfani fresco; and further evidence is not lacking in the crypts of a Capuchin monastery, a short distance outside the Porta Nuova. The vaults, long ago used as a burial place by the wealthier families of the city, contain at present some eight thousand embalmed bodies. This subway full of mummies is divided into several sections, the men and women segregated from each other and from the monks and priests, who have a gallery apart. Some of the bodies are in coffins or caskets of various sorts, but many have been hung up by the neck in cords like hangman’s nooses. Some skulls are entirely fleshless, while others are partially covered. Hands whose fingers have shrunk to black bits of petrifaction hang loosely from rotting gloves which now appear several sizes too large. Heads have slipped back to stare up at the cobwebbed ceiling, turned sidewise with most diabolical leers, moved forward as though to combat the visitor. Not a single skull is expressionless, even if devoid of flesh. Some are jocose, some piously sad, some morose, some menacing and grim.

Within the artillery barrack a little farther out, is a ragged tower some thirty feet high that represents the ancient villa of La Cuba. An Arabic frieze about the bare exterior suggests the residence of some haughty old Emir of Palermo. The iconoclastic archæologists, however, have shattered the popular belief by deciphering the inscription to prove that no Saracen ever lived there, but that the mansion was erected in 1183 by the grandson of Roger, King William II, “The Good,” of whose reign one chronicler of the period wrote: “There was more security then, in the thickets of Sicily than in the cities of other kingdoms.” Modesty, though, could scarcely have been the most conspicuous of that monarch’s many virtues, for the inscription reads: “In the Name of God, clement, merciful, give heed. Here halt and admire. Behold the illustrious dwelling of the most illustrious of the kings of the earth, William II.”

Tired out one night after a long day following the hounds through the forests outside Palermo, this same King William II, “The Good,” lay down to sleep on a hill overlooking the city. And in his sleep, he dreamed: Out of the glades floated the shining figure of the Virgin, mysterious and inspiring, telling the awestruck monarch that the church he had sworn to build for her must be erected on that very spot. Slowly the dazzling vision faded, and when he awoke William named the hill Mon Reale--Royal Mount--at once beginning to prepare for the most splendid church in Sicily, a house of prayer worthy of both its divine patroness and its royal founder.

In 1174 the actual construction began, and eight years later, thanks to the pious aid of the King’s mother, Margaret of Aragon, the Duomo of Monreale was solemnly consecrated. It was, however, unfinished outside, and to this day its barren exterior hints nothing of its interior magnificence.

Around the Cathedral sprang up a populous little city of jammed-together houses along constricted, hilly streets, and eight centuries have not changed the town appreciably. It is possible to ascend by tram this crested slope upon whose brow the Middle Ages still reign. Unfortunately, the cars are not personally conducted to stop at the best viewpoints, so it is better, though more expensive, to take a cab.

Once in a while in Europe the recognition of class distinction grips an American with a strangle-hold. That day in the Monreale tram it seized me, when a fat, overdressed middle-class woman of forty or so began to give herself more airs than a duchess. With her little son, she was taking up room enough for four ordinary people, when a spotlessly neat old peasant woman, with a decent murmur of apology, sat down in the half-vacant space alongside. The bourgeoise flared like a Sans Gene, jabbed at her parcels brusquely, and told her loudly not to intrude upon her betters. It was then that I wished for a second-class car, to save the old woman from such gratuitous effrontery.

The Cathedral rises like a fortress before the town; its main doors--between two massive square towers, giving upon a dusty little square--are rich bronze leaves full of low-reliefs from Old Testament history. The first impression on entering is of a dazzling blaze of golden light, beating upon and beaten back from golden walls with stunning effect, in which the details of design and ornamentation, for all their clarity and importance, are so marvelously subordinated that they but add to the glowing display. Though the superb glass mosaics cover an area which Baedeker--with “Made-in-Germany” accuracy--declares to be 70,400 square feet, the lower walls are all pure white marble, with an upper border and slender bright-colored bands which run perpendicularly through the spotless white like the embroidery upon a holy robe. The vast nave and aisles are light and airy. There is complete absence of any artificial decoration--no tawdry, meaningless images, no hideous ex-votos to distract the eye. Harmony is the keynote of every inch of the decorations; from pave to rooftree there is not one inconsistent or jarring note.

The great dome of the main apse is completely filled by a bust of the Christ in the same glittering, marvelous, indescribably mellow glass mosaic that covers thousands of square feet upon the walls. It is the face of the man traditional, the visage of one whose appearance has been handed down from father to son since the beginning, the likeness of a founder, a prophet. And the still, solemn wonder of it fills one like the recurrent chords of a great and stately harmony. It is the one feature that stands out high above the blinding golden haze.

“Not a jarring note”--and yet, who that has seen those forty Old Testament mosaic tableaux on the upper walls can help recalling his first start of amazement at their literalness. They speak a dialect of art; they translate the Bible stories that the uneducated medieval mind could not read, into something that everybody could understand. A snow-white Eve worming her way out of an equally pallid dreamer’s side, and afterward decorously introduced by God Himself to Adam, is startling enough. But how about Noah, draped by a modest son, while in the vinous slumber brought about through a too generous testing of the liquid sunshine of his own vines? No details of these ancient histories was too insignificant or too broad for the artificers to weave lovingly into their master-work; and nothing could better illustrate the pure simplicity of the medieval mind to which anything Biblical was holy, and fit for presentation to all the world.

One of the most noticeable features of the Duomo is the clearness and delicacy of every detail. In St. Mark’s in Venice, time has blurred and defaced almost everything and the better part of the mosaics is crumbling into soft decay; but here in Monreale the delineation is so vivid and sharp, each color so soft and pure in tone, it seems as though the master workman had laid down his tools but yesterday to pronounce his _chef d’œuvre_ complete.

We are apt to think of cloisters as gloomy, forbidding places, where half frozen monks with blue lips and hair shirts shiver about their religious tasks and wish--if they are human!--they had never been born. Of course, there are such cloisters--but not here in Monreale, where the glorious sunshine bathes all that is left of the monastery King William erected for his Benedictine monks beside the Cathedral. Pleasant cloisters these, warm and blooming and fragrant with ozone and the perfume of the flowers. And very pleasant, indeed, very much worth while, must have been the lives of the jovial Benedictine brothers during the high and mighty reign of William the Good! Even after seven hundred years the silent arcades are lovely, filled yet with slender columns about which climb ribbons of mosaic and garlands of living vines to set off the different capitals--the finest examples of twelfth century carving in the world. Every capital is different, and almost every one tells a story. The visitor can unravel for himself ancient legend or Bible story, picking out old familiar figures here and there in the mellow marble; or if he chooses, he can meditate upon the curious fact that the Normans were producing this glorious work in the island of the sun long before Giotto was born.

Monreale’s streets are rugged and steep, but very clean and decent. The Monrealese, instead of naming their Corso for Italy’s first king, have named it for the town’s most famous son, the seventeenth century painter Pietro Novelli, whose studies of the monks are moving figures, clearly establishing him as the foremost materialist Sicily ever produced. On the Corso is Grado Salvatore’s three-boy-power macaroni factory, a queer, rambling, black sort of a cavern, lighted only by the front door. A macaroni-machine looking for all the world like Benjamin Franklin’s old hand printing press occupies the front on one side; and Salvatore himself sits in the little blue and white tiled sink before it, fanning and snipping the wriggly paste as the boys twist the screw and force it out in long strings. On the other side of the partition is a cluttered-up sales-room where every imaginable shape of macaroni and spaghetti decorates the shelves. Behind all is the mixing-room, joyously dark; and you may handle the doughcakes to make sure they are pure and clean! No matter if your hands are very dirty, after your sightseeing; the good folk of Monreale will take no particular harm after what they have doubtless experienced at other hands. None the less, as a general thing the interior of a Sicilian paste shop compares favorably with that of an American bakery, and the workers themselves are quite immaculate, with soft, clean, pink hands like a woman’s.

After it comes from the press, the macaroni is cut into six-foot lengths and hung up outside the shop to dry in the sunshine. By the time it has collected sufficient dust and germs to make it stiff--two or three days are usually long enough--it is cut into package lengths and sold. In Southern Italy it often occupies a good part of a roadway, or even hangs over a busy coalyard; but in Sicily both its manufacture and sale are cleaner and more wholesome; and the macaroni made in Termini is famous for its quality. Whether it is something in its manufacture, or some subtle quality of the flour from which it is made, the Sicilian _pasta_ seems generally to have a flavor and a delicacy lacking in the Italian variety.

The three juvenile assistants--boys who had the haunting native eyes of soft yet gleaming brown dusk, lustrous as old Marsala wine full of the sun--did not seem in the least to mind the drudgery of turning their endless screw. But while we were handling doughcakes in the black backroom with genial Salvatore, they stopped “twisting the twist” and somehow managed to spread the news throughout the entire village that there were strangers within their gates; and a crowd of small boys, beggars, and others who seemed to have no occupation gathered at the front door, demanding vociferously that they be photographed, chaffing each other and us, and arranging themselves according to their own ideas of a picturesque group.

While there was no stately ceremony to welcome us, the freedom of the town was clearly ours after that picture taking. Nobody asked for so much as a copper penny, and gruff, cheery voices called after us heartily: “_Buon viaggio! A rivederci, signori!_ Good-by! Come back again!” And Monreale has been branded as a town “whose beggars are very importunate!”

Bad as the Sicilian beggars are supposed to be, we experienced less annoyance from them throughout the island than from their pertinacious brethren of Naples and the mainland generally.

At the brow of the hill is a terrace garden, the “Eden Restaurant”--where by all means you must take tea. The little establishment amuses rather than disappoints; and though it scarcely justifies its grandiose title, it commands a view that no doubt suggested the name to its proprietor. Falling away from its feet, the hill cascades down in great billows to the cool green and orange sea of the Conca d’Oro. And when the trolley car turns the shoulder of the hill, in Palermo--misty and dun in the gathering dark--lights like jewels flash out in scintillating ripples that spread and widen and sparkle as you race down the dusty mountain road, leaving medieval Monreale silent and spectral behind.

V

PALACES AND PEOPLE

“Palace” in Italian is a flexible and generic term, and the examples of “palaces” one sees in Sicily give an entirely new sense of the elasticity of the Italian language, and the freedom with which the people use it. _Palazzo_ means really any building or structure of any sort where wealthy, a noble, or a royal family lives now, or ever has lived; and some of these structures are as remarkable for their disreputable appearance as others are for their beauty and richness, resembling nothing in the world so much as American tenement houses. One such is unforgettable--a dingy white, square, four-storied building with green shutters and a large central doorway, owned and occupied by a titled and wealthy family whose members move in the highest society throughout the island. The ground floor is taken up entirely by stables, the servants, and rats as large as kittens. The mezzanine floor above is given over to two insurance companies, whose signs cover a considerable part of their story. Above, the really noble family lives in stately fashion.

It was when idling up the Nile that we first met the older son of the family. Becoming friendly on desert and river, the Sicilian confided in me his desire for a northern alliance, readily admitting the difficulty of reconciling his fiery temper with that of any wife he might choose among his own people.

“I’d like an American,” he declared, shrugging, “but if I can’t get her, I’ll take an English girl. With cool northern blood in their veins, my children might well show the virtue and strength which has made you Anglo-Saxons what you are. You see, here in Palermo I am a wealthy man. I am ‘Your Grace,’ ‘Your Highness.’ But in New York or London or Paris I am only one of ‘those poor Sicilians.’ I should like to marry a wife whose income, together with mine, would enable us to live as becomes the nobility in those cities.”

I made as diplomatic a reply as possible, but I am very much afraid that the gentleman left me feeling that Americans are after all a cold and unappreciative people, though he did express a desire to continue the acquaintance in Palermo. When we reached that city, we learned from various sources of the aggravating inhospitality of the romancing nobility, one of whose favorite pleasantries consists of ardent solicitations to foreigners to call, and the presenting of cards which, upon scrutiny, are found to bear either no address or only the Italian legend for “General Delivery.”

Nevertheless, to our surprise, he called on us the morning after his return from an extended trip through the Holy Land, and learning that we intended to leave the next day, insisted that we drive out with him that afternoon. About three o’clock we were informed with great éclat that “His Excellency the Egregious Lord X--” did us the honor to await us. Ready at the door to bow us out to the emblazoned barouche with its black-liveried coachman and lackey hovered an unsuspected congregation of obsequious hotel employés. Many of them we had never before seen; none of them had hitherto deigned to notice our daily peregrinations in Gualterio’s coach of state. But now that one of the dear nobility they reverence almost as much as in medieval times recognized us socially, we were quite plainly persons of consideration. Our splendor, however, was short-lived. We had time only for a swift visit to a handsome club with extensive grounds, to the Caffè Massimo for a taste of its famous green-almond ices, and to the Giardino Inglese for a glimpse at its botanic charms, for we had an engagement for tea at the American Consulate.

It had not taken us long to arrive at the conclusion that Consul Bishop was a very Bishop of Consuls, and it was due to his kindly interest and hints that we enjoyed considerable intimacy with the life of the people, and also had a good opportunity to see under actual conditions not only the delights of being a foreign representative of the United States, but also the drawbacks of such a position. Incidentally, it is, generally speaking, both wise and pleasant to introduce one’s self at the Consulate immediately on arriving in a foreign city where a stay of any length is contemplated. In case any untoward incident should arise later, such acquaintance with the consul would prove of inestimable advantage, and would save unpleasant and wearisome investigations of one’s right to American citizenship and his character. And if the consul prove, as is now generally the case, a man of parts and charm, the result will prove most happy for the visitor who desires to see and know the best the city can afford.

The royal residence in Palermo, rising from the Piazza Vittoria, the highest point in the city, is scarcely more remarkable than many of the private _palazzi_. Ordinary as Palace and Piazza are now, in medieval times this was the fortified citadel: a place of arms and chivalry, of turrets and bastions, of fortresslike buildings forming the defensive key to the city. But little have Time and the barbarous restorer left. First comes an arcaded court, then two flights of marble stairs, and then room after room, tastelessly over-decorated. One marvels at the dullness of royalties who could so slavishly consent to the stuffy vulgarity of these apartments, when before them was a model in the room declared to have been King Roger’s own. Its mosaics have faded not a whit in the long centuries; design and color hold soft and true to the walls, and this kingly chamber in its dignity and splendor shames the tawdry display of the monarchs who came after. Time spent in such rooms is wasted.

The Cappella Palatina, or royal chapel, is a tiny temple richly embellished with marvelous mosaics, but so smothered by the encroachments of the formless Palace that half its beauty is lost for lack of light. It is not even a structure by itself, but a part of the main building, which King Roger added about 1132 in honor of Saint Peter, to whom he dedicated it. Perhaps, because of its position, or perhaps by design, the nave and aisles were left almost unlighted; but seventy-five feet above, the architect pierced the dome with eight apertures, to flood apse and chancel with a glorious nimbus of sunshine, which finds a fit mirror in gleaming walls inlaid with golden glass.

The illumination is, however, confined entirely to the choir save for an hour or so in the morning, when the sidewalks glow with the genius of their artist creators--and fade as one watches into shadowy old tapestry. At first it is a darkly mysterious place, indistinctly peopled by spectral figures on every side. Then slowly, as the eyes habituate themselves to the gloom, out from the mellow background lean strong, stern figures. Saints and angels pray, plead, wing their way across the walls; patriarchs and prophets act out the stirring chronicles of the Old Testament and New. High above the choir and tribune, halved by the circumambient light, a majestic, supramundane figure, cross-crowned with the diadem of supreme sacrifice, holds forth the Book upon whose snowy page blazes the royal message in golden letters that need no flame of fire to bid them shine--’Εγώ εἰμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου: “I am the Light of the world.”

The single-mindedness of medieval artists is always astonishing. Anything from the Bible was apparently meet for the walls of this sumptuous house of prayer, which, instead of being a mere bit of florid decorative architecture belonging to the King, is a vivid pictorial history. Very realistic is the scene at Lazarus’ tomb, where a man, with head turned away, holds his nose with one hand as he tilts the tightly swaddled body to an upright position. A little farther along, on the same wall, the artist represented Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in a dark stream which flows past in snow white ripples. John is sheltered by a section of bright olive-green wall, and at their feet cherub heads peep through the wavelets. All the figures, though very stiff and formal, as might be expected of work in such intractable material, are admirably done, and the faces in particular are expressively stern and reposeful.

Restoration has not harmed the chapel, and both it and its decorations and furniture remain intact--the magnificent mosaic pulpit, in the Lombard style; the giant candelabrum beside it, about fifteen feet high, a superb piece of pure Byzantine sculpture with a wealth of mythological details, which strikes a strange pagan note in this Christian church; and the stalactite ceiling, carved wood of the best period of Saracenic workmanship, much after the style of the ceilings of the Alhambra at Granada. The Saracen glorified it with magnificent star-shaped coffers, geometrical designs, Cufic lettering--his religion allowed him no image of anything in heaven above or the earth beneath--and the less prescribed Norman placed his saints and virgins in the divisions of the stars. Yet the work was done with such rare skill--so thoroughly were the Saracens artists first and Mohammedans afterward--that nowhere is there a clash of motive or execution. It fills one with the delight of the East, the subtle perception of masses of color shaded and mellowed by time.

That, unfortunately, cannot be said of Palermo’s other royal residence, the little Summer palace of La Favorita, built by the Bourbon King Ferdinand IV under the shoulder of Monte Pellegrino, and evidently his conception of a Chinese nobleman’s residence. Striking a jangling note of color in the landscape, it stands boldly forth a great rubricated initial upon the green and gold of the smiling Conca d’Oro. Surely there never was such another freak of royal fancy! In their search for the bizarre, King Ferdinand’s architects and decorators succeeded in cramming into one architectural nightmare the styles of a dozen realms and epochs; and the result is a queer hodge-podge of no artistic value, but of mirth-provoking interest to the traveler. Only Mr. Kipling’s famous phrase can describe it--“A sort of a giddy harumfrodite!”

In the King’s suite, Japanese artisans may have decorated the bedchamber, some forgotten artist from hundred-gated Thebes the ceiling of the anteroom, and then with supreme disregard for these exotic effects, the royal humorist--if he were such!--must have turned over the beautifying of his dressing room to a commonplace decorator of modern times, and permitted him to do his worst.

The dining table, a huge circular affair, is the _piéce de résistance_ of the whole palace. Nothing queerer--or more entirely up-to-date and practical--has ever made its appearance in the most recently constructed American houses. Standing upon a massive cylindrical shaft that runs straight through to the kitchen in the basement, the table is a sort of combination dumbwaiter-quicklunch counter. At each place a silver tray, imbedded in a small shaft, connects below with the main trunk, and these trays, operated automatically with the larger central charger, answer djinn-like by serving a whole course at once, smoking hot, when the royal host rubs the button at his place. Slow eaters might find it somewhat disconcerting to turn from conversation back to--an empty black hole before them! But perhaps King Ferdinand was not a joker.

Every room has some freakish combination peculiarly its own, some in Turkish, Arabic or Pompeiian motives, and one huge reception salon in hand-painted silk with Chinese mandarins in full ceremonial costume upon the walls. Above all are the luxurious smoking and lounging rooms, and of course, a wide, tiled veranda on each floor affording sweeping views on either hand.

To the Sicilian in his blissful ignorance, La Favorita appears a masterpiece, the people generally regarding the _château_ with the reverence of simplicity. Indeed, poverty and ignorance are the mainsprings of life for a majority of the people. Nor is ignorance confined to the masses. A Sicilian doctor in Palermo, himself graduated from one of our greatest universities and therefore an exception to the rule, told me in all seriousness that a majority of the “society people” of the capital could read nothing more difficult than the daily papers. “They often forget how to spell their own names”--you don’t wonder much at that when you see some of the names!--“and their notions of first aid in sickness or injury are barbarous and medieval. When my wife and I first began to practise in Palermo, we tried to help the people with clubs and societies of a semi-educational nature. But we had to drop it all. You can’t begin education with the adults.”

This was recognized a century ago by one of the foremost patriots of Sicily, the Prince of Castlenuovo, who was one of the prime movers in lifting his island out of the medievalism of Ferdinand’s régime. Out in this region of the suburbs--known as _I Colli_ (The Tops), and dotted with splendid villas--and not far distant from Ferdinand’s Favorita, the Prince established a model farm, kitchen garden and dairy where the boys of both rich and poor families are taught by experts how to get the most out of the ground without having recourse to the antiquated methods of their forefathers. And if one may judge from the attitude of the young students and the eagerness with which they display their knowledge, the big Institute is still proving most successful.

The boy who showed us about said proudly that when he finished his schooling he was to be overseer of a big plantation up country, much like the one spreading around us. America had no attractions for him. In his own words: “My father has taught me to love Sicily very much, _signore_. He makes much money in his business in N’ova York. But I will be patriot. I stay here. I study. By and by I can help my poor country to grow rich!”

Gardens and boys are interesting, but the stockyards of the school are a revelation. Goats and kids, sheep and lambs, magnificent bulls and kine and soft-eyed, frisky little calves have each their separate yards, all immaculate; and in the neat brick addition to the cow-stables is a model piggery comfortably full of grunters, who seem to appreciate quarters where a fresh handkerchief dropped in an occupied pen can be recovered quite unsoiled. The school dairy is as complete as it is wholesome and clean; but you are not likely to go far outside until another phase of the milk industry appears--a donkey carrying large jute panniers full of goats’-milk potcheese, or _ricotta fresca_. The whey oozing from the bags and the donkey’s sweat gather a crust of dust over all. Don’t manifest a talkative interest--unless you wish to have the peasant merchant urge you to try “just a taste, _signori_!”