.dt Seekers In Sicily, by Elizabeth Bisland and Anne Hoyt—A Project Gutenberg eBook
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SEEKERS IN SICILY
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“Demeter’s Well-Beloved Children”
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SEEKERS IN SICILY
BEING A QUEST FOR PERSEPHONE
BY JANE AND PERIPATETICA
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Done into the Vernacular
By
Elizabeth Bisland and Anne Hoyt
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NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMIX
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
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Copyright, 1909
By JOHN LANE COMPANY
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[Illustration: Decoration]
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To
ANDERS AND FRAU ZORN
from the North, in memory
of the Sun and the South,
this book is inscribed
BY
A Pair of “Word Braiders”
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[Illustration: Decoration]
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NOTE
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THE designs upon the cover of this book,
and at the heads of the chapters, are the
tribe signs or totems of the original inhabitants
of the island of Sicily, which have
survived all conquests and races and are still
considered as tokens of good luck and defenders
from the Evil-eye.
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[Illustration: Decoration]
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PREFACE
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When this book was written—in the spring of the
year—the Land of the Older Gods was unmarred by
the terrible seismic convulsions which wrought such
ruin in the last days of 1908.
Very sad to each of us it is when time and the sorrows
of “this unintelligible world” carve furrows upon our
own countenances, but when the visage of the globe
shrivels and wrinkles with the lapse of ages then the
greatness of the disaster touches the whole race. Sicily,
whose history is so full of blood and tears, has been the
victim of the greatest natural tragedy that man’s
chronicles record because of this line drawn by Time
upon our planet’s face—yet it leaves her still so fair,
so poignantly lovely, that pilgrims of beauty will—forgetting
this slight blemish—still journey to see the
sweetest remnant of the world’s youth. Happily
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Messina, the one city injured, was the one city where
travellers rarely paused. All the others remain
unmarred and are still exactly as they were when this
chronicle of their ancient beauty and charm was set
down.
.in 10
E. B. and A. H.
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CONTENTS
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| | PAGE
| Preface | #9:preface#
CHAPTER | |
I | On the Road to the Land of the Gods | #15:ch01#
II | A Nest of Eagles | #45:ch02#
III | One Dead in the Fields | #126:ch03#
IV | The Return of Persephone | #178:ch04#
V | A City of Temples | #192:ch05#
VI | The Golden Shell | #229:ch06#
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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“Demeter’s Well-Beloved Children” | #Frontispiece:front#
| PAGE
“A Place Where the Past Reveals Itself” | #71:illus_071#
“Pan’s Goatherd” | #137:illus_137#
“Ætna, The Salient Fact of Sicily” | #193:illus_193#
“The Saffron Mass of Concordia” | #207:illus_207#
“Lifting Themselves Airily From a Sea of Flowers” | #229:illus_229#
“Sicily’s Picture-book, The Painted Cart” | #247:illus_247#
“The Last Resting Place of Queen Constance” | #263:illus_263#
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[Illustration: Decoration]
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SEEKERS IN SICILY
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CHAPTER I || On the Road to the Land of the Gods
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“He ne’er is crown’d with immortality
Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.”
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“Oh, Persephone, Persephone!... Surely Koré is
in Hell.”
This is a discouraged voice from the window.
“Peripatetica, that sounds both insane and improper.
Would it fatigue you too much to explain in the vernacular
what you are trying, in your roundabout way, to
suggest?”
Thus Jane, a mere diaphanous mauve cloud, from
which the glimmering fire picked out glittering points
here and there. When Jane takes to teagowns she is
really very dressy.
Peripatetica strolled up and down the dusky drawing-room
two or three times, without answering. Outside
a raging wind drove furiously before it in the darkness
the snow that flew upward in long spirals, like desperate
hunted ghosts. Finally she took up a book from the
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table, and kneeling, to get the light from the logs on
the page, began to read aloud.
These two were on such kindly terms that either
one could read aloud without arousing the other to open
violence.
“Persephone, sometimes called Koré—” read Peripatetica,
“having been seized by Pluto, as she gathered
narcissus, and wild thyme, and mint, and the violet
into her green kirtle—was carried, weeping very bitterly,
into his dark hell. And Demeter, her mother, missing
her fair and sweet-curled daughter, sought her through
all the world with tears and ravings; the bitter sound
and moisture of her grief making a noise as of winter wind
and rain. And her warm heart being so cold with pain
the blossoms died on her bosom, and her vernal hair
was shredded abroad into the air, and all growing things
drooped and perished, and her brown benignant face
became white as the face of the dead are white——”
Peripatetica closed the book, put it back on the table,
and drew a hassock under her for a seat.
“I see,” said Jane. “Demeter is certainly passing
this way to-night, poor dear! It’s a pity she can’t
realize Persephone, that sweet soul of Spring, will come
back. She always does come back.”
“Yes; but Demeter, the mother-earth, always fears
that this time she may not; that Pluto will keep her in
hell always. And every time she makes the same outcry
about it.”
“I suppose she always finds her first in Enna,” Jane
hazarded. “Isn’t Enna in Sicily?”
“Yes, I think so; but I don’t know much about Sicily,
though everybody goes there nowadays. Let’s go
there, Jane, and help Demeter find Persephone.”
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“Let’s!” agreed Jane, with sympathetic enthusiasm,
and they went.
.tb
Now, being Americans, and therefore accustomed to
the most obliging behaviour on the part of the male sex,
it never occurred to them that Pluto might be ungallant
enough to object to their taking a hand in. But he
did—as they might have foreseen would be likely in a
person so unmannerly as to snatch lovely daughters
from devoted mothers.
It began on the ocean. On quite a calm evening a
wave, passing from under the side of the ship, threw
its crest back—perhaps to look at the stars—and fell
head over heels into their open port. Certainly as much
as two tons of green and icy Atlantic entered impulsively,
and by the time they were dried out and comforted by
the tight-corseted, rosy, sympathetic Lemon every object
they possessed was a mere bunch of depressed rumples.
Throughout the rest of the voyage they presented the
unfortunate appearance of having slept in their clothes,
including their hats. These last, which they had believed
refreshingly picturesque, or coquettish, at starting,
had that defiantly wretched aspect displayed by the
broody hen after she has been dipped in the rain-barrel
to check her too exuberant aversion to race-suicide.
That was how Pluto began, and it swiftly went from
bad to worse.
Three large tourist ships discharged bursting cargoes
of humanity upon Naples on one and the same day, and
the hotel-keepers rose to their opportunity and dealt
guilefully with the horde clamouring as with one voice
for food and shelter. That one’s hard-won shelter was
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numbered 12 bis (an artful concealment of the unlucky
number 13) was apparently an unimportant detail. It
was shelter, though even a sea-sodden mind should have
seen something suspicious in those egregious frescoes
of fat ladies sitting on the knife edge of crescent moons
with which Room 13 endeavoured to conceal its real
banefulness. Even such a mind should have distrusted
that flamingly splendid fire-screen in front of a
walled-up fireplace; should have scented danger in
that flamboyant black and gold and blue satin furniture
of the vintage of 1870. There was plainly, to an observant
eye, something sinister and meretricious in so much
dressiness, but Jane and Peripatetica yielded themselves
up to that serpent lodging without the smallest
precaution, and lived to rue their impulsive confidence.
To begin with, Naples, instead of showing herself all
flowers and sunshine, tinkling mandolins, and moonlight
and jasper seas, was as merry and pleasing as an
iced sponge. Loud winds howled through the streets,
driving before them cold deluges of rain, and in these
chilling downpours the street troubadours stood one foot
in the puddles snuffling songs of “Bella Napoli” to
untuned guitars, with water dripping from the ends of
their noses. Peripatetica—whose eyes even under her
low-spirited hat had been all through the voyage full of
dreamful memories of Neapolitan tea-roses and blue
blandness—curled up like a disappointed worm and
retired to a fit of neuralgia and a hot-water bottle.
There was something almost uncanny in the scornful
irony of her expression as she hugged her steaming
comforter to her cheek, and paced the floor in time to
those melancholy damp wails from the street. Instead
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of tea-roses she was prating all day of American comforts,
as she clasped the three tepid coils of the chilly
steam-heater to her homesick bosom, while Jane
paddled about under an umbrella in search of the
traditional ideal Italian maid, who would be willing to
contribute to the party all the virtues and a cheerful
disposition, for sixty francs a month.
Minna, when she did appear, proved to be Swiss instead
of Italian, but she carried an atmosphere of happy
comfort about her, could spin the threads of three
languages with her gifted tongue, while sixty francs
seemed to satisfy her wildest dreams of avarice. So
the two depressed pilgrims, soothed by Minna’s promise
to assume their burdens the next day, fell asleep dreaming
that the weather might moderate or even clear.
Eight o’clock of the following morning came, but
Minna didn’t. Jane interviewed the concierge, who
had recommended her. The concierge interviewed the
heavens and the earth, and the circumambient air, but
spite of outflung fingers and polyglot cries, the elements
had nothing to say about the matter, and for twenty-four
hours they declined to let the secret leak out that
other Americans in the same hotel had ravished their
Minna from them with the glittering lure of twenty
francs more.
Finally it dawned upon two damp and depressed
minds that some unknown enemy had put a comether
on them—though at that time they had no inkling of
his identity. Large-eyed horror ensued. First aid to
the hoodooed must be sought. Peripatetica tied a strip
of red flannel around her left ankle.
“In all these very old countries,” she said oracularly,
“secret malign influences from the multitudes of wicked
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dead rise up like vapours from the soil where they have
been buried.”
Jane listened and, pale but resolute, went forth and
purchased a coral jettatura.
“Let us pass on at once from this moist Sodom,” she
said.
Visions of sun and Sicily dawned upon their mildewed
imaginations.
Now there is really but one way to approach Sicily
satisfactorily. Of course a boat leaves Naples every
evening for Palermo, but the Mediterranean is a treacherous
element in February. It had broken night after
night in thunderous shocks upon the sea wall, making
the heavy stone-built hotel quiver beneath their beds,
and in the darkness of each night they had seen the water
squadron charge again and again, the foremost spinning
up tall and white to fling itself in frenzied futile spray
across the black street. So that the thought of trusting
insides jaded by two weeks of the Atlantic to such a foe
as this was far from their most reckless dreams. The
none too solid earth was none too good for such as they,
and a motor eats up dull miles by magic. Motors are
to be had in Naples even when fair skies lack, and with
a big Berliet packed with luggage, and with the concierge’s
tender, rueful smile shedding blessings, at last
they slid southward.
—Pale clouds of almond blossoms were spread
against grey terraces.... Less pale smells rose in
gusty whiffs.... Narrow yellow streets crooked
before them, where they picked a cautious hooting way
amid Italy’s rising population complicated with goats
and asses.... Then flat, muddy roads, and Berliet
bumping, splashing between fields of green artichokes....
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The clouds held up; thinned, and parted,
showing rifts of blue.... Vesuvius pushed the mists
from her brow, and purple shadows dappled her shining,
dripping flanks.... Orange groves rose along
the way. Flocks of brown goats tinkled past. More
almond boughs leaned over walls washed a faded
rose. Church bells clanked sweetly through the moist
air from far-away hills. Runnels chattered out from
secret channels fringed with fern. Grey olive orchards
hung like clouds along the steep.... The sun was
fairly out, and Italy assuming her old traditional air of
professional beauty among the nations of the earth....
The Berliet climbed as nimbly as a goat toward
Sorrento. The light deepened; the sea began to peacock.
More and more the landscape assumed the
appearance of the impossibly chromatic back drop of an
opera, and as the turn was made under the orange
avenue of the hotel at Sorrento everything was ready for
the chorus of merry villagers, and for the prima donna
to begin plucking song out of her bosom with stereotyped
gestures.
It was there they began to offer the light wines of the
country, as sweetly perfumed and innocent as spring
violets; no more like to the astringent red inks masquerading
in straw bottles in America under the same
names, than they to Hercules. The seekers of Persephone
drank deeply—as much as a wine-glass full—and
warmed by this sweet ichor of Bacchus they bid
defiance to hoodoos and pushed on to Amalfi.
Berliet swam along the Calabrian shore, lifting them
lightly up the steeps, swooping purringly down the
slopes,—swinging about the bold curves of the coast;
rounding the tall spurs, where the sea shone, green and
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purple as a dove’s neck, five hundred feet below, and
where orange, lemon, and olive groves climbed the narrow
terraces five hundred feet above. They were
following the old, old way, where the Greeks had gone,
where the Romans went, where Normans rode, where
Spaniards and Saracens marched; the line of the drums
and tramplings of not three, but of three hundred conquests!
They were following—in a motor car—the
passageway of three thousand years of European history
that was to lead them back beyond history itself to
the old, old gods.
The way was broad and smooth, looping itself like a
white ribbon along the declivity, and even Peripatetica
admitted it was lovely, though she has an ineradicable
tendency to swagger about the unapproachable superiority
of Venezuelan scenery; probably because so few
are in a position to contradict her, or because she enjoys
showing off her knowledge of out-of-the-way places
which most of us don’t go to. She had always sniffed at
the Mediterranean as overrated in the matter of colour,
and declared it pale and dull beside the green and blue
fire of Biscayne Bay in Florida, but it was a nice day,
and a nice sight, and Peripatetica handsomely acknowledged
that after Venezuela this was the very best scenery
she knew.
At Amalfi
.nf b
“Where amid her mulberry trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas,”
.nf-
.ni
they climbed 175 steps to the Cappucini convent
which hangs like a swallow’s nest in a niche of the cliffs,
flanked by that famous terrace the artists paint again
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and again, from every angle, at every season of the year,
at every hour of the day. There they imbibed a very
superior tea, while sea and sky did their handsomest,
listening meanwhile to a fellow tourist brag of having
climbed to Ravello in his motor car.
.pi
If one cranes one’s neck from the Cappucini terrace,
on a small peak will be seen what purports to be a
town, but the conclusion will be irresistible that the
only way to reach such a dizzy eminence is by goat’s
feet, or hawk’s wings, and the natural inference is that
the fellow tourist is fibbing. Nevertheless one hates
to be outdone, and one abandons all desire to sleep in
one of those coldly clean little monk-cells of the convent,
and climbs resolutely down the 175 steps again
and interviews Berliet. Berliet thinks his chassis is
too long for the sharp turns. Thinks that the road is
bad; that it is also unsafe; that the hotel in Ravello
is not possible; that he suspects his off fore tire; that
there’s not time to do it before dark; that his owner
forbids his going to Ravello at all; that he has an appointment
that evening with a good-looking lady in
Amalfi; that he is tired with his long run, and doesn’t
want to any way. All of which eleven reasons appeared
so irrefutable, collectively and individually, that
Jane and Peripatetica climbed into their seats and
announced that they would go to Ravello, and go
immediately.
Berliet muttered unpleasant things in his native
tongue as to signori being reckless, obstinate, and inconsiderate;
wound them up sulkily and took them.
Peripatetica admitted in a whisper that up to that
very day she had never even heard of Ravello, which
proved to be a really degrading piece of ignorance, for
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every human being they met for the next three months
knew all about the place—or said they did. Further
experience taught them to know that Italy is crowded
with little crumbling towns one has never heard of
before, which when examined prove to be the very
particular spots in which took place about a half of all
the history that ever happened. History being a thing
one must be pretty skilful if one means to evade it in
Italy, for the truth is that whenever history took a
notion to be, it promptly went on a trip to Italy and
was.
They hooted slowly again through narrow streets,
pushed more goats and children out their way, and
then Berliet swung round on one wheel and began to
mount. Began to climb like the foreseen goat, to soar
like the imagined hawk, up sharp zigzags that lifted
them by almost exact parallels. Everything that puts
on power and speed, and makes noises like bomb explosions
in a saw-factory, was pushed forward or pulled
back. They rushed noisily round and round the peak
at locomotive speed, and finally half way up into the
very top of the sky they pulled up sharply in a cobble-paved
square. Berliet leaped nimbly out, unscrewed
a hot lid—with the tail of his linen duster—from which
lid liquids and steam and smells boiled as from an
angry geyser, and they found themselves in the wild
eyrie of Ravello. That ubiquituosity—(with the name
of a hotel on his cap)—who springs out from every
stone in Italy like a spider upon the foolish swarming
tourist fly, was waiting for them in the square as if by
appointment, and before they could draw the first gasp
of relief he had their possessions loaded upon the backs
of the floating population, and they were climbing in
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the dusk a stone stairway that called itself a street—meekly
and weakly unwitting of their possible destination.
The destination proved to be a vaulted courtyard,
opening behind a doorway which was built of a
choice assortment of loot from four periods of architecture
and sculpture; proved to be a reckless jumble
of winding steps, of crooked passages, of terraces, balconies,
and loggias, and the whole of this destination
went by the name of the Hotel Bellevue. And once
there, then suddenly, after all the noise and odours,
the confusion and human clatter of the last three weeks,
they stepped quietly out upon a revetment of Paradise.
Below—a thousand feet below—in the blue darkness
little sparks of light were Amalfi. In the blue darkness
above, hardly farther away it seemed, were the larger
sparks of the rolling planets. The cool, lonely darkness
bathed their spirits as with a blessed chrism. The
place was, for the night, theirs alone, and for one holy
moment the swarming tourist failed to swarm.
.tb
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.nf c
“In the Highlands! In the country places!”—
.nf-
.ni
murmured Jane, gratefully declining upon a broad
balustrade, and Peripatetica echoed softly—declining
in her turn—
.nf b
... “Oh, to dream; oh, to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render
Through the trance of silence
Quiet breath.”...
.nf-
And Jane took it up again—
.nf b
... “Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And forever in the hill recesses
Her more lovely music broods and dies.”
.nf-
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.pi
Just then essential silence was broken by the last
protesting squawk of a virtuous hen, who seemed to be
about to die that they might live. Peripatetica recognized
that plaintive cry. Hens were kept handy in
fattening-coops on the Plantation, against the sudden
inroads of unexpected guests.
“When the big-gate slams chickens begin to squawk,”
was a well-remembered Plantation proverb.
“How tough she will be, though,” Jane gently
moaned, “and we shan’t be able to eat her, and she
will have died in vain.”
Little did she reck of Signor Pantaleone Caruso’s
beautiful art, for when they had dressed by the dim,
soothing flicker of candles in big clean bed-rooms that
were warmed by smouldering olive-wood fires, they
were sweetly fed on a dozen lovely dishes; dishes
foamy and yellow, with hot brown crusts, made seemingly
of varied combinings of meal and cheese, and
called by strange Italian cognomens. And the late—so
very late—pullet appeared in her due course amid
maiden strewments of crisp salads; proving, by some
Pantaleonic magic, to be all that a hen could or should
be. And they drank gratefully to her manes in Signor
Caruso’s own wine, as mellow and as golden as his
famous cousin’s voice. After which they ate small,
scented yellow apples which might well have grown in
Hesperidian gardens, and drowsed contentedly by the
musky olive-wood blaze, among bowls of freesias and
violets, until the almost weird hour of half past eight,
when inward blessedness and a day of mountain air
would no longer be denied their toll.
Yet all through the hours of sleep “old forgotten,
far-off things, and battles long ago” stirred like an
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undertone of dreams within dreams. The clank of
armed feet moved in the street. Ghostly bells rang
whispered tocsins of alarm, and shadowy life swept
back and forth in the broken, deserted town. The
“Brass Hats” glimmered in the darkness. Goths set
alight long extinguished fires. Curved Saracen swords
glittered faintly, and Normans grasped the heights
with mailed hands. The Rufolis, the d’Affliti, the
Confalones, and della Maras married, feasted, and
warred again in dumb show, and up and down the
stairs of this very house rustled the silk robes and soft
shod feet of sleek prelates.
Even the sea below—where the new moon floated
at the western rim like a golden canoe—was astir with
the myriad sails of revenants. First the white wings of
that—
.nf b
“Grave Syrian trader ...
Who snatched his rudder and shook out his sail ...
Between the Syrtes and soft Sicily.”
.nf-
.ni
After him followed hard the small ghostly sails of the
Greeks.
.pi
“They were very perfect men, and could do all and
bear all that could be done and borne by human flesh
and blood. Taking them all together they were the
most faultlessly constructed human beings that ever
lived, and they knew it, for they worshipped bodily
health and strength, and spent the lives of generations
in the cultivation of both. They were fighting men,
trained to use every weapon they knew, they were
boxers and wrestlers, athletes, runners and jumpers,
and drivers of chariots; but above all they were seamen,
skilled at the helm, quick at handling the sails,
masters of the oar, and fearless navigators when half
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of all navigation led sooner or later to certain death.
For though they loved life, as only the strong and the
beautiful can love it, and though they looked forward
to no condition of perpetual bliss beyond, but only to
the shadowy place where regretful phantoms flitted in
the gloom as in the twilight of the Hebrew Sheol, yet
they faced dying as fighters always have and always
will, with desperate hands and a quiet heart.”
The golden canoe of the young moon filled and sank
behind the sea’s rim, but through the darkness came
the many-oared beat of ponderous Roman galleys
carrying the dominion of the earth within their great
sides, and as they vanished like a fog-wreath along the
horizon, followed fast the hawk-winged craft of the
keen-bladed, keen-faced Saracen, whose sickle-like
crescent would never here on this coast round to the
full. For, far away on the grey French coast of Coutance
was a Norman gentleman named Tancred, very
strong of heart, and very stout of his hands. There
was no rumour of him here, as he rode to the hunt and
spitted the wild boar upon his terrible length of steel.
What should the Moslems know of a simple Norman
gentleman, or care?—and yet in those lion loins lay the
seeds of a dozen mighty whelps who were to rend their
Christian prey from the Moslem and rule this warm
coloured South as kings and dukes and counts, and
whose blood was to be claimed by every crown in
Europe for a thousand years. Very few among the
shadowy sails were those of the de Hautevilles, but
quality, not quantity, counts most among men, and those
ships carried a strange, potent race. Anna Comnena
thus describes one of them:
“This Robert de Hauteville was of Norman origin—he
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united a marvellous astuteness with immense
ambition, and his bodily strength was prodigious. His
whole desire was to attain to the wealth and power of
the greatest living men; he was extremely tenacious
of his designs and most wise in finding means to attain
his ends. In stature he was taller than the tallest; of
a ruddy hue and fair-haired, he was broad-shouldered,
and his eyes sparkled with fire; the perfect proportion
of all his limbs made him a model of beauty from head
to heel, as I have often heard people tell. Homer says
of Achilles that those who heard his voice seemed to
hear the thundering shout of a great multitude, but it
used to be said of the de Hautevilles that their battle
cry would turn back tens of thousands. Such a man,
one in such a position, of such a nature, and of such
spirit, naturally hated the idea of service, and would
not be subject to any man; for such are those natures
which are born too great for their surrounding.”
.tb
When morning dawned all spirits of the past had
vanished, and only the noisy play of the young hopes
of the Caruso family disturbed the peace of the echoing
court. Jane insisted upon calling these innocent infants
Knickerbockers, because, she said, they were
only short Pantaleones—which is the sort of mild
pleasantry Jane affects. Peripatetica doesn’t lend
herself to these gentler forms of jest. It was she who
put in all that history and poetry. (See above.)
Ravello used to be famous for her dye stuffs, and
for the complete thorough-goingness of her attacks of
plague, but her principal industries to-day are pulpits,
and fondness for the Prophet Jonah. Her population
.pn +1
.bn 032.png
in the day of dyes and plague was 36,000, and is now,
by generous computation, about thirty-six—which does
not include the Knickers. Just opposite the Hotel
Bellevue is one of these pulpits, in the church of St.
John of the Bull; a church which about a thousand
years ago was a very superior place indeed; but worse
than Goths or Vandals, or Saracens, or plague, was the
pernicious activity of the Eighteenth Century. Hardly
a church in Italy has escaped unscathed from its busy
rage. No sanctuary was too reverend or too beautiful
to be ravaged in the name of Palladio, or of “the classic
style.” Marbles were broken, mosaics torn out,
dim aisles despoiled, brass and bronze melted, carvings
chopped and burned, rich glass shattered, old
tapestries flung on the dust heap. All the treasures of
centuries—sweet with incense, softened and tinted by
time, sanctified by a thousand prayers, and beautified
by the tenderest emotions—were bundled out of the
way of those benighted savages, and tons of lime were
had into the poor gaunt and ruined fanes to transform
them into whited sepulchres of beauty. Blank plaster
walls hid the sweetest of frescoes; clustered grey
columns were limed into ghastly imitations of the
Doric; soaring arches—flowered like forest boughs—vanished
in stodgy vaultings; Corinthian pilasters
shoved lacelike rood-screens out of the way, and fat
sprawling cherubs shouldered bleeding, shadowy
Christs from the altars.
The spirit which inspired this stupid ruthlessness
was perfectly expressed by Addison, who, commenting
upon the great Cathedral of Siena, said
pragmatically:
“When a man sees the prodigious pains that our
.pn +1
.bn 033.png
forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings,
one cannot but fancy what miracles of architecture
they would have left us had they only been instructed
in the right way; for when the devotion of those ages
was much warmer than it is at present, and the riches
of the people much more at the disposal of the priests,
there was so much money consumed on these Gothic
churches as would have finished a greater variety of
noble buildings than have been raised before or since
that time. Than these Gothic churches nothing can
make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties
and affected ornaments to a noble and majestic simplicity”—of
dull plaster!
Much has been said of the irreverence of the Nineteenth
Century. The Eighteenth respected nothing
their forefathers had wrought; not even in this little
far-away mountain town, and St. John of the Bull is
now—poor Saint!—housed drearily in a dull, dusty,
echoing white cavern, with not one point of beauty to
hold the protesting eye save the splendid marble pulpit—escaped
by some miracle of ruth to stand out in
that dull waste upon delicate twisted alabaster columns,
which stand in their turn upon crawling marble lions.
Its four sides, and its baldachino, show beautiful patterns
of precious mosaics, wrought with lapis lazuli,
with verd antique, and with sanguine Egyptian marbles.
The carefullest and richest of these mosaics, of
course—along the side of the pulpit’s stair—is devoted
to picturing that extremely qualmish archaic whale who
in all Ravello’s churches unswallows the Prophet Jonah
with every evidence of emotion and relief.
Recently, in the process of removing some of the
acres of Eighteenth Century plaster, there was brought
.pn +1
.bn 034.png
to light in a little chapel in the crypt a life-sized relief
of St. Catherine and her wheel.
Such a lovely lady!—so fair, so pure, so saint-like;
with faint memories of old tinting on her small lips, on
her close-folded hair, and her downcast eyes—that
even the most frivolous of tourists might be moved to
tears by the thought that she alone is the one sweet
ghost escaped from all that brutal destruction of mediæval
beauty; resurrected by the merest chance from
her plaster tomb.
Jane at the thought of it became quite dangerously
violent. She insisted upon digging up the Eighteenth
Century and beating it to death again with its own
dusty old wig, and was soothed and calmed only by
being taken outside to look once more by daylight at
the delicious marble mince of fragments which the
Hotel Bellevue has built into its portals—Greek and
Roman capitals upside down; marble lambs and
crosses, gargoyles, and corbels adorning the sides and
lintels in a charming confusion of styles, periods, and
purposes.
Ravello, as are all these arid ancient towns from
which the tides of life have drained away, is as dry and
empty as an old last year’s nut; a mere hollow shell,
ridged and parched, out of which the kernel of existence
has vanished.
A tattered, rosy-cheeked child runs up the uncertain
footway—the stair-streets—with feet as light and sure
as a goat’s. An old, old man, with head and jaws
bound in a dirty red kerchief, and with the keen hawk-like
profile of some far-off Saracen ancestry, crouches
in a doorway with an outstretched hand. He makes
no appeal, but his apparent confidence that his age
.pn +1
.bn 035.png
and helplessness will touch them, does touch them,
and they search their pockets hastily for coppers, with
a faint anguished sense of the thin shadow of a dial-finger
which for them too creeps round and round, as
for this old derelict man, for this old skeleton city....
A donkey heaped with brushwood patters up the
steep narrow way; so narrow that they must flatten
themselves against the wall to admit of his stolidly
sorrowful passage. They may come and go, as all the
others have come and gone, but our brother, the ass,
is always there, recking not of Greek or Roman, of
American or Tedeschi; for all of them he bears burdens
with the same sorrowful stolidity, and from none does
he receive any gratitude....
These are the only inhabitants of Ravello they see
until they reach the Piazza and the Cathedral of Saint
Pantaleone. They know beforehand that the Cathedral
too has been spoiled and desecrated, but there
still remain the fine bronze doors by the same Barisanus
who made the famous ones in the church at
Monreale in Sicily, and here they find the most beautiful
of the pulpits, and the very biggest Jonah and the
very biggest whale in all Ravello.
Before that accursed Bishop Tafuri turned it into a
white-washed cavern the old chroniclers exhausted
their adjectives in describing the glories of Saint Pantaleone’s
Cathedral. The richness of its sixteen enormous
columns of verd antique; its raised choir with
fifty-two stalls of walnut-wood, carved with incredible
richness; its high altar of alabaster under a marble
baldachino glowing with mosaics and supported upon
huge red Egyptian Syenite columns—its purple and
gold Episcopal throne; its frescoed walls, its silver
.pn +1
.bn 036.png
lamps and rich tombs, its pictures and shrines and
hangings—all pitched into the scrap heap by that
abominable prelate, save only this fine pulpit, and the
Ambo. The Ambo gives itself wholly to the chronicles
of the prophet Jonah. On one stairside he leaps
nimbly and eagerly down the wide throat which looks
so reluctant to receive him, as if suspecting already the
discomfort to be caused by the uneasy guest. But
Jonah’s aspect is all of a careless gaiety; he is not
taking this lodging for more than a day or two, and is
aware that after his brief occultation his reappearance
will be dramatic and a portent. On the opposite stair
it happens as he had prophetically foreseen, the mosaic
monster disgorging him with an air of mingled violence
and exhausted relief.
No one can tell us why Jonah is so favourite a topic
in Ravello. “Chi lo sara” everyone says, with that
air of weary patience Italy so persistently assumes before
the eccentric curiosity of Forestieri.
Rosina Vokes once travelled about with a funny
little playlet called “The Pantomime Rehearsal,”
which concerned itself with the sufferings of the author
and stage manager of an English house-party’s efforts
at amateur theatricals. The enthusiastic conductor
used to say dramatically:
“Now, Lord Arthur, you enter as the Chief of the
fairies!”
To which the blond guardsman replies with puzzled
heaviness: “Yes; but why fairies?”
Producing in the wretched author a sort of paralysis
of bafflement. The same look comes so often into these
big Italian eyes. The thing just is. Why clamour for
reasons? It is as if these curious wandering folk,
.pn +1
.bn 037.png
always staring and chattering and rushing about, and
paying good money that would buy bread and wine,
merely to look at old stones, should ask why the sun,
or why the moon, or why anything at all?...
So they abandon Jonah and take on the pulpit instead,
the most famous of all the mosaic pulpits in a
region celebrated for mosaic pulpits. It is done after
the same pattern as that of St. John of the Bull, but
the pattern raised to the nth power. More and bigger
lions; more and taller columns; richer scrolls of mosaics;
the bits of stone more deeply coloured; the
marble warmed by time to a sweeter and creamier
blond. The whole being crowned, moreover, by an
adorable bust of Sigelgaita Rufolo, wife of the founder
of the Cathedral and giver of the pulpit. A pompous
Latin inscription under the bust records the virtues of
this magnificent patron of religion. The inscription
including the names of all the long string of stalwart
sons Sigelgaita brought forth, and it calls in dignified
Latinity the attention of the heavenly powers to the
eminent deserts of this generous Rufolo, this mediæval
Carnegie.
Sigelgaita’s bust is an almost unique example of the
marble portraiture of the Thirteenth Century—if indeed
it truly be a work of that time, for so noble, so
lifelike is this head with its rolled hair, its princely
coronet and long earrings, so like is it to the head of
the Capuan Juno, that one half suspects it of being
from a Roman hand—those masters of marmoral records
of character—and that it was seized upon by
Sigelgaita to serve as a memorial of herself.
Bernardo Battinelli, a notary of Ravello, writing in
1540 relates an anecdote which shows what esteem was
.pn +1
.bn 038.png
inspired by this marble portrait long after its original
was dust:
“I remember in the aforesaid month and year, the
Spanish Viceroy Don Pietro di Toledo sent for the
marble bust, which is placed in the Cathedral and
much honest resistance was made, so that the first
time he that came returned empty-handed, but shortly
after he came back, and it was necessary to send it to
Naples in his keeping, and having sent the magnifico
Giovanni Frezza, who was in Naples, and Ambrose
Flomano from this place to his Excellency, after much
ado, by the favour of the glorious Virgin Mary, and by
virtue of these messengers from thence after a few days
the head was returned.”
In the year 1851 the palace of these splendid Rufoli,
which in the time of Roger of Sicily had housed ninety
knights with their men at arms, had fallen to tragical
decay. A great landslide in the Fifteenth Century
destroyed the harbour of Amalfi; hid its great quays
and warehouses, its broad streets and roaring markets
beneath the sea, and reduced it from a powerful Republic,
the rival of Venice and Genoa, to a mere fishing
village. A little later the plague followed, and
decimated the now poverty-stricken inhabitants of
Ravello, and then the great nobles began to drift away
to Naples, came more and more rarely to visit their
Calabrian seats, and these gradually sank in the course
of time into ruin and decay. Fortunately in the year
before mentioned a rich English traveller, making the
still fashionable “grand tour,” happened into Ravello,
saw the possibilities of this crumbling castle set upon
one of the most beautiful sites in the world, and
promptly purchased it from its indifferent Neapolitan
.pn +1
.bn 039.png
owner. He, much absorbed in the opera dancers and
the small intrigues of the city, was secretly and scornfully
amused that a mad Englishman should be willing
to part with so much good hard money in exchange for
ivied towers and gaping arches in a remote country town.
The Englishman mended the arches, strengthened
the towers, gathered up from among the weeds the
delicate sculptures and twisted columns, destroyed
nothing, preserved and restored with a reverent hand,
and made for himself one of the loveliest homes in all
Italy. It was in that charming garden, swung high
upon a spur of the glorious coast, that Jane and Peripatetica
contracted that passion for Ravello which
haunted them with a homesickness for it all through
Sicily. For never again did they find anywhere such
views, such shadowed green ways of ilex and cypress,
such ivy-mantled towers, such roses, such sheets of daffodils
and blue hyacinths. They dreamed there through
the long day, regretting that their luggage had been
sent on to Sicily by water, and—forgetting quite their
quest of Persephone—that they were therefore unable
to linger in the sweet precincts of the Pantaleone wines
and cooking, devoting weeks to exploring the neighbouring
hills, and to unearthing more pulpits and more
Jonahs in the nearby churches.
In the dusk they lingered by the Fountain of Strange
Beasts, in the dusk they wandered afoot down the
cork-screwed paths up which they had so furiously
and smellily mounted. Berliet hooted contemptuously
behind them as he crawled after, jeering as at “scare-cats,”
who dared mount, but shrank from descending
these abrupt curves and tiptilted inclines except in the
safety of their own low-heeled shoes.
.pn +1
.bn 040.png
At Amalfi they plunged once again into the noisy
tourist belt—the va et vient, the chatter, the screaming
flutter of the passenger pigeons of the Italian spring.
And yet there was peace in the tiny white cells in which
they hung over the sheer steep, while the light died
nacreously along the West. There was quiet in certain
tiny hidden courts and terraces under the icy moonlight,
and Jane said in one of these—her utterance
somewhat interrupted by the chattering of her teeth,
for Italian spring nights are as cold as Italian spring
days are warm—Jane said:
“What idiotic assertions are made in our time about
ancient Europe having no love for, no eye for, Nature’s
beauty! Did you ever come across a mediæval monastery,
a Greek or Roman temple that was not placed
with an unerring perception of just the one point at
which it would look best, just at the one point at which
everything would look best from it?”
“Of course I never did,” Peripatetica admitted with
sympathetic conviction. “We get that absurd impression
of their indifference from the fact that our forebears
were not nearly so fond of talking about their
emotions as we. They had a trust in their fellow man’s
comprehension that we have lost. We always imagine
that no one can know things unless we tell them, and
tell them with all our t’s carefully crossed and our i’s
elaborately dotted. The old literatures are always
illustrating that same confidence in other people’s
imaginations, stating facts with what to our modern
diffuseness appears the baldest simplicity, and yet
somehow conveying all their subtlest meanings. Our
ancestors happily were not ‘inebriated with the exuberance
of their own verbosity.’... And now, Jane,
.pn +1
.bn 041.png
bring that congealed nose of yours in out of the open
air. The moon isn’t going on a vacation. She will
be doing her old romance and beauty business at the
same old stand long after we are dead and buried, not
to mention to-morrow night.”
Berliet was all his old self the next day, and they
swooped and soared, slid and climbed toward Pæstum,
every turn around every spur showing some new beauty,
some new effect. Gradually the coast sank and sank
toward the sea; the snow-caps moved further back
into the horizon; grew more and more mere white
clouds above, more and more mere vapoury amethyst
below, and at last they shot at a right angle into a wide
level plain, and commenced to experience thrills. For
the guide-books were full, one and all, of weird tales
of Pæstum which lay, so they said, far back in a country
as cursed and horrible as the dreadful land of the
Dark Tower. About it, they declared, stretched leprous
marshes of stagnant ooze choked with fat reeds,
where fierce buffalo wallowed in the slime. The contadini
passed through its deadly miasma in shuddering
haste, gazing large-eyed upon a dare-devil Englishman
who had once had the courage to pass a night there in
order to gratify a bold, fantastic desire to see the temples
by moonlight. It was such a strange, tremendous
story, that of the Greek Poseidonia, later the Roman
Pæstum.
Long ago those adventuring mariners from Greece
had seized the fertile plain which at that time was covered
with forests of great oak and watered by two clear
and shining rivers. They drove the Italian natives
back into the distant hills, for the white man’s burden
even then included the taking of all the desirable things
.pn +1
.bn 042.png
that were being wasted by incompetent natives, and
they brought over colonists—whom the philosophers
and moralists at home maligned, no doubt, in the same
pleasant fashion of our own day. And the colonists
cut down the oaks, and ploughed the land, and built
cities, and made harbours, and finally dusted their
busy hands and busy souls of the grime of labour and
wrought splendid temples in honour of the benign gods
who had given them the possessions of the Italians and
filled them with power and fatness. Every once in so
often the natives looked lustfully down from the hills
upon this fatness, made an armed snatch at it, were
driven back with bloody contumely, and the heaping
of riches upon riches went on. And more and more
the oaks were cut down—mark that! for the stories of
nations are so inextricably bound up with the stories
of trees—until all the plain was cleared and tilled; and
then the foothills were denuded, and the wave of destruction
crept up the mountain sides and they too were
left naked to the sun and the rains.
At first these rains, sweeping down torrentially, unhindered
by the lost forests, only enriched the plain
with the long hoarded sweetness of the trees, but by
and by the living rivers grew heavy and thick, vomiting
mud into the ever-shallowing harbours, and the
lands soured with the undrained stagnant water.
Commerce turned more and more to deeper ports, and
mosquitoes began to breed in the brackish soil that
was making fast between the city and the sea. Who
of all those powerful land-owners and rich merchants
could ever have dreamed that little buzzing insects
could sting a great city to death? But they did.
Fevers grew more and more prevalent. The malaria-haunted
.pn +1
.bn 043.png
population went more and more languidly
about their business. The natives, hardy and vigorous
in the hills, were but feebly repulsed. Carthage
demanded tribute, and Rome took it, and changed the
city’s name from Poseidonia to Pæstum. After Rome
grew weak Saracen corsairs came in by sea and grasped
the slackly defended riches, and the little winged poisoners
of the night struck again and again, until grass
grew in the streets, and the wharves crumbled where
they stood. Finally the wretched remnant of a great
people wandered away into the more wholesome hills,
the marshes rotted in the heat and grew up in coarse
reeds where corn and vine had flourished, and the city
melted back into the wasted earth. So wicked a name
had the miasmatic, fever-haunted plain that age after
age rolled away and only birds and serpents and wild
beasts dared dwell there, or some outlaw chose to face
its sickly terrors rather than the revenge of the law.
“Think,” said Jane, “of the sensations of the man
who came first upon those huge temples standing
lonely in the naked plain! So lonely that their very
existence had been long forgotten. Imagine the awe
and surprise of such a discovery——”
They were spinning—had been spinning for half an
hour—along a rather bad highway, and Peripatetica
found it hard to call up the proper emotions in answer
to Jane’s suggestion, so occupied was she in looking
for the relishing grimness insisted upon by the guide-books.
There were reeds; there were a very few innocuous-looking
buffalo, but for the most part there
were nice cultivated fields of grain and vines on either
hand, and occasionally half a mile or so of neglected
shrubby heath.
.pn +1
.bn 044.png
“Why, half of Long Island is wilder than this!”
grumbled Peripatetica. “Where’s the Dark Tower
country? Childe Roland would think this a formal
garden. I insist upon Berliet taking us somewhere
that will thick our blood with horror.”
As it turned out, a wise government had drained the
accursed land, planted eucalyptus trees, and was slowly
reclaiming the plain to its old fertility, but the guide-books
feel that the story is too good to be spoiled by
modern facts, and cling to the old version of 1860.
Just then—by way of compensation, Berliet having
fortunately slowed down over a bad bit—an old altar-piece
of a Holy Family stepped down out its frame and
came wandering toward them in the broad light of day.
On the large mild gray ass—a real altar-piece ass—sat
St. Anna wrapped in a faded blue mantle, carrying
on her arm a sleeping child. At her right walked the
child’s mother, whose thin olive cheek and wide, timid
eyes seemed half ghostly under the white linen held
together with one hand under her chin. Young St.
John led the ass. A wreath of golden-brown curls
blew about his golden-red cheeks, and he wore goat-hide
shoes, and had cross-gartered legs.
Jane now says they never saw them at all. That it
was just a mirage, or a bit of glamourie, and that there
is nothing remaining in new Italy which could look so
like the typical old Italy—but if Jane is right then
how did the two happen to have exactly the same
glamour at exactly the same moment? How could
they both imagine the benign smile of that strayed altar
picture? Is it likely that a motor car would lend itself
to sacred visions? I ask you that!
There was certainly some illusion—not sacred—about
.pn +1
.bn 045.png
the dare-devilishness of that Englishman who
once spent a moonlit night at the temples, for a little
farming village lies close to the enclosure that shuts
off the temples from the highway, the inhabitants of
which village seemed as meek as sheep and anything
but foolhardy, and there was reason to believe that
they spend every night there, whether the moon shines
or not.
But the Temples were no illusion, standing in stately
splendour in the midst of that wide shining green plain,
by a sea of milky chalcedony, and in a semicircle behind
them a garland of purple mountains crowned with
snow. Great-pillared Neptune was all of dull, burned
gold, its serried columns marching before the blue
background with a curious effect of perfect vigour in
repose, of power pausing in solid ease. No picture or
replica gives the sense of this energy and power. Doric
temples tend to look lumpish and heavy in reproductions,
but the real thing at its very best (and this shrine
of Neptune is the perfectest of Greek temples outside
of Athens) has a mighty grace, a prodigious suggestion
of latent force, of contained, available strength that
wakes an awed delight, as by the visible, material expression
of an ineffable, glorious, all-powerful god.
“Well, certainly those Greeks——!” gasped Jane
when the full meaning of it all began to dawn upon
her, and Peripatetica, who usually suffers from chronic
palpitation of the tongue, simply sat still staring with
shining eyes. Greeks to her are as was King Charles’
head to Mr. Dick. She is convinced the Greeks knew
everything worth knowing, and did everything worth
doing, and any further proof of their ability only fills
her with a gratified sense of “I-told-you-so-ness.” So
.pn +1
.bn 046.png
she lent a benign ear to a young American architect
there, who pointed out many constructive details,
which, under an appearance of great simplicity, proved
consummate grasp of the art, and of the subtlest secrets
of architectural harmonics.
Before the land made out into the harbour Poseidon’s
temple stood almost on the sea’s edge. The old
pavement of the street before its portals being disinterred
shows the ruts made by the chariot wheels still
deep-scored upon it, and it was here
.nf b
“The merry Grecian coaster came
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine—”
.nf-
.ni
anchoring almost under the shadow of the great fane
of the Lord of the Waters; and here, when his cargo
was discharged, he went up to offer sacrifices and
thanks to the Sea-god of Poseidonia, and
.nf c
“Hung his sea-drenched garments on the wall,”
.nf-
.ni
and prayed for skill to outwit his fellows in trade; for
fair winds to blow him once more to Greece.
.pi
Besides the temple of Neptune there was, of course,
the enormous Basilica, and a so-called temple of
Ceres, and some Roman fragments, but these were so
much less interesting than the golden-pillared shrine
of the Trident God, that the rest of the time was spent
in looking vainly and wistfully for Pæstum’s famous
rose gardens, of which not even the smallest bud remained,
and then Berliet gathered them up, and went
in search of the Station of La Cava.
.pn +1
.bn 047.png
.pb
.if h
.il fn=illus_047.jpg w=250px
.if-
.if t
.nf c
[Illustration: Decoration]
.nf-
.if-
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
CHAPTER II || A Nest of Eagles
.nf b
“So underneath the surface of To-day
Lies yesterday and what we call the Past,
The only thing which never can decay.”
.nf-
Trustfully and sleepily Jane and Peripatetica, in
the icy starlight of La Cava, boarded the express of
European de Luxe. Drowsy with the long day’s rush
through the wind, they believed that the train’s clatter
would be a mere lullaby to dreams of golden temples
and iris seas and “the glory that was Greece.” No
robbers or barbarians nearer than defunct corsairs
crossed their imaginings; the hoodoo had faded from
mind, shaken off by the glorious swoop of Berliet, and
they supposed it left behind at Naples, clinging bat-like
under the gaudy frescoes of Room 13 to descend
on other unwary travellers.
Half of their substance had been paid to the Compagnie
Internationale des Wagon Lits for this night’s
rolling lodging, and they begrudged it not, remembering
that it entitled their fatigue to the comforts of a
.pn +1
.bn 048.png
room to themselves in all the vaunted superior civilization
and decencies of a European compartment car.
Presenting their tickets in trusting calm they prepared
to follow the porter to a small but cosy room where
two waiting white beds lay ready for their weary heads.
But the Hoodoo had come on from Naples in that very
train. Compartments and beds there were, but not
for them. The porter led on, and in a toy imitation of
an American Pullman, showed them to a Lilliputian
blue plush seat and a ridiculous wooden shelf two feet
above that pretended it could unfold itself into an
upper berth. This baby section in the midst of a
shrieking babble of tongues, a suffocation of unaired
Latin and Teutonic humanity, was their compartment
room, “à vous seules, Mesdames!” telegraphed for to
Rome and made over to them with such flourish by
the polite agent at Naples!
If the car was Lilliputian its passengers were not.
Mammoth French dowagers and barrel-like Germans
overflowed all its tiny blue seats, and the few slim
Americans more than made good by their generous
excess of luggage. It was a very sardine box.
In a fury too deep for words or tears Peripatetica
and Jane sank into the few narrow inches the porter
managed to clear for them, and resigned themselves
to leaving their own dear bags in the corridor.
“They will, of course, be stolen, but then we may
never need them again. We can’t undress, and shall
probably be suffocated long before morning,” remarked
Peripatetica bitterly, with a hopeless glare at the imitation
ventilators not made to open. Their fury deepened
at the slow struggles of the porter to adjust the
inadequate little partitions, at the grimy blankets and
.pn +1
.bn 049.png
pillows on the little shelves, at the curtains which didn’t
conceal them, the wash-room without water or towels
and the cattle-train-like burden of grunts and groans
and smells floating on the unbreathable atmosphere.
Morning dawned golden on the flying hills at last,
and then deepest fury of all was Peripatetica’s, that
passionate lover of fresh air, to find that in spite of
everything she had slept, and was still breathing!
Calabria, lovely as ever, melted down to her glowing
seas; one last swooping turn of the rails, and another
line of faint hills rose opposite—and that was
Sicily!
The train itself coiled like a weary serpent into a
waiting steamer, which slipt smoothly by the ancient
perils of Scylla and Charybdis; and nearer and nearer
it rose, that gold and amethyst mountain-home of the
Old Gods. The white curve of Messina, “the Sickle,”
showed clear at the base of the cloud-flecked hills.
Kronos, father of Demeter, enthroned on those very
mountain peaks, had dropped his scythe at the sea’s
edge, cutting space there for the little homes of men,
and leaving them the name of his shining blade, “Zancle,”
the sickle, through all Greek days. It was there,
really there in actual vision, land of fire and myths;
the place of the beginnings of gods and men.
Peripatetica and Jane burst from the car and climbed
to the narrow deck above to get clearer view. The
sea wind swept the dust from their eyes and all fatigue
and discomfort from their memories. Their spirits
rose to meet that Spirit Land where Immortals had
battled and labored; had breathed themselves into
man,—the divine spirit stirring his little passing life
with revelation of that which passeth not; that soul
.pn +1
.bn 050.png
of beauty and wisdom, and of poetry which should
move through the ages. Their eyes were wide to see
the land where man’s imaginings had brought the
divine into all surroundings of his life, until every tree
and spring and rock and mountain grew into semblance
of a god. Oh, was it all a “creed outworn”? Here
might not one perchance still see
.nf b
“Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn”?
.nf-
In these very mountains before them had man himself
been shaped; hammered out by Vulcan upon his
forge in Ætna. Here, in this land he had been taught
by Demeter to nourish himself from the friendly earth,
taught how to shelter himself from the inclement elements
by Orion, Hunter and Architect—a god before
he was a star. There Zeus, all-conquering wisdom,
had prevailed against his opponents and placed his
high and fiery seat, this very Ætna, upon the bound
body of the last rebellious Titan, making even the
power of ignorance the pediment of his throne. There
the fair maiden goddesses, Artemis and Minerva and
Persephone, had played in flowery fields. There had
Pluto stolen the fairest away from among the blossoms,
the entrance to his dark underworld gaping suddenly
among the sunny meadows. There had the desolate
mother Demeter lit at Ætna the torch for her long and
desperate search. There had demi-gods and heroes
lived and loved and struggled. Its very rivers were
transformed nymphs, its islands rocks tossed in Cyclop’s
battles. There Ulysses had wandered and suffered;
there Pythagoras had taught, Theocritus had sung.
There—but man nor woman either is yet entirely spirit;
.pn +1
.bn 051.png
and though it was in truth the actual land of their
pilgrimage, of the birthplace of myth, of beauty
and wonder, Persephone had not yet returned. The
icy wind was turning all sentiment into shivers and
they fled back to the Twentieth Century and its Pullman
car.
Messina looked still more enticing when close at
hand; both prosperous and imposing with its lines of
stone quays and palaces on the sea front. Beyond
these there were famous fountains they knew, and
colourful marketplaces, and baroque churches with
spires like fluted seashells, and interiors gleaming like
sea caverns with all the rich colour and glow of Sicilian
mosaics. In one of the churches was the shrine of a
miracle-working letter from the Madonna, said to have
been written by her own hand. There was besides an
old Norman Cathedral, built of Greek ruins and Roman
remains; much surviving Spanish quaintness, but
to two unbreakfasted Wagon Lit passengers all this
was but ashes in the mouth. They felt that the attractions
of Messina could safely remain in the guide-books.
They were impelled on to Taormina....
No prophetic vision warned them that in their haste
they were losing the chance of ever seeing that doomed
Sickle-City at all. In that placid, modern port, where
travellers for pleasure rarely paused, there seemed
nothing to stay them. No ominous shadow lay upon
it to tell that it was marked for destruction by “the
Earth-Shaker,” or that before the year had gone it
would be echoing the bitter cry of lost Berytus:
“Here am I, that unhappy city—no more a city—lying
in ruins, my citizens dead men, alas! most ill-fated
of all! The Fire-god destroyed me after the
.pn +1
.bn 052.png
shock of the Earth-Shaker. Ah me! From so much
loveliness I am become ashes. Yet do ye who pass
me by bewail my fate, and shed a tear in my honour
who am no more. A tomb of tombless men is the
city, under whose ashes we lie.”
Taormina, the little mountain town, crouched under
Ætna’s southern side, not far from those meadows of
Enna from which Persephone had been ravished away.
There she would surely first return to the upper world,
and Demeter’s joy burst into flowers and sunshine.
So there they decided to seek her, and turned their
grimy faces straight to the train. The only sight-seeing
that appealed to them now was a vision of the
San Domenico Hotel with quiet white monkish cells
like to Amalfi’s to rest their weariness in, peaceful
pergolas, large bathtubs, and a hearty table d’hôte
luncheon.
So they stayed not for sights, and stopped not for
stone—nor breakfast, nor washing, nor even for their
trunks, which had not materialized, but sat in a dusty
railway carriage impatient for the train to start.
“It was beautiful,” remarked Jane, thinking of the
harbour approach to the city.
“Yes,” said Peripatetica, jumping at her unexpressed
meaning as usual. “Messina has always been
a famous beauty, and always will be. But she is, and
always has been, an incorrigible cocotte,—submitting
without a struggle to every invader of Sicily in turn.
And she certainly doesn’t in the least look her enormous
age in spite of having led a vie orageuse. Whenever
the traces of her past become too obvious she goes
and takes an earthquake shock, they say, and rises
fresh and rejuvenated from the ruins, ready to coquette
.pn +1
.bn 053.png
again with a new master and be enticing and treacherous
all over again.”[#]
.fn #
Messina suffered a terrific earthquake shock in 1783 and
has had in her history serious damage from seismic convulsions no less
than nine times.
.fn-
// 1783 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messina
// 1783 - Encyclopedia.com (http://www.encyclopedia.com/node/1210257)
It was hard to imagine on her modern boulevards
the armies of the past—all those many conquerors that
Messina had herself called in, causing half the wars
and troubles of Sicily by her invitations to new powers
to come and take possession, and to do the fighting for
her that she never would do for herself; betraying in
turn every master, good or bad, for the excitement of
getting a new one....
Greeks, Carthagenians, Mamertines, Romans, Arabs,
Normans, Spaniards—where were the ways of their
tramplings now? On that modern light-house point
there was not even a trace of the Golden Temple in
which Neptune sat on a crystal altar “begirt with
smooth-necked shells, sea-weeds, and coral, looking
out eastward to the morning sun?”
“If it were near the 15th of August I would stay
here in spite of everything,” ventured Peripatetica,
looking up from her book. “The Procession of the
Virgin is the only thing really worth seeing left in
Messina.” And in answer to Jane’s enquiring eyebrows
Peripatetica began to read aloud of that extraordinary
pageant of the Madonna della Lettera and her
car, that immense float, dragged through Messina’s
streets by hundreds of men and women; of its tower
fifty feet high, on which are ranged tiers over tiers of
symbolically dressed children standing upon all its different
stories; poor babies with painted wings made
to fly around on iron orbits up to the very top of the
.pn +1
.bn 054.png
erection; of the great blue globe upon which stands
a girl dressed in spangled gauze, representing the
Saviour, holding upon her right hand—luckily supported
by iron machinery—another child representing
the Soul of the Blessed Virgin.
“Not real children—not live babies!” protested Jane.
“Yes, indeed, just listen to Hughes’ account of it.”
Peripatetica read: “At an appointed signal this well-freighted
car begins to move, when it is welcomed with
reiterated shouts and vivas by the infatuated populace;
drums and trumpets play; the Dutch concert in the
machine commences, and thousands of pateraroes fired
off by a train of gunpowder make the shores of Calabria
re-echo with the sound; then angels, cherubim,
seraphim, and ‘animated intelligences,’ all begin to
revolve in such implicated orbits as to make even the
spectators giddy with the sight; but alas for the unfortunate
little actors in the pantomime; they in spite of
their heavenly characters are soon doomed to experience
the infirmities of mortality; angels droop, cherubim are
scared out of their wits, seraphim set up outrageous
cries, ‘souls of the universe’ faint away, and ‘moving
intelligences’ are moved by the most terrible inversion
of the peristaltic nerves; then thrice happy are those to
whom an upper station has been allotted. Some of
the young brats, in spite of the fracas, seem highly delighted
with their ride, and eat their ginger-bread with
the utmost composure as they perform their evolutions;
but it not unfrequently happens that one or more of
these poor innocents fall victims to this revolutionary
system and earn the crown of martyrdom.”
Jane seized the book to make sure it was actually
so written and not just one of Peripatetica’s flights of
.pn +1
.bn 055.png
fancy, and plunged into an account of another part of
the pageant—the giant figures of Saturn and Cybele
fraternizing amiably with the Madonna; Cybele
“seated on a large horse clothed like a warrior. Her
hair is tied back with a crown of leaves and flowers
with a star in front, and the three towers of Messina.
She wears a collar and a large blue mantle covered
with stars, which lies on the back of the horse. A
mace of flowers in her right hand and a lance in her
left. The horse is barded, and covered with rich trappings
of red, with arabesques of flowers and ribbons.”...[#]
.fn #
All this, along with every treasure of her past, has now
disappeared.
.fn-
“What curious folk the Sicilians are! They accept
new creeds and ceremonies, but the old never quite
lose their place. Where else would the Madonna
allow a Pagan goddess to figure in her train? And did
you notice in this very procession they still carry the
identical skin of the camel on which Roger entered the
city when he began his conquest of Sicily? I wish it
were near the 15th of August!”
“I wish it were near the time this train starts, if it
ever does,” replied Peripatetica crossly.
And, as if but waiting the expression of her wish,
the train did begin to stream swiftly along the deeply
indented coast beside whose margin came that wild
Norman raid upon Messina of the dauntless young
hawks of de Hauteville. Roger, the youngest and
greatest of the twelve sons, accompanied by but sixty
knights and their squires, two hundred men in all,
pouncing daringly upon a kingdom. A half dozen
galleys slipped over from Reggio by night, and the
.pn +1
.bn 056.png
morning sun flashed upon the dew-wet armour as they
galloped through the dawn to Messina’s walls. The
great fortified city was in front of them, a hostile country
around them, and a navy on the watch to cut them
off from reinforcements or return by sea. That they
should succeed was visibly impossible. But determined
faces were under the steel visors, the spirit of
conquering adventure shining in their grey eyes.
Every man of the host was confessed and absolved for
this fight of the Cross against the Crescent and their
young Commander was dedicated to a life pure and
exemplary, if to him was entrusted the great task of
winning Sicily to Christian dominion.
They did it because they thought they could do it;
as in the old Greek games success was to the man who
believed in his success. The Saracens fell into a panic
at the sight of that intrepid handful at their gates,
thinking from the very smallness of the band that it
must be the advance pickets of a great army already
past their guarding navy and advancing upon the city.
“So the Saracens gave up in panic, and Roger and
his two hundred took all the town with much gold and
many slaves, as was a conquering warrior’s due.”
The key of Messina was sent to Brother Robert in
Calabria with the proud message that the city was his
to come and take possession of. And the Normans
went on with the same bold confidence; and always
their belief was as a magic buckler to them as over all
the island they extended their conquest. Seven hundred
Normans routed an army of 15,000 Saracens,
killing 10,000. And young Serbo, nephew of Roger,
conquered 30,000 Arabs, attacking them with only one
hundred knights.
.pn +1
.bn 057.png
It was one of Jane’s pet romances, the career of this
landless youngest son of a small French noble carving
out with sword and brain “the most brilliant of European
Kingdoms,” leaving a dominion to his successors
with power stretching far beyond Sicily as long as they
governed upon his principles. The young conqueror,
unspoiled by his dazzling success, ruled with justice,
mercy, and genius, making Sicily united and prosperous;
the freest country in the world at that time; the
only one where all religions were tolerated, where men
of different creeds and tongues could live side by side,
each in his own way; each governed justly and liberally
according to his own laws—French statutes for
Normans, the Koran for Mussulmen, the Lombard
laws for Italians, and the old Roman Code for the
natives.
“Peripatetica,” Jane burst out. “Roger must have
been a delightful person—‘so good, so dear, so great a
king!’ Don’t you think there is something very appealing
in a king’s being called ‘so dear’? It is much
easier for them to be ‘great.’”
“Normans are too modern for me now,” said Peripatetica,
whose own enthusiasm was commencing to
catch fire. “We are coming to the spot of all the
Greek beginnings, where their very first settlement
began—do you realize that?”
And Jane, who had been hard at work with her histories,
could see it clearly. The little narrow viking-like
boats of Theocles, the Greek merchant, driven before
the sudden northeast storm they could not beat
up against nor lie to, straight upon the coast of this
dread land. It had always been a land awesome and
mysterious to the Greeks. They had imagined half
.pn +1
.bn 058.png
the dramas of their mythology as happening there. It
was sacred ground, too sacred to be explored by profane
foot; and was besides the home of fierce cannibals,
as they believed the Sikilians to be, and of all
manner of monstrous and half divine beings. But,
desperately choosing before certain destruction at sea
the unknown perils of the shore, Theocles had rounded
the point and beached his boats safely on that strip of
yellow sand that still fringes the cove below Taormina.
He and his companions, who feared to adventure no
perils of the treacherous Mediterranean in their tiny
crafts, but feared very much the monsters of their
imagination in this haunted country, built to Apollo
an altar of the sea-worn rocks, and sacrificed on it
their last meal and wine, praying him for protection
and help to save them from the Læstrygones, from
Polyphemus, and Hephæstos at his nearby smoking
forge. And Apollo must have found it good, the savour
of that his first sacrifice on Sicilian land, for straightway
succour came. The natives, drawn down from
the hillsides in curiosity at that strange fire on the shore,
were not raging cannibals but peaceful and friendly
farmer folk, who looked kindly on the shipwrecked
merchants, and gladly bartered food and rich dark
wine for Greek goods. And through the days of the
storm the Greeks lived unmolested on the shore, impressed
by all that met their eyes; the goodness of that
“fairest place in the world.” When at last came
favourable winds and the Greeks could set sail again,
Theocles vowed to return to that fertile shore, and if
Apollo, protector of colonists and giver of victory,
should favour his enterprise, to build there a shrine in
his honour.
.pn +1
.bn 059.png
But in Athens none would believe his accounts of
the rich land and the mild natives. They said that
even so it would be unwise to disturb Polyphemus, or
to run the risk of angering Hephæstos, and that it was
no proper site for a colony any way! Theocles did not
falter at discouragement; he took his tale to other
cities and over in Eubœa the Chalcydians were won to
him. After the oracle of Apollo had promised them
his protection and all good fortune, more Ionians and
some Dorians joined them; and in the spring they set
forth, a great fleet of vessels laden with all necessary
things to found a colony. Theocles piloted them to
the spot of his first sheltering; and there on the red
rock horns of the point above the beach they founded
Naxos, and built the great shrine of Apollo Archagates,
founder and beginner, with that wonderful statue which
is spoken of as still existing in the time of Augustus,
36 B.C.
Naxos itself had no such length of life. It knew
prosperous centuries of growth and importance, of
busy commerce and smiling wealth. Then came
Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, subdued the mother
city to his jealous power and absolutely exterminated
it, killing or carrying off into slavery all its population.
“The buildings were swept away, and the site of Naxos
given back to the native Sikilians. They never returned,
and for twenty-two centuries no man has dwelt
there.” Of all the shrines and palaces of Naxos not
one stone remains upon another, not one surviving
trace to identify now the exact site even of the Mother
of all Greek cities in Sicily. But from her sprang
Taormina.
Such of her population as managed to escape from
.pn +1
.bn 060.png
Dionysius, climbed up to those steep rocks above and
there, sheltering with the Sikilians, out of tyrants’
reach in that inaccessible mountain nest, Greek and
Sikilian mingling produced a breed of eagles that with
fierce strugglings has held fast its own on those peaks
through all the centuries.
But these shipwrecks and temples and sieges grew
dim behind the gritty cloud of railroad cinders. Jane
felt the past melt away from her and fade entirely into
the cold discomfort of the present. She subsided into
limp weariness in a corner of the carriage, incapable
of interest in anything, while Peripatetica’s spirits revived,
approaching the tracks of her adored Greeks,
and her imagination took fire and burst into words.
“Oh those wonderful days!” she cried. “If one
could only have seen that civilization, that beauty, with
actual eyes. Jane, wouldn’t you give anything to get
back into the Past even for a moment?”
“No, I’d rather get somewhere in the now—and to
breakfast,” grumbled Jane with hopeless materialism
as she vainly tried to stay her hunger on stale chocolate.
So Peripatetica saw visions alone, Jane only
knowing dimly that miles and miles of orange groves,
and of a sea a little paled and faded from its Calabrian
blue, were slipping by.
A box of a station announced itself as Giardini-Taormina.
A red-cheeked porter bore the legend
“Hotel San Domenico” on his cap; and much luggage
and two travellers fell upon him. But, ah, that hoodoo!
“Desolated, but the hotel was full. Yes, their letter
had been received, but it had been impossible to reserve
rooms,” said the cheerful porter heartlessly; “no
doubt other hotels could accommodate them.” He
.pn +1
.bn 061.png
didn’t seem to feel his cheerfulness in the least diminished
by the dismay pictured in the dusty faces before
him.
“Oh, well,” said Jane bravely, “picturesque monasteries
are all very well, but modern comfort does count
in the end. We will probably like the Castel-a-Mare,
and if we don’t, there is the Timeo.”
A small man buzzing “Metropole, Metropole!
Come with me, Ladies—beautiful rooms—my omnibus
is just going!” hung upon their skirts, but they
brushed him sternly aside, and permitted the rosy-cheeked
porter to pile them and the mountains of their
motoring-luggage into a dusty cab, and sing “Castel-a-Mare”
cheerily to its driver.
“We will go there first as it’s nearest,” they agreed,
“but if the rooms aren’t very nice, then the Timeo—the
royalties all prefer the Timeo.”
The road was twisting up and up a bare hillside.
They roused themselves to think that they were approaching
Taormina, the crown of Sicily’s beauty, the
climax of all earthly loveliness, the spot apostrophised
alike with dying breath by German poets and English
statesmen, as being the fairest of all that their eyes had
beheld on earth, place of “glories far worthier seraph’s
eyes” than anything sinful man ought to expect in this
blighted world according to Cardinal Newman.
But where was it, that glamour of beauty? Underneath
was a leaden stretch of sea, overhead a cold,
clouded sky, jagged into by forbidding peaks. The
grey road wound up and folded back upon itself, and
slowly—oh dear departed Berliet, how slowly!—up they
crawled. It was all grey, receding sea and rocky hillside,
grey dust thick on parched bushes and plants,
.pn +1
.bn 062.png
greyer still on grey olives and cactus, and what—those
other dingy trees—could they be almonds!—those
shrivelled and pallid ghosts of rosy bloom shivering in
the icy wind? Was it all but a chill shadow, that for
which they had left home and roaring fires and good
steam heat?
A furry grey head surmounted a dust wave, a donkey
and a small square cart emerged behind him, following
a line of others even greyer and dustier. Jane
looked listlessly at the forlorn procession until her eyes
discerned colour and figures dim beneath the dirt on the
cart’s sides, and underneath fantastic mud gobs what
appeared to be carvings. Could these be the famous
Painted Carts, the “walking picture books” of a romance
and colour loving people, the pride of a Sicilian
peasant, frescoed and wrought, though the owner lived
in a cave—the asses hung with velvet and glittering
bits of mirrors though he himself walked in rags?
Was everything hoped for in Sicily to prove a delusion?
Up whirled the San Domenico porter in a cloud of
dust, his empty carriage passing their laden one.
“You might try the ‘Pension Bellevue,’ ladies—beautiful
outlook—opposite the Castel-a-Mare, if you
are not suited there,” he called out as he rolled by.
They thanked him coldly, with spines stiffening in
spite of fatigue.
A pension? Never! If they could not have ascetic
cells at San Domenico or the flowery loggias of the
Castel-a-Mare, then at least the chambers that had
sheltered a German Empress!
Gardens and flowers began to appear behind the
dust; a wave-fretted promontory ran into the sea below,
a towering peak crowned with a brown rim loomed
.pn +1
.bn 063.png
overhead. In a few more dusty twists of road the
Castel-a-Mare was reached, and two large rooms with
the best view carelessly demanded.
The Concierge looked troubled and sent for a bland
proprietor. Rooms? He had none! wouldn’t have
for a month—could give one room just for that very
night—that was all!
To the Timeo then.
More dusty road, a quaint gateway, a narrow street
with all the town’s population walking in the middle
of it, a stop in front of a delightful bit of garden. A
stern and decided concierge this time—No rooms!
In the mile and a half from the Castel-a-Mare at
the end of one promontory, to the Internationale at
the extreme end of the other, that dusty cab stopped at
every hotel and, oh lost pride! at every pension in the
town and out. The same stern refusal everywhere;
no one wanted the weary freight. They felt their faces
taking on the meek wistfulness of lost puppies vainly
trying to ingratiate themselves into homes with
bones.
“Does no one in the world want us?” wailed Peripatetica.
“Can’t any one see how nice we really are
and give us a mat and a crust?”
“The Metropole man did want us,” reminded Jane
hopefully. “He even begged for us. Let’s go there!”
That had been the one and only place passed by,
the Domenico porter had seemed so scornful of its
claim at the station, but now they would condescend to
any roof, and thought gratefully of that only welcome
offered them in all Taormina.
How pleased the little porter would be to have them
coming to his beautiful rooms after all! Their meek
.pn +1
.bn 064.png
faces became proud again. They looked with approving
proprietorship on the waving palm in front of the
Metropole, and the old bell tower rising above it.
Peripatetica’s foot was on the carriage step ready to
alight and Jane was gathering up wraps and beloved
Kodak when out came a languid concierge and the
usual words knelled in their ears—“No rooms!”
They refused to believe. “But your porter said you
had.”
“Yes, an hour ago, but now they are taken.”
A merciful daze fell upon Peripatetica and Jane....
How they returned to the “Castel-a-Mare” and got
themselves and their mountain of luggage into the one
room in all Taormina they might call theirs for as much
as a night, they never knew; when consciousness came
back they were sitting in front of food in a bright dining-room,
and knew by each other’s faces that hot
water and soap must have happened in the interval.
Speech came back to Peripatetica, and she announced
that she was never going to travel more, except to reach
some place where she might stay on and on forever.
Jane might tour through Sicily if she liked, but as for
her, Syracuse and Girgenti and all could remain mere
words on the map, and Cook keep her tickets—if she
had to move on again on the morrow, she would go
straight to Palermo and there stay!
Jane admitted to congenial feelings, and resigned all
intervening Sicily without a pang. There would be no
place in inhospitable Taormina for Persephone to
squeeze into any way!
They went to question the Concierge of trains to
Palermo. He took it as a personal grief that they
must leave Taormina so soon. “The air of Palermo
.pn +1
.bn 065.png
is not like ours.” They hoped it was not, as they
shivered in a cold blast from the open door, and put it
to him that they could hardly live on air alone, and
that Taormina offered them nothing more. But he
had something to suggest—furnished rooms that he
had heard that a German shop-keeper wished to let.
Peripatetica did not take to the suggestion kindly, in
fact her aristocratic nose quite curled up at it. But
she assented dejectedly that they might as well walk
there as anywhere, and give the place a look.
Through the dust and shrivelled almond blossoms
they trailed back into town. The sun was still behind
grey clouds and an icy wind whipped up the
dust.
“Too late for the almond bloom, too early for warmth.
What is the right moment for Sicily?” murmured
Peripatetica.
The mountains with their sweeping curves into the
sea were undeniably beautiful; the narrow town street
they entered through the battlemented gate was full
of gay colour, but it left them cold and homesick for
Calabria. A little old Saracen palace, with some delicate
Moorish windows and mouldings still undefaced,
held the antiquity shop of the Frau Schuler. Brisk
and rosy she seemed indeed the “trustable person” of
the Concierge’s description.
Yes, indeed, she had rooms and hoped they might
please the ladies. Her niece would show them. A
white-haired loafer was beckoned from the Square, and
Peripatetica and Jane turned over to his guidance.
Behind his faded blue linen back they threaded their
way between the swarming tourists, children, panniered
donkeys, and painted carts.
.pn +1
.bn 066.png
Suddenly the old man vanished into a crack between
two houses, which turned out to be an alley, half stair,
half gutter, dropping down to lower levels. Everything
no longer needed in the kitchen economy of the
houses on either side had been cast into the alley—the
bones of yesterday’s dinners, vegetable parings of to-day’s,
the baby’s bath, the father’s old shoes lay in a
rich ooze through which chickens clucked and squabbled.
At the bottom of the crack a high wall and a
pink gateway ... they were in a delicious garden,
descending a pergola of roses and grapes. Violets and
freesias, geraniums and heliotrope spread in a dazzle of
colour and sweetness under gnarled olives and almonds
and blossoming plums; stone benches, bits of old
marbles, a violet-fringed pool and a terrace leading
down to a square white house, a smiling young German
girl inviting them in, and then a view—dazzling
to even their fatigued, dulled eyes.
In front a terrace, and then nothing but the sea, 700
feet below, the surf-rimmed coast line melting on and
off indefinitely to the right in great soft curves of up-springing
mountains, a deep ravine, then the San
Domenico point with the old convent and church rising
out of its gardens. On the left the ruins of the Greek
theatre hanging over their heads; and on the very edge
of the terrace an old almond-tree with chairs and a
table under it, all waiting for tea.
Fortunately the villa’s interior showed comfortable
rooms, clean, airy, and spacious. But the terrace settled
it. They would have slept anywhere to belong to
that. No longer outcast tramps but semi-proprietors
of a villa, a terrace, a garden, and a balcony, they returned
beaming to the friendly Concierge.
.pn +1
.bn 067.png
And all Taormina looked different now. The brocades
and laces waved enticingly at the “antichita’s”
doors, old jewels and enamels gleamed temptingly;
mountains rose more majestic, the sea seemed less disappointingly
lacking in Calabrian colour.... And as
for the tourists, so disgustingly superior in the morning
with their clean faces and unrumpled clothes, assured
beds and table d’hôtes; now, how the balance had
changed! They were mere tourists. What a superior
thing to be an inhabitant, with a terrace all one’s
own!
Life at the Villa Schuler was inaugurated in a pouring
rain. But even that did not dim its charm; though
to descend the Scesa Morgana—as the gutter-alley
called itself—was like shooting a polluted Niagara,
and the stone floors of the villa itself were damply
chill, and American bones ached for once despised
steam heat. Yet smiling little Sicilian maids, serving
with an ardour of willingness that never American
maid knew, with radiant smiles staggered through the
rain bearing big pieces of luggage, carried in huge
pitchers of that acqua calda the forestieri had such a
strange passion for, and then, as if it were the merriest
play in the world, pulled about heavy pieces of furniture
to rearrange the rooms according to American
ideas, which demanded that dressing-tables should have
light on their mirrors, and sofas not be barriered behind
the immemorial German tables.
Maria of the beaming smile, and Carola of the gentle
eyes, what genius was yours? Two dumb forestieri,
who had never learned your beautiful tongue, found
that they had no more need of words to express their
wants than a baby has to tell his to knowing mother
.pn +1
.bn 068.png
and nurses. Did they have a wish, all they had to do
was to call “Maria!”—smile and stutter, look into her
sympathetic face, and somehow from the depths of their
eyes she drew out their desire....
“Si, si, Signora!”
She was off and back again with a smile still more
beaming.
“Questo?”
Yes, “questo” was always the desired article!
At first they did make efforts at articulate speech,
and with many turnings over of dictionary and phrase-book
attempted to translate their meaning. But that
was fatal. Compilers of phrase-books may be able to
converse with each other, but theirs is a language apart—of
their own, apparently—known to no other living
Italians. They soar in cloudy regions of politeness,
those phrase-books, all flourishes and unnecessary compliments;
but when it comes to the solid substantials
of existence they are nowhere! Towels are not towels
to them, nor butter, butter.
At first two trusting forestieri loyally believed in
them, and book in hand read out confidently to Maria
their yearnings for a clean table cloth, or a spoon. But
a dictionary spoon never was a spoon to Maria—dazed
for once she would look at them blankly until meaning
dawned on her from their eyes; then “ah!” and she
would exclaim an entirely different word from the dictionary’s,
and produce the article at last.
But then according to Maria’s vocabulary “questo?”
“qui!” were the only really vital and necessary words
in all the Italian language. It merely depended upon
how you inflected these to make them express any
human need or emotion. “Questo” meant everything
.pn +1
.bn 069.png
from mosquito-bars to vegetables; and the combination
of the two words with a sprinkling of “si’s”
and “non’s” were all one needed to define any shade
of feeling—pride, surprise, delight, regret, apology,
sadness. From the time Maria brought in the breakfast
trays in the mornings to the hot-water bottles at
night it rang through the villa all day long; for the intricacies
of her duties, the demands of the lodgers,
scoldings from the Fraulein, chatter with other maids,
“questo! qui!” sounded near and echoed from the
distance like a repeated birdnote.
No nurse ever showed more pride in a precocious
infant’s lispings than did Maria when they caught up
her phrases and repeated them to her—when the right
words to express the arrangement of tub and dinner
table were remembered and stammered out. She
seemed to feel that there might be hope of her charges
eventually developing into rational articulate beings,
and “questo-ed” every article about to them, with all
the enthusiasm of a kindergartner.
.tb
Next morning the sun had come out, and so had
Ætna. There it suddenly was, towering over the terrace,
a great looming presence dominating everything;
incredibly high and white, its glittering cone clear cut
as steel against the blue morning sky, rising far above
the clouds which still clung in tatters of drapery about
the immense purple flanks. Enceladus for once lay
quiet upon his fiery bed; no tortured breathings of
steam floated about the icy clearness of the summit.
It was a vision all of frozen majestic peace, yet awesomely
full of menace, of the times when the prisoned
Titan turned and groaned and shook the earth with his
.pn +1
.bn 070.png
struggles, and poured out tears of blood in floods of
burning destruction over all the smiling orchards and
vineyards and soft green valleys.
Suddenly, Germans armed with easels and palettes
sprang up fully equipped at every vantage viewpoint.
The terrace produced a fertile crop of them, solemnly
reducing the wonderful vision to mathematical dabs of
purple and mauve and grey upon yellow canvas. One
felt it comforting to know that even if Ætna never
pierced the clouds again all Germany might feast its
eyes on the colored snap shots then being made of that
morning’s aspect of the Great Presence amid a patronising
chorus of “Kolossals” and “achs reizends.”
But once seen, it remained impressed on sense and
spirit, that vision—whether visible or not. It was always
with one, dominating all imaginings as it did every
actual circumstance of life at Taormina, the weather,
the temperature, the colour of every prospect. Though
the sky behind San Domenico might be a blank and
empty grey, one knew it was there, that mysterious and
wonderful presence. And when it stood out, a Pillar
of Heaven indeed, all clear and fair in white garment
of fresh-fallen snow, it was still a menace to the blossoming
land below, whether from its summit were sent
down icy winds and grey mists or shrivelling fire and
black pall of lava.
.if h
.il fn=illus_071.jpg w=600px id=illus_071
.ca
“A Place Where the Past Reveals Itself”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: “A Place Where the Past Reveals Itself”]
.if-
Equal in importance with this vision of Ætna was
the appearance of Domenica—both events happening
in the same day. Domenica too began as a bland outline.
Small, middle-aged, and primly shawled; a
smooth black head, gold earrings, and a bearing and
nose of such Roman dignity and ability that two weary
forestieri yearned at once to put themselves and their
.bn 071.png
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
.bn 073.png
undarned stockings into the charge of her capable little
hands. She respectfully asserted her willingness to
serve them; they could make that out—but how tell
her their requirements and the routine of the service
they wished? It was seen to be beyond the powers of
any phrase-book or even of Maria, presiding over the
interview with beaming interest, and carefully repeating
with louder tone and hopeful smile all Domenica’s
words. No mutual understanding could be reached.
They gave it up, and regretfully saw the shining black
head bow itself out. But Domenica had to be. Their
fancy clamoured for her, and all their poor clothes,
full of the dust of travel and the rents of ruthless washerwoman,
demanded her insistently. A more competent
interpreter was found, and their needs explained at
length. Domenica’s eyes sparkled with willing intelligence;
she professed herself capable of doing anything
and everything they asked of her; and mutual delight
gilded the scene until the question of terms came up.
What would the ladies pay? They mentioned a little
more than the Frau Schuler had told them would be expected,
and waited for the pleased response to their
generosity—but what was happening? The grey shawl
was tossed from shoulders that suddenly shrugged, and
arms that flew about wildly; fierce lightnings flashed
from the black eyes, a torrent of ever faster and shriller
words rose almost into shrieks.
Peripatetica and Jane shrank aghast, expecting to see
a stiletto plunged into the stolid form of their interpreter,
bravely breasting the fury.
“What is the matter?” they cried.
“Oh nothing,” smiled the interpreter, “she is saying
it isn’t enough; that the ladies at the hotels pay
.pn +1
.bn 074.png
their maids more, and her husband wouldn’t permit
her to take so little.”
Dear me, she need not! they certainly would not
want such a fury.
The fury had subsided into tragic melancholy, and
subdued after-mutterings of the storm rumbled up from
the reshawled bosom.
“She says she will talk it over with her husband to-night,”
said the gentle interpreter with a meaning wink.
“She is really good and able; the ladies will find her
a brave woman.”
They didn’t exactly feel that bravery was needed on
her side as much as on theirs after that storm, but they
had liked no other applicant, and again the imposing
nose and capable appearance asserted their charm, and
they remembered their stockings. Their offer still
stood, they said, but it must be accepted or declined at
once; they wanted a maid that very evening. Renewed
flashes—she dared not accept such a pittance
without consulting her husband.... Very well, other
maids had applied, expecting less. A change of aspect
dawned—she would like to serve the ladies, would they
not give half of what she asked for? Consultation with
the interpreter—ten cents more a day offered only—instant
breaking out of smiles and such delighted bobbings
and bowings as she departed that it seemed impossible
to believe that furious transformation had ever
really happened.
They felt a little uneasy. Had they caught a Tartar?
Remembering all the tales of Sicilian temper it
seemed scarcely comfortable to have a maid who might
draw a stiletto should one give her an unpleasing order.
They awaited the beginning of her service a bit doubtfully.
.pn +1
.bn 075.png
But when that grey shawl was hung inside the
villa door, the only fierceness its owner showed was in
her energy for work. The black eyes never flashed
again, until ... but that comes later. They beamed
almost as happy and instant a comprehension of all
needs as Maria’s. And her capacity for work was appalling.
At first they watched its effects with mutual
congratulations; such an accumulation of the dilapidations
of travel as was theirs had seemed to them
quite hopeless ever to catch up with, but now the great
heaps of tattered stockings turned into neat-folded pairs
in their drawers, under-linen coquetted into ribbons
again, and all their abused belongings straightened
into freshness and neatness once more. Domenica’s
energy was as fiery as Ætna’s during an eruption, only
unlike the mountains it never seemed to know a surcease.
Dust departed from skirts instantly at the
fierce onslaught of her brushings; things flew into their
places; sewing seemed to get itself done as if at the
wave of a magician’s wand. Accustomed to the dilatoriness
of Irish Abigails at home, Peripatetica and Jane
were quite dazzled with delight at first—but then incredibly
soon came the time when there was nothing
left undone; when the little personal waiting on they
needed could not possibly fill Domenica’s days, and it
became a menace, the sight of that little grey-clad
figure asking with empty hands, “what next, Signora?”
“The Demon,” they began calling her instead of
Domenica, and felt that like Michael Scott and his
demon servant, they would be obliged to set her to
weaving ropes of sand, the keeping her supplied with
normal tasks seemed so impossible. It became almost
.pn +1
.bn 076.png
a pleasure to find a gown too loose or too tight, that
she might alter it, or to spot or tear one, and as for
ripped skirt bindings or torn petticoat ruffles, they
looked at each other in delight and cried exultantly,
“a job for the Demon!” Tea-basket kettles to scour
they gave her, silver to clean, errands to do, fine things
to wash, their entire wardrobes to press out; yet still
the little figure sat in her corner reproachfully idle,
looking at them questioningly, and sighing like a furnace
until some new task was procured her. Desperately
they took to giving her afternoons off, and invariably
dismissed her before the bargained time in the
evening. But still to find grist for the mill of her industry
kept them racking their brains unsuccessfully
through all their Taormina days.
.tb
Home comforts and maid once secured they could
turn to Taormina itself with open minds, and plunge
into a flood of beauty and queernesses and history.
Of the guide-books some say that Taormina was the
acropolis of Naxos, an off-shoot of that first Greek
town, others that it, like Mola, was a Sikilian stronghold
long before the days of the Greeks. Jane’s private
theory was that neither Greeks nor Sikilians had
been its founders, that eagles alone would ever first
have built on that dizzy windy perch!
On the very ridge of a mountain spine with higher
peaks overhanging, Taormina twists its one real street,
houses climbing up or slipping down hill as best they
may, all clinging tight, and holding hands fast along the
street to balance themselves there at all. Dark stairway
cracks between lead up or down, and overhead flying
arches or linked stories keep the clasp unbroken.
.pn +1
.bn 077.png
Here and there a little street manages to twist off and
find a few curves for itself on another level, or the
street widens into a wee square, or a terrace beside an
old church is edged with a stone-benched balustrade
where ancient loafers may sun themselves and look
down at the tiny busy specks of fishing boats in the sea
far below.
Every hour of the day the Street is a variety show
with the mixed life passing through it, and acting its
dramas there. Flocks of goats squeezing through on
their way to pasture; donkeys carrying distorted wine
skins or gay glazed pottery protruding from their panniers;
women going to the fountain, balancing slender
Greekish water jars on their heads; the painted carts
carrying up the tourists’ luggage; the tourists themselves
in veils and goggles bargaining at enticing shop
doorways, or peering into the windowless room of
Taormina’s kindergarten, where a dozen or more infants
are primly ranged, every mother’s daughter with
knitting pins in hand and silky brown curls knotted on
top of head like little old women, sitting solemnly in the
scant light of the open door, acquiring from a gentle
old crone the art of creating their own stockings.
There the barber strums his guitar on a stool outside the
“Salone” door while he waits for custom; the Polichinello
man obstructs traffic with the delighted crowds
of boys collected by Punch’s nasal chantings and the
shrill squeaks of “Il Diavolo.” There come the golden
loads of oranges and lemons; green glistening lettuces
and feathery finochi; bread hot from the bakers in
queer twists and rings; live chickens borne squawking
from market, and poor little kids going to the
butchers. The busy tide of every-day life never ebbed
.pn +1
.bn 078.png
its colourful flow from the beginning of the street at the
arch of one old gateway until its end at the arch of the
other. Buying and selling, learning, working, and
idling, the Present surged there, but a step aside into
any of the backways, and one was instantly in the
Past. Old women spinning in doorways with the very
same twirling spindles as those of two thousand years
ago. The very same old women, one had almost said,
their hawk-like dried faces were so unimaginably far
removed from youth, from all modernness.
The very names of the streets spell history and drama.
History rises up and becomes alive.
In the Street of Timoleon one hears the clank of
armour—the Great Leader and his Corinthians swing
down the road. Only a few days ago they had landed
at the beach of ruined Naxos in answer to the call of
Andromachus, Taormenium’s ruler. They have been
warmly entertained at his palace, have there rested,
learning from him of the lay of the land and state of
affairs; now they set out to begin the campaign. The
staring people stand watching the march of these
strong new friends, murmuring among themselves in
awestruck whispers of the portents attending the setting
forth of these allies. How great Demeter and
Persephone herself had appeared to the servitors of
their temple, promising divine assistance and protection
to this expedition for the succour of their island—a
rumour too that Apollo had dropped the laurel
wreath of victory from his statue at Delphi upon Timoleon’s
head; a marvel, not a rumour, for it was beheld
with very eyes by some amongst themselves. How the
ships bringing these deliverers had come in through
the night to the harbour below with mysterious unearthly
.pn +1
.bn 079.png
fires hovering in front of them and hanging in balls at
the masthead, to light them on the way!
In the midst of the soldiers is a taller figure—or one
that seems so—a face like Jupiter’s own, of such majesty
and sternness and calm. The crowd surges and thrills
and shouts with all its heart and soul and stout Sicilian
lungs.
“Who is that?” ask the children.
“Timoleon! Timoleon, the Freer!” they are answered
when the shouting is over. “Remember all
your life long that you have seen him.”
And when years later those boys, grown to manhood
in a free prosperous Sicily, hear of the almost divine
honours that grateful Syracuse is paying to her adored
deliverer, of the impassioned crowds thronging the
theatre, mad with excitement at every appearance
of the great old blind man, they too thrill to know that
their eyes too have seen “The Liberator,” greatest and
simplest of men.
It is the Street of the Pro-Consulo Romano. Here
comes Verres, cruelest of tyrants, most rapacious of
robbers. The people shrink out of the way, out of
sight as fast as may be, at the first gleam of the helmets
of the Pro-Consul’s guard, when “carried by
eight stalwart slaves in a litter, lying upon cushions
stuffed with rose leaves, clad in transparent gauze and
Maltese lace, with garlands of roses on his head and
round his neck, and delicately sniffing at a little net
filled with roses lest any other odour should offend his
nostrils,” the sybarite tyrant is borne along, passing
the statue of himself he has just had erected in the
Forum, on his way to the theatre.
The Street of Cicero; it is only necessary to close
.pn +1
.bn 080.png
one’s eyes to see that lean, long-nosed Roman lawyer.
A fixed, silent sleuth-hound on this same Verres’ track;
following, following close, nose fixed to the trail, for
all the cunning doublings and roundings of the fox,
questing all over Sicily, gathering everywhere evidence,
building up his case, silently, inexorably; until at last
his quarry is cornered, no squirming tricks of further
avail. Verres is caught by the throat, exposed, denounced;
so passionately, that as long as man’s appreciation
of logic and eloquence endures the great lawyer’s
pleading of that case is remembered and quoted.
Children are playing in the Via Sextus Pompeius,
but one sees instead a gleam of golden armour, of white
kilts swinging from polished limbs—the proud figure
of Pompey; splendid perfumed young dandy who,
the fair naughty ladies say, is the “sweetest-smelling
man in Rome.”
Here, with instinctive climb to the heights, he is desperately
watching the surge of that great new power
flooding, foaming, submerging all the world; rising up
to him even here, the bubbling wave started by that
other Roman dandy, the young man Julius Cæsar,
who knotted his girdle so exquisitely....
The street from which the Villa Schuler’s pink door
opened was that of the Bastiones, where the town’s
fortified wall had once been. Corkscrewing dizzily
down the sheer hillside among the cacti and rocks ran
a narrow little trail. Jane had settled it to her own
satisfaction that this was the scene of Roger’s adventure
when besieging Taormina, then Saracen Muezza—last
stronghold on the East coast to hold out against him;
as it had two hundred years ago been one of the last in
succumbing to the Moslems.
.pn +1
.bn 081.png
Roger had completely surrounded the strong place
with works outside its walls, and was slowly reducing
it by starvation. Going the rounds one day, with his
usual reckless courage almost unaccompanied, he is
caught in a narrow way by a strong party of the enemy.
The odds are overwhelming, even to Normans, on that
steep hillside. Roger must retreat or be cut down.
For attackers and pursued the only foothold is the
one narrow path. Evisand, devoted follower of Roger,
is quick to see the advantage of that—one man alone
may delay a whole host for a few important minutes
there, and he offers up his life to cover his master’s
escape. Alone, on the narrow way he makes a stand
against all the Moslem swarm, with such mighty wielding
of sword that it is five minutes before the crooked
Moslem blades can clear that impediment from their
way. Roger, who has had time to reach safety before
the brave heart succumbs to innumerable wounds,
dashes back with reinforcements, wins the day, recovers
his loyal servitor’s body, buries it with royal
honours, and afterwards builds a church in memory of
this preservation, and for the soul of his preserver.
And Taormina, yielding to Roger and starvation, regains
her name and the Cross....
Picking their way one morning up through the puddles
and hens of their own alleyway, Peripatetica,
raising her eyes an instant from the slime to look at
the label on the house corner, said:
“Who could have been the Morgana this scandal of
a street ever stole its name from? ... you don’t suppose....”
“What?”
“Why, that it could have been the Fata Morgana?
.pn +1
.bn 082.png
Her island first appeared somewhere off the Sicilian
coast.”
“Oh, Peripatetica! how could a fairy, lovely and enchanting,
ever have become associated with this!”
Peripatetica had a fine newborn theory on her
tongue’s tip, but ere she could voice it, a nervous hen
above them suddenly decided there was no room on
that road for two to pass on foot, and took to her wings
with wild squawk and a lunge straight at Peripatetica’s
face in an attempt to pass overhead. Peripatetica
ducked and safely dodged all the succeeding hens whom
the first dame’s hysteria instantly infected to like behaviour.
By the time she caught her breath again in
safety at the street’s level, the theory was lost, but another
more interesting one was born to her as they proceeded.
“‘Street of Apollo Archagates,’—Jane, do you see
meaning in that? The Greeks always put their greatest
temples on the heights—Athens, Girgenti, Eryx,
wherever there were hills the Great Shrine was on the
Acropolis. Taormina must have been the Acropolis
of those Naxos people—they certainly never stayed on
the unprotected shore below without mounting to these
heights. I believe Apollo’s temple stood up here, not
below. Here they built it, dominating the city, shining
far out to sea, a mark for miles to all their ships
and to the sailormen worshipping Apollo, Protector of
Commerce.”
“No one has ever suggested that,” said Jane.
“What if they haven’t? It’s just as apt to be true,
though even tradition has left no trace of it now but
the name of this dirty little street. I for one am going
to believe it, and that was why the statue survived until
the time of the Romans.”
.pn +1
.bn 083.png
And so it was that every step they took stirred up
wraiths of myth and history. Even on the Street in
the midst of all its humming bustle, rotund German
tourists and donkeys, all the modern life would suddenly
melt away, and they would resurrect old St. Elio,
attired only in chains and his drawers, kneeling in
front of the Catania gate, exhorting the Byzantine soldiers
to cleanse themselves from their sins before destruction
came from the Saracens then raging like mad
wolves outside the devoted town’s walls, in a fury that
it alone—save Rometta—of all Christian Sicily should
still hold out against them. Then the air would fill
with the screaming and strugglings of those old fierce
eagle fights, and the donkey boys’ cries of “A-ah-ee!”
would change to the fierce triumphant shouts of “Allah
Akbar!” with which Ibrahim’s cruel soldiery finally
broke in to massacre garrison and townsfolk.
Although Taormina sat apart on her mountain eyrie
with no epoch-making events finding room on her perch
to happen, the stream of all Sicily’s history, from first
Greek settlement to the revolts of modern days against
King Bomba’s tyranny, have surged around and through
her. An American living in Taormina did a kindness
to her native cook, for which in grateful return the cook
insisted on presenting her a quantity of old coins, which
her husband had turned up through the years in their
little garden. Showing them to the Curator of a Museum,
“Madame,” he said to the fortunate recipient
of the gift, “you have a complete epitome of all Sicilian
history in these coins.”
All the different races and dynasties dominating
Sicily from her beginning, all the great cities that rose
into local power were represented in these treasure
.pn +1
.bn 084.png
troves from the silt of the centuries, dug by a peasant
from the soil of one little garden.
It was the Greek theatre which first revealed the
Sicily of their dreams to Peripatetica and Jane; consoling
for the vague disappointment of those first days
of dust and rain by the glamour of its presentment of
the loveliness of nature and the majesty of the past.
Greek that wonderful ruin still essentially is, for all
its Roman remodelling and incrusting of brick. Only
the Greeks could have so lovingly and instinctively
combined with nature and seized so harmoniously all
nature’s fairest to enhance their own creation. The
place, the setting, the spirit of it is Greek; what matter
if the actual material shape now is Roman, with the
Greek form only glimmering through like a body of
the old statuesque beauty cramped and hidden under
distorting modern dress? Not that the theatre’s
Roman clothing is ugly—the warm red brick, contrasting
with the creamy marble fragments, has an undeniable
charm, Greek and Roman together. It is an exquisite
ruin of human conceivings, contrived to have
blue sea and curving shore and Ætna’s snowy cone as
the background of the open stage arches, and in the
foyer, the arcaded walk back and behind the top tiers
of the auditorium, all the differing panorama of beauty
of the northern coast line.
Nature from the beginning did more than man for
the building, and now she has taken it back to herself
again, blending Greek and Roman in binding of vine
and flower and moss; twining all the stone-seated tiers
into an herb and flower garden, and putting the song
of birds into the vaulted halls of the Greek Chorus.
An enchanting place, where the Past seems to reveal
.pn +1
.bn 085.png
itself in all that it had most of beauty and splendour.
Peripatetica and Jane thought themselves fortunate
to live under its wings; actually in its shadow,
and so be on intimate calling terms at any hour of the
day, learning its beauty familiarly through every changing
transformation of light, cool morning’s grey and
glowing noon’s gold, fiery sunsets, blue twilights, and
early moonrise—mountains and sea and wide-flung sky
dissolving magically and mysteriously into ever different
pictures.
They wandered through chorus halls and dressing-rooms,
the obscure regions under the stage and the
dizzy ones on top of it; strolled in the outside arcade
on top of the auditorium, where the loveliness of the
view was a fresh wonder every time it burst on them,
sat in the top rows and the bottom ones on the flowery
sod now covering all the seats, looking from every
angle at that most charming of marble stage settings
and most wonderful of all backgrounds, trying to
imagine the times when the surrounding tiers had been
filled with 4,000 eager spectators, and the walls had
echoed to the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides.
Looking wonderingly at the curious drains and holes
and underground passages below the stage, they wondered
if Æschylus, that eminent stage manager as well
as poet, had not himself perhaps contrived some of
them on his visit to Sicily, to introduce new thrills of
stage effects into the performances of his tragedies here.
Æschylus, who was inventor of stage realism, first to
introduce rich costuming, accessories, and stage machinery,
the mutter of stage thunder, shrieks, and
sounds from behind the scenes suggestive of the deeds
.pn +1
.bn 086.png
considered too shocking to happen in the audience’s
sight—inventor of the “Deus ex Machina,” that obliging
god popping from out his trap-door to divinely
straighten out a situation snarled past natural conclusion.
As one sat there in the calm splendour of the setting
of earth and sky, sun, and great winds streaming overhead,
it became easier to understand the spirit of the
old Greek plays; how the drama had been to them not
mere amusement but almost a form of religion, and an
expounding of their beliefs, an attempt to “justify the
ways of God to man.” If perhaps such settings had
not instinctively formed the differing tendencies of their
great play-writers; Æschylus to represent suffering as
the punishment of sin; Sophocles to justify the law of
God against the presumption of man; and in these
spacious open-air settings if the great rugged elementary
simplicity of their plays had not been necessary
and inevitable.
“In the Greek tragedy the general point of view predominates
over particular persons. It is human nature
that is represented in the broad, not this or that highly
specialized variation.... To the realization of this
general aim the whole form of the Greek drama was
admirably adapted. It consisted very largely of conversations
between two persons representing two opposed
points of view, and giving occasion for an almost
scientific discussion of every problem of action raised
in the play; and between these conversations were inserted
lyric odes in which the chorus commented on the
situation, bestowed advice or warning, praise or blame,
and finally summed up the moral of the whole.”
More akin to an opera than to a play in our modern
.pn +1
.bn 087.png
sense, the Greek drama had as its basis music. The
song and stately dance of its mimetic chorus being the
binding cord of the whole, “bringing home in music
to the passion of the heart the idea embodied in lyric
verse, the verse transfigured by song, and song and
verse reflecting as in a mirror to the eye by the swing
and beat of the limbs they stirred to consonance of
motion.”
Sitting in the thyme-scented breeze Peripatetica and
Jane read Euripides until they seemed to become a
part of a breathless audience waiting for his tragedies
to be performed before their eyes, waiting for the first
gleam of the purple and saffron robes of the chorus,
sweeping out from their halls in chanting procession.
And it would all seem to take place once more on the
stage in front of them, that feast for the eye and ear
and intelligence at once. It became clear that across
such great unroofed space the actors could not rely on
“acting,” in our sense, for their results. It must be
something bigger and simpler than any exact realism
of petty actions; play of facial expression, subtle
changes of voice and gesture would be ineffectually
lost there. So, though at first the stage conventions of
a different age seemed strange to these modern spectators,
the actors raised above their natural height on
stilted boots, their faces covered by masks, their voices
mechanically magnified; yet in wonderful effects of
statuesque posings the meaning came clear to the eye,
and the chanting intonation brought out every beautiful
measure of the rolling majestic verse which a realistic
conversational delivery would have obscured. So
the representation became “moving sculpture to the
eye, and to the ear, as it were, a sleep of music between
.pn +1
.bn 088.png
the intenser intervals of the chorus,” and the spectators
found themselves “without being drawn away by
an imitative realism from the calm of impassioned contemplation
into the fever and fret of a veritable actor
on the scene,” receiving all the beautiful lucid thought
and sentiment of the text, heightened by the accompanying
appeal to the senses of perfect groupings of
forms and colours, of swaying dance, and song and recitative,
until it all blended into one perfect satisfying
whole—perhaps the most wonderful form of art production
that has ever existed.
And then some German tourist would scream, “Ach
Minna, komm mal her! ’s doch famos hier oben!”
and they would be waked from their day dream of old
harmonies into the shrill bustling present again.
“It is like all really great fresco painting,” said Peripatetica
on one of these comings back, “kept in the
flat. Anything huge has to be treated so as to make
its meaning tell; it has to be done in flat outline to
stay in the picture, to make the whole effective. All
the great imposing frescoes are like that; when the
seventeenth century tried to heighten its effects by
moulding out arms and legs in the round, its pictures
dropped to pieces; any idea it was trying to express
became lost. One is conscious of nothing but the
nearest sprawling realistic limb thrusting out at one.
Oh, those delicious marvellous Greeks! everything
that is beautiful and perfect they did first, and anything
good that has ever been done since is only copying
them.”
Jane had a deep respect for the Greeks herself, but
she sometimes turned against too much laudation of
them.
.pn +1
.bn 089.png
“Do you suppose the æsthetic effect of their tragedies
was really greater than that of a Wagner opera,
well given? That the lament for Iphigenia could be
more deeply thrilling than Siegfried’s funeral march?”
Peripatetica almost bounded from her seat.
“But that’s just it!” she cried. “Wagner operas
are a revival of the Greek ideal! the only modern analogy
of their drama! He had the same idea of painting
on a huge canvas great heroic figures in the flat, keeping
them in the picture without rounding out into petty
realism. And he has attempted exactly what they did,
to present his dramatic theme in a mingling of music,
poetry, picture, and dance, every branch of art combined!”
“That’s interesting, and perhaps true, my dear, but
if you discourse on about King Charles’ head, we shall
get caught by that shower racing down the coast.
There is just time to beat it to home and Vesuvius!”
Vesuvius was, after Domenica, their greatest acquisition,
and the one that most soothingly spread about
an atmosphere of home comfort. Until he came life
had been a thing of shivers and sneezes, of days spent
in ceaseless trampings to keep their chilled blood in
circulation, and of evenings sitting swathed in fur coats
and steamer rugs, with feet raised high above the cold
drafts of the floor.
Fireplaces, or any means of artificial heating were
unknown to the villa. They had waited patiently for
the Southern sun to come and do his duty, but he didn’t;
and a day came when Jane took to bed as the only
hope of warmth, when even Domenica sneezed and
said it was “molto freddo,” and then Peripatetica sallied
forth determined to find some warmth nearer than
.pn +1
.bn 090.png
Ætna. “Vesuvius” was the result of her quest. Not
much was he to look at outwardly. Small was his
round black form; oh, pitifully small he seemed at first
view to those whose only hope he was. A mere rusty
tin lantern on three little feet, he looked—but when his
warm heart began to glow and to send delicious hot
rays percolating through the holes of his sides and
pointed lid, the charms of his fiery nature won respect
at once. He made his small presence felt incredibly,
from stone floor to high ceiling. Shawls and coats
could be shed, feet lowered and at once frozen spines
relaxed into long-forgotten comfort.
His breath was not pleasant to be sure, his charcoal
fumes troubled at first, but when a Sicilian oracle had
recommended the laying of sliced lemons on his head,
all fumes were absorbed, he breathed only refreshing
incense and became altogether a joy. Every day,
except on rainy ones, when his company was called
for earlier, he made his appearance at six of the evening—and
how eagerly the sight of Maria bearing him
in used to be waited for! Then with feet toasting and
backs relaxing in delightful warmth, Peripatetica and
Jane sat over his little glowing holes with quite the
thrill and comfort of a real hearthstone.
Ardent fire worshippers they found themselves becoming
in this supposedly Southern land. If Persephone
had ever been as cold as they, they doubted if
that enlèvement to Pluto’s warm, furnace-heated realm
could have been so distasteful after all!
.tb
Paddling out in the rain to hotels for meals was at
first a drawback to life in the Villa Schuler. To sit
with damp ankles through the endless procession of
.pn +1
.bn 091.png
table d’hôte meals, and afterwards have the odoriferous
bespatterings of the Scesa Morgana as dessert, was
not an enjoyable feature of local colour. Frau Schuler
was implored to feed her lodgers.
“But we are simple people; our plain cooking would
not satisfy the ladies,” she protested, distressed. But
the ladies felt that a crust and an egg in their own sitting-room
would be more satisfying than all the triumphs
of hotel chefs out in the wet. And to bread
and eggs they resigned themselves. Instead came a
five-course banquet, served by beaming Butler Maria
in a dazzling new grass-green bodice—soup and macaroni,
meat and vegetables, perfect in seasoning and
succulence, crisp salad from the garden, and with it
the demanded poached eggs which were to have constituted
the whole dinner, almond pudding with a wondrous
sauce; dates, oranges, sugary figs beaded on
slivers of bamboo, mellow red wine. It seemed a very
elastic two lire which could cover all that, as Frau
Schuler said it did! Truly the Fraulein Niece was an
artist. Peripatetica and Jane thereafter dined at home
in tea gowns and luxury—and the pudding sauces grew
more bland and wonderful every night. Also eggs continued
to give originality by the vagaries of their appearance.
As Peripatetica said, “they just ran along
anyhow, and jumped on at any course they took a
fancy to!” And to see where they were going to land—in
the soup, the vegetables, the salad, the stewed
fruit of dessert—or what still other and stranger companionships
they might form, lent a sort of prize-packet
excitement to each succeeding course. Dinner
at the Villa Schuler, with little Vesuvius glowing warmingly
through all his fiery eyes and steaming out spicy
.pn +1
.bn 092.png
incense of lemon and mandarin peel, the soft low lamplight,
the gleam of Maria’s smile and green bodice, the
blessed remoteness from all tourist gabble, was truly a
cosy function. They took to making elaborate toilets
in honour of it, adding their Taormina acquisitions of
old lace and jewels to Maria’s round-eyed amazement.
When Jane burst out in an Empire diadem, and Peripatetica
not to be outdone donned a ravishing lace cap,
their status as good republicans was forever lost in the
villa. Maria spread the tale of this splendour abroad,
firmly convinced that these lodgers were incognito
members of the most exalted nobility of distant “Nuova
Yorka.” The tongues which could not pronounce
their harsh foreign names insisted on labelling them
the “Big and Little Princess”—and no protests could
bring their rank down lower than “the most gentle
Countesses,” upon their washing-bills.
It amused them in fine weather to try the various
hotels for lunch. In mid-town was the Hotel Victoria,
the haunt of artists and gourmets, famous for its food
and for its garden, which climbed the hillside in blooming
terraces and loggias, all stairways, springing bridges,
and queer little passages leading to buildings and
courts on different levels. Peripatetica and Jane wandered
into it almost by accident. They noticed the
name over a dingy door as they were strolling aimlessly
one day, and Peripatetica remembered having heard
of a picturesque garden within. Penetrating through
empty hall and up various winding stairways they
came to a charming garden court. There appeared
the proprietor, and in Parisian French treated their
curiosity as a boon and a pleasure. A little man, the
Padrone, with nothing large about him but the checks
.pn +1
.bn 093.png
of his trousers and the soft black eyes which turned
upon the gay colour about him with gentle melancholy.
He did the honours of the place with all the courtesy
and dignity of Louis XIV showing Versailles. When
they admired the aviary of Sicilian and tropical birds,
the budding roses clambering everywhere, the strange
feathery-fringed irises like gaudy little cockatoos, the
delicate bits of Moorish carving and arches built into
the hotel walls, he accepted all their enthusiasm for
the charms of his property with no sign of pride, but
rather with the pensive melancholy of one whose soul
was above such things, as of one who knew the hollowness
of earthly delights. Courteously he exhibited
everything, taking them to still higher and more glowing
terraces where his laden orange trees were burnished
green and gold, and his violets sheets of deepest,
royalest purple underneath.
A pair of monkeys lived in cage up there, and while
the Signor deftly fed them for the amusement of his
visitors he warmed up into caustic philosophic comment
upon human and monkey nature, comment not
unspiced with wit. Peripatetica, always ready for philosophy,
immediately plunged into the depths of her
French vocabulary and responded in kind. The discussion
grew warm and fluent, and the little Padrone
became a new man. With kindling eye and a pathetic
eagerness he kept the ball rolling in polished Voltairian
periods, intoxicated apparently with the joy of mental
intercourse. He snatched and clung to it, inventing
new pretexts to detain them, new things to exhibit,
while the talk rolled on.
But Peripatetica, whose next passion to Philosophy
is Floriculture, broke off to exclaim at the violets as
.pn +1
.bn 094.png
they passed a bed of purple marvels. Emperors they
were among violets. The Padrone immediately proffered
some, setting two contadini to picking more.
Peripatetica contemplating gluttonously the wonderful
spread of the deep purple calyx, the long firm stems of
those in her hand, and at the profusion of others sweetening
the air, cried from her heart, “Oh, Monsieur,
what luxury to have such a garden! You should be
one of the happiest creatures in the world to be able
to grow such flowers as these!”
The Padrone, from his knees, picking more violets,
glanced up, and gloom fell over him again.
“Madame,” he inquired bitterly, “does happiness
ever consist in what one possesses of material things?
Contentment, perhaps—but happiness? Not the most
beautiful garden in the world can grow that,” and with
dark Byronic mystery, “Ah, one can live amid brightness
and yet be very miserable.”
They parted with much friendliness, the Padrone
hoping the ladies would do his hotel the honour of
visiting it again. Surely, yes, they said; they would
give themselves the pleasure of lunching there some
day.... Upon that it seemed as if his gloom grew
darker, but he implied courteously that that would do
him too much honour, but if they did venture as much
he would do his best to content them. His was but a
rough little place, but it had been wont to be the haunt
of artists and “they, you know, are always ‘un peu
gourmet!’”
“What do you suppose is the story of that man?”
they asked each other; and amused themselves inventing
romantic pretexts to explain his air of blighted
hopes and poetic pain.
.pn +1
.bn 095.png
Before long their curiosity impelled them to try the
Victoria’s cuisine. They were a half hour before the
time. No guests had yet gathered. They stood again
in front of the aviary, but no polite philosopher made
his appearance. A little yellow-haired maid in a frock
as brightly purple as the violets, carrying decanters
into the empty dining-room, was the only creature
about. The sitting room offered them shelter from
the wind, and for entertainment heaps of German
novels and innumerable sketches of Sicilian scenery
and types, which they hoped the Victoria’s artist patrons
had not given in settlement of their hotel bills.
A bell rang, and people streamed in until every seat in
the clean, bare dining-room had its occupant. Not the
artists Peripatetica and Jane were looking for, but
types fixed and amusing, such as they had never before
encountered in such numbers and contrasts. Rosy,
bland English curates and their meek little wives;
flashy fat Austrians, with powdered ladies of unappetizing
look; limp English spinsters of the primmest propriety;
seedy old men with dyed moustaches and loud
clothes, diffusing an aroma of shady gambling-rooms.
Scholarly old English professors; and Germans, Germans,
Germans of all varying degrees of fatness, shininess,
and loud-voicedness, but all united in double-action
feeding power of knife and fork.
An expectant hush held them all for a while before
empty plates. Then the little purple-gowned maid,
and a sister one in ultramarine blue, with the same
brilliant yellow hair knotted on top of her head, appeared
with omelettes. Omelettes of such melting perfection
as to explain the solemn expectancy of the
waiting faces.
.pn +1
.bn 096.png
Followed a meal in which every course—fish, vegetables,
meat, and salad, in a land where the tourist expects
to subsist alone on oranges and scenery—was of
a deliciousness to have made a Parisian epicure compliment
the chef of his pet restaurant.
The Germans were explained; lovers of feeding and
of thrift, of course, they had come in their hordes to
this modest Inn. And how they made the most of it!
Back they called the little maids for two and three
helpings of each delicious platter. Food was piled
upon plates in mountains, but before Peripatetica and
Jane could more than nibble at their own share, the
German plates would be polished clean, and the little
maids called for another supply. The caraffes of
strong new Sicilian claret were emptied too, until
Tedeschi faces grew very red, and tongues more than
ever loud.
Peripatetica and Jane dared not meet each other’s
eyes. Next to them sat an elderly maiden lady from
Hamburg “doing” Sicily without luggage, prepared
for any and every occasion in black silk bodice and
cloth skirt, which could be made short or long by one
of the mysterious arrangements of loops and strings
the female German mind adores. With maiden shyness
but German persistence she firmly insisted on
human intercourse with the French commercial traveller
across the table. He clung manfully to the traditional
gallantry of his race, though the Hamburgian’s
accent in his mother tongue threw him into wildest confusion
as to the lady’s meaning. When he confided
his wife’s confinement to bed with a cold, and his ineffectual
struggles to get the proper drugs for her in
Taormina, the German lady announced the theory
.pn +1
.bn 097.png
that violent exercise followed by a bath was better cure
for a cold than any drugs, “the bath the main point,”
she said. “The exercise and the transpiration without
that being of no use.”
“A bath! with a cold! Not a complete wash all
over?” protested the startled Frenchman.
“Yes, indeed, one must wash one’s self entirely—though
it might be done a bit at a time—but completely,
all over, with water and soap,” insisted the German,
which daring hygienic theory so convinced the Frenchman
that its propounder’s reason must be unhinged
that stammering and trembling he gulped down his
wine and fled from the table without waiting for the
sweets.
All this time Peripatetica and Jane had caught no
glimpse of their friend, the Padrone. They wondered,
but decided that his poetic nature soared above the
materialities of hotel keeping.
The meal had reached the sweet course—a pudding
of delectableness no words can describe. It inspired
even the gorged Germans with emotion. Thoroughly
stuffed as they already were they still demanded more
of its ambrosia and the purple-frocked one flew back
to the kitchen, leaving the door open.... Alas! their
philosopher of the garden, in cook’s apron, was pouring
sauce on more pudding for the waiting maid!
Ah, poor Philosopher! This the secret of his blighted
being. The poet driven to cooking-pots, the artistic
temperament expending itself in omelettes and puddings
for hungry tourists. How wonder at the irony
with which he had watched the monkeys feed!
.tb
Maria and Vesuvius were not the only possessors of
.pn +1
.bn 098.png
ardent temperaments in the Villa. Another existed in
a round soft ball of tan and white fuzz.
The Puppy!
He of the innocent grey eyes, black nose with pink
tongue-trimming, and the most open and trusting heart
in the world. On friends and strangers alike his
smiles and warm licks fell. He bounded into every
room all a-quiver of joy to be with such delightful
people in such an altogether charming world. And
never could it enter his generous thoughts that others
might not equally yearn for his society; that Jane
might object to having a liberal donation of fleas and
mud left on the tail of her gown; that at 6 A.M. Peripatetica
might not be enchanted to have a friendly
call and a boisterous worry of her slippers all over the
stone floor; or Fraulein might prefer the front of the
stove entirely to herself during sacredest rites of cooking.
He could not be brought to understand. He
was cheerfully confident that every one loved him as
much as he loved them, and that nothing could possibly
be accomplished in that family without his valuable
assistance. Many times a day loud wails rose to
heaven, announcing that he had come to grief in the
course of his labours; had encountered some one’s
foot or hand, or had some door shut in his face; but
in the midst of grief he would see in the distance something
being accomplished without him—charcoal being
carried in, the hall swept, or the garden watered—and
he would rise from his tears and offer his enthusiastic
assistance once more, all undaunted, and continue to
give encouraging chews to the worker’s ankles, and
stimulating barks of advice entirely undeterred by
being called “an injurienza puppy!”
.pn +1
.bn 099.png
Peripatetica claimed that his grey eyes showed that
he was Norman descent, as Jane insisted they did in
all the grey-eyed children of Taormina. But Fraulein,
appealed to on that question, said he was of the
colley race, and she revealed the dark and dreadful
destiny laid upon him—that he was to grow up
into a fierce and suspicious watch-dog; to live
chained on the upper terrace, a menace to all intruders,
a terror to frighten thieves from the garden
plums!
And alas for natural bent of temperament when it
must yield to contrary training. The grey-eyed one’s
fate soon overtook him. Wild and indignant wails
and shrieks woke Jane one sunny morning, and continued
steadily in mounting crescendo all the while she
clothed herself in haste to go to the rescue. Following
the wails to the top of the garden she found the
Puppy, a red ribbon around his soft neck, and from
that a string attaching him to a pole. Nearby stood
the Fraulein admonishing him that it was time his
duties in life should begin, and he must commence
to learn the routine of his profession without so much
repining. In spite of Jane’s protests she insisted on
leaving him there; and in vain all that quarter of
Taormina rang with the wails of protesting indignation
that welled from the confined one’s heart in the
bewilderment of being left in loneliness, separated from
all his friends and their doings. Every day after that
he had to undergo his hour or two of schooling in the
stern training of his grim profession. Soft-hearted
Jane released him whenever she could, but Fraulein
inexorably put him back, and even his playfellow
Maria sternly held him to his duties. Between times
.pn +1
.bn 100.png
he mixed with the family again on the old footing, but
it was pathetic to see how soon nature was affected by
the mould into which it was pressed, how soon he acquired
the mannerisms and habits of his profession—curbing
his exuberance of sociability, imposing on himself
a post on the door mat, when strangers appeared,
confining all welcome to his tail end, which would still
wag friendlily though head did its duty in theatrical
staccato growls.
.tb
In Taormina everything happens in the street.
Houses are merely dark damp holes in which to take
shelter at night, but life is lived outside them. Food
is prepared in the street, clothes are mended there,
hair is combed and arranged, neighbours gossiped with,
lace and drawn-work made. The cobbler soles his
shoes in the street, the tinsmith does his hammering
and soldering there. It is the poultry run of hens and
turkeys, the pasture grounds for goats and kids, the
dance hall for light-footed children to tarantelle in, the
old men’s club, the general living-room of all Taormina.
Peripatetica and Jane found endless amusement
there, though they seldom tarried in town. Like
Demeter they wandered all day in meadow and mountain
seeking Persephone, and found her not. Preparation
for her beloved coming Mother Demeter seemed
to be making everywhere; grass springing green when
once the cold rain ceased, and carpets of opening blossoms
spreading in orchards and fields for the little
white feet to press. Every night they said, “She will
come to-morrow,”—but still Demeter’s loneliness dissolved
into cold tears hiding the face of the sun, and
.pn +1
.bn 101.png
the chill winds told of nothing but Ætna’s snow, and
the Lost One did not return.
But though they searched for her in vain in the setting
of sunshine and blossom their fancy had pictured,
Peripatetica and Jane found much else on their rambles—idyls
of Theocritus still being lived, quaint little
adventures, bits of local colour, new friends and old
acquaintances among contadini, animals and flowers,
and always and all about, the Bones of the Past.
Everywhere obscured under the work-a-day uses of the
Present, or rising out of them in beauty; half hidden
among flowers in lonely fields or a part of squalid modern
huts, they stumbled upon those remains of antiquity,
debased and crumbled and inexplicable often, but
beautiful with a lost strange charm, sad and haunting.
Taormina prides herself more on scenery than antiquities,
but they found many of the latter in their
scrambles on rough little mountain trails, learning all
sorts of charms and secrets undreamed of by luxurious
tourists rolling dustily in landaus along the one
high road. Theirs was an unhurried leisure to take
each day as it came. Without plans or guides they
merely wandered wherever interest beckoned, until
gradually they learned all the town and its setting of
mountain and shore by heart.
They sallied forth untrammelled of fixed destination,
ready to take up with the first adventure that offered—and
one always did offer to adventurers of such receptive
natures. They made plans only to break them;
for inevitably they were distracted by something of interest
more vital than the thing they had set out to see.
They might start, staff in hand, on a pilgrimage to
the Madonna of Rocca Bella, whose brown shrine
.pn +1
.bn 102.png
nestled dizzily on one of the strange peaks shooting
their distorted summits threateningly above their own
Villa, those peaks so vividly described by another
Idle Woman in Sicily: “Behind, wildly flinging themselves
upwards, rise three tall peaks, as of mountains
altogether gone mad and raving.... The nearest
peak of a yellow-grey, splintered and cleft like a lump
of spar, and so upright that it becomes a question how
it supports itself, is divided into two heads—one thrusting
itself forward headlong over the town and crowned
with the battlements of a ruined Saracenic-Norman
castle; the other in the rear carrying the outline of a
little church, and the vague vestige of a house or two;
Saracenic-Norman castle and church (Madonna della
Rocca) both so precisely the tint of the rock that it requires
time and patience to disentangle each, and not
to put the whole down as a further evidence of mountain
insanity.”...
When Jane sat herself, muffled in furs and rugs, to
read or sew in one of the quaint tile-encrusted arbours
of the garden, those jagged peaks fell out of the sky
overhead so menacingly, coming ever nearer and
nearer to her shrinking head, that for all the sweetness
of the flowers and birds she never could stay there long,
but always, panic-struck, fled to the bare sea-terrace,
and the prospect of calm and distant Ætna.
But to go back to Our Lady of Rocca Bella, which
Peripatetica and Jane never managed to see, there
were so many distractions on that path! Did they
start with the firmest of pilgrim intentions, a new garden
opened unexplored paths of sweetness, or a brown
old sea-dog, Phrygian-capped, smiled a “buon giorno”
on his bare-footed way up from the shore, showed
.pn +1
.bn 103.png
them the strange sea creatures gleaming under the
seaweed in his basket, and enticed them down to the
shore. There on the golden beach of Theocles’ landing
place, they embarked in a heavy boat pulled by
their friend, and another old gold-earringed mariner,
to the “grotte molto interessante” in the Isola Bella.
They poked their heads between waves into coral caves
where the light filtering through the bright water was
dyed almost as intense an azure as in the famous Capri
Blue Grotto, and the whole coast line of mountains
came to them in a new revelation of beauty from the
level of wide-stretching sea. And beside the queer
bits of coral presented by the sea-dogs as souvenirs,
they carried away salt-water whetted appetites of wonderful
keenness, and pictures, bestowed safely behind
their eyes, of deliciously moulded mountain sides rising
straight from clear green seas, of wave-carved fantasies
in sun-bathed coral rocks, of red nets being
stretched on yellow sands by bare-legged, graceful
fisher folk; memories they would not have exchanged
for any wide map-like vista the Madonna could have
given them from her high-perched eyrie.
It was the same story with the Fontana Vecchia. If
they had persisted in reaching its clear spring they
might have heard the nightingales singing in the
wooded dell, but they would never have known Carmela
and her sunny mountain meadow.
It was a day of shifting clouds and cold winds. Peripatetica
was depressed. Her energies wilted in the
cold, and she had only gone forth to walk because the
salon was too icily vaultlike for habitation. Jane tried
to cheer her with prospect of hot tea at the Fontana,
but her spirit refused to respond to any material comforting.
.pn +1
.bn 104.png
She complained of what had been troubling
her for some time, a sense of feeling a mere ghost herself
in these Past-pervaded spots; a cold and shivering
ghost aimlessly blown about in the wind, pressed
upon by all the thronging crowds of other ghosts haunting
these places where through the centuries each succeeding
throng of beings had struggled and laboured,
laughed and suffered. Living among ghosts in these
days of idleness, her own existence cut off from the
real living and doing of the world, from the duties and
responsibilities of her own place in life, from the warm
clutching hands of the people dependent on her, she
had come to seem to herself entirely vague and ineffectual.
She felt a mere errant, disembodied spirit,
she said, and it was a bleak and dreary feeling.
Jane said she thought a disembodied spirit, able to
soar over the sharp cobbles of that road, an exceedingly
enviable thing to be at that moment; but she
quite understood, and was herself affected by the same
sense of chill aloofness from actual, vital human living.
And then they saw Carmela—a little old Sibyl twirling
her distaff at an open gate that looked out on the
quiet road. Sitting in the sun with cotton kerchief,
bodice, and apron all faded into soft harmonies of
colour, she made such a picture through the arch of the
gate’s break in the dull stone wall, with the green of
the garden behind her, that they stopped a moment to
look.
“Buon giorno”—the picture smiled, her little round
face breaking into friendly wrinkles. She rose to her
bare feet, and with graceful gesture invited them in—wouldn’t
they like to see the farm? she asked. There
was a molto bella vista beyond. Always welcoming the
.pn +1
.bn 105.png
unexpected they at once accepted, and found themselves
passing through olive and orange groves. The
property was not hers, their hostess explained; she was
merely a servant; it all belonged to a molto vecchia
lady, Donna Teresa by name. Though owning no
part of it, Carmela pointed out the old vines, the thriving
newly planted young vineyard, the grafts on the
almond trees, with proud proprietorship.
Donna Teresa made her appearance; a tiny bent
crone, bare-footed like her maid and dressed in cottons
as faded if not as patched, but showing traces of a refined
type of beauty in the delicate features of her old
face and the soft fine white hair curling still like grape
tendrils about her well-shaped head. She accepted
her maid’s explanation of the strangers’ presence, and
proceeded to outdo her in hospitality. They must do
more than see the vista—must pick some flowers too.
With cordial toothless chatter, of which the friendly
meaning was the only thing they could entirely understand,
she led through the farmyard court where blue
and white doves cooed on the carved stone well-head,
and a solemn white goat, his shaggy neck hung about
with charms and amulets, attached himself to the party
and followed down the stone stairs to a lower terrace.
There was a view entrancing indeed, also a strange
little old round building resembling a Roman tomb.
Carmela could tell no more than that it was cosa di
molto antichita and very useful to store roots in. Under
a sheltering wall was a purple bank of violets to which
the old Donna led them with much pride, inviting them
to pick for themselves. When they did so too modestly
to suit her, she fell on her knees and gathered
great handfuls, thrusting on them besides all the oranges
.pn +1
.bn 106.png
and mandarins they could carry, until her lavishments
became an embarrassment. For all her bare feet and
poor rags there was that in the grace of her hospitality
they felt they could not offer money to. All they could
do was to press francs into the maid’s hand, offer the
Donna, as curiosities from distant America, the maple
sugar drops Jane had filled her pocket with before
starting, and try to make smiles fill the gaps in thanks
of their halting Italian.
Carmela showed redoubled friendliness from the
moment America was mentioned. She still clung to
them after her mistress bade them goodby at the gate,
and offered to show them another vista still more beautiful.
They would rather have continued their interrupted
way, but the little round face falling sadly
changed their protestations into thanks, and she trotted
happily beside them, smiling at their compliments on
the even thread she spun as she walked, confiding how
much it brought her a hank, what she could spin in a
day, and that Donna Teresa was a good mistress, but
a little weakened in her head by age.
She pattered along, her bare feet skimming carelessly
over the sharp-cobbled road, spindle steadily
whirling, past the Campo Santo, where at the top of a
sudden ravine the road forked and strings of panniered
donkeys and straight, graceful girls with piles of
linen on their heads were going down to a hidden
stream tinkling below. They longed to follow, but
Carmela took them on around a curve, through a door
in a high wall, past a deserted barn, along a grassy
path under almond trees, and they found themselves
in a spot that made them catch breath with delight.
The crown of a mountain spur dropped in terraced
.pn +1
.bn 107.png
orchards and gardens to the sea below. Taormina
was hidden behind intervening heights. Below, an
opal sea divided Sicily from wraiths of the Calabrian
mountains drifting along the horizon, and curves of
yellow sand and white, surf-frothed rocks outlined the
far indentations of the Island’s mountainous coast
spreading blue and rosy-purple on their left. Fringed
with blossoming plum and yellow gorse, the spur on
which they stood dropped sheer to the river ravine,
and above still towered Mola and Monte Venere.
It was a world of sun and colour and sweet silence.
The cold, moaning wind was shut off by the heights
behind them, and turned full to the glowing South, a
real warmth of sun bathed the sheltered spot and had
spread a carpet of flowers of more brilliant and harmonious
arabesques than any of Oriental weaving.
Of purple and puce and gold, coral and white and
orange, of blues faint and deep, of rose and sharp
crimson, it was woven exquisitely through the warp of
young spring green. Even without the view, nothing
so sweet and really springlike as that bit of mountain
meadow had Peripatetica and Jane yet seen. They
cried out in joy and sat them down among all the unknown
bewitching flowers.
Carmela’s face lit up at their appreciation. She too
sat down, let her spindle fall, and gazed about as if her
eyes loved what they rested upon; then looking from
one strange face to the other:
“You are really from America?” she asked, and
let her pathetic little story pour out. Nine children
she had borne, and all but one dead. She told how
that one, a splendid youth, had gone to America three
years ago to make a fortune for himself and her, and
.pn +1
.bn 108.png
at first had written to her that he was doing well; but
for two years she had spent her hard earnings to have
letters written to him, and had prayed with tears at
the Madonna’s shrine, but for two long years now—no
answer.
Her round little old, yet childlike, face fell into
tragic lines. With work-scarred hands clasping her
knees across her patched apron she sat, a creature of
simple and dignified pathos, opening her heart in brief
and poignant words to the response in Peripatetica’s
eyes. Among the blossoms and the bees the three
women of such different lives and experiences, with
the barrier of a strange tongue between them, came
into close touch for a moment in the elementary humanity
of that pain known to all women—Goddess
Demeter and ragged peasant alike—when their dearest
has gone forth from the longing shelter of their arms
and theirs is the part of passive loneliness and waiting.
“Yes, life was brutta,” said Carmela simply, “but
one had always one’s work.”
Picking up the spindle, winding again her even
thread, smilingly she bade these strange friends “a
rivedercela,” and departed, a certain tragic dignity
clinging to the square little figure going sturdily, yet
with head drooping, back to her life of hard and lonely
labour. Whether that moment of sympathetic intercourse
had meant anything to her or not, to the two
idle ones that trusting touch of the life about them
meant much. It pulled them out of the world of
ghosts, from the empty sense of being outside of any
connection with other lives, and by that contact of
living, pitiful drama they came back into realities.
.tb
.pn +1
.bn 109.png
For all the tiny extent of Taormina’s boundaries,
the discoveries of its antiquities seemed never ending;
the cella of a Greek temple hidden in San Pancrazio’s
church; the tiny Roman theatre, a section of its pit
and auditorium with seats still in perfect rows sticking
out from another old church whose greediness had
only succeeded in half swallowing it; the enormous
Roman baths whose old pools and conduits a thriving
lemon orchard is now enjoying; the Roman pavement
next to the Hotel Victoria; that bit of Greek inscription
hospitably let into church walls, exciting imagination
with its record that the “people of Tauromenium
accord these honours to Olympis, son of Olympis” for
having gained the prize in horse racing at the Pythian
games.
The wall of the loveliest garden in Taormina is
honeycombed with ancient tombs. The slender cypresses,
like exclamation points emphasizing its rhythms
of colour, have their roots among the very bones of antiquity.
In this garden Protestant worship has succeeded
Catholic in the old Chapel of the delicious little
Twelfth Century Convent whose cloisters are now an
English lady’s villa—and who knows in how many
earlier shrines man’s groping faith has prayed in this
very spot?
All over Taormina fragments of old marbles and
carvings and columns appear in the most unlikely
places; a marble mask from the theatre over the door
of a modest little “Sarta” in a back alleyway, bits of
porphyry columns supporting the steps of a peasant’s
hovel. The traces of Norman and Saracen embellishment
are, of course, even more numerous, almost
every house on the street breaking out into some odd
.pn +1
.bn 110.png
and delicate bit. The façade of the palace in which
dwelt the Frau Schuler’s antiquity shop is freaked
with charming old lava inlays and queer forked “merluzzi”
battlements. Forcing one’s way through the
chickens into its courtyard, one finds a vivid Fourteenth
Century relief of the story of Eve’s creation, temptation,
and punishment climbing up the stone stairway,
and an inscription “Est mihi i locu refugii,” which
tradition says was placed by John of Aragon taking
refuge here once in the days when it was a Palace of
the Aragonese Kings. Beyond that inscription with
its legend, and some few Spanish-looking iron balconies,
the Spaniard has left no trace of his dominion
in Taormina. The Norman printed himself on churches
and convents, but it is the Greeks and Romans, and
above all the Saracens, who have stamped themselves
indelibly upon Taormina. Moorish workmen must
have been employed by their conquerors for centuries
to build them palaces and convents, baths and even
churches. And the Arab blood still shows strongly in
hawk-like, keen-eyed faces passing through Taormina’s
streets as haughtily as in the days when their progenitors
ruled there with hand of iron upon the dogs of
Christians.
In those Moslem days much liberty in the practice
of religion was allowed to such of the Christians as did
not show the cross in public, read the gospel loud
enough to penetrate to Moslem ears, or ring their
church bells “furiously.” How often in Sicily one
wishes that last regulation were still in force! They
might go on worshipping freely in all existing churches
and convents, though to build new ones was not allowed.
In matters of religion the Arab was strangely
.pn +1
.bn 111.png
liberal, but in civil matters he reduced the conquered
people to a sort of serfdom. Christians were not allowed
to carry arms, to ride on horseback, or even
donkeyback, to build houses as high as the Mussulman’s,
to drink wine in public, to accompany their
dead to burial with any pomp or mourning. Christian
women might not enter the public baths when
Moslem women were there, nor remain if they came
in. Christians must give way to Moslems on the street;
indoors they must rise whenever a man of the conquering
race came in or went out. “And that they
might never forget their inferiority, they had to have a
mark on the doors of their houses and one on their
clothes.” They were bid wear turbans of different
fashion and colour from Moslems, and particular
girdles of leather.
Yet many good gifts these Eastern conquerors
brought—introduction of silkworms and the mulberry,
of sugar-cane and new kinds of olives and vines;
new ways of preserving and salting fish; new processes
of agriculture and commerce; their wonderful methods
of irrigation; the clear Arabic numeration; advance
in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, all sciences; and
even “the slaves in Sicily under the Moslem rule were
better off than the Italian populations of the mainland
under the Lombards and Franks.”
.tb
Jane and Peripatetica were taking tea in the San
Domenico gardens—a flowery terrace dizzily flung out
to sea, and almost as high as their own. There is
nothing prettier in Taormina than that garden; tile-paved,
mossy stone pergolas of dense shade still breathing
.pn +1
.bn 112.png
of quiet monkish meditations; open, yet sheltered,
nooks to bask in the sun, and the loveliness of the outlook
on Ætna and his sweeping foothills, and the milky-streaked
green sea; mats of fragrant sweetness, purple
and ivory, of violets and freesias; royal splash of bougainvilla
against the buff stucco of old convent walls;
coast steamers, white yachts, and tiny black fishing
boats far, far below, the only hint of the world’s bustle;
here in the garden was only slumberous quiet and
fragrant peace.
.nf b
“On his terrace high in air
Nothing doth the good monk care
For such worldly themes as these.
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shimmering chestnut trees.
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon.”
.nf-
Little has been changed since the good monk really
dozed there. The charm of his peaceful days still
lingers in cloister and garden, and the conventual atmosphere
still asserts itself in spite of the frivolous
swarm of tourists, who leave innovation trunks in the
stone-flagged corridors. But that same tourist sits in
the monk’s painted wooden stalls, has a beflowered
little shrine and altar perhaps opposite his own bedroom
door; walks under saintly frescoes, hangs his hat
on the Father’s carved towel-frame outside the Refectory
door, and eats his dinner under pictures of
martyrdoms. The chapel in the midst of the modern
caravanserai is still the parish church, the vaulted stone
.pn +1
.bn 113.png
corridors echo to the solemn boom of its organ many
times a day—a wrong turn on the way to the dining-room
and the tourist finds himself not in gas-lit, soup-redolent,
salle-à-manger, but among the dim, carved
stalls, taper-lit altars, and incense-sweet air of the
chapel.
It was the one place which ever caused Peripatetica
and Jane to think ungratefully of their villa. Whenever
they wandered through either of the vine-draped
old cloisters; looked up the delightfully twisted stone
stairways, and along mysterious Gothic passages, they
wished that they too might have had a “belonging”
door in one of the arches of that quiet incense-perfumed
corridor, such sense of unhurried calm reigned there;
the frescoed saints over each cell door looked so peacefully
benignant.
“Jane,” queried Peripatetica, “do you notice that
these Saints are all women?—a gentle lady saint over
every Brother’s door! even where no living woman was
allowed to penetrate they still clung to some memory
of the Eternal Feminine!”
Tea was seeming unusually good that afternoon after
hours passed amid the excitements and wonderful finds
and bargains of the beguiling antiquity shops of Taormina’s
main street. Now, the pot drained to the last
drop, the last crumb of bread and honey eaten, they
sat tranquilly watching the shadows lengthen in the
garden.
“This is the only really peaceful spot in Taormina,”
said Jane. “What a relief to escape from all that old
overwhelming Past for once and just be soothingly
lulled in this placid monkish calm. I know nothing
ever happened here more exciting than the scandal of
.pn +1
.bn 114.png
some fat Brother’s unduly prolonging his siesta in a
sheltered nook, and so missing Vespers.”
A boy appeared at her elbow; one of the little shy
fauns of Von Gloëden’s photographs. He pulled a
cactus leaf out of one pocket, a penknife out of another,
and trimming off the cactus prickles tossed the leaf
out into space in such deft way that in graceful curves
and birdlike swoops it whirled slowly down to the far
bottom of the cliff. Jane leaned over the gratefully
substantial stone parapet and watched, fascinated, as
he proceeded to send yet another and another after it
in more elaborate curves each time. The boy’s shyness
melted under her admiration of his trick and the
coppers it was expressed in; he showed white teeth in
much merriment when she too attempted to toss the
green discs only to have them drop persistently without
any whirling. He began to chatter.
“Yes, it was very high that cliff, and of much interest
to pitch things over and watch them fall. In the
old days they had pitched men over it—yes indeed,
prigionieri; many hundreds of them.”
“Oh Peripatetica! black dramas even here! what
can he mean?”
“The insurgent slaves of the Servile War, perhaps.
Their whole garrison was hurled alive over some cliff
here—native tradition may have it this one.”
Jane remembered. Eight hundred men thus treated
by Publius Rupilius, Roman Consul in 132 B.C.
The dark flood of old cruelty surged back to her.
Sicily was a country of great landowners holding
estates of eighty miles round and more; working them
by slave labour; owning slaves in thousands. Twenty
thousand slaves was not an exaggerated number for a
.pn +1
.bn 115.png
great noble to own, two hundred a fair allowance for
an ordinary citizen. Two-thirds of Sicily’s population
were then slaves.
Of course the human live-stock possessed in such
indistinguishable hordes, like cattle, had to be branded
with the owner’s mark. They did their work in irons,
to be safely under their overseer’s power; were lodged
in holes under ground; their daily rations but one
pound of barley or wheat, and a little salt and oil.
Against atrocious cruelties they revolt at last. All over
Sicily they rise, two hundred thousand men soon finding
arms and power to mete to masters the same cruelties
that had been shown them. For six years all the
might of Rome cannot crush them, but eventually her
iron claw closes in upon them—only impregnable Enna
and Taormina still remain in the hands of the slave
army. It is a struggle to test all Rome’s mettle. These
slaves too are of the eagle’s blood. Men free-born
and bred, most of them; Greeks and Franks from the
mainland, prisoners of war or of debt. Fiercely, indomitably,
they cling to their rocky eyries. But in
Taormina starvation fights direfully against them.
There was not one grain, one blade of grass even, left.
Still the garrison clings and strikes back at the Romans.
They devour their own children, next the women, then
at last eat one another—but still hold out.
Commanus, the slave commander, weakens and tries
to escape from the horrors. He creeps alone from the
city, but is captured and brought before the Consul.
He knows what methods will be tried to make him give
information of the town’s condition—can his weakness
hold out against torture? With apparent acquiescence
he appears willing to answer all Roman questions, but
.pn +1
.bn 116.png
bends his head and draws his cloak over it as if shielding
his eyes to better collect his thoughts.... Under
the cloak he grips his throat between his fingers and
with the last remnant of once phenomenal physical
strength crushes his own windpipe, and falls safely
silent at the Consul’s feet.
But the horrors of Taormina in that siege are too
much for another slave—a Syrian. He betrays the
town to the Romans ... and Publius disposes of all
the remaining garrison over the edge of the cliff.
.tb
Shopping is an important part of a stay in Taormina.
Surely no other street of its length anywhere
in the world has so many beguilements to part the
tourist from his coin. The dark little shops spilling
their goods out upon the pavement; things so bizarre,
so good, so cheap, the lire of the forestieri flow away
in torrents. Beautiful inlaid furniture; lovely old
jewelry of flawed rubies and emeralds set amid the
famous antique Sicilian pearl-work and enamelling.
Old Spanish paste in delightful designs; red Catanian
amber, little Roman intaglios, delicate old cameos,
enamelled orders; necklaces, rings, pendants; earrings
in odd and charming settings; delightful old
trinkets in richer assortment of variety and quality here
than any other place in Italy. Old Sicilian thread lace,
coarse but effective, in shawls and scarfs of many
charming old designs; old altar lace too in great abundance;
better laces, as one may have luck to find them,
or to be on the spot when gleanings from churches and
convents in the interior are brought in—bundles containing
varied treasures, from brocades and embroideries
.pn +1
.bn 117.png
and splendid lace of priestly vestments, to drawn-work
altar cloths and the lace cottas little choirboys’
restless arms have worn sad holes in. Churchly silver
too, reliquaries and ornaments and old medals, abound
in Taormina for scarcely more than the value of the
silver’s weight. Old coins dug up in its gardens, the
old porcelains bought from its impoverished nobles;
old drawn-work, on heavy hand-woven linen, still
firmly carrying its processions of marvellous beasts and
birds and personages in wide lace-like bands. Beasts
conceived by the same imagination that evolved the
gargoyles of Gothic cathedrals, such wonderful mixtures
of animal and bird and human as Adam never
named in Garden of Eden. These horned birds and
winged animals processioning around churchly altar
cloths are old, old pagan Siculian luck charms—protectors
against the evil eye. Peripatetica and Jane instantly
proceeded to combat their Hoodoo with valiant
processions of fat little many-horned stags romping
around throat and wrist—and of all the many exorcisms
they had tried this truly seemed the most effective!
Taormina’s naïve native pottery, too, drapes the outside
walls of shops and doorways in bright garlands of
strange shapes of fishes and fruits and beasts, is stacked
in shining heaps of colour, jugs and pots and platters
of every possible form and design. Some of it reminiscent
of Sevillian pottery in elaborate Renaissance decoration,
but for the most part rough little shapes of clay,
covered with hard bright glaze and no two ever exactly
alike in either shape or tint. The favourite model being a
gay Sicilian Lady Godiva, riding either a stag or a cock,
attired proudly in a crown and a floating blue ribbon!
Day after day, all through March, the sun moped behind
.pn +1
.bn 118.png
clouds, the wind lashed the sea against the rocks,
and milky foam bands streaked the turbid green. Rain
beat on the Villa windows, and even through them, to
the great amusement of Maria, who appeared to consider
mopping up the streaming floors a merry contest
with the elements.
But when the rare sun burst out and revealed a
fresh-washed sky, a land shimmering through thinnest
gauze of mist, or the moon could escape from the clouds
and rise behind the theatre ruins to hang, hugely
bright over the gleaming sea floor so far, far below, it
seemed a fair world all prepared to greet its radiant
returning goddess.
On such days no shop could beguile. Even the old
dames weaving towels on hand looms by their open
doors, always so ready for friendly chat with these
forestieri, would be passed with only a smile, for the
breath of the fields called loudly to hillside and orchard,
“where all fair herbs bloom, red goat-wort and endive,
and fragrant bees-wort”; the only sound breaking the
sunny calm being the notes of a shepherd boy on a
neighbouring hill, piping as if his reed flute held the very
spirit of youth, the bubbling notes sparkling like a little
fountain of joy flinging its spray on the spring breeze.
Or on a day like this to wander far afield; or else in the
high hillside orchards where the birds sang “Sicily!
Sicily! Sicily!” or called mockingly “Who are you?
Who are you?”
On such a day they adventured to Mola and the
heights of Monte Venere’s peak in the company of
those brave asinelli Giovanino and Francesco, and in
the charge of Domenico, Sheik of guides, whose particular
exploitation they had long ago become.
.pn +1
.bn 119.png
Loafing in the fountain square, watching the women
filling jars at the fountain, and speculating as usual
over the history of its presiding deity (who as St. Taypotem
is the local genius and emblem of the town, a
saint utterly unknown to churchly calendar)—a lady
centaur, and a two-legged one at that, uprearing her
plump person on two neat little hoofed heels raised
high above the four archaic beasts spouting water—Peripatetica
and Jane fell a prey to a genial Arab, a
beguiling smile wrinkling his dark hawk-like face.
Wouldn’t they like a donkey ride? The best donkeys
in all Sicily were his—Domenico’s—guide No. 5, beloved
of all tourists, as they could see by reading his
book. A dingy little worn note-book was fluttered
under their noses, an eager brown finger pointed to this
and that page of English writing, all singing the praises
of Domenico and his beasts on many an expedition.
More influenced by the smile than the testimonials
they promised that he should conduct them to Mola.
From that instant Domenico’s wing was spread over
them in brooding solicitude. Yes, the weather was too
threatening to ride out anywhere that afternoon, but
did they know all the sights of the town? he inquired.
Had they seen the Bagni Saraceni? No, they admitted.
Oh, that was molto interessante and close at
hand; he would show them! Hypnotized by the smile
they followed meekly, though the Bagni turned out to
be the Norman Moorish ruins of the San Stefano Palace
with which they were already familiar. But not
as it was shown by Domenico. The surly old contadina
in charge, bullied into offering the choicest of the
oranges and flowers growing among the ruins, the
smile gilding all the dark corners of antiquity and
.pn +1
.bn 120.png
lighting up the vaulted cellar in which by graphic pantomime
of jumps into its biggest holes they were shown
exactly how the Saracens had once bathed, much as
more modern folk did, it seemed.
After that days came and went of such greyness and
cold wind or rain, that Domenico and his donkeys
attended in vain at the pink gateway to take Peripatetica
and Jane excursioning. But not for that did they
lose the sunniness of the smile. Like a benevolent
spider, Domenico was to be always lying in wait to
pounce around any corner with friendly greeting, to
give them the news of the town in his patois of mixed
Italian, English, and pantomime; to suggest carrying
home their bundles for them if they were on a shopping
tour, to point out an antiquity or garden to inspect
if they seemed planless, or a lift home on the
painted cart whose driver he had been enlivening with
merry quips, when met on the high road outside town.
And once, oh blessed time, when he encountered Jane
at the Catania gate, her tongue hanging out with thirst
and fatigue after a long mountain climb, he haled her
straightway into a friend’s garden to refresh herself
with juicy oranges from the trees.
Finally the long waited-for day came, when not a
cloud threatened and the mountains beckoned through
crystalline, sunny air. So Francesco and Giovanino
laden with Peripatetica and Jane, Domenico and a
brown young hawkling of the Domenican brood laden
with lunch, they climbed upwards. Ætna stood out
in glistening, freshly renewed snow mantle, icy sharp
against the most perfect of blue skies. Taormina
dropped far below, a tiny huddled human nest of brown
among the green, green hilltops. Mola, which for so
.pn +1
.bn 121.png
long had loomed far over their heads on its beetling
crags, now too sank below. The pink mountain villa
where Hichens had written “The Call of the Blood,”
the vineyards and the orchards, all dropped away.
Only Ætna, high and white, soared against the sky,
remote and inaccessible. The trail grew steeper and
steeper, but Francesco and Giovanino, noble pair,
with unbroken wind and gloomy energy picked their
way unfalteringly among the rolling stones, and both
Domenicos, like two-legged flies, seemed to take to
the perpendicular as easily as the horizontal.
Francesco, tall and grey and of a loquacious turn of
mind, made all the mountains echo to his voice whenever
a fellow asinello was encountered on the trail.
Giovanino, small and brown, attended strictly to the
business of finding secure places for his tiny hoofs
among the stones, but developed two idiosyncrasies
rather dismaying to his rider. Whenever the path led
along a precipice’s edge, on the very outside edge of it
would his four obstinate little feet go, with Jane’s feet
dangling horribly over empty space; whenever it
skirted a stone wall his furry sides insisted upon rubbing
it clingingly, sternly regardless of his rider’s toes.
The path ceased being a path. It became a stairway
climbing up the mountains’ bare marble side in rough
stone steps a foot or more in height.
“But we can’t ride up that!” cries the appalled Peripatetica
in the lead. In vain Domenico assures her
that she can, that people do it every day. She looks
at its dizzy turns and insists on taking to her own feet.
Jane, having acquired a reverential confidence in Giovanino’s
powers after their mutual tussles, puts more
faith in his head and knees than in her own, and goes
.pn +1
.bn 122.png
on, clutchingly. Young Domenico, hanging like a
balance weight to Giovanino’s tail, keeps up a chorus of
“Ah-ees” and assurances that the Signorina need have
no fear, he is there to guide her! In reality he knows
that his small person could no more interfere with the
orbit of Giovanino’s movements than with those
of the planets, but also that there is no more need
that he should—Giovanino’s grey head holds a perfect
chart of the way, with the safest hoof-placings
plainly marked out on it, and he follows it imperturbably.
Travellers to Monte Venere do not know much of
what they are passing the last forty minutes. They are
too busy wondering whether each minute will not be
their last—on those daunting stairs of living rock and
rolling stones. Breathless, dizzy, speechless, they at
last realize a firm level terrace is under foot, and reel
against the comforting solid walls of the little tratoria.
The donkeys are quite unruffled and unheated, less dejected
than when they started. The young Domenico,
who has pulled himself on shuffling small bare feet
thrust in his father’s heavy boots all up that mountain
wall, is as unflushed of face, unshortened of breath, as
if he had come on wings! Old Domenico, escorting
an exhausted Peripatetica, is bubbling faster than ever
with vehement chatter. He cannot understand why
his charges insist on rest, on holding fast to the solid
house. It fills him with surprised distress that they
will not go on to the top. “The view over all Sicily
awaits them there, and it is such a clear day. Corragio!
only one-half hour more!”...
But Peripatetica and Jane plant their feet on that
little level platform with more than donkey obstinacy—with
.pn +1
.bn 123.png
reeling heads they look out into the great blue
gulfs of air and over the green ripples of mountain tops.
This is high enough for them, they pant, feeling like
quivering earth-worms clinging to the top of a telegraph
pole and invited to go out along the wires.
Shivering in the wind which, in spite of sun, is icy
keen at this height, they proceed to eat their cold
lunch; the tratoria offering only tables and crockery,
wine, goat’s milk, and coffee to its patrons. Between
two infants of the house begging for tidbits, three skeleton
dogs so long unacquainted with food they snatched
greedily even at egg shells, a starved cat, and the two
Domenicos, who, it seems, also expect to lunch on
their leavings, Peripatetica and Jane have themselves
no heart to eat. Wishing they had brought another
asinello laden only with food, that all the inhabitants
of this hungry height might for once be filled, they
divide their own meal as evenly as possible among all
its aspirants and try to sustain themselves on the view.
Peripatetica looked on the far expanse of hills and sea
below, sourly asserting her fixed lowlander’s conviction
that mountains are only beautiful looked up to,
and that a bird’s-eye-view is no view. But when a
comforting concoction of hot goat’s milk and something
called coffee had been swallowed, and numbed
fingers thawed out over the tiny fire of grapevine prunings
in the tratoria kitchen, they succumbed to Domenico’s
insistence about the view it is their duty to
see, and climbed higher.
The crest of Monte Venere is a green knoll rising
above rock walls. Around and below it enough mountains
to fill a whole world roll confusedly on every
side. They felt more than ever like earth-worms too
.pn +1
.bn 124.png
far removed from friendly earth, and stayed only to
listen to the pipings of a curly-headed goatherd flinging
trills out into space; while Domenico, pained at
their indifference to his vaunted coup d’état of “bella
vistas,” but benevolent still, clambered about like a
goat himself, gathering for them the “mountain violets”
as he called the delicate mauve flowers starring
the sod.
So soon they were back at the tratoria that Francesco
and Giovanino had not half chewed their little
handfuls of hay, and young Domenico’s red tongue
was still delightedly polishing off the interior of their
tin of potted chicken, while the lean dogs watched
enviously, waiting for their chance at this queer bone.
Another personage was lunching luxuriously, stretched
at his ease on the steep hillside, a large sleek white
goat, munching solemnly at grass and blossom, wagging
his beard and rolling watery pink-rimmed eyes
with such evangelical air of pious complacence Peripatetica
and Jane instantly recognized him as an incarnation
of a New England country deacon, and sat
down respectfully to pass the time of day with him.
Going down even Jane takes to her own feet. Slipping,
sliding, jumping, the worst is somehow past with
bones still unbroken. The mountainside is yet like
the wall of a house, but Domenico, with more cries of
“corragio,” and proverbs as to those who “Va piano,
va sano,” urges them to mount, and Jane, quite confident
that four legs have more clinging power than
two, is glad to lie back along Giovanino’s tail while he
balances himself on his nose, with young Domenico
serving as a brake on his tail, and so slides and hitches
calmly down hill.
.pn +1
.bn 125.png
Mola is a climb again, the narrow path twisting up
the one accessible ledge to its sharp peak. One wonders
why human beings ever first climbed there to
build, and even more why they still live in its cramped
buildings, and with what toil they can find ways to
squeeze daily bread out of the bleak rocks. Yet before
the first Greek colonists landed at Naxos, Mola
was already a town. It looked down on infant Taormina
when the Naxos refugees fled to its heights. It
loomed above, still Siculian and intact, on its bare unassailable
crags, through all the squabbles and screamings
below of the different eagle broods taking possession
of Taormina’s nest. The conqueror who tried
to take Mola had usually only his trouble for his pains.
Even Dionysius, with all Sicily clutched in his cruel
hand, failed in his snatch at Mola. His attempt to
steal into it by surprise one dark winter’s night ended
in an ignominious, breakneck, hurling repulse of tyrant
and all his victory-wonted veterans. And Mola still
lives to-day. All its huddled houses seem to be inhabited,
though only bent old men, palsied crones,
black pigs, and babies are to be met with in its steep
narrow alleys. Domenico said scornfully that there
was nothing to be seen in it, but led the way to the
tiny town-square terrace beside the church, and had
a brown finger ready to emphasize all points of interest
in the spread of country and sea stretching below
its parapet. Once Mola had a sister town, he told, on
another crag across the valley; but Ætna opened a
sudden mouth and lava rivers pouring down to the sea
flowed over it and swallowed it completely. Whether
this is actual history or Domenican invention remains
in doubt. No other historian mentions the lost town.
.pn +1
.bn 126.png
But then, as Domenico said, there is Ætna, and there
the lava mound still black and ugly, as proof!
.tb
Again it rained, and Ætna sulked behind a cloudy
mantle. Vesuvius worked all day long, yet fur coats
were a necessary house dress. The poor Demon took
the influenza and coughed, and shivered in spite of her
hot energies; turned livid yellow and feverish, and had
to be sent to a doctor. Scarcely able to hold her head
up, but protesting to the end, she gave in to going
home to bed and staying there. But first she reappeared,
pale but proud, with a fashionably dressed
young lady of fourteen, her figlia Adalina, to whom she
had shown and told everything, and who could do all
the ladies’ service quite as well as herself.
Adalina was very high as to pompadour and equally
high as to the French heels on the tight boots which
finished off the plump legs emerging from her smart
kilted skirt—but height of intelligence was not in her;
none of her mother’s quickness and energy seemed to
have passed into the head under the high rolling thatch
of hair. Feet were Adalina’s strong point, and she
knew it. There was probably not another such grand
pair of real French boots as hers in all Taormina!
So her life consisted in showing them off. She arranged
Peripatetica’s and Jane’s belongings, and
brushed their clothes, as Mother had shown her, but
with pirouettings and side steps—one, two, three, all
the best dancing positions—between every touch of
brush or laying out of garment. It absorbed so much
time to keep her feet arranged in the most perfect placings
to exhibit pointed toes that very little else could be
.pn +1
.bn 127.png
expected of her in the course of the day. She opened
her mouth wide at Peripatetica’s and Jane’s broken
babblings, but no sense from them ever penetrated her
intelligence. Maria had to be called to interpret everything,
and usually to do it too. A charm seemed to
have departed from the villa with no Demon to keep
them comfortable and uncomfortable at once.
“Why should we wait and shiver here any longer?”
asked Peripatetica. “Persephone is surely coming
first on the other side of Ætna.”
“Why should we? Let us start on,” said Jane.
Domenica returned to them, a pale yellow Demon,
but bustling as ever, too late to affect their decision.
Trunks were packed, towering packing-cases stuffed
with their Taormina acquisitions. Fraulein’s last wonderful
pudding eaten, Ætna seen looming vapory white
above the terrace for the last time, Old Nina had carried
down through the garden from the well, in a Greek
jar on her grey head, the water for their last tub, Maria
had peeped her last “Questo,” Frau Schuler and her
polite son, the Fraulein, Maria, and Carola, had all
presented fragrant nosegays, Adalina, too, with pompadour
more aggressive than ever, appeared to offer
them violets and hint a receptivity to a parting douceur
herself. Every one was bidding them regretful farewells.
Touched, and themselves regretful to leave so
much kindness and charm, with melting heart the last
goodby of all was said to Domenica, and her wages for
the last two weeks pressed into her palm.
“You have served us so well, we have made no deduction
for the days you were first ill, and we had no
one; nor for the days when we had your little girl instead,”
said Jane.
.pn +1
.bn 128.png
Oh! had Ætna burst into eruption? The whole smiling
morning landscape was darkened by the wild black
figure pouring down shrill volleys of wrathful Italian on
their devoted heads. This Fury threatening with
flashing eyes and wild gesture was their gentle Domenica—now
a demon indeed!
They shrank aghast unable to catch a word in the
rapid torrent.
“What is the matter?” they cried to Frau Schuler.
With Teuton phlegm she dropped a word into the
flood.
“You have not paid her for the hour she has been
here this morning.”
“No, because we have paid her just the same for the
days on which we had no one and the ten days on which
we had only that stupid child—and have given the
precious Adalina a mancia too. But good gracious,
we will pay her more if she feels that way!”
“Indeed, you must not!” said the Frau briskly.
“It is an abominable imposition. She has been much
overpaid now, that is the trouble, she thinks you easy
game. Listen, my woman, and shame yourself,” she
turned to Domenica, “you disgrace your town to these
good Signorine, who have acted so generously to you!”
The raging demon looked into her calm face and at
the two astounded American ones, and the storm
quieted as quickly as it had come ... in an instant’s
metamorphosis she was again the amiable little person
of all the weeks of service, saying:
“Many, many thanks to the ladies, and a pleasant
journey, and might they come back again soon to
Taormina!”
She snatched Peripatetica’s coat away from Maria,
.pn +1
.bn 129.png
and Jane’s kodak from out her hand, and bore them
off to the carriage with all her usual assiduous energy.
One last pat to the puppy, graduated this very morning
to real collar and chain attaching him to new huge
kennel, the warring friendliness of his heart and the
conscientious effort to live up to his responsibilities
struggling more pathetically than ever in his grey eyes,
and they passed up the pergola for the last time, and
out of the pink gate to continue their quest.
.pn +1
.bn 130.png
.pb
.if h
.il fn=illus_130.jpg w=250px
.if-
.if t
.nf c
[Illustration: Decoration]
.nf-
.if-
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III || One Dead in the Fields
.sp 2
.nf c
“Where he fell there he lay down and died.”
.nf-
Sir John Lubbock tells a story—and this story
teaches an obvious lesson—of certain red warrior ants,
who capture black fellow pismires, and hold them as
slaves; an outrage which must certainly shock all true
pismitarian ants. The captors become in time so dependent
upon their negro servants that, when deprived
of their attendants, they are unable to feed or clean
themselves, and lie helplessly upon their backs, feebly
waving their paws in the air!...
Peripatetica, having but recently suffered the loss of
a maiden slave of a dozen years’ standing, had suffered
a like moral disintegration, and she violently lost her
taste for travel whenever it became necessary to move
from one place to another, attempting to deal with her
packing by a mere series of helpless paw-wavings, most
picturesque to observe, but which for all practical purposes
were highly inefficient. So when she and Jane
dropped down and down the zigzags to Giardini—each
.pn +1
.bn 131.png
of those famous views self-consciously presenting itself
in turn for the last time—the light figure which hurled
itself boldly down the steeps by a short cut, springing
along the daring descent with the sure-footed confidence
of a goat, proved to be not a wing-heeled Mercury
conveying an affectionate message from the gods,
but merely a boy from the villa fetching Peripatetica’s
left-behind nail brush, hot-water bottle, and umbrella....
From Giardini a spacious plain curves all the way
to Syracuse. This broken level is built upon a
foundation of inky lava cast out from Hephæstos’
forge in Ætna, in whose wrinkled crevices of black and
broken stone has been caught and held all the stored
richness of the denuded mountains so long ago stripped
of trees; and in this plain grain and flowers and trees
innumerable find food and footing. Peripatetica, bred
in deep-soiled, fertile fields with wide horizons, drew,
as they passed into the open vistas, deep breaths of
refreshment and joy. The fierce, soaring aridity of
Taormina had oppressed her with a restless sense of
imprisonment. Her elbows were as passionate lovers
of liberty as the Spartans, and she demanded proper
space in which to move them. What she called a view
was a view, not merely more mountains climbing, blind
and obstinate, between the eye and the landscape.
Being, too, of a race always worshippers of Demeter—a
race which had spent generations in her service,
which considered the cultivation of the soil the only
possible occupation of a gentleman, and all other businesses
the mere wretched astonishing fate of the unfortunate—she
rejoiced loudly and fatiguingly over the
blessedness of a return to a sweet land of farms.
.pn +1
.bn 132.png
“I don’t call that Taormina window-box-gardening
on tiny stone ledges a thousand feet up in the air
farming,” she scoffed.
“If your tongue was a spade what crops you would
raise!” sniffed Jane.
“Well, I raise big harvests of diversion in my own
spirit,” retorted the unsuppressed chatterer. “Besides,
it’s now my turn to talk. You have done a lot
of elaborate speechifying about Taormina. I made
you a present of the whole jaggèd, attitudinizing old
place, and for the moment I mean to flow unchecked!
You needn’t listen if you don’t like. I enjoy hearing
myself speak, whether anyone pays the smallest attention
or not.”
Which was why, while Jane settled down comfortably
to a copy of Theocritus, Peripatetica continued
to entertain her own soul with spoken and unspoken
comments as to a certain restful letting down
of tension which resulted from sliding away from the
dazzling, lofty Olympianism of Taormina into a region
Cyclopean, perhaps, but with a dawning suggestion of
coming humanity. For here, in this plain, succeeding
those bright presences that were the elementary
forces of nature—forces of the earth and sea and sun,
of fire and dew, of thunder, wind, and rain, of the shining
day, and the night with its changing moon—first
came the primitive earth-spirits, rude and rugged, or
delicate and vapourous. Creatures not gods—no
longer immutable and immortal, but stronger, older,
greater than man, who was yet to come. Creatures
partaking somewhat of the nature of both gods and
men, but subject to transformation into stream and
fountain, into tree and flower; very near to the earth,
.pn +1
.bn 133.png
yet swayed by human passions, by human sorrows and
joys.
This plain was the home of nymph and oread, of
dryad and faun. Here had the Cyclops and the Titans
wrought—first of the great race of Armourers and
Smiths—under the tutelage of Vulcan, shaping the
beams of the heavens, and the ribs of the earth; arming
the gods and forging the lightning.
Ulysses, the earliest of impassioned tourists, had had
dealings on this very spot with the last of the Cyclops.
A degenerate scion of the great old race, as the last of
a great race is apt to be, Polyphemus had sunk to the
mere keeping of sheep, and according to Ulysses’ own
story he got the better of Polyphemus, and related,
upon returning home, the triumph of his superior cunning,
with the same naïve relish with which the modern
Cookie retails his supposed outwitting of the native
curio dealer. Very near to the train, as it ran by the
sea’s edge, lay the huge fragments of lava which the
blinded Cyclop had cast in futile rage after the escaping
Greeks. He was a great stone-thrower, was Polyphemus,
for further along the coast lay the boulders
he had flung at Acis, the beautiful young shepherd.
Polyphemus having still an eye in those days, his aim
was truer, and the shepherd was killed, but who may
baffle true love? The dead boy melted away beneath
the stones and was transformed to the bright and racing
river Acis (which they crossed just then), and the
river, flowing round the stones, runs still across the
plain to fling itself into the arms of the sea-nymph
Galatea. So the two still meet as of old, and play
laughingly together in and out among the huge rocks,
which certainly might have been flung there by Ætna
.pn +1
.bn 134.png
in one of her volcanic furies, but which, if one may
believe the Greek story, were really the gigantic weapons
of a cruel jealousy.
Jane and Peripatetica could put their heads out of
the windows and study history and legend at their ease,
the train ambling amiably and not too rapidly through
the lovely land, where the near return of Persephone
was foreshadowed in the delicate rosy clouds of the
Judas trees drifting across the black green of dense
carobs. It was foretold, too, by the broad yellow mustard
fields blooming under the shadow of silver-grey
olive orchards; Fields-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold they were,
about which Spring was pitching white tents of plum
flowers in which to sign royal alliance with Summer.
They saw old Sicilian farm-steadings here and there
crowning the rising ground on either hand, freaked
and lichened with years, and showing among their
spiring cypresses the square towers to which the inhabitants
had fled for safety in the old days of Levantine
piracy. Many of these houses were very old, six
or eight hundred years old, it was said. Orange and
lemon groves on either side the way still hung heavy
with fruit, plainly feeling it a duty laid upon them to
look like the trees in Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes; like
the trees of all the Old Masters’ backgrounds. Invariably
being round, close clumps of green set thick
with golden balls, quite unlike the orange trees in
America, which have never had proper decorative and
artistic models set for their copying, and therefore grow
carelessly and less beautifully.
As far as the eye could reach the whole land was
furred with the tender green of sprouting corn. For
this was once Europe’s granary, and the place of Rome’s
.pn +1
.bn 135.png
bread; here Demeter first taught man to sow and reap,
and despite Ætna’s fires, despite the destruction and
ravaging of a thousand wars, and thousands of years
of careless unrestorative use of the soil, corn still grows
on this plain, so hard, so perfect, and so nourishing of
grain that no Sicilian can afford to eat it, selling his
own crop to macaroni manufacturers, and contenting
himself with a poorer imported wheat for his dark daily
bread.
In these rich meadows, too, replacing the frigid little
Evangelical-looking goat of Taormina, browsed fat
flocks in snowy silken fleeces, and with long wavy
horns. Flocks that were tended by shepherds draped
in faded blue or brown hooded cloaks, wearing sheep’s
wool bound about their cross-gartered legs, their feet
shod with hairy goat-skin shoes. They leaned in contemplative
attitudes on long staves—as every right-minded
shepherd should—so old a picture, so unchanged
from far-off, pastoral days! Just so had they
shown themselves to Theocritus, when that sweet
young singer of the early time had wandered here
among the herdsmen, the fishers, and the delvers in the
good brown earth, in the days when the Greeks still
lived and ruled here, so long and long ago.
“I wish they would pipe,” said Peripatetica. “It
only needs to complete the picture that innocent sweet
trilling of the shepherd’s reed that is like the voices of
the birds and of the cicalas.”
“Oh, they daren’t do it here in high noon,” remonstrated
Jane. “For fear of Pan, you know.” And
she turned back the pages of her little book to read
aloud the sweetest and perfectest of the Idyls....
.pn +1
.bn 136.png
Thyrsis. Sweet, meseems, is the whispering sound
of yonder pine tree, goatherd, that murmureth by the
wells of water; and sweet are thy pipings. After Pan
the second prize shalt thou bear away, and if he take
the horned goat, the she-goat shalt thou win; but if he
choose the she-goat for his meed, the kid falls to thee,
and dainty is the flesh of kids ere the age when thou
milkest them.
The Goatherd. Sweeter, O shepherd, is thy song
than the music of yonder water that is poured from
the high face of the rock! Yea, if the Muses take the
young ewe for their gift, a stall-fed lamb shalt thou
receive for thy meed; but if it please them to take the
lamb, thou shalt lead away the ewe for the second prize.
Thyrsis. Wilt thou, goatherd, in the nymphs’
name, wilt thou sit thee down here, among the tamarisks,
on this sloping knoll, and pipe while in this place
I watch thy flocks?
.if h
.il fn=illus_137.jpg w=600px id=illus_137
.ca
“Pan’s Goat Herd”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: “Pan’s Goat Herd”]
.if-
Goatherd. Nay, shepherd, it may not be; we may
not pipe in the noontide. ’Tis Pan we dread, who
truly at this hour rests weary from the chase; and
bitter of mood is he, the keen wrath sitting ever at his
nostrils. But, Thyrsis, for that thou surely wert wont
to sing The Affliction of Daphnis, and hast most deeply
meditated the pastoral muse, come hither, and beneath
yonder elm let us sit down, in face of Priapus and the
fountain fairies, where is that resting-place of the
shepherds, and where the oak trees are. Ah! if thou
wilt but sing as on that day thou sangest in thy match
with Chromis out of Libya, I will let thee milk, ay,
three times, a goat that is the mother of twins, and
even when she has suckled her kids her milk doth fill
two pails. A deep bowl of ivy-wood, too, I will give
.bn 137.png
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
.bn 139.png
thee, rubbed with sweet bees’-wax, a two-eared bowl
newly wrought, smacking still of the knife of the
graver. Round its upper edges goes the ivy winding,
ivy besprent with golden flowers; and about it is a
tendril twisted that joys in its saffron fruit. Within is
designed a maiden, as fair a thing as the gods could
fashion, arrayed in a sweeping robe, and a snood on her
head. Beside her two youths with fair love-locks are
contending from either side, with alternate speech, but
her heart thereby is all untouched. And now on one
she glances, smiling, and anon she lightly flings the
other a thought, while by reason of the long vigils of
love their eyes are heavy, but their labour is all in vain.
Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are
fashioned, a rugged rock, whereon with might and
main the old man drags a great net for his cast, as one
that labours stoutly. Thou wouldst say that he is
fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big the sinews
swell all about his neck, grey-haired though he be, but
his strength is as the strength of youth. Now divided
but a little space from the sea-worn old man is a vineyard
laden well with fire-red clusters, and on the rough
wall a little lad watches the vineyard, sitting there.
Round him two she-foxes are skulking, and one goes
along the vine-rows to devour the ripe grapes, and the
other brings all her cunning to bear against the scrip,
and vows she will never leave the lad, till she strand
him bare and breakfastless. But the boy is plaiting
a pretty locust-cage with stalks of asphodel, and fitting
it with reeds, and less care of his scrip has he, and of
the vines, than delight in his plaiting.
All about the cup is spread the soft acanthus, a
miracle of varied work, a thing for thee to marvel on.
.pn +1
.bn 140.png
For this bowl I paid to a Calydonian ferryman a goat
and a great white cream cheese. Never has its lip
touched mine, but it still lies maiden for me. Gladly
with this cup would I gain thee to my desire, if thou,
my friend, wilt sing me that delightful song. Nay, I
grudge it thee not at all. Begin, my friend, for be
sure thou canst in no wise carry thy song with thee to
Hades, that puts all things out of mind!
.nf c
The Song of Thyrsis.
.nf-
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! Thyrsis
of Ætna am I, and this is the voice of Thyrsis.
Where, ah! where were ye when Daphnis was languishing;
ye Nymphs, where were ye? By Peneus’
beautiful dells, or by dells of Pindus? for surely ye
dwelt not by the great stream of the river Anapus, nor
on the watch-tower of Ætna, nor by the sacred water
of Acis.
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
For him the jackals, for him the wolves did cry; for
him did even the lion out of the forest lament. Kine
and bulls by his feet right many, and heifers plenty,
with the young calves bewailed him.
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
Came Hermes first from the hill, and said, “Daphnis,
who is it that torments thee; child, whom dost
thou love with so great desire?” The neatherds came,
and the shepherds; the goatherds came; all they asked
what ailed him. Came also Priapus,—
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
And said: “Unhappy Daphnis, wherefore dost thou
languish, while for thee the maiden by all the fountains,
through all the glades is fleeting, in search of thee?
.pn +1
.bn 141.png
Ah! thou art too laggard a lover, and thou nothing
availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now thou
art like the goatherd.”
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
“For the goatherd, when he marks the young goats
at their pastime, looks on with yearning eyes, and fain
would be even as they; and thou, when thou beholdest
the laughter of maidens, dost gaze with yearning
eyes, for that thou dost not join their dances.”
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
Yet these the herdsman answered not again, but he
bare his bitter love to the end, yea, to the fated end he
bare it.
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
Ay, but she too came, the sweetly smiling Cypris,
craftily smiling she came, yet keeping her heavy anger;
and she spake, saying: “Daphnis, methinks thou didst
boast that thou wouldst throw Love a fall, nay, is it
not thyself that hast been thrown by grievous Love?”
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
But to her Daphnis answered again: “Implacable
Cypris, Cypris terrible, Cypris of mortals detested,
already dost thou deem that my latest sun has set; nay,
Daphnis even in Hades shall prove great sorrow to
Love.
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
“Get thee to Ida, get thee to Anchises! There are
oak trees—here only galingale blows, here sweetly hum
the bees about the hives!
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
“Thine Adonis, too, is in his bloom, for he heards
the sheep and slays the hares, and he chases all the
wild beasts. Nay, go and confront Diomedes again,
.pn +1
.bn 142.png
and say, ‘The herdsman Daphnis I conquered, do
thou join battle with me.’”
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
“Ye wolves, ye jackals, and ye bears in the mountain
caves, farewell! The herdsman Daphnis ye never
shall see again, no more in the dells, no more in the
groves, no more in the woodlands. Farewell Arethusa,
ye rivers good-night, that pour down Thymbris your
beautiful waters.
.nf c
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
.nf-
“That Daphnis am I who here do herd the kine,
Daphnis who water here the bulls and calves.
“O Pan, Pan! whether thou art on the high hills of
Lycæus, or rangest mighty Mænalus, haste hither to
the Sicilian isle! Leave the tomb of Helice, leave that
high cairn of the son of Lycæon, which seems wondrous
fair, even in the eyes of the blessed.
.nf c
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
.nf-
“Come hither, my prince, and take this fair pipe,
honey-breathed with wax-stopped joints; and well it
fits thy lip; for verily I, even I, by Love am now haled
to Hades.
.nf c
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
.nf-
“Now violets bear, ye brambles, ye thorns bear violets
and let fair narcissus bloom on the boughs of juniper!
Let all things with all be confounded—from
pines let men gather pears, for Daphnis is dying! Let
the stag drag down the hounds, let owls from the hills
contend in song with the nightingales.”
.nf c
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
.nf-
So Daphnis spake, and ended; but fain would Aphrodite
have given him back to life. Nay, spun was all
the thread that the Fates assigned, and Daphnis went
.pn +1
.bn 143.png
down the stream. The whirling wave closed over the
man the Muses loved, the man not hated of the nymphs.
.nf c
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
.nf-
And thou, give me the bowl, and the she-goat, that
I may milk her and pour forth a libation to the Muses.
Farewell, oh, farewells manifold, ye Muses, and I,
some future day, will sing you yet a sweeter song.
The Goatherd. Filled may thy fair mouth be with
honey, Thyrsis, and filled with the honeycomb; and
the sweet dried fig mayest thou eat of Ægilus, for thou
vanquishest the cicala in song! Lo, here is thy cup,
see, my friend, of how pleasant a savour! Thou wilt
think it has been dipped in the well-spring of the Hours.
Hither, hither, Cissætha: do thou milk her, Thyrsis.
And you young she-goats, wanton not so wildly lest
you bring up the he-goat against you.
.tb
“What a crowded place Sicily is!” cried Jane,
heaving an oppressed breath.
“Isn’t it?” sympathized Peripatetica. “Here we
are on our way to the very fountain, as it seems, of
history—Syracuse, where nearly everything happened
that ever did happen, and yet one has to mentally push
one’s way through a swarming crowd of events to get
there, because almost everything that didn’t happen
in Syracuse occurred in these Sicilian plains. When
you think of the layer on layer of human life, like geologic
strata, that lies all over this place, you realize
that it would take half a lifetime to come to some understanding
of the significance of it all, and that it’s
.pn +1
.bn 144.png
foolish to go on until one can get some hold upon the
meaning of what lies right here.”
This “simple but first-class conversation” took
place in the eating-station at Catania which the two
had all to themselves, most of the Tedeschi tourists
frugally remaining in the train and staying their pangs
from bottles, and with odds and ends out of paper
parcels, from which feasts they emerged later replete
but crumby.
Poor Catania! sunk to a mere feeding-trough for
passing tourists. She, the great city sitting blandly
among her temples and towers, wooed for her money
bags by all the warlike neighbours. For whenever her
neighbours squabbled with one another, which was
pretty nearly all the time—or whenever an outsider intervened—each
strove to engage the aid of this rich
landholder, sending embassies and emissaries to bully
or cajole Catania. As rich folk will, she always tried to
protect herself by taking neither side completely, speaking
fair to each, and, like all Laodiceans, she made
thereby two enemies instead of one, and was considered
fair prey by both.
That splendid, dangerous dandy, Alcibiades, was
one of these ambassadors. Almost under the feet of
Jane and Peripatetica, as they sat with their mouths
full of crisp delectable little tarts, had the wily Athenian
spoken in the Catanian theatre. The older men enjoyed
his eloquent, graceful Greek, but they were quite
determined not to be persuaded by it to let his fleet
enter their harbour, his army enter their city, or to be
used as a base from which to strike the Syracusians.
The Catanians didn’t like Syracuse, but they didn’t
mean to embroil themselves with her. They secretly
.pn +1
.bn 145.png
hoped the Athenians would reduce that dangerous
neighbour to despair, but if either destroyed the other—why,
then it would be well to be able to show the
victor their clean hands.
Alcibiades was quite aware he was not convincing
them, but he enjoyed turning brilliant periods in public,
and was meanwhile pleasantly conscious of the
young men in the audience admiring the chasing of
his buckles, the artful folds of his gold-embroidered
chalmyde, the exquisite angle at which he knotted his
fillet, privately resolving to readjust their own provincial
toilets by the model of this famous glass of fashion.
And when they all poured out of the theatre after his
brilliantly preferred request had been politely refused,
he could afford to smile calmly, for, behold! there was
the Athenian fleet in the harbour, the Athenian army
in the city. He had not been using those well-turned
phrases for mere idleness. They had availed to keep
the authorities occupied while his subordinates had
executed his commands.
And their caution was of no avail whatever, for in
due time, when Alcibiades was in exile and the Athenians
rotting in the Latomiæ, Syracuse duly turned and
“took it out of” Catania. Took it out good and hard
too.
There was no use stopping over a train to see the
old theatre and realize for themselves this curious bit
of history; it only meant crawling through black passages
by the light of a smoky candle, for Ætna in 1669—in
a fit of ennui with poor Catania—had pitched
down thousands of tons of lava upon her and hid all
the rich city’s ancient glories from the sun.
It was from Catania that another interesting Greek
.pn +1
.bn 146.png
had set out upon his last journey. A journey to the
crest of that volcano which has been constantly taking
a hand in the destinies of Sicily, with what—in its
careless malice, its malignant furies—seems almost like
the personal wickedness of some demon; that incalculable
mountain whose soaring outlines had been coming
out at Jane and Peripatetica all day whenever the
train turned a corner, as if to reassure them that they
couldn’t lose her if they tried. Ætna was from the
very beginning the pre-eminent fact in this part of Sicily.
First Zeus—who always had a cheerful disregard of
any rules of chivalry in dealing with his enemies—tied
down the unlucky Titan Enceladus upon this very
spot, and, gathering up enough of Sicily to make a
mountain the size of Ætna, heaped it on top of him,
probably congratulating himself the while that he had
put a complete end to that particular annoyance. But
quite a number of rulers since Zeus have discovered
that in a rebellious temperament there reside resources
of annoyingness which even a god cannot entirely
foresee or provide against, and the Titan still heaves
restlessly at his load from time to time, rocking the
whole island with his struggles, toppling towers, engulfing
cities, tearing the earth apart in his furies.
Some of the myths accuse Demeter herself of having
set Ætna alight in her frenzy, that all Sicily might thus
be illumined to aid her in the search for Persephone,
and that never since that reckless day has she been able
to extinguish it, but must fight, with rain and dews and
snows to save her people’s bread from the flames forever
threatening to destroy it. The fire pours forth
from time to time, spreading cruel ruin, but ever, aided
by her, man creeps up and up once more. Up to Randazzo;
.pn +1
.bn 147.png
up to Brontë, the “thunder town,” given to
Lord Nelson by Marie Antoinette’s sister, then Queen
of the Two Sicilies, where the Dukes of Brontë, Nelson’s
descendants, still live part of each year in their
wild eyrie.
The vine and the olive climb and climb after each
catastrophe. They cover the old scars of the eruptions,
perch in crevices where a goat can scarce stand,
and wring from the rich crumbs of soil “wine that
maketh glad the heart of man, and oil that causeth his
countenance to shine.”
Up to the top of this Ætna—ten thousand feet up—on
the last journey from Catania climbed Empedocles,
that strange figure who passes with ringing brazen
sandals through the history of Sicily. Empedocles,
clothed in purple, crowned with a wreath of golden
leaves, followed by thousands to whom he taught some
strange, half Pythagorean worship, the form and meaning
of which have vanished with time, save for some
hints of a sort of mental healing practised upon his
followers. Empedocles, composing vast poems of
thousands of lines, and vaunting himself as a Super-man,
saying:
“An immortal god, and no longer a mortal man, I
wander among you; honoured by all, adorned with
priestly diadems and blooming wreaths. Into whatever
illustrious towns I enter men and women pay me
reverence, and I am accompanied by thousands who
thirst for their advantage; some being desirous to
know the future, and others, tormented by long and
terrible disease, waiting to hear the spells that soothe
suffering.”
Whether his following fell away; whether he became
.pn +1
.bn 148.png
the victim of some wild melancholy, some corroding
welt-schmerz—unable to cure the ills of his own
soul with his own doctrines—no one knows, but the
dramatic manner of his exit printed his name indelibly
upon the memory of the world from which he fled.
Deserting late at night a feast in Catania, he mounted
a mule, climbed the rough steeps, threaded the dusky
oak woods, dismissed his last follower, and—after lingering
a moment to listen to the boy-harper Callicles
singing in the dawn at the edge of the forest—he passed
on upward through the snows, and was seen no more
by human eye. Only the brazen sandal was found
beside the crater, into whose unutterable furnace—urged
by some divine despair—he had flung himself:
all that had been that aspiring, passionate life vanishing
in an instant in a hiss of steam, a puff of gas, upon
the most stupendous funeral pyre ever chosen by man.
.tb
There was endless history waiting to be looked into
at Catania; frightful passagings and scufflings, massacres
and exilings, murders, conspiracies and poisonings,
and every other uncomfortable exhibition of
“man’s inhumanity to man”—accompanied, of course,
by heroisms, patriotic self-sacrifice, and a thousand
humble, unremembered kindnesses and virtues, such
as forever form warp and woof of the web of life and
time. But railway schedules, even in Sicily, are almost
heartlessly indifferent to tradition, and when the
last tartlet was consumed the two seekers for Persephone
were dragged Syracuse-ward, along with the
crumby Tedeschi, divided during the long afternoon
between increasing drowsiness and reproachful Baedekers.
.pn +1
.bn 149.png
At last came sea marshes, where salt-pans evaporated
in the sun, and toward sunset the train dumped
them all promiscuously into station omnibuses at the
capital of history; too grubby and fatigued to care
whether the first class in historical research was called
or not.
The Tedeschi, after their frugal fashion, went in
search of cheap pensions in the city, and only Jane and
Peripatetica entered the wheeled tender of the Villa
Politi, along with a young Italian pair, obviously engaged
upon a honeymoon. A pair who never ceased
to look unutterable things at each other out of fine
eyes bistred with railway grime, nor ceased to murmur
soft nothings from lips surrounded with the shadows
of railway soot, undaunted by the frank interest
of the hotel portier hanging on to the step, nor by the
joltings of the dusty white road that led, through the
noisy building of many ugly new villas, up to bare,
wind-swept heights.
Strong in the possession of a note from the proprietor
promising accommodation, with which, this time,
the wayfarers had had the prudence to arm themselves,
Jane and Peripatetica swept languidly up the steps,
ordering that their luggage be placed in their rooms
and tea served immediately upon the terrace.
But there were no rooms. No rooms of any kind,
single or double!
The note was produced. There it was, down in
black and white!
The young Signor Antonio drew a similar weapon—more
black and white promises!
The Padrone raised eyes and hands in a gesture almost
consoling in its histrionic effectiveness.
.pn +1
.bn 150.png
Could he make guests depart at the time they said
they would depart?
Could he cast them out neck and crop when they
found Syracuse so attractive that they changed their
minds about going away and vacating rooms promised
to others?
He left it to Jane. He left it to Peripatetica. He
left it to Signor Antonio. He left it to Signor Antonio’s
beautiful bride, his “bellissima sposa.” Could he?
He asked that!...
The two seekers were sternly sarcastic. Signor
Antonio imitated the histrionic attitude. The Bellissima
Sposa simply smiled fatuously. Beloved Antonio
now held her destinies in his strong hand. Was
it a royal suite? Well and good. Was it a corner of
a stone wall under an umbrella? It was still well and
good, for would she not still be with her Antonio?
The honeyed submissiveness of this was too much
for even the wicked obduracy of the Padrone.
There was a billiard room—for the night. To-morrow
some one must keep his promise and go. They
could choose among themselves.
The bride was led away to the billiard room, still
gazing upon her Antonio with intoxicated content, and
two cross females, shaking the dust of the Villa Politi’s
glowing garden and vine-wreathed terraces from their
feet, jolted back again indignantly along the bare,
windy heights fretted by the clamour of a sirocco-tortured
sea. Past the gritty precincts of the ugly
building villas, to the gaunt precincts of an hotel within
the shrunken town. There to climb early into beds of
the sloping pitch and rugged surface of a couple of
tiled roofs; to lay their heads upon pillows undoubtedly
.pn +1
.bn 151.png
stuffed with the obdurate skulls of all Syracuse’s myriad
dead, and to listen in the wakefulness thereby induced
to the dull sickening thuds about the floor which they
knew, for good and sufficient reasons, to be the nocturnal
hopping of the mighty Syracusan flea....
“Fancy anyone being tempted to remain over here!”
sneered Peripatetica.
This was in the morning. They had compared the
bleatings of the goats; the raucous early cries of the
population; the effects of sirocco; the devices by
which, clinging with teeth and nails, they had succeeded
in maintaining their perch on the tile roofs; had boasted
of their shikarry among the hopping, devouring monsters
of the dark.
“Talk of history!” mourned Jane. “Who could
be the adequate Herodotus of last night?”
They were on their way to the Temple of Minerva.
The route led by a wide sea-street, half of whose length
gave upon that famous Inner Harbour so often filled
with hostile fleets, so often barred by great chains, so
often echoing with clanging battles, with the bubbling
shrieks of the drowning. Now the sparkling waters
rolled untinged with blood, the clean salt air swept unhindered
across their path, for half of the huge sea-wall
had been recently demolished to let in wind and
sun, though part still towered grimly, darkening the
way, shutting out the light from the opposite dwellings.
The path turned at right angles and wound through
narrow foot-pathless cracks, between houses; cracks
that served the older Syracuse in lieu of streets, where
swarmed in the dingy narrownesses the everlasting goat,
the ever pervasive child. Very different children these
from those cherub heads, with busy little legs growing
.pn +1
.bn 152.png
out of them, who formed the rising population of Taormina.
Taormina, who has solved that whole question
of educating children; a question which still so puzzles
the unintelligent rest of mankind. For weeks they had
walked the ancient ways of that high-perched town,
picking careful steps amid its infant hordes, and never
once had they heard a cry, or seen a discontented child.
“Occupation was the secret of all that cherubic
goodness, I think,” said Peripatetica reflectively.
“Don’t you remember that every single one of them
had a job?”
“Of course, I remember,” said Jane crossly. “You
needn’t remind me. It was only twenty-four hours ago
we were there—though it seems ages since we fell out
of the tender protecting care of dear ‘Questo-qui.’
You can put it all in the book if you feel you must talk
about it.”
“Jane, your usually charming temper has been
spoiled by a night on a roof. It has made a cat of
you,” persisted Peripatetica as she calmly circled round
a goat. When the fount of her eloquence was unsealed
it was not to be choked by the mere casting of a stony
snub into it.
“I devoted some of the dark hours on my tiles to
profound philosophic reflection upon the Taorminian
methods with children,” she continued. “I have often
thought the ennui suffered by children and pet animals
was the cause of much of their restless fretfulness.
Even the most undeveloped nature feels the difference
between a real occupation and an imitation one; feels
the importance of being an economic factor. Now
those Taormina children from the age of two years are
made to feel they are really important and necessary
.pn +1
.bn 153.png
members of the family. They knit as soon as they can
walk; they sew, they do drawn-work, at five. They
sit in the streets at little tables and help cobble shoes
or mend teakettles. They shop for busy parents; they
fetch and carry. They pull out of the gardens and
orchards weeds as tall as themselves, and everywhere
are calm and self-respecting, and receive from their
parents and their grown-up neighbours that serious
courtesy and consideration due to useful and well-behaved
citizens. One does not slap or jerk or scold valuable
and important members of the community, and
no youthful Taorminian would permit such an unjustifiable
liberty from a parent.”
Borne on this flood of words they suddenly flowed
out into a big irregular square where stood one of the
most curious buildings in the world; the great temple
of Pallas of the Syracusans. The enormous fluted
Doric columns were sunk into the walls of a Cathedral,
for Zosimus, bishop of Syracuse in the Seventh Century,
had seized the columned frame and had plastered
his church upon it—but so great was the diameter of
the pillars that their sides and capitals protruded
through the walls inside and out like the prodigious
stone ribs of some huge skeleton. The Saracens had
come later, and, after slaughtering the priests and
women who clung shrieking to the altars, had added
battlements to the roof, and the Eighteenth Century,
being unable, of course, to keep its finger out of even
the most reverend pie, had gummed upon the portal a
flaring baroque façade of yellow stone. But through
all disfigurements and defacements the temple still
showed its soaring majesty, and Peripatetica, at sight
of it, cried:
.pn +1
.bn 154.png
“One dead in the fields!”...
For suddenly was revealed to the two the meaning
of what they had been journeying to see—it was the
dead body of a great civilization.
Here, nearly three thousand years since, had come
Archias, the rich Heraclid of Corinth. He had gathered
sullenly into little ships his wealth, his family, and
his servants, and had fled far down the horizon, an
execrated fugitive because of the slaying of beautiful
Actæon. And, finding on the coast of the distant
God’s-land a reproduction of the bays and straits of
the Corinth which had cast him out, he founded there
a city. A city that was to have a life like the life of
some gifted, powerful man, growing from timid infancy
to a lusty youth full of dreams and passions and vague
towering ambitions; struggling with and conquering
his fellows; grasping at power and glory, heaping up
riches unbelievable, decking himself in purple and gold,
living long and gloriously and tumultuously; and who
was to know rise and fall, defeats and triumphs, and
finally was to die on the battlefield, and be left there by
the victor to rot. So that all the flesh would drop from
the long frame, the muscles dry and fall apart, the
eyes be sightless, and the brain dark; and the little
busy insects of the earth would carry away the fragments
bit by bit, and on the field where he lay would
be found at last only the hollow skull once so full of
proud purpose; only the slack white bones of the arm
that had wielded the strong sword, the vast arch of the
gaunt ribs that once had sheltered the brave heart of
Syracuse. And among these dry bones little curious
creatures would come to peep and peer and build their
homes; spiders spinning webs over the empty eye
.pn +1
.bn 155.png
sockets, mice weaving their nests among the wide-flung
knuckles....
One little spider, about ten minutes old, lay in wait
for these two tourist flies at the side door of the Cathedral
with an offer to guide them, and though they
sternly endeavoured to brush the insect aside, doubting
his infantile capacity to direct their older intelligences,
the Spider was not of the to-be-brushed-aside
variety and knew better than they what they really
needed. While they wandered through the vulgar
uglinesses of Zosimus’ shrine, trying to recall Cicero’s
glowing picture of the temple in its glory, he never took
his claws off of them. While they talked of the great
doors inlaid with gold and ivory, of the brazen spears,
of the cella walls frescoed with the portraits and the
battles of the Sikel Kings, of the pedestals between each
column bearing images of the gods in ivory, silver, and
bronze, the Spider was patient and merely murmured
“Greco” or “molto antico” by way of encouraging
chorus. He let them babble unchecked of the tall
image of armed Pallas standing behind the altar, with
plumed helmet and robe of Tyrian purple, grasping her
great spear in her right hand and resting the left hand
upon the golden shield that bore a sculptured Medusa
head. Upon her pedestal was carved the cock, the
dragon, and the serpent, and the altar before her was
heaped with fresh olive boughs about the smouldering
spices sending up wavering clouds of scented smoke that
coiled among the ceiling’s gilded plates. Without, upon
the roof, stood another great shield of gilded bronze, a
beacon for sailors who, setting out upon long voyages, carried
a cup of burning ashes from her altar to sprinkle on
the waves as the glittering landmark faded down the sky.
.pn +1
.bn 156.png
But when these reminiscences of the “molto antico”
finally exhausted themselves, the Spider rose to his
occasion. He was vague about Minerva, but Santa
Lucia was his trump card. He was eminently capable
of guiding any number of travellers to the chapel of
that big swarthy idol adorned with wire-and-cotton
wreaths, and hung about with votive silver hands and
hearts, arms and legs, in grateful testimony of the
limbs and organs cured by her mercy and power. He
could pour out in burning Sicilian, illustrated by superb
spidery gestures, a thrilling description of the
yearly villegiatura of Syracuse’s patron saint. How
twice in a twelvemonth she feels the need of change
of air, and all the town attends her visit of a few days
to the church beyond the bridge, she being escorted by
priests and censors, and blaring bands, and wearing her
finest jewels and toilet, as befits a lady on ceremonial
travels. It is a festa for all Syracuse, Spider explains,
with much good eating and “molto buono vino.”
Jane, always a molten mass of useful information,
interjects sotto voce into the flood of his narrative that
precisely the same ceremony was used for the image
of Diana when she was the patron goddess of the
Syracusans, and the very same molto buono vino so
overcame the populace at one of Diana’s festas that
Marcellus, the Roman, after a siege of three years,
captured the long and fiercely defended city that very
night.
The Spider took them later to see the handful of
fragments alone remaining of Diana’s fane—broken
columns sunk in a fosse between two houses—though
once a temple as splendid as Minerva’s. A temple
served by many priestesses, and surrounded by a great
.pn +1
.bn 157.png
grove sloping down to the fountain of Arethusa. Among
these trees the Oceanides herded the sacrificial deer,
and troops of just such silken-coated, wavy-horned
goats as feed to-day upon the Catanian plain. And to
this grove came young girls, offering up, to please the
great Huntress, their abandoned childish toys of baked
clay. For oddly enough the wild, arrowy goddess who
loved to shed the blood of beasts, adored children, and
was a special patron of theirs, and would even listen
favourably to the petitions of barren wives.
There seemed some strange vagueness, some shadowy
inexplicableness in the worship of Diana. All the
other gods typified some force of nature, some resultant
struggle and passion of man caught in nature’s web,
but of the moon they knew only that it influenced tides
and the growing of plants. What is one to make then
of this fierce ivory-skinned Maid who sweeps, crescent-crowned,
through the moonlit glades of the deep primitive
forests, with bayings of lean questing hounds and
echoing call of silver horns, hard on the track of crashing
boar, of leaping deer? There is something as glimmeringly
elusive, as magically haunting in the personality
and the worship of Diana as in the moon itself.
They offered the web of this conundrum to the Spider,
but he wisely refused to allow himself to be entangled
in it. This, however, is anticipating the real course of
events.
Already, before leaving the Cathedral, another conundrum
had been asked and not answered.
High on opposite sides of the walls of the nave Jane
and Peripatetica had observed two ornate glass and
gilt coffins. The one on the left contained the half-mummy,
half-skeleton of a man. A young, beardless
.pn +1
.bn 158.png
face it was, the still fair skin drawn tight over the
features; the still blond hair clustering about it in curls
of dusty gold. The fleshless visage was handsome,
and though strange and ghostly, not repulsive. The
skeleton body was clothed in velvet and gold, and the
bony, gloved fingers clasped a splendid silver-scabbarded
sword; an empty dagger case was hanging
from an embroidered baldrick across the dead man’s
breast. He lay on his side in an uneasy attitude, looking
through the transparent pane of his last home
toward the opposite crystal sarcophagus. This opposite
coffin contained a half-mummied, half-skeleton
woman—a woman also young and fair-haired; artfully
coiffed, her tresses wrapped with pearls. Neither
was her face repulsive; some strange process had preserved
a dry whiteness in the skin stretched smooth
and unwrinkled upon the bones and integuments,
though all the flesh was gone. She too was clothed
in gold and silk in a fashion centuries old. Through
the lace of the sleeves showed the white polished bones
of what must once have been warm rounded arms.
She too was gloved; she too crouched upon her side
uneasily, but she did not face her companion. Her
head was thrown back as if in pain; and plunged
through the pointed silk corselet—just where there
must once have beat a young heart—was the gold-handled
dagger from the empty dagger case hung to
the embroidered baldrick.
Who were they?
What tragedy was this? why did they lie here in
their crystal sepulchres—was it the record of some
strange crime, preserved with meticulous care for all
the world to see?
.pn +1
.bn 159.png
The Spider could not tell. They had always been
there. He did not know their names or their story.
He could not refer to anyone who did. Baedeker was
equally indifferent and uncommunicative; he made no
mention of them. Hare was silent. Sladen ignored
them. No questioning of guide-books or guides ever
unravelled that mystery.
.tb
From the temple of Diana the Spider led Jane and
Peripatetica through more narrow, crooked streets
thronged with rough, fierce Syracusan children, to see
the Sixteenth Century palace of the Montaltos, now
fallen on grimy days. The windows with their ogives
and delicate twisted columns were crumbling, and the
noble court—through which silken guests and mailed
retainers had passed to mount the great stairs and
throng the long balconies—was now full of squalid,
squalling populace, and flocks of evil-savoured brown
goats being milked for the evening meal.
For some unexplained reason the mere presence of
the Spider was an offence to the lowering boys who
laired in this court. His grown-up air of being capably
in charge of two female forestieri stank in their
resentful nostrils, but Spider was an insect of his hands,
landing those hands resoundingly upon the cheeks of
his buffeters and hustlers until an enraged mother took
the part of one of her discomfited offspring, and under
her fierce cuffings the Spider melted into outraged tears.
Peripatetica had already discovered that angry English
had a demoralizing effect upon the natives. Its
crisp consonants seemed as daunting as blows to the
vowelled Sicilian; armed with which, and a parasol,
.pn +1
.bn 160.png
the Spider was rescued and borne half way to the
fountain of Arethusa before he could control his sniffles
and his protesting fingers, upon which he offered passionate
illustration that even Hercules could not overcome
the odds of ten to one, and that tears under the
circumstances left no smirch upon nascent manhood.
Jane, with her usual large grasp of financial questions,
applied a lire to the wounded heart with the happiest
results, and it was a once more united and cheerful
trio which leaned over Arethusa’s inadequate little
fount with its green scum and its frowzy papyrus plants.
Poor Nymph! She of the rainbow, and the “couch
of snows”—she whose “footsteps were paved with
green.” Flying from the gross wooing of Alpheus she
comes all the way from Elis under the sea to take
refuge with moon-crowned Artemis—Artemis “the protectress”—and
for safety is turned into a sparkling
pool which feeds all Syracuse with its sweet waters.
Now Artemis is dead. Her cool groves have given way
to acres of arid stone convents; earthquakes have
cracked Arethusa’s basin, letting the sea in and the
sweet water out; modern bad taste has walled her
vulgarly about, and the poor old nymph can only
gurgle reiterantly, “I was once a beauty; long ago,
long ago!” with not the smallest hope that any tourist
will believe it.
.tb
The Spider has retired to his web. Pranzo has been
discussed, and Jane and Peripatetica, refreshed, are taking
another nibble at the vast mouthful of Syracuse’s past.
It was a thrilling pranzo. Not because of the food,
nor of its partakers. The food was the same old stereotyped
.pn +1
.bn 161.png
menu. Gnocchi with cheese. Vegetables, divorced
from the meats—they cannot apparently occupy
the same course in any part of Italy. More cheese—a
jardinière of pomegranates, oranges, dates, and almonds.
Wine under a new name, but with the same delicate
perfumed savour of all the other wines they have drunk.
No more did the guests offer any startling variety.
The same tall condescending English woman; elderly,
manacled with bracelets, clanking with chains; domineering
a plain, red cheek-boned, flat-chested daughter
obviously needing a lot of marrying off on Mamma’s
part; dominating also a nervous, impetuous husband—the
travelling Englishman being much given to
nervous impetuosity. A few fat, greasy Italians with
napkin corners planted deeply into their collars, and
scintillating the gross joys of gluttony. Two dark-faced
melancholy-eyed foreigners, not easily placed as
to nationality. All types of feminine Americans. If
it were possible to see only their eyes they would be
recognizable as Americans from their glance of bold,
alert self-confidence and cheerfulness, very noticeable
by contrast with the European eye. Also if one could
see only that inevitable ready-made silk bodice the
wearers would be recognizable as fellow countrywomen.
The man who manufactures that type of bodice at
home must be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
No; the thrill of the pranzo was due to invisible
causes.
Behind the door from which the hopelessly estranged
meat and vegetables emerged there arose a clash and
murmur as of some domestic storm, and the waiters
passed the spinach course with an air so tense and distrait
that the crunching horde felt their forks strain
.pn +1
.bn 162.png
with curiosity in their hands. Even the fat Italians
paused in their gorging to stare. Even the foreigners’
melancholy dark eyes grew interested.
After the spinach course ensued a long interval; the
waiters lingering about with empty platters and furtive
pretences of occupation, plainly not daring to enter
that door, behind which ever waxed the loud rumour
of domestic war.
The interval increased in length. The clamour rose
and rose, and someone went in search of the Padrone.
Ours was a splendid Padrone; clothed upon with a
redingote and an historic and romantic dignity. For
had not Guy de Maupassant mentioned him with respectful
affection in “La Vie Errante”? The memory
of which artistic appreciation still surrounded him
with an aura. The Padrone entered that fateful door
with calm, stern purpose, while the guests crumbled
their bread in patient hope.
The domestic storm drew breath for one terrible
moment, then suddenly rose to the fury of a cyclone,
and the Padrone was shot convulsively forth into our
midst, the romantic aura hanging in tragic tatters
about him. Holding to the wall he swallowed hard
several times, seeking composure, then passed, with
knees wabbling nervously beneath the stately redingote,
to the office, where could be witnessed his passionately
protesting gestures and whispers poured into the sympathetic
bosom of the concierge.
The cyclone had expended itself; the courses resumed
their course, but what had taken place behind
that closed door was never known. It remained another
Syracusan mystery.
.tb
.pn +1
.bn 163.png
The Museo at Syracuse, though small, is the best in
Europe, for here, as on an open page, is written the
whole history of the island of Sicily—not a gap or a
break in the story of more than three thousand years;
of perhaps five thousand years, for it antedates all the
certain dates of history. Here are cases full of the
stone and obsidian tools and weapons of the autochthonous
Sikels; their crude pottery, their rough burial urns,
their bone ornaments, and feathery wisps of their woven
stuffs. These are all curiously like the relics of the
Mound-builders of America, now in the Smithsonian
Institution. Apparently the Stone Age was as deadeningly
similar everywhere as is our own Age of Steel.
Follows the rude metal working of the Siculians,
who, having some knowledge of the use of iron, can
build boats, and come across the narrow strait at Messina
and drive out the Sikels. So long ago as that the
old process of “assimilation” begins. The Siculians
begin to work in colour, to ornament their pottery, to
dye their stuffs, to mark their silver and iron with rough
chisel patterns—patterns and colours again astonishingly
like those of our own Pueblo Indians.
There are fragments of Phœnician work here and
there—the traders from Tyre and Sidon are beginning
to cruise along the coast and barter their superior wares
with the inhabitants.
All at once the arts make a great spring upward.
The Greeks have appeared. Rude, archaic, Dorian,
these arts at first, but strong, and showing a new spirit.
The potteries have a glaze, the patterns grow more intricate,
the reliefs show a plastic striving for grace and
life, the ornaments are of gold as well as silver and
bronze, and steel has appeared. Follows a splendid
.pn +1
.bn 164.png
flowering; an apogee of beauty is reached. Vases of
exquisite contours covered with spirited paintings, pictures
of life and death, of war and love. Coins that
are unrivaled in numismatic beauty; struck frequently
with the quadriga to celebrate the winning of the chariot
race at the Olympic games; a triumph valued as greatly
by the Greeks of Sicily as is the winning of the Derby
by English horsemen. Tools, jewels, arms, all adorned
with infinite taste and skill. Statues of such subtle
grace and loveliness as this famous “Nymph,” the
long-buried marble now grown to tints of blond pearl.
Figurines of baked clay, reproducing the costumes, the
ornaments, the physiology of the passing generations—faces
arch, lovely, full of gay humour. Splendid sarcophagi,
and burial urns still holding ashes and calcined
bones, and tiny clay reproductions of the death
masks of the departed, full of tender human individuality,
or else heads of the gods, such as that enchanting
tinted and crowned Artemis, that still lies in one of the
great sarcophagi amid a handful of burned bones.
Punic and Roman remains begin to show themselves,
recording that tremendous struggle between Europe
and Africa for dominion in the midland sea, under the
impact of which the Greek civilization is to be crushed.
Byzantine ornament appears. Africa makes another
struggle and is for a while triumphant, leaving record
of the Moorish domination in damascened arms, in
deep-tinted tiles.
The Goths and Normans fuse with the Saracen arts
at first, but soon dominate the Eastern influence and
shake it off, developing an art inferior only to the Greek.
The Spanish follow, baroque, sumptuous, pseudo-classical.
All the story of all the conquerors is here.
.pn +1
.bn 165.png
“Oh!” sighs Peripatetica. “What an illustrated
history; I could go on turning its pages for days.”
“Well, you’ll turn them alone!” snapped Jane,
clutching frantically at her side, and adding in a dreadful
whisper: “There are fleas hopping all over these
historical pages. Come away this instant.”
But they linger a moment on the way out to look
again at the famous headless Venus Landolina.
“There is only one real Venus,” commented Peripatetica
contemptuously. “The Melian. All the rest
are only plump ladies about to step into their baths. I
detest these fat women with insufficient clothing who
sprawl all over Europe calling themselves the goddesses
of love. Goddesses indeed! They look more like
soft white chestnut worms. That great dominating,
irresistible lady of the Louvre is a deity, if you like—Our
Lady of Beauty—besides, this little person’s calf
is flat on the inner side.”
“Iss it not righd dat her calve should be vlat on de
inside?” queried an elderly Swiss, also looking, and
showing all her handsome porcelain teeth in a smile
of anxious uncertainty. “I dink dat must be righd,
because Baedeker marks her wid a ztar.”
“Don’t allow your opinions to be unsettled by this
lady’s,” consoled Jane sweetly. “She isn’t really an
authority. It would be wiser perhaps and more comfortable
to be guided by Baedeker.”
“Bud she has no head,” grieved the Swiss. “How
can Baedeker mark her wid a ztar w’en she has no
head?”
How indeed? But then, there is such a lot of
body!...
.pn +1
.bn 166.png
It is some days later. They have “done” the river
Amapus; have been rowed among the towering feathery
papyrus plants, the original roots of which were
sent to Heiro I. by Ptolemy, and which still flourish in
Sicily though all the parent plants have vanished out
of Egypt.
They have looked down into the clear depths of La
Pisma’s spring. Jane says it is less beautiful than the
Silver Spring in Florida out which the Ocklawaha
river rises, but that fountain of a tropical forest—transparent
as air, and held in a great argent bowl—has
no history, while La Pisma was the playmate of
fair Persephone, and on seeing her ravished away by
fiery Pluto melted quite away into a flood of bright
tears. And it was she who, having caught up Persephone’s
dropped veil, floated it to the feet of Demeter,
and told her where to look for the lost daughter. La
Pisma and Anapus her lover were, too, the real guardians
of Syracuse, for as one after another of the armies
of invading enemies camped on their oozy plain they
sapped the invaders’ strength, and blighted their courage
with fevers from the miasmatic breaths exhaled
upon the foes as they slept.
Jane and Peripatetica have found another mystery.
Syracuse, it appears, is full of mysteries. This last is
known as the Castle of Euryalus, and they must take
horse and drive to it, six miles from the hotel, though
still within the walls of the original city, once twenty-two
miles about; shrunk in these later days to less
than three. This six miles of pilgrimage gives ample
time to search the guide-books for information as to
this thing they have come out for to see. But the
guide-books palter, and shuffle and evade, as they are
.pn +1
.bn 167.png
prone to do about anything really interesting. Euryalus,
solid enough to their eyes and to their sense of
touch, seems as illusive in history as the cloudy towers
of the Fata Morgana—now you see it, and now you
don’t. It seems to come from nowhere. No one can
tell when or by whom it was built, but it always turns
up in the history of Syracuse in moments of stress—much
like those Christian patron-saints who used suddenly
to descend in shining armour to turn the tide of
battle. One hears of Dionysius strengthening it when
news comes that the dread Himilcon is on his way
from Carthage with two hundred triremes accompanied
by rafts, galleys, and transports innumerable. Dionysius
makes Euryalus the key of a surprise he prepares
for the Carthagenians, for when the latter come sailing
into the harbour—“A forest of black masts and dark
sails, with transports filled with elephants trumpeting
at the smell of land,” and from the West “comes trampling
across the plain by the Helorian road and the
banks of the Anapus, the Punic army 300,000 strong,
with 3,000 horse led by Himilcon in person,”—there
stands waiting for them one of the most amazing works
ever wrought by the will of a single man.
Dionysius in twenty days has built a wall three miles
long barring Himilcon’s ingress at the only weak point.
Seventy thousand of the inhabitants of Syracuse had
worked at this building. Forty thousand slaves had
been in the Latomiæ cutting the blocks of easily hewn
sandstone, which six thousand oxen carried to the
wall, while other armies of men had been upon the
slopes of Ætna ravaging the oak woods for huge beams.
When Himilcon comes the wall is complete.
Then there are more appearings and disappearings
.pn +1
.bn 168.png
through the years, and suddenly Euryalus fills the foreground
again. Archimedes is helping Hieronymus to
fortify it against Marcellus—is designing veiled sally
ports, and oblique apertures from which his “scorpions”
and other curious war engines may hurl stones,
is placing there the burning glasses with which he will
set the Roman galleys on fire by means of the sun’s
heat. But though the Carthagenians were terrible the
Roman is more terrible still, and in spite of Archimedes
they get into Syracuse after a three years’ siege. While
the furies of final capture are raging Archimedes sits
calmly drawing figures upon the sand. A Roman
soldier rushing by carelessly smears them with his foot.
Archimedes is angry, and “uses language.” The soldier,
angry in his turn—no doubt “language” in Greek
sounded especially insulting—shortens his sword and
stabs “the greatest man then living in the world.”
Marcellus sheds tears when he hears it, and buries
the father of mathematics with splendid honours,
marking the tombstone—as Archimedes had wished—with
no name, with only a sphere and a cylinder. He
spared Syracuse too; left her temples and splendours
intact, and forbid the usual plundering and massacres.
Marcellus was, it seems, in every way a very decent
person, and Peripatetica grieved that those frigid Romans
wouldn’t let him have a triumph when he went
home, and Jane breathed a hope that he used more
language to that murderous soldier....
Later comes Cicero to Syracuse, hunting evidence
against Verres, who had, as pro-consul, robbed the
city of all the treasures Marcellus had spared, and the
great lawyer takes time from his examination of witnesses
to look out Archimedes’ resting place. He finds
.pn +1
.bn 169.png
it overgrown with thistles and brambles, but recognizes
it by the sphere and cylinder, and sets it once
more in order.
.nf b
“So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of time,
On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime,
Where at his feet in honoured dust disclosed
The immortal Sage of Syracuse reposed.”
.nf-
“You cribbed that from one of the guide-books,”
jeered Jane.
“Of course I did,” admitted Peripatetica with calm
unblushingness. “Do you imagine I go around with
samples of formal Eighteenth Century Pope-ry concealed
about my person?”
.tb
They are on their way to the theatre, passing by the
ancient site of the Forum, which site is now a mere
dusty, down-at-heels field where goats browse and
donkeys graze, and where squads of awkward recruits
are being trained to take cover behind a couple of grass
blades, to fire their empty rifles with some pretence at
unanimity.
The road winds between walled orange and lemon
groves, in which contadini are drying and packing
miles of pungent golden peel for transportation to
French and English confectioners. The air is redolent
with it.
Themistocles—Jane doubts his sponsors in baptism
having had any hand in this, but the grubby card he
presented with so pleasant a glance, so fine a gesture at
the time of striking a bargain for the day, bore it printed
as plain as plain—Themistocles, then, dismounts before
.pn +1
.bn 170.png
a small drinking shop lying at the foot of an elevation.
With one broad sweep of his hand he signifies
that he is making them free of history, and yields
them to the care of a nobleman in gold and blue; a
nobleman possessing a pleasing manner and one of
those plangent, golden-strung voices which the lucky
possessors always so enjoy using.
The two demand the Latomia Paradiso; the name
having seduced their sentimental imaginations. The
peer intimates that the name is misleading, but with
gentle firmness they drop down the path which descends
into the quarries from which Dionysius hurriedly
snatched the material for his wall; material (almost as
easy to cut as cheese, but hardening in the air) which
has been dug, scooped, and riven away as fantastically
as if sculptured by the capricious flow of water, leaving
caverns, towers, massy columns, arches, a thousand
freaked shapes. Now all this is draped with swaying
curtains of ivy, with climbing roses heavy with unblown
buds, with trailing geraniums hanging from
crannies, with wild flowers innumerable. Lemon and
fig trees grow upon the quarries’ floor, mosses and
ferns carpet the shady places, black-green caroba trees
huddle in neglected corners.
The nobleman, however, is impatient to show other
wonders. He leads the way into caverns through
whose openings shafts of sunlight steal, turning the
dusk within to a blond gloom, caverns where rope-makers
walk to and fro twisting long strands, twirling
wheels, with a cheerful chatter that booms hollowly
back to them from the vaulted darkness over their
heads; where the birds who flit in and out hear their
twitterings reflected enormously, with a curious effect;
.pn +1
.bn 171.png
where even the sound of dripping moisture is magnified
into a large solemnity.
He has saved the best for the last. Here an arch
soars a hundred feet, giving entrance to a lofty narrow
cave. Where the sides of the arch meet is a small
channel of chiselled smoothness, ending in an orifice
through which a glimpse of the sky shows like a tiny
blue gem. It is the Ear of Dionysius. In this cave,
so the story runs, the Tyrant confined suspected conspirators,
for this is a natural whispering gallery, and
the lowest of confidential talk within it would mount
the walls, each lightest word would run along that
smooth channel, as through the tube of an ear, and
reach the listener at the orifice. For the uneasy Dictator
knows that his turbulent Greek subjects, who
cannot rule themselves, are equally unable to bear
placidly the rule of another, and it would have been interesting,
and at times exciting, to have been permitted
to watch that stern, bent face as the rebellious protests
climbed in whispers to the greedy ear a hundred feet
above.
A wonderful echo lives in this cave. Now it is plain
why the guide has such large and vibrant tones—he
was chosen because of that natural gift.
“Addio!” he cries gaily. “Addio,” calls the darkness,
a little sadly and wistfully. The guide sings a
stave, and all the dusk is full of melodious chorus. He
intones a sonorous verse, and golden words roll down
to them through the gloom.
“Speak! speak!” the nobleman urges, and Jane and
Peripatetica meekly breathe a few banalities in level
American tones. Not a sound returns; their syllables
are swallowed by the silence.
.pn +1
.bn 172.png
“Staccato! staccato!” remonstrates the guide, and
when they comply, light laughing voices vouchsafe
answers.
“I think,” says Peripatetica reflectively, as they leave
the Latomia, “that one has to address life like that if
one is to get a clear reply—to address it crisply, definitely,
with quick inflections. Level, flat indefiniteness
will awake no echoes.”
“‘How true’! as the ladies write on the margins of
circulating library books,” comments Jane with unveiled
sarcasm.
The guide has lots more up his gold-braided sleeve.
He opens a gate and displays to them with a flourish
the largest altar in the world. Six hundred feet one
way, sixty feet the other; cut partly from solid rock,
made in part of masonry. Hiero II. thought he knew
a trick of governing worth any amount of listening at
doors. Those who are fed and amused are slack conspirators.
So this huge altar to Zeus is built, and here
every year he sacrifices 450 oxen to the ruler of heaven.
“It must have rather run into money for him,” says
Jane thoughtfully, “but he probably considered it
cheaper to sacrifice oxen than be sacrificed himself.”
“Yes,” says Peripatetica, who has just been consulting
the guide-book. “It must have been rather like
the barbecues the American politicians used to give to
their constituents half a century ago, for only the choicest
bits were burnt before the gods, sprinkled with oil
and wine and sweet-smelling spices, and the populace,
I suppose, carried home the rest. No doubt Hiero
found it a paying investment.”
The theatre, when reached, is found, of course, to
have a beautiful situation. All Greek theatres have.
.pn +1
.bn 173.png
They were a people who liked to open all the doors of
enjoyment at once, and when they filled this enormous
semicircle (24,000 could sit there) cut from the living
rock upon the hillside, they could not only listen to the
rolling, organ-like Greek of the great poets, and have
their souls shaken with the “pity and terror” of tragedy,
or laugh at the gay mockery of comedy, but by
merely lifting their eyes they could look out upon the
blue Ionian sea, the smiling flowered land, and in the
distance the purple hills dappled with flying shadows.
In their time all the surrounding eminences were
crowned with great temples, and behind them—this
was a contrast very Greek—lay the Street of Tombs.
For they had not a shuddering horror of death, hastening
their departed into remote isolation from their own
daily life. They liked to pass to their occupations and
amusements among the beautiful receptacles made for
the ashes of those they had loved.
In this theatre Syracuse saw not only the great
dramas, but the great dramatists and poets. Æschylus,
sitting beside Hiero I., saw all his plays produced
here; “The Ætnaiai” and “The Persians” were written
for this stage. Pindar was often here; so were Bacchylides
and Simonides, and a host of lesser playwrights.
Indeed, no theatre has ever known such
famous auditors. Theocritus, Pythagoras, Sappho, Empedocles,
Archimedes, Plato, Cicero, have all sat here.
Plato was long in Syracuse; called by Dionysius to
train his son Dion, he labours with such poor success
that Dion is driven from the power inherited from his
father, by the citizens outraged at the grossness of his
vices. Before this fall Plato has left him in disgust,
Dion remarking with careless insolence:
.pn +1
.bn 174.png
“I fear you will not speak kindly of me in Athens.”
To which the philosopher, with still more insolent
sarcasm, replies:
“We are little likely to be so in want of a topic in
Athens as to speak of you at all.”
Yet it would seem as if no good effort was ever
wholly lost, for when Dion, earning his bread in exile
as an obscure schoolmaster, is sneeringly asked what
he ever learned from Plato, his dignified answer is,
“He taught me to bear misfortune with resignation.”
.tb
Themistocles has conducted them, with much cracking
of his whip, much irrelevant conversation, quite to
the other side of what once was Syracuse, and has deposited
them before a little low gate that pierces a high
wall. Inside this gate is a tiny garden cultivated by
two monks who do the work by means of short-handled
double-ended hoes; a laborious-looking Sicilian implement.
The garden is full of pansies growing between
low hedges of sweet-smelling thyme and rosemary.
At the same moment there debarks a carriage
load of touring Germans. Typical touring Germans;
solid, rosy, set four-square to the winds; all clinging
to Baedekers encased in covers of red and yellow cross
stitch of Berlin wool, all breathing a fixed intention of
seeing everything worth seeing in the thorough-going
German fashion. The monks openly squabble as to
the division of the parties who have come to see the
church and the catacombs, and eventually the big,
shaggy, red-haired one, who might be some ancient
savage Gaul come to life, sullenly carries off the Teutons.
It is somewhat of a shock to Jane and Peripatetica
.pn +1
.bn 175.png
when their slim, supple, handsome Sicilian explains
to them that this contest has its reason not in their personal
charm, but is owing to a reluctance to guide the
hated Tedeschi.
There is something inexplicable in this universal unpopularity
of the Teuton in Italy. Germany has been
dotingly sentimental about Italy for generations.
.nf c
“Kennst du das Land”
.nf-
.ni
has hovered immanent on every lip from beyond the
Rhine ever since the days of Goethe. They passionately
study her language, her literature, her monuments,
and her history. They make pilgrimages to
worship at all her shrines, pouring in reverent Pan-Germanic
hordes across the Alps to do it, and despite
their extreme and skilful frugality they must necessarily
leave in the Peninsula hundreds of thousands of
their hard-earned, laboriously hoarded marks, which
they have not grudged to spend in the service of beauty.
Yet Italy seems possessed of a sullen repugnance to the
entire race.
.pi
“Tedeschi!” hisses the monk. “Tutto ‘Ja! Ja!
Wunderschön!’” with a deliriously funny imitation of
their accent and gestures, as he steers swiftly around a
corner to prevent the two parties fusing into one.
The church of San Giovanni is, of course, founded
upon a Greek temple—most Sicilian churches are, and—of
all places!—this one stands upon a ruin of a temple
of Bacchus—the fragments of which poke up all through
the tiny garden. The church, equally, of course, has
been Eighteenth Centuried, but happily not wholly;
remaining a great wheel window, and beautiful bits
here and there of Twelfth Century Gothic in the outer
.pn +1
.bn 176.png
walls, though the interior is in the usual dusty and
neglected gaunt desuetude. The whole place is in decay,
even the attendant monastery is crumbling, the
number of monks shrunk to a mere handful, despite
the fact that this is a spot of special sanctity, for when
they descend into the massive chapel of the crypt there
is pointed out to them the little altar before which Saint
Paul preached when he was in Syracuse.
“Of course, St. Paul was here,” said Jane. “Everybody
who was anybody came to Syracuse sooner or
later—including ourselves.”
The guide is firm as to the altar having stood in this
very chapel when that remarkable Hebrew poured out
to the Syracusans his strange new message of democracy,
but this is clearly the usual fine monkish superiority
to cramping probabilities, for such rib-vaultings
as these were as yet undreamed of by the architects of
Paul’s day.
The altar is Greek, and no doubt was standing in
the fane of Bacchus when the Jew spoke by it. The
Greeks were interested and tolerant about new religions,
and the life and death which Paul described would
hardly have seemed strange to them, spoken in that
place. That birth and death, the blood turned to
wine, the sacred flesh eaten in hope of regeneration,
having so many and such curious resemblances to the
legends, and to the worship of the Vine God celebrated
on that very spot. “At Thebes alone,” had said Sophocles,
speaking of the birth of Bacchus, “mortal women
bear immortal gods.” The violent death, the descent
into hell, the resurrection, were all familiar to them,
and what a natural echo would be found in their hearts
to the saying, “I am the true Vine.”...
.pn +1
.bn 177.png
The monk only smiles bitterly when it is demanded
of him to explain why a spot of so reverent an association
should be abandoned to dust and decay, and to
the interest of curious tourists, when the mere apocryphal
vision of an hysterical peasant girl should draw
hordes of miracle-seeking pilgrims to Lourdes.
Perhaps there was something typical in that anguished
Christ painted upon the great flat wooden
crucifix that hung over the altar in the crypt; a Christ
fading slowly into a mere grey shadow; the dim,
hardly visible ghost of a once living agony....
The monk goes before, the flickering candle which
he shades with his fingers throwing a fan of yellow rays
around his tonsured head. These are the Catacombs
of Syracuse.
.nf c
“On every hand the roads begin.”
.nf-
Roads underground, these, leading away endlessly
into darkness. At long intervals they widen into
lofty domed chapels rudely hewn, as is all this place,
directly from the rock. Here and there a narrow shaft
is cut upward through the earth, letting in faint gleams
of sunshine through a fringe of grass and ferns, showing
sometimes an oxalis drooping its pale little golden
face to peer over the shaft’s edge into the gloom below.
And in all these roads—miles and miles of roads, extending
as far as Catania it is said; roads under roads
three tiers deep—and in all these roads and chapels
are only open graves. Graves in the floor beneath
one’s feet; graves in every inch of the walls; graves
over graves, graves behind graves. Great family
graves cut ten feet back into the rock, containing narrow
niches for half a dozen bodies—graves where four
.pn +1
.bn 178.png
generations have slept side by side. Graves that are
mere shallow scoopings hardly more than three spans
in length, where newborn babies must have slept alone.
Tombs innumerable beyond reckoning, all hewn from
the solid rock, and each and all vacant. An incredibly
vast city of the dead from which all the dead inhabitants
have departed.
This is the crowning mystery of mysterious Syracuse.
Who were this vast army of the buried? And
where have their dead bodies gone?... Christians,
everyone says.
“But why,” clamours Peripatetica, “should Christians
have had these peculiar mole-like habits?”
The monk merely shrugs.
“Oh, I know,” she goes on quickly before Jane can
get her mouth open. “Persecution is the explanation
always given, but will you tell me how you can successfully
persecute a population of this size? There
must be half a million of graves, at least, in this place,
and there would have to be a good many living to bury
the dead, and Syracuse in its best days hadn’t a million
inhabitants. Now, you can’t successfully martyrize
nine-tenths of the population, even if it is as
meek and sheep-like as the early Christians pretended
to be.”
“They didn’t all die at once,” suggests Jane helpfully.
“This took years.”
“I should think it did! Years? It took generations,
or else the Christians died like flies, and proved that
piety was dreadfully undermining to the health. No
wonder the pagans wouldn’t accept anything so fatal.
But populations as large as this one must have been
to furnish so many dead, don’t go on burrowing underground
.pn +1
.bn 179.png
for generations. They come out and impose
their beliefs upon the rest. And, besides, how can the
stories of their worshipping and burying in secret be
true when the mass of material taken out of these excavations
would have to be put somewhere? And
how could the presence or the removal of all that
refuse stone escape attention? The persecuted Christian
theory doesn’t explain the mystery.”
Even Peripatetica had to pause sometimes for breath,
and then Jane got her innings.
“Equally mysterious, in my opinion,” she said, “is
the rifling of all these graves. The monk tells me ‘the
Saracens did it,’ but the Saracens were in Syracuse less
than two hundred years, and of all these myriad graves
only two or three have been found intact, and these
two or three were graves beneath graves. Every other
one for sixty miles, from the largest to the smallest, has
been opened and entirely emptied. The Saracen population
in Syracuse was never very large. It consisted
in greater part of the ruling classes. The bulk of the
people were natives and Christians, who would regard
this grave-rifling as the horridest sacrilege, and if the
Saracens undertook alone this enormous task they
would have had, even in two hundred years, time for
nothing else. The opening of the graves is as strange
a puzzle as the making of them.”
“Perhaps some last trump was blown over Syracuse
alone,” hazarded Peripatetica, “and all the dead
here rose and left their graves behind them empty.”
“Come up into the air and sunlight,” said Jane.
“Your mind shows the need of it.”
At the little gate sat one of the monastery dependents,
whose perquisite was a permission to sell post-cards,
.pn +1
.bn 180.png
and such coins and bits of pottery as he could retrieve by
grubbing in the rubbish of the empty graves. He had
a few tiny earthenware lamps, marked with a cross
and still smoke-blackened, some so-called tear jugs,
and one or two small clay masks which, from the closed
eyelids and smooth sunken contours, must have been
modelled in miniature from real death masks. Among
these they found Arsinoë—or so they named her—whose
face was touched with that strange, secret archness,
that sweet smiling scorn so often seen on faces
one day dead. The broad brow with its drooping hair,
the full tender lips so instinct with vivid personality,
went with them, and became to them like the record
of some one seen long ago and dimly remembered,
though the lovely benignant original must have been
mere dust of dust for more than a thousand years.
.tb
A nun in a faded blue gown has been showing them
the relics of Santa Lucia. She has also been telling
them how the Saint, when a young man admired her
eyes, snatched them out of her head with her own hands
and handed them to the young man on a plate.
“What a very rude and unpleasant thing to do!”
comments Jane in English. “But invariably saints
seem so lamentably deficient in amiability and social
charm.”
The nun unlocks the gate of the Cappucini Latomia,
and Jane and Peripatetica descend the long stair cut
in the rocks. They are seeking the place where the
remnant of that army Alcibiades so skilfully introduced
into Catania, finally perished.
They have been reading tales of the Athenians’ long
.pn +1
.bn 181.png
siege of Syracuse, of their final frightful despairing
struggle, so full of anguish, terror, and fierce courage—“when
Greek met Greek”—and they have come to
look at the spot where those seven thousand unhappy
prisoners finally found an end. When they were driven
into this quarry they were all that remained of the
tremendous expedition which Athens had drained her
best blood to send. Alcibiades had fled long ago, and
was in exile. Nicias and Demosthenes, who had surrendered
them, were now dead; fallen on their own
swords. The harbour of Syracuse was strewn with the
charred wrecks of their fleet. The marshes of Anapus
were rotting with their comrades, the fountain of Cyane
choked with them. They themselves were wounded
to a man, shuddering with fevers, starving, demoralised
with long fighting and the horrible final débâcle
when they were thrust all together into this Latomia;
not as now a glorious garden with thyme and mint and
rosemary beneath their feet, ivy-hung, full of groves
and orchards, but raw, glaring, shaled with chipped
stone, the staring yellow sides towering smoothly up
for a hundred feet to the burning blue of the Sicilian
sky. There in that waterless furnace for seventy days
they died and died. Died of wounds, of thirst, of
starvation; died of the poisonings of those already
dead.
And the populace of Syracuse came day by day,
holding lemons to their noses, to look down at them
curiously, until there was not one movement, not one
sound from any one of the seven thousand.
There is but one human gleam in the whole demoniacal
story—a touch characteristically Greek. Some
of the prisoners had beguiled the tedium of dying by
.pn +1
.bn 182.png
chanting the noble choruses of Euripides’ newest play,
which Syracuse had not yet heard, and these had been
at once drawn up from among their fellows and treated
with every kindness. They were entreated to repeat
as much as they could remember of the poet’s lines
again and again, and were finally sent back to Athens
with presents and much honour.
Not a trace of the tragedy remains. The only record
of death now in those lovely wild, deep-sunken
gardens is a banal monument to Mazzini, and a tomb
hollowed out of the wall in one of the caves. A tomb
closed with a marble slab, upon which was cut an
epitaph telling, in the pompous formal language of that
day, of the young American naval lieutenant who died
here suddenly on his ship in the first decade of the
Nineteenth Century, and because he was a Protestant,
and therefore could not occupy any Catholic graveyard,
was laid to rest alone in this place of hideous
memories.
Poor lad! Sleeping so far from his own people, and
thrust away here by himself, since he must, of course,
not expect to lie near those who had been baptised with
a different motion of the fingers. Seeing which isolation
Peripatetica quoted that amused saying of an
ironic old Pagan world, “Behold, how these Christians
love one another!”
.tb
It is the terrace of the Villa Politi. They have
finally forgiven the villa, and have climbed up here
from the Latomia to sit on its lovely terrace, to drink
tea and eat the honey of Hybla, to look down on one
side into the blossom-hung depths of the Athenians’
.pn +1
.bn 183.png
prison, on the other out to the mauve and silver of the
twilight sea.
“Peripatetica,” says Jane with great firmness, “I
am suffering from an indigestion of history. I am
going away somewhere. All these spirits of the past
block up the place so that I’ve no freedom of movement.
It’s an oppression to feel that every time one
puts a foot down it’s in the track of thousands and
thousands of dead feet, and that one’s stirring up the
dust of bones with every step we take. Everything we
look at is covered so thick with layer on layer of passion
and pain that I’ve got an historic heartache. I
leave to-morrow.”
Peripatetica didn’t answer at first. She was looking
out over the dusky sea, from which breathed a soft
slow wind.
The change had come while they were in the Latomia;
had come suddenly. That bleak unkindness
in the atmosphere—of which they were always conscious
even in the sun—had all at once disappeared.
Even though the sun was gone a mild sweetness seemed
to exhale from the earth, as from a heart at last content.
“Jane,” said Peripatetica, turning shining eyes upon
her, “Persephone has returned. Let us go to Enna
and meet her!”
.pn +1
.bn 184.png
.pb
.if h
.il fn=illus_184.jpg w=250px
.if-
.if t
.nf c
[Illustration: Decoration]
.nf-
.if-
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV || The Return of Persephone
.nf c
“God’s three chief gifts, Man’s bread and oil and wine.”
.nf-
No doubt the usual things that happen to travellers
happened to Jane and Peripatetica at Enna-Castrogiovanni,
and on their way to it. Things annoying
and amusing, tiresome or delightful, but they have no
memory of these things, all lesser matters having been
swallowed up in the final satisfaction of their quest.
Memory is an artist who works in mosaic, and all
the fantastic jumble and contrast of the experiences of
travel she heaps pell-mell together in her bag. Bits of
sights but half seen, but half understood; vague memories
of other things seen before and seemingly but
slightly related to these new impressions, mere faint
associations but partly realised, along with keen emotions
and strong pleasures; all tumbled in together
and rubbing corners with petty vexations, small inconveniences,
.pn +1
.bn 185.png
practical details. Memory gathers them
all without discrimination and carries them along with
her, a most unsatisfactory-looking mess at first sight,
out of which it would seem nothing much could be
made. But give her time. While one’s attention is
occupied with other matters she is busy—sorting, arranging,
rejecting here, adding there. Recollections
that bulked large at first she often files down to a mere
point; much that appeared but dull rubbish with no
colour she finds valuable when pushed into the background,
because its neutral tones serve to bring out
more clearly the outlines of the design. Dark bits are
skilfully employed for the sake of the contrast, and to
intensify the warm tones of richer fragments. The
shadowy associations give body and modelling to impressions
otherwise flat and ineffective. All at once
the picture is seen; a complete delineation of an episode,
taking form and warmth, and vivid life; and
over the whole she spreads the magic bloom of distance,
which transforms the crude materials, hides the
joinings of the mosaic, and makes of it a treasure of the
soul.
Something of this sort she did for Castrogiovanni.
’Tis but an impressionist picture. They only see, looking
back to it, two great, divine shadows breathing
such passion and pain, such essential, heart-stirring
loveliness that the eye hardly observes the wreathed
border about the picture, a border which serves merely
as a frame for those two significant figures revived from
the dreams of primitive man.
Here is an incident taken from the unimportant
frame of the picture....
Jane and Peripatetica are in the train. It seems
.pn +1
.bn 186.png
quaint to be finding one’s way to the “Plutonian Shore”
in a little puffing, racketting Sicilian train. To be
properly in the picture they should have been included
in a band of pilgrim shepherds piping in the hills as
they wander upward to the great shrine of Demeter,
to give thanks for the increase of their flocks, to offer
her white curds, and goat cheeses, and the snowy wool
of washed fleeces. Pilgrims who are weeks upon the
road; climbing higher and higher each day through
the steady sunshine, and sleeping at night under the
large stars, with the little olive-wood fire, that cooked
the evening meal, winking and smouldering beside
them in the dewy darkness. Resting here and there
at the Greek farms, where new pilgrims are waiting to
add themselves to the pious band.
Jane, who consults her Theocritus oftener in Sicily
than her Baedeker—for she says she finds that Theocritus
has on the whole a better literary style—is the
one who suggests this idyllic alternative.
“Just listen to him!” she cries. “This would be
travel really worth while recording. He is telling of
just such a journey, and of the pause at one of the hill
farms:
“‘So I, and Eucritus, and the fair Amyntichus,
turned aside into the house of Phrasidamus, and lay
down with delight in beds of sweet tamarisk and fresh
cuttings from the vines, strewed on the ground. Many
poplars and elm trees were waving over our heads, and
not far off the running of the sacred water from the
cave of the nymphs warbled to us; in the shimmering
grass the sunburnt grasshoppers were busy with their
talk, and from afar the owl cried softly out of the
tangled thorns of the blackberry. The larks were singing
.pn +1
.bn 187.png
and the hedge birds, and the turtle dove moaned;
the bees flew round and round the fountains, murmuring
softly. The scent of late summer and the fall of
the year was everywhere; the pears fell from the trees
at our feet, and apples in number rolled down at our
sides, and the young plum trees bent to the earth with
the weight of their fruit.
“‘The wax, four years old, was loosed from the heads
of the wine jars. O! nymphs of Castalia, who dwell
on the steeps of Parnassus, tell me, I pray you, was it
a draught like this that the aged Chiron placed before
Hercules, in the stony cave of Phulus? Was it nectar
like this that made that mighty shepherd on Anapus’
shore, Polyphemus, who flung the rocks upon Ulysses’
ships, dance among his sheep-folds? A cup like this ye
poured out now upon the altar of Demeter, who presides
over the threshing floor. May it be mine once
more to dig my big winnowing-fan through her heaps
of corn; and may I see her smile upon me, holding
poppies and handfuls of corn in her two hands!’”
.tb
Instead of being accompanied on their arcadian
journey by Eucritus and the fair Amyntichus, they have
as companions in the little carriage of the Regie Ferrovia
the two dark foreigners from Syracuse, upon
whose nationality they have speculated at idle moments.
They prove to be Poles. Two gentlemen from Cracow,
escaped for a moment from its snows to make a
little “giro” in the Sicilian sunshine.
Conversation develops around Ætna—of all places!
Peripatetica catches sight of it, as the train rounds a
curve, sees it suddenly looming against the sky, a glittering
.pn +1
.bn 188.png
cone of silver swimming upon a base of misty
hyacinth-blue. By a gesture she calls everyone’s attention
to this new and charming pose of that ever
spectacular mountain.
Jane glances up from her book and signifies a condescending
approval, but the sight has a most startling
and electrifying effect upon the Poles. They miss, in
their enthusiasm, flinging themselves from the carriage
window merely by a hair’s breadth, and crying, “Ætna!
Ætna!” with passionate satisfaction, not only solemnly
clasp hands with one another, but also grasp and shake
the limply astonished hands of Jane and Peripatetica.
Transpires that the foreigners have been three weeks
in Sicily without once having caught a glimpse of the
ever present, ever dominant mountain, since, with
sulky coquetry, whenever they were within sight it
promptly hid in veils of mist, and now they are bound
for Cracow, via Palermo, facing uneasily the confession
at home of having been to the play and missed seeing
the star.
They hang from the window in eager endeavour to
cram all lost opportunities into one, and rend the
heavens with lamentations when the carriage comes to
rest immediately opposite a tiny station whose solid
minuteness is sufficient to blot from sight all that distant
majesty.
“It is like life,” the taller foreigner wails, sinking
back baffled from an attempt to pierce the obdurate
masonry with a yearning eye. “One little ugly emotion
close by can shut out from one’s sight all the loftiest
beauties of existence!”
This fine generalization gathers acuity from the fact
that a sharp turn soon after leaving the station piles
.pn +1
.bn 189.png
up elevations that quickly rob them of their long-sought
opportunity, but for the rest of the time that the paths
of the four lie together the Poles insist upon attributing
to the direct intervention of Jane and Peripatetica the
wiping of this blot from their travelling ’scutcheon—an
attitude which Jane and Peripatetica find both soothing
and refreshing, and they affect a large familiarity
and possessiveness with the Volcano, which the Poles
bear with polite and grateful respect; the more so, no
doubt, as the two seekers possess—as Americans—a
novelty almost more startling and intense than Ætna.
The gentlemen from Cracow have never met Americans
until now, and make no attempt to disguise the exhilaration
of so unwonted a spectacle—confessing that in
their turn they too have been speculating upon the
racial identity of “the foreign ladies,” whose nationality
they were unable to guess. They are consumed
with an inexhaustible curiosity to get the “natives’”
point of view, and exchange secret glances of surprise
and pleasure at the exhibition of human intelligence
in a people so remote from Cracow. When the necessary
change of train detaches them from their eager
investigations Peripatetica is still futilely engaged in
her persistent endeavour to combat in the European
mind its strange delusion as to the real relations of the
sexes in her own land.
... “No; the American man in no respect resembles
the Sicilian donkey ... no; he does not ordinarily
spend his life toiling humbly under the intolerable
loads laid upon him by his imperious mate....
No; he is not a dull unintelligent drudge wholly unworthy
of the radiant beings who permit him to surround
them with an incredible luxury.... No; the
.pn +1
.bn 190.png
American woman is not his intellectual superior. In
everything of real practical importance he is immensely
the superior.... No; he isn’t this.... No; he
isn’t that.... He isn’t any one of the things the European
thinks he is and—good bye!”
The mountains all this while have been peaking up;
mounting, climbing, rolling more wildly, and at last
two of them soar splendidly, sweep up close on to
three thousand feet into the sky ... Castrogiovanni
and Calascibetta, and the train drops Jane and Peripatetica
at their feet.
Memory has cast out, or has pushed into the background,
the long weary jolting up to the wild little wind-swept
town; makes no record of the hotel or the fellow
tourists; has jotted down a certain straight wild beauty
in the inhabitants, who have eagle-like Saracen profiles,
but grey Norman eyes. Has left well in the foreground
a dark castle, and a cluster of half-ruined
towers. All else of modern details she has rejected,
except a great wash of blue, a vast vista of tumbling
broken landscape, huge and stern, for she has been
busy with a picture of the past; building up an imagination
of vanished gods moving about their mighty
affairs, playing out Olympian dramas in this lofty land.
Here is the very centre of the God’s-land, the “umbilicus
Siciliæ,” the Key of Sicily, Enna “the inexpugnable,”
the strongest natural fortress in the world,
which no one ever took except by treachery; which the
Saracens besieged in vain for thirty-one years, and
when they finally got it, through a treason, the Normans
in their turn could not dislodge them until all
Sicily had been theirs for a quarter of a century, and
then only through another betrayal. In the great
.pn +1
.bn 191.png
slave war Eunus, the serf, held it against the whole
power of Rome for two years until he too was betrayed.
Broken and wild as is the land it is still cultivated;
the olive still climbs up to where the clouds come
down, but where are the magnificent forests, the wonder
and joy of antiquity? Where the brooks and
streams and lakes, whose dropping waters sang all
through the records of the elder world? Where are
those fields so blessed by Demeter that they offered to
the hands of men illimitable floods of golden grain?
Where are the vines that wreathed the mountains’
brows with green and purple grapes, as if it had been
the brow of Dionysius the wine god? Where, too, are
the meadows so thick with flowers that for the richness
of the perfume the hounds could not hold the scent of
the game? Meadows where the bees wantoned in such
honeyed delight that the air vibrated with their murmuring
as with the vibrating of multitudinous harp
strings?...
Listen to the story, which, when it was told was only
a prophecy and a warning, but a warning never heeded.
Erysicthon cuts down the grove sacred to Demeter.
A grove so thick “that an arrow could hardly pass
through; its pines and fruit trees and tall poplars
within, and the water like pale gold running through
the conduits.” One of the poplars receives the first
stroke, and Demeter, hearing the ringing of the axe,
appears, stern and awful, hooded and veiled, and
carrying poppies in her hand. To the ravager of her
groves she threatens a divine curse of an everlasting
thirst, of an insatiable, unsatisfied hunger, and the
workmen, awed, depart, leaving the axes sticking in
the trees, but Erysicthon drives them to their task
.pn +1
.bn 192.png
again with blows, and soon the grove is levelled, and
the heat of the day enters where once all was sweet
shade. Erysicthon laughs at the futile curse of the
goddess; he has had his will and nothing has happened.
The water still runs and he can slake his
drought, but the water escapes as he stoops for it,
sinking into the earth before his eyes, leaving upon his
lips only choking dust. No one can safely ignore the
warnings of the gods, and he wanders, whipped by intolerable
longings, and dies dreadfully, raving of his
own folly.
Neither Greeks, Romans, Saracens, nor Norman
heed this parable, told ages and ages before the meaning
of the loss of forests was understood. All over the
land the clothing of oaks, chestnuts, and pines was
stripped from the hills, and slowly but surely the curse
of Demeter has turned it into a place of thirst. To-day
less than five per cent of the whole island contains
timber, and these high lands, these “fields which
in the days of the Greeks returned one hundred times
the amount of seed sowed, now yield but seven-fold,
and only one-ninth of all the land is productive.” This
is the story of the ravaging of Enna, once the true garden
of Paradise, and now a rocky waste burned to the
bone.
.tb
.if h
.il fn=illus_193.jpg w=600px id=illus_193
.ca
“Ætna, The Salient Fact of Sicily”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: “Ætna, The Salient Fact of Sicily”]
.if-
Always from the very earliest records the goddess of
the harvest was worshipped in this place. Long before
the coming of the Greeks the Siculians had here a
shrine to Gaia, the Earth Mother, from whose brown
breast man sucked his life and food. And the Siculians
had traditions of the Sikels making pilgrimages to
.bn 193.png
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
.bn 195.png
Enna to give thanks to a goddess representing some
principle of fertility, by whose power the earth was
made blessed to its children. Very vague and shadowy
are the traditions of the worship of this Bread-giver.
There are hints of a great cave with a rude
dark figure within, this idol having, curiously, a head
roughly resembling the head of a horse, where the people
timidly laid their offerings of the first fruits of their
primitive culture. This figure is heard of later at
Eleusis, to which the Greeks transpose the image and
the worship, but the myth, so sympathetic to the Greek
nature, becomes refined and spiritualized; takes on
many new plays of thought and colour, and when the
great temple of Demeter is built here the story has
cleared and defined itself, and is hung about with the
garlands of a thousand gracious imaginings.
Our Lady of Bread—daughter herself of Zeus, the
overarching sky—has one child, Persephone, the spirit
of Spring, that dear vernal impulse which rejuvenates
all the world and “puts a spirit of life in everything”;
that is forever sweetly renewing hope of happiness.
Persephone’s playmates are the maiden goddesses,
Pallas and Artemis, and also those light spirits of the
fields, the water and the air—the nymphs, the oreads,
and the oceanides—but she is not without duties and
labours too, for “Proserpina, filling the house soothingly
with her low song, was working a gift against the
return of her mother, with labour all to be in vain.
In it she marked out with her needle the houses of
the gods and the series of the elements, showing by
what law nature, the parent of all, settled the strife of
ancient times.... The lighter elements are borne
aloft; the air grows bright with heat; the sea flows;
.pn +1
.bn 196.png
the earth hangs in its place. And there were divers
colours in it; she illuminated the stars with gold, infused
a purple shade into the water, and heightened
the shore with gems of flowers; and under her skilful
hand the threads with their inwrought lustre swell up
in counterfeit of the waves; you might think the sea
wind caused them to creep over the rocks and sands.
She put in the fire zones, marking with a red ground
the midmost zone possessed by burning heat; on either
side lay the two zones proper for human life, and at
the extremes she drew the twin zones of numbing cold,
making her work dun and sad with the lines of perpetual
frost. She works in, too, the sacred places of
Dis and the Manes so fatal to her. And an omen of
her doom was not wanting, for as she worked, as if
with foreknowledge of the future, her face became wet
with a sudden burst of tears. And now in the utmost
border of the tissue she had begun to wind in the wavy
line of the Ocean that goes round about all, but the
door sounds on its hinges, and she perceives the goddesses
coming; the unfinished work drops from her
hands and a ruddy blush lights her clear and snow-white
face.”...
Leaving her needle in the many-coloured web, she
wanders down the mountain side to Lake Pergusa, then
lying like a blue jewel in enamelled meads, but ever since
that tragic day dark and sulphurous, as with fumes of
hell.
This is the story of the ravishment, as told in the
great Homeric Hymn that was sung in honour of the
Mother of Corn.
“I begin the song of Demeter. The song of Demeter
and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus
.pn +1
.bn 197.png
carried away as she played apart from her mother with
the deep-bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering
flowers in a meadow of soft grass—roses and the crocus
and the fair violets and flags and hyacinths, and above
all the strange flower of the narcissus, which the Earth,
favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth for the
first time to snare the footsteps of the flower-like girl.
A hundred heads of blossom grew up from the roots
of it, and the sky and the earth and the salt wave of
the sea were glad at the scent thereof. She stretched
forth her hands to take the flower; thereupon the earth
opened and the King of the great nation of the Dead
sprang out with his immortal horses. He seized the
unwilling girl, and bore her away weeping on his
golden chariot. She uttered a shrill cry, calling upon
Zeus; but neither man nor god heard her voice, nor
even the nymphs of the meadow where she played;
except Hecate only, sitting as ever in her cave, half
veiled with a shining veil, and thinking delicate thoughts,
she, and the Sun also, heard her.
“So long as Persephone could still see the earth and
the sky and the sea with the great waves moving, and
the beams of the sun, and still thought to see again her
mother, and the race of the ever-living gods, so long
hope soothed her in the midst of her grief. The peaks
of the hills and the depths of the sea echoed her cry.
And the Mother heard it. A sharp pain seized her at
the heart; she plucked the veil from her hair, and cast
down the blue hood from her shoulders, and fled forth
like a bird, seeking her daughter over dry land
and sea.
“Nine days she wandered up and down upon the
earth, having blazing torches in her hands, and in her
.pn +1
.bn 198.png
great sorrow she refused to taste of ambrosia, or of the
cup of the sweet nectar, nor washed her face. But
when the tenth morning came Hecate met her, having
a light in her hands. But Hecate had heard the voice
only, and had seen no one, and could not tell Demeter
who had borne the girl away. And Demeter said not
a word, but fled away swiftly with Hecate, having the
blazing torches in her hands, till they came to the Sun,
the watchman of Gods and men; and the goddess
questioned him, and the Sun told her the whole
story.”...
What a picture the Greek singer makes of the melancholy
earth calling for comfort to the moon! for Hecate
was not Artemis, but a vaguer, vaster principle of the
night; an impersonalized shadow of the Huntress, as
Hertha was the shadow, formless and tremendous, of
Demeter. Hecate was a pale luminous force, “half
veiled with a shining veil, and thinking delicate
thoughts,” and ten days later, having rounded to the
full, the bereaved mother meets her “bearing a light
in her hands,” though the night is nearing morning,
and moon and earth turn together toward the coming
sun.
The Homeric Hymn tells much of the wandering
and grieving mother; of her disguises; of her nursing
of the sick child Demophoon, whose own mother
snatched him back from the immortality which the
goddess was ensuring by passing him through the fire—as
many a loving and timid mother since has held
her son back from the fires that confer immortality.
The Hymn tells of her teaching of Triptolemus of the
winged feet, instructing him in Eleusinian mysteries—“those
mysteries which no tongue may speak. Only
.pn +1
.bn 199.png
blessed is he whose eyes have seen them; his lot after
death is not as the lot of other men!”
But Jane and Peripatetica loved more the story of
the ending of her vigil, when Hermes descended into
Hell in his chariot.
“And Persephone ascended into it, and Hermes took
the reins in his hands and drove out through the infernal
halls; and they two passed quickly over the
ways of that long journey, neither the waters of the
sea, nor of the rivers, and the deep ravines of the hills,
nor the cliffs of the shore resisting them; till at last
Hermes placed Persephone before the door of the temple
where her mother was, who, seeing her, ran out
quickly to meet her, like a Mænad coming down a
mountain side dusky with woods.”
So these two saw Persephone come home; saw the
spring return to the earth in the high places of the gods.
Saw the land, even though no longer a paradise, yet—despite
Erysicthon’s foolish waste of the sacred trees—saw
it “laden with leaves and flowers and the waving
corn,” and, having seen it, they passed on through
Sicily satisfied.
.pn +1
.bn 200.png
.pb
.if h
.il fn=illus_200.jpg w=250px
.if-
.if t
.nf c
[Illustration: Decoration]
.nf-
.if-
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V || A City of Temples
.nf b
“’Tis right for him
To touch the threshold of the gods.”
.nf-
They were running swiftly through the dark. On
either hand was a dim and gloomy land of bare, shrivelled
peaks, grey cinder heaps, and sulphurous smells.
Intermittently visible by the strange subterranean
glowings rose black, glowering mountains in the background,
and nearer at hand were shadowy shapes of
men and asses bringing sulphur from the mines.
Within, the garlic-reeking tongue of a flickering gas-lamp
vaguely illumined the dusk of the railway carriage.
“This is Pluto’s own realm,” declared Jane, removing
her nose from the window-pane, through which
she had been endeavouring to peer into the outer gloom.
“If it’s not the very threshold of the infernal regions it
ought to be. Peripatetica, you might spare me a
glimmer or two from your Baedeker. Were there no
temples to Pluto here? These are surely the very surroundings
in which he should have been worshipped.”
.pn +1
.bn 201.png
“A temple to Pluto?” replied Peripatetica sleepily.
“Where?... I never heard of one that I can remember;
have you?”
Jane suddenly realized that her recollections held no
account of any spot where that dark King of the Under
World had been honoured under the sun; it was another
mystery of the past, to which there was no answer,
though Peripatetica gave up her nap in the effort
to solve it—why had Pluto, supreme in the Under World
as Zeus in the Upper one, beneath whose sway all men
born must come, remained so unhonoured among living
men?
The Greeks did believe in a future life; the spirit
expiating or rewarded for deeds done in the flesh.
Those were facts which men thought they knew, which
were an integral axis of their faith—how so believing,
did they treat it thus unconcernedly, seeing things in
such different proportions from ourselves? So much
concern for the fulness of life in the present, so little for
the shadowy hereafter—shrines and temples and sacrifices
on every hillside to the Deities of Life, of Birth,
and Fertility; nothing for the God of Death.
Death and Life—they touched as closely in ancient
days as now, perhaps more closely. The Greeks did
not push away their dead to a dim, silent oblivion.
Near to the warm heart of life they were held in bright,
oft-invoked memory. In the busiest centres of life
were placed the tombs of their dead; close to the
theatre—to the Forum—wherever the living most
thronged the Road of Tombs was; one where all the
busiest tide of life flowed. Invocations and offerings
and sweet ceremonies of remembrance were given to
their dead more often than tears. And constantly the
.pn +1
.bn 202.png
living turned to the dear and honoured dead—“much
frequented” was the Greek adjective which went
oftenest with the tomb. But the grim God of Death
was apparently not for living man to make his spirit
“sick and sorry” by worshipping. It was Life—glorious,
glowing fulness of life to the uttermost—that was
important to the Greek; Life that governed Death and
made it either honoured and reposeful, or a state of
shadowy wanderings and endless regret.
To the modern mind, still tinged with mediæval morbidity,
groping back into the clear serenity of those
golden days, it seemed to be life, life, only life that
preoccupied the Greeks, and yet, they too had hearts
to feel Death’s sting even as we—to be aware of the
underlying sadness of all the joy upon this rolling
world. They too could deeply feel the inexorable
mingling of delight and pain, of life and loss....
Their great Earth Mother, blond and sunny as her
golden grain, the deity of all fruitfulness and beneficent
increase, is also Ceres Deserta—the Mater Dolorosa—shrouded
in the dark blue robe of all earth’s
shadows, haggard with tears of wasting desolation—“the
type of divine sorrow,” as well as of joyous fruition
... her emblem the blood-red poppy, symbol in
its drowsy juices, of sleep and death, as in its multitudinous
seeds the symbol of life and resurrection.
And her daughter, like herself the most specially and
intimately beloved by the Greeks among all their deities,
had even more the dual quality—Goddess of
Spring, of resurrection, and rejuvenescence, and yet
too, Queen of the dark Under World. She was the
impulse of all spring’s teeming life, and yet herself
“compact of sleep and death and narcotic flowers bearing
.pn +1
.bn 203.png
always in the swallowed pomegranate seeds the
secret of ultimate decay, of return to the grave.”
Korè, the maiden, the incarnation of all fresh and
sweet and innocent joyousness, was also symbol of its
evanescence—“a helpless plucked flower in the arms of
Aidoneus,” so that upon the sarcophagi of women who
had died in early youth the Greeks were wont to carve
Pluto’s stealing of Persephone, picturing the Divine
Maiden with the likeness of the dear dead one’s face.
.tb
Dark, blurred shapes in Greek-like drapery of many-folded
cape and shawl, appeared now and then in
shifting crowds upon station platforms, like the uneasy
shades of Pluto’s kingdom seeking escape.
To Peripatetica and Jane it began to seem as if their
quest for the Lost Spring had taken them into the Under
World of her imprisonment to behold with thrills of
half pity, half awe, in “that dim land where all things
are forgotten” her transformation into the mate of
gloomy Dis, no longer bright, golden-haired girl-flower,
but veiled Proserpina Despœna, the Queen of the Dead,
where now:
.nf b
“Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands,
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born,
Forgets the Earth, her mother,
The life of fruits and corn.”
.nf-
.tb
Escaping at last from the sulphur fumes, the strange
.pn +1
.bn 204.png
glares and the Hades visions, they found themselves
standing under a clear star-strewn sky with a gentle
air blowing in their faces. In an open carriage they
were whirled off, they knew not where, into the night,
stars bright overhead and lights like fallen stars on a
high hill to the right, the soft wind of the darkness
breathing of spring and green growing things.
Suddenly there was the welcoming door of the Hotel
des Temples, and then little white bedrooms and quick
oblivion.
.tb
There is a pounding on Jane’s door.
“Hurry, you sluggard!” says Peripatetica’s voice.
“Come out and see what a delicious place this is!”
and she enters radiant. “There’s no mistake about
spring this time; everything is riotous with it—and it’s
real country. Not mere theatrical scenery like Taormina,
nor mere bones and stones like Syracuse, but
real dear Arcadian country, with trees, actually trees!
and there are great golden temples rising out of the
trees, with the sea and the hills behind, and nothing
but sweet peaceful meadows and orchards all around
us—I want to stay here forever.”
When Jane too stood upon the hotel terrace drinking
in all the fairness of the outlook which Peripatetica
silently but proudly displayed, in the proprietorship of
earlier rising, she was quite ready to echo the wish.
Billowy orchards of almonds in tenderest leafage, hoary
groves of olives, the silver and white of wind-stirred
bean-fields in blossom, vivid emerald of young wheat,
crimson meadows of lupine rolling down to a peacock
sea glittering to a wide horizon.
.pn +1
.bn 205.png
Soft mountains, not too high; old stone pines black
against the azure sky; brown walls of convents, and
bell towers emerging from the dark green of oranges
and pines; and rising out of all this Arcadian sweetness
of meadow and grove the tawny columns of the
Temples.
“Oh, let’s get to them at once!” cried Jane, and
guideless and impatient they went, as the bird flies,
straight across the intervening country, towards those
beckoning golden pillars. Plunging down the hillside
in front, garden-orchard, ploughed field, dusty highroad—all
were merely a road between them and those
temples of Lost Gods still rising unsubmerged above
the tree tops. Little boys digging in the fields shyly
offered them fossil shells and the bits of pottery their
shovels had turned up, old women at garden gates
called invitations to come in and pick oranges or inspect
the ruins of “Casa Greco’s,” but they held straight
on through olive groves seemingly old as the temples
themselves, through velvety young wheat and flowery
meadows. The distance was greater than had appeared
from above. Sometimes the gleam of columns
through the green beckoned illusively to impossible
short cuts, as when a tempting grass path seemed to
run straight to the feet of the nearest temple and instead
led into a farmyard inhabited by fiercely barking
dogs. A noise that called out the farm people to
explain as politely as if these were the first strangers
who had ever made the intrusive mistake, that an impassable
wall made it impossible to reach the Temples
through their property, and to detail a wee, starry-eyed
bronze faun in tattered blue rags to put them
upon the correct but roundabout road.
.pn +1
.bn 206.png
In the glowing sun of the spring morning—the old
world renewing itself in blooming freshness all about—songs
of birds and petals of fruit-blossoms in the air,
against the shimmering blue of sky and sea and the
new green of the earth’s breast, was upreared the
saffron mass of Concordia—shrine of a Peace twenty
centuries old.
It looked its name, did Concord, standing with all its
amber columns worn but perfect, in unbroken accord,
still upholding architrave and tympanum.
Intact in all but roof, on its platform of steep, worn
steps it stands—in the midst of fields and groves that
were once a clanging stone city, close beside the dusty
highroad along which come the landau loads of hurried
tourists—with its calm still unbroken. It embodies
the permanence of peace through all the evanescent
life of the flowing years. Unaltered through all
the changes of time, its Doric columns rise, tranquil
and fair, and hospitably it offers welcome to all who
come.
.if h
.il fn=illus_207.jpg w=600px id=illus_207
.ca
“The Saffron Mass of Concordia”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: “The Saffron Mass of Concordia”]
.if-
As of old one may climb its steps to worship and
admire. The road winds to its very base, and it stands
as free to all comers as to the sun and wind. It alone
of all the glories of once magnificent Akragas remains
in its original shape. Other shrines were greater,
larger, more splendid in their day. The high house of
Zeus, with its mammoth columns, was nearly three
times the height of Concord; it had an enclosure of
three hundred and seventy-two feet to Concord’s one
hundred and thirty-eight, and must once have looked
scornfully on its little neighbour. Hercules, with his
marvels of sculpture and painting; Juno, with her
statue-enriched “thymele” terrace extending her precincts
.bn 207.png
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
.bn 209.png
around its out-door altar and her renowned picture
by Zeuxis, for whose composite beauty the five
loveliest girls of the city had been models, probably
outranked simple Concord. No record of its holding
venerated treasures of beauty has come down from the
days of its prime. Yet it alone has survived whole;
emerging intact from the storms of war and nature, as
if its own distilled atmosphere of serenity has acted as
a preservative against Time. Even the Middle Ages
treated it gently. St. Gregory of the Turnips took it
for a shrine, and a gentle, serene saint he must have
been; one able to dwell in the abode of Peace without
feeling any desire to alter and rebuild, glad to look out
of its open peristyle and watch his turnips in the sunny
fields, wisely refraining from choking the pillars into
walls and plaster like poor Minerva’s at Syracuse.
Concordia’s cella seemed to have been just a cosy fit
for St. Gregory and he a careful tenant, leaving only
the two arched openings in its walls to mark his occupancy.
And so the Temple is to-day the best preserved
in existence—shorn of all its statues, stucco, and
decoration, a little blurred and worn in outline, as if
Time’s maw, while refraining from crushing, has yet
mumbled it over gently.
It was apparently this completeness of preservation
which had so enamoured Goethe that he dared to
speak lightly of the stern majesty of the temple of
Pæstum by comparison. Poseidon’s great fane he
thought as inferior to Concord’s as a hero is inferior to
a god.
“A god to a hero,” quoted Jane with a resentful
sniff. “It was just like that pompous, stodgy old German
to be carried away by mere preservation, and to
.pn +1
.bn 210.png
prefer this sugary-slightly-melted-vanilla-caramel temple
to that solemn splendour of Pæstum.”
“What an abominable simile you’ve used for this
lovely thing,” scolded Peripatetica. “You’re even
worse than Goethe—if possible.”
“It isn’t an abominable simile,” protested Jane flippantly.
“It is exactly the colour of a good vanilla
caramel, and moreover it looks like one licked all over
by some giant tongue.”
Having said an outrageous thing she pretended to
defend it and believe it, but her heart smote her for
irreverence as she and Peripatetica strolled about the
peristyle, gazing through the columns at the pictures
their tawny flutings framed, and she grudgingly admitted
that the situation at least was divine.
Perched on the crest of a sheer-dropping rocky cliff,
Concordia faces the west. To the south dark blue
sea, and to the north billowy woods and fields in all the
gamut of spring greens surge up to the apricot-tinted
town, which is the last shrunken remnant of old Akragas.
Beneath the cliff green meadows stretch smooth
to the African Sea. Eastwards, on a neighbouring
knoll, Juno lifts her exquisite columns against the blue,
and softly moulded hills melt into the distant ruggedness
of Castrogiovanni’s mountains. To the north lie
fields and groves and orchards, with dottings of farmhouse
and church, up to the top of the Rupe Athena,
where, with her usual passion for conspicuousness, high
Athena had once kept watch in her Temple, that now,
according to the so frequent fate of the mighty, is
fallen into nothingness.
How worshipful his blithe gods of Sun and Abundance
must have here appeared to the Greek; how
.pn +1
.bn 211.png
good the world spread out for him in all its fairness;
the citadel-crowned hill protecting his rich city, the
shining sea carrying his commerce; the mountains of
the bounteous Earth Mother’s home encircling the
rolling groves and meadowland she blessed so fruitfully,
and the triumphs of his own handiwork in the
marvellous temples and buildings of this splendid
Akragas, “fairest of mortal cities,” as even the poets
of Greece admitted.
The Plutonian shore of the previous night seemed
very far away, now that Persephone was back in her
own “belonging” country again; the dark terrors of
Hades had grown dim. Naturally the gods of Light
and Day were the only ones worshipped; they were
supreme for life—and after—ah well! “the dark Fate
which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated
by any rites, and must be encountered manfully
as one meets the inevitable.”...
“Of course there were no temples to Pluto, they
wouldn’t have known how to build one,” said Peripatetica,
looking from the enclosed cella to the sunlit
peristyle outside. “I never quite realized before the
cheerful, self-possessed publicity of Greek worship;
their temples standing always in these open elevated
sites; open themselves to the light and air—majestically
simple. There is just the little enclosure to shelter
the statue of the god, and all the rest is clear openness,
where the worshippers stood under glowing sun
and sky, or looking out into it. It’s essentially an
out-of-door building, the Greek Temple, spreading its
beauty to light and air like a flower. Pluto would have
had to evolve a type of his own, he never could have
fitted into this calm cheerfulness.”
.pn +1
.bn 212.png
“No,” pondered Jane, “there is no room for superstitious
terrors in the sunshine. I wonder does
superstition turn naturally to caves and gloom, or do
dark holes in the ground breed it? There is all the
space of light and darkness between the sermon preached
on the Mount, all beatitudes and tenderness, and the
theology of the monks in the Middle Ages after the
Christians had made their churches in such catacombs
as those of Syracuse.”...
All Girgenti’s temples are wrought from this native
chrome-yellow tufa; a sort of solidified sea-beach—compacted
sand, pebbles, and fossil shells. The original
snow-white stucco, made of marble dust, has flaked
away, save here and there in some protected niche.
The dry sirocco gnaws into the soft sandstone, and
on the seaside of the columns show the long deep scorings
of its viewless teeth, sunk in places nearly half
through the huge diameter of the pillars.
Peripatetica was in two minds as to whether the
temples had not been even more lovely in their original
virgin whiteness. “After all,” she mourned, “they
are but a frame without the pictures; for the Greek
temple existed primarily to be a setting for its sculpture.
Sculpture was an essential part of its planning,
not a mere decoration, and without it pediment, metopes,
frieze, and pedestals are meaningless forms.
That sculpture that stood and walked on the pediments
and gave life to the frieze; that animated the
exterior, or sat calm and strong in the central shrine.
To a Greek even this wonderfully preserved Concordia,
bare of sculpture, would seem but a melancholy
skeleton of a once fair shrine.”
But Jane was obstinately sure that nothing could
.pn +1
.bn 213.png
be better than the natural harmonies of the naked
stone.
“Nothing,” she insisted with bland firmness, “not
even your blind conviction that everything the Greeks
did was exactly right—just because they did it—will
persuade me that they improved these temples by any
marble plaster. Come over here and look at the warm
red gold of those soaring fluted stems against the vivid
blue! It is as if the splendour of sunset glowed upon
them all day long. As if they had soaked in so much
sun through all the bright centuries that now even the
very stones gave it out again.”
Peripatetica had been half inclined to believe this
herself at first, but of course Jane’s opposition clinched
her wavering suffrages for the stucco.
“You lack in imagination,” she announced loftily.
“You see only what you see. Try to realize what the
marble background meant to the saffron-robed, flower-garlanded
priests, and to the worshippers massed on
the steps and in the peristyles in delicate-tinted chiton
and chamyle—crocus, daffodil, violet-rose, ivory—like
a living flower wreath from out the spring meadows
encircling the white temple’s base—”
“Oh, do stop trying to be Pater-esque!” scoffed
Jane, “and let’s go to luncheon. That sounds too
much like sublimated guide-book, and the hotel looks
miles away to my unimaginative eye.”
.tb
“We won’t, will we?” said Jane half an hour later,
with her irreverent mouth full.
Peripatetica knew what she meant.
“Go on to-morrow? No, indeed. We’ll telegraph
.pn +1
.bn 214.png
Cook to send our mail here until further notice—the
idea of being told there was nothing to linger for at
Girgenti! It’s the nicest place we’ve yet found in
Sicily.”
The room was full of the munching of tourists.
From the talk in German, English, and French, could
be gathered they had one and all “done” the five temples,
the tombs, and San Niccola that morning—would
“take in” the town sights that afternoon and pass on
that evening or the next morning. The two Seekers,
to whom the morning had not been long enough in
which to dream and dispute over one temple, felt their
heads growing dizzy at the rush with which the tourist
stream flowed along its Cook-dug channels, and they
gladly resolved to leave the current and climb up high
and dry on the bank of this inviting little backwater.
The announcement of their intention to stay on
seemed to give the polite young proprietor of the hotel
a strange shock. He offered better rooms looking on
the terrace, and pension rates if they stayed more than
three days, instead of the usual week for which that
reduction is commonly made. A flutter of excitement
at their behaviour passed at once through all the personnel
of the hotel.
First came the concierge. “You are really not leaving
to-morrow morning, ladies? For what day do you
wish me to get your tickets stamped?” He was startledly
incredulous when told that the day was still too
far in the future for a date to be fixed. The porter
came to ask at what time he was to carry out their
luggage in the morning—the head waiter to know for
which train they wished to be called. The stolid
chambermaid’s mouth fell open in surprise when asked
.pn +1
.bn 215.png
to move their things to other rooms. The two-foot-high
Buttons shifted about chairs four times his own
size in the lobby to get a chance to gaze satisfactorily
at such peculiar ladies, and by tea-time the German
waiters were staring as they carried about tea-trays,
and pointing out to one another the strangely behaving
two who were not leaving the next day!
The pretty little hotel was like a railway restaurant.
Successive sets of hurried tourists appeared, made a
one-meal or a one-night stop, and rushed on, leaving
their places to others. In a week’s time so many sets
had come and gone that Peripatetica and Jane began
to take on the air of pre-historic aborigines; as if they
had been sitting on their sunny bank watching all the
invading hordes of nations since the Carthagenians
made their first raid.
By way of emphasizing the superior intelligence of
their own methods they savoured slowly and lingeringly
Girgenti’s endless charms. Loafing placidly on
the flowery terrace for an hour after breakfast to enjoy
the distant view of the golden temples, or to watch the
patient labours of ancient brown Orlando and his
ancient grey ass Carlo, who spent all their waking
hours in climbing down, down the precipitous road to
the Fonte dei Greci with empty water-barrels, and
toilsomely bringing them up full and dripping to be
emptied into the terrace well with its lovely carved
well head. Or they retired to the niche below the
terrace stairs under the feathery pepper tree, and sat
amid a blaze of poppies and mauve to write letters,
punctuated by frequent pauses to look across the olive
orchards and young wheat fields to the wide blue fields
of the sea. And every day they strolled away through
.pn +1
.bn 216.png
the orchard footpaths towards the temples, which were
ever their goal, though they might be hours in reaching
that goal because of being led away by adventures on
the road.
It was by way of this footpath that they first fell
into the hands of Fortunato. They were forever falling
into some one’s hands and finding the results agreeable,
for they kept their minds open to suggestion and
abjured all hard and fast lines of intention, being wise
enough to realize that what is known as “a good traveller”
usually misses all the good of travel by the cut-and-driedness
of his aims.
Fortunato was sure that he could “spika da Englishy,”
though what led him to suppose so, other than
a large command of illuminative gesture, never became
clear. Some half-dozen words—adorned with superfluous
vowels to a point of unrecognizability—he did
possess; the rest was Sicilian, sympathy, and vivid intelligence,
which sufficed to make him the perfectly
delightful guide he explained himself to be. His age
he declared to be fourteen, he looked all of ten, but
his knowledge of the world, of life, of history, and of
the graces of conversation could hardly have been
acquired by any one less than forty. Within twenty
minutes he had made them free of such short and simple
annals of his career as he judged to be suited to
their limited forestieri minds, having first firmly assumed
the burden of all their small impedimenta—jackets,
kodaks, and parasols. He was one of fifteen,
he explained, and also the main staff of his parents’
declining years; the six staffs younger than himself
being somewhat too short for that filial office. The
other eight had been removed from this service by the
.pn +1
.bn 217.png
combined ravages of marriage, the army, and emigration.
When time and the growth of his juniors enabled
him to lay down his absorbing duties he had the
intention of joining in Nuova Yorka a distinguished
barber, who enjoyed the privilege of being his elder
brother. Nuova Yorka, he had been given to understand
by this brother, boasted no such mountains as
these of Girgenti, but its streets were filled for months
with hills of ice and snow, and this information Peripatetica
and Jane were regretfully obliged to confirm.
No matter! even such rigours could not check his
ambition to “barb,” and as his brother had explained
how necessary it was that he should be complete master
of Englishy before landing in Nuova Yorka if he
hoped to escape being “plucked” (great business of
illuminating gestures of rapacity) he employed in guiding
Americans such brief hours as he could snatch from
school.
They discovered later that Fortunato snatched from
school just seven entire days every week.
It had been the intention of the two to spend the
morning among the gigantic ruins of the temple of
Zeus, and yet when Fortunato put pressure upon their
ever flexible impulses at the gate of the strange old
Panitteri garden, they found themselves instead under
the walls of the church of San Niccola, where the gillyflowers
and wild mignonette rioted from every crevice.
Meekly they climbed a great stone terrace adorned
with crumbling statues and Corinthian entablatures.
Meekly they examined the great baths, and delighted
in the shining panorama of sea and plain and hill, with
golden Concordia seen in its most lovely aspect between
two gigantic stone pines.
.pn +1
.bn 218.png
Still sternly shepherded by the small guide they
climbed down again to make a closer acquaintance
with the Oratory of Phalaris. Phalaris of the infamous
legend of the brazen bull, into whose heated body were
cast the enemies of the ancient Tyrant of Akragas,
because that humorous gentleman’s fancy was highly
diverted by the similarity of their moanings, as they
slowly roasted, to the lowing of kine. It is said that
he fretted a good deal because nobody else appeared
to think the thing as good a joke as it seemed to him,
but then taste in jests will differ, unfortunately. The
Carthagenians when they came over and conquered
Sicily were quite delighted with the ingenious toy, and
carried it off triumphantly to Africa. They were
finished artists in torture themselves, and appreciated
a valuable new idea. Scipio found the bull in Carthage,
when he made a final end of that city, and he
returned it to Akragas, but appetite for really poignant
fun appears to have died out by that time, and Fortunato,
whom they consulted, seemed to think it was
probably eventually broken up for the purpose of manufacturing
braziers, or possibly warming-pans.
Memory of the Bull almost obscured the fact that
the Oratory was a beautiful Greek chapel, such as was
used to hold some statue of a god, and the memorials
of ancestors, and served for private daily devotions
without need of a priest. The Normans had the same
habit of private family chapels, so the Oratory had
served them in turn, being pierced by a Norman window
and the square-headed entrance door fitted with
an arch.
Half a dozen races and centuries had each had a
hand in the Church and Convent of San Niccola too,
.pn +1
.bn 219.png
apparently. It was built from stones filched from that
vast ruin of the Temple of Zeus they were on their
roundabout way to see, and which has always been an
exhaustless quarry for Girgenti. So late as in the last
century the huge stones that formed the Porto Empedocle,
a long mole from which the sulphur is shipped,
were stolen from poor Zeus. Doors, windows, roofs,
arches, had been added or changed in San Niccola,
just as each generation needed, and each in the taste
of the period. The holy-water stoup at the entrance,
for example, was an enormous marble hand, taken
from one of the temples. For the Greeks too had
fonts of holy water, consecrated by plunging into it a
burning torch from the altar, and as the worshippers
entered they were asperged with a branch of laurel.
The poor Saint was not in flourishing circumstances
in these later days, it would seem, judging by the bareness
of his sanctuary, and the torn cotton lace upon
the altars, and yet he was an industrious healer, if one
might reason from the votives that hung about his
picture. A few were wrought in silver, but more in
wax, or carved and painted wood, reproducing with
hideous fidelity the swollen limbs, the cancerous breasts,
the goitered throats, the injured eyes, the carbuncles
and abcesses he had healed through his miraculous intervention.
Indeed, he was a general jobber in miracles,
for the naïve, rude little paintings on the wall
showed a spirited donkey running away with a painted
cart, the terrified occupant frantically making signals
of distress to San Niccola in heaven, who was preparing
promptly to check the raging ass. Or he was
drawing a chrome-yellow petitioner from a cobalt sea,
or turning a Mafia dagger aside, or finding a lost child
.pn +1
.bn 220.png
in the mountains. He certainly “studied to please,”
and it did seem a pity he should be housed in so bare
and poverty-stricken a shrine. Many less active saints
lived amid welters of gilding and luxury.
In spite of Fortunato dragging them aside later to
see a little “Casa Greco,” where they could trace delicate
tesselated pavements and the bases of the columns
of the atrium amid the grass, they still succeeded in
arriving that same afternoon at their original goal.
Only the temple of Diana at Ephesus was larger
than this great shrine to the spirit of the overarching
sky, and even yet, though moles and churches and
villas have been wrought from its remains, the gigantic
ruin daunts the imagination with its colossal fragments,
its huge tumble of stone, its fallen mountains of masonry.
Each triglyph alone weighed twelve tons, and
the enormous columns around the whole length of its
three hundred and seventy-two feet were more than
sixty feet high. Theron, the benevolent despot of
Akragas, built it with the labours of his Carthagenian
captives, and no doubt a memory of their frightful
toilings in the Sicilian noons inspired the Carthagenians,
when they captured the city, to their fury of destruction
against the fane they themselves had wrought.
It would seem as if only some convulsion of nature
could have brought down that prodigious construction,
but still visible upon the bases of the fallen pillars are
the cuts made by the Punic conquerors, sufficient to
disturb the equilibrium of even these monster columns.
When their rage had at last expended itself nothing of
all that incredible mass of masonry remained standing
save three of the enormous Telamone—the male caryatids—that
had supported the entablature. And so
.pn +1
.bn 221.png
firmly were these built that they stood there for fifteen
centuries more before time and a quaking of the earth
at last brought them down.
Now the last of these lies in the centre of the ruin,
perhaps the most impressive figure wrought by man’s
hands, so like does it seem—blurred, vague, tremendous—to
some effort to symbolize in stone the whole
human race—the very frame of the world itself. Shoulder
and breast an upheaved mountain range, down which
the mighty muscles pour like leaping rivers to the plain
of the enormous loins and thighs. Rough-hewn locks
cluster about the frowning brows, as a gnarled forest
grips a cliff’s edge, from beneath which stare darkly
the caverned eyes. Primeval, prehistoric in form, overrun
by gnawing lichens, smeared by lapse of time to a
mere vast adumbration of the human form.
This temple had been the supreme effort of Akragas,
the richest and most beautiful city the Greeks ever
built. The stories of its wealth, of its luxury, of its
gardens, palaces, theatres, baths, its gaieties, and its
pomps, sound like a description of Rome under the
Empire, and would be incredible if such ruins as this
did not exist to attest to the facts.
Far more characteristic of the Greek were those twin
temples of Castor and Pollux
.nf b
—“These be the great Twin Brethren
To whom the Dorians pray”—
.nf-
.ni
to which Fortunato turned their steps as a refreshing
counteraction of the stern immensities of Zeus. Light,
delicate, gracious fragments they were, lifting themselves
airily from a sea of flowers on the edge of the
ravine-like Piscina, once the reservoir for the city’s
.pn +1
.bn 222.png
water, but now full of lemon orchards, and fringed by
immense dark carouba trees....
.pi
Another day, conducted by Fortunato always, they
pilgrimed to the temple of Hercules, oldest and most
archaic of them all, containing still in the cella remains
of the pedestal on which stood that famous bronze
statue of the muscular hero and demigod. The statue
which that unscrupulous collector, Verres, tried to remove
and thereby provoked a riot in the city. In this
temple too had hung Zeuxis’ renowned painting of
Hercules’ mother, Alcmena.
It was on still another day that Fortunato led through
olive groves and bowery lanes to the temple of Juno
Lacina, beguiling the way with light songs—some of
them distinctly light—and scintillating conversation
upon all matters in the heavens above, the earth beneath,
and the waters under the earth. He mimicked
deliciously the characteristics of English, French, German,
and American tourists, differentiating their national
peculiarities with delicate acuity. He made no
effort to disguise that he had pondered much upon the
sexes, and opined, with a shrug, that there was a hopeless
and lifelong irreconcilability in their two points of
view. Marriage, he frankly conceded to be a necessity,
but considered it a lamentable one. Of course
one must come to it soon or late, but, for a man, how
sad a fate! Then he broke off to sing of undying passion,
and interrupted himself to ask if the donkeys in
Nuova Yorka were as quick and strong as those of
Sicily; he supposed the streets must be crowded with
them, where the needs of commerce were so great.
Eventually he brought them out upon the lovely
eminence of the temple of the Mother of Heaven—Juno
.pn +1
.bn 223.png
Lacina, special deity of mothers, which crowns
the edge of a sheer cliff of orange-yellow tufa four hundred
feet above the sea. The sea had washed close
under the cliff when the temple was first built, but now
at its foot the alluvial plains stretch level and rich, bearing
orchards and meadows and vineyards more fertile
than any old Akragas knew, though this very shrine
was built from the proceeds of exportation of oil to
Carthage.
Earthquakes had shaken down more than half
the tall, slim columns. Sirocco has bitten deep into
those still standing, and into the fallen fragments which
strew the landward slope; fragments lying among
gnarled olives, seemingly as wind-eaten and ancient as
themselves. Among these fluted fragments grew wild
pansies and crimson lupins, from which little Fortunato
gathered nosegays, as he shrilled, in his boyish falsetto,
songs of love and sorrow—or sat and kicked his heels
upon the margin of an old bottle-shaped cistern. Tourists
whirled up dustily for a cursory inspection—Baedeker
in hand—and whirled as quickly away, bent on
getting through the sights and passing on; but still
Peripatetica and Jane lingered and dreamed among
the ruins until Fortunato, visibly bored, suggested a
short cut back to the hotel. It led them by fields of
lupin, spread like crimson velvet mantles on the hillside,
where the contadini cut the glowing crop, heaping
it upon asses until they seemed but a moving mass
of blossom trotting home on brown legs. Goats, Fortunato
volunteered, detested—for some curious goatish
reason he could not explain—this picturesque food,
but donkeys! ah, to donkeys it was—in a burst of superlative
explanation—“the donkey macaroni.”
.pn +1
.bn 224.png
This short cut led, too—apparently to Fortunato’s
surprise and dismay—directly through a walled farmyard
surrounding a frowning, half-ruined casa, nail-studded
of door and barred of window, and with an air
of ancient and secretive menace. It was the sort of
place travellers in such books as “The Mysteries of
Udolpho” used to come upon at nightfall, far from
any other habitation, with a thunderstorm about to
break among the mountains, and the leader of their
four-horsed travelling carriage hopelessly lame, so that
the delicate and shrinking heroine must, willy nilly,
beg for a night’s accommodation and the surly inhabitant’s
sinister hospitality. Curiously enough the
dwellers in this casa were, it seemed, of the exact
Udolpho variety. Ringing the correctly rusty bell, and
battering upon the massive gate with their parasol
handles aroused a storm of deep-mouthed baying of
dogs within, and a fierce brown face finally appeared
at a small wooden shutter to demand the cause of the
intrusion. Fortunato’s heart and legs plainly turned
to water at the sight of this person, but realizing that
he had got Jane and Peripatetica into a hole and must
get them out, he wheedled in such honeyed and persuasive
Sicilian, that at last, and reluctantly, the heavy
portal
.nf c
“Ground its teeth to let them pass,”
.nf-
.ni
the furious dogs having first been chained. Very arid
and ruined and poor this jealously guarded dwelling
seemed. Nothing was visible the protection of which
required those four big wolf-like dogs that shrieked
and bounded and tore at their chains as the intruders
passed; nor that the lean fierce man and his leaner
and fiercer wife and children should accompany them
.pn +1
.bn 225.png
like a jailer’s guard to the exit. Fortunately this nether
door was unbarred before the lean man demanded
money for having permitted them to cross his land,
and having a sense of Fortunato’s imploring eyes upon
them they made the gift a lire instead of a copper,
and pushing through the door fled as for their lives.
.pi
“So there really was an Italy like the Italy of the
romantic Georgian novel!” said Jane wonderingly, as
soon as she could catch breath.
“It’s only another proof,” gasped Peripatetica,
“that travellers really do tell the truth. It’s the ignorant
stay-at-homes who can’t believe anything they
haven’t seen themselves. Fortunato,” she demanded
sternly, “who are those people, and why do they behave
so absurdly? What are they concealing?”
But no explanation was to be had from that erstwhile
fluent and expansive homme du monde. He was
frightened, he was vague, and simply darkened counsel.
“I strongly suspect there is some Mafia business behind
all this—you naughty boy!” said Jane reprovingly,
but Fortunato only pulled his cap over his eyes
and slunk away without claiming his day’s wage.
Because of this episode Fortunato found his offered
services frigidly dispensed with the next day when he
presented himself, Jane and Peripatetica setting out
alone to explore the town of Girgenti. They were
quite sure they could themselves discover a short cut
to the small city which would be much more amusing
than the dusty highway. It seemed but a stone’s
throw distant, and surely by striking down this footpath,
and rounding that rise....
An hour later, panting, dripping, and disgusted, they
climbed into the rear of the town, having stumbled
.pn +1
.bn 226.png
through the boulders of dry water-courses, struggled
over the huge old rugged pavements of ancient Akragas—washed
out of their concealment by winter torrents—skirted
outlying villas, and laboured up steps. The
short cut had proved the longest way round they could
possibly have taken to the inadequate, shabby little
museum they had set out to see in this modern successor
of the great Greek city. Girgenti, though one
of the most thriving of Sicilian towns, thanks to its
sulphur mines, only manages to fill one small corner
of the hill acropolis of that ancient city, which once
covered all the miles stretching between this and the
temple-crowned ridge of the southern boundary of
cliffs. Akragas found space for nearly a million of inhabitants
where Girgenti nourishes but twenty thousand
or so.
It was not till 580 B.C. that this Rhodian colony was
founded, so Akragas was a century and a half younger
than her great rival, Syracuse—the offspring of Corinth.
But that site on the steep river-girt hill, rising
from such fertile country, proved so favourable to life
and commerce; trade with the opposite coast of Africa
developed so richly, that Akragas’ rise to wealth and
power was rapid, and she was soon pressing Syracuse
hard for the place of first city. Her temples were the
greatest of all Sicily, almost of all Greece. The city’s
magnificence became a bye-word, and accounts of the
wealth and prodigality of its private citizens read like
Arabian Nights imaginings. In the public gymnasium
the people used golden strigils and gold vessels for oil.
One rich Akragantine kept slaves in waiting all day
at the door of his great mansion to invite every passing
stranger in to feast and repose in his spacious courts,
.pn +1
.bn 227.png
where there were baths and fresh garments always
waiting and slaves to entertain with dance and music;
flower garlands and food and wine unlimited at his
call. There was wine in the cellars by the reservoir
full—three hundred reservoirs of nine hundred gallons
each—hewn in the solid rock! This same genial
Gelleas, when five hundred riders came at once from
Gela, took them all in, and, it being the dead of winter,
presented each man with new warm garments.
They delighted in pageants and splendid public festivals,
these splendour-loving Akragantines, of whom
their philosopher Empedocles said that they “built as
if they were to live forever and feasted as if they were
to die on the morrow!” We know they went out to
welcome young Exainetos, victor at the Olympian
Games, with three hundred glittering chariots drawn
all by milk-white horses; we know of the wonderful
illuminations that lit all the city, from the monuments
of the high Acropolis to the temple-crowned sea-rampart,
when a noble bride passed at night to her new
home, with flutings and chorus, and an escort of eight
hundred carriages and riders innumerable.
Now the town seemed to be mostly a winding tangle
of steep stairs—with houses for walls—and these stairs
were bestrewn with ancient remnants of vegetables that
had outlived their usefulness, and a swarming population
of children. Fazelli mentions an Agrigentian
woman of his time who brought forth seventy-three
children at thirty-three births, and judging from the
appearance of the streets that rabbit-like practice still
maintains. Way could hardly be made through the
swarm of juvenile pests, clamouring for pennies and
offering themselves as guides, until a boy in slightly
.pn +1
.bn 228.png
cleaner rags was chosen to show the way to the Cathedral.
Once given an official position he furiously put
his competitors to flight, and with goat-footed lightness
flitted before up the ladder-like alleys, while the
two panted after until it seemed as if they should be
able easily to step off into the sky.
A queer old Fourteenth Century campanile, with
Norman ogives and Moorish balconies, still gives character
to the exterior of this thousand-foot-long Cathedral
of San Gerlando perched aloft in the windy blue,
but inside the Eighteenth Century had done its worst.
Baroque rampant; colossal stucco mermaids and cupids,
interspersed with gilded whorls and scrolls as
thick as shells upon the “shell-work” boxes of the seaside
booths. A giant finger could flick out a dozen
cupids anywhere without their ever being missed.
Yet it stands upon the ruins of a temple to Jove, and
here for more than two thousand years have prayers
and praise and incense gone up to the gods of the
overarching blue that looks so near, so that even stucco
and gilding cannot render it irreverent or lessen its
power to brood the children of earth beneath its wings.
.if h
.il fn=illus_229.jpg w=600px id=illus_229
.ca
Temples of Castor and Pollux, Girgenti
“Lifting Themselves Airily From a Sea of Flowers”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: Temples of Castor and Pollux, Girgenti
“Lifting Themselves Airily From a Sea of Flowers”]
.if-
Even so it seemed to-day, for merrily and thickly as
the throngs of naked little stucco cupids chased each
other on the walls, infants of flesh and blood in gay
rags and heavy hob-nailed shoes swarmed over the
marble floor. As if it were a kindergarten small boys
played games of tag around the columns, small girls
trotted about more demurely, or flocked like rows of
perching sparrows around the numerous altars. The
church resounded with the hum of their voices and the
patter of their feet; yet the old women at prayer continued
their devotions, quite undisturbed, and no passing
.bn 229.png
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
.bn 231.png
priest or sacristan did more than shake a gentle
finger at some especially boisterous youngster.
The sacristy holds the jewel of the Cathedral, a
ravished jewel which does not belong at all in this
ecclesiastical setting—the lovely Greek sarcophagus
portraying the passionate story of Hippolytus and
Phædra. This is the one remnant now left to Akragas
out of all her treasures of Greek art. Found in the
temple of Concord, where the gentle St. Gregory had
probably cherished it, the Girgentians offered it to
their Cathedral, and in that most tolerant of churches
it served for long as the High Altar until influx of the
outer world made some sense of its incongruity felt
even here. At one end of the tomb Phædra swoons
amourously among her maidens, their delicate little
round child-like faces and soft-draped forms melting
into the background in exquisite low relief. Two of a
more stately beauty hold up the Queen’s limp arms
and support her as she confesses to her old nurse the
secret passion consuming her for that god-like boy,
son of her own husband, whom with all her fiery blood
she had once hated as illegitimate rival to her own children,
but now had come to find so dear that she “loved
the very touch of his fleecy coat”—that simple grey-and-white
homespun his Amazon mother’s loving
fingers had woven. In high bold relief of interlacing
trees Hippolytus on the other side hunts as joyously as
his patroness Artemis herself. Opposite, arrested
among his dogs and companions, he stands in the clear
purity of his young beauty, like “the water from the
brook or the wild flowers of the morning, or the beams
of the morning star turned to human flesh,” turning
away his head from the bent shrunken form of the old
.pn +1
.bn 232.png
nurse pleading her shameful embassy. And on the
other end is carved the tragedy of his death, the revenge
of Aphrodite in anger at his obduracy against
herself and her votary Phædra. “Through all the
perils of darkness he had guided the chariot safely
along the curved shore; the dawn was come, and a
little breeze astir as the grey level spaces parted delicately
into white and blue, when angry Aphrodite
awoke from the deep betimes, rent the tranquil surface;
a great wave leapt suddenly into the placid distance
of the little shore, and was surging here to the
very necks of the plunging horses, a moment since enjoying
so pleasantly with him the caress of the morning
air, but now, wholly forgetful of their old affectionate
habit of obedience, dragging their leader headlong
over the rough pavements.”
Life seemed to breathe from the ivory-coloured
marble. So vividly had its creator’s hand carried out the
conception of his brain that all the elapsed centuries
since the vision of beauty had come to him were but as
drifting mists. Races, dynasties, powers, the very form
of the earth itself, had altered, in the changing ages, but
the grace of this little dream was still a living force.
.nf b
“Oh Attic shape! Fair Attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens, over wrought
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity; Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waile
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
.nf-
.tb
.pn +1
.bn 233.png
On the steps of the Cathedral they witnessed a pretty
sight.
“Peripatetica,” announced Jane, “I will not walk
back to the hotel! It may be only one mile from town,
by the high road, but it was certainly four by that short
cut, and all this hill-climbing on slippery cobbles has
turned my knees to tissue paper. The boy must get
us a cab—how does one say it? You tell him.”
The boy hesitated at first at Peripatetica’s request,
but went off in obedience to the firm command of her
tone.
Accustomed to the ubiquitous, ever present and ever-pestering
cab of Taormina and Syracuse, they expected
his instant return. But the minutes passed and
passed, and sitting on the parapet of the Cathedral
steps they had long opportunity to watch the world
wag on. Apparently it was “Children’s Day” at the
Cathedral, to which they were being mustered for
catechism. The swarms inside were now explained.
Though it had seemed as if every child in town must
already be there, they were still flocking in.
Mites of every size and sort between the ages of two
and ten, small things with no accompanying elders,
came toiling up the steep streets Cathedralwards,
climbing the long flights of steps and boldly shoving
into the great doorway.
But the different manner of their coming! The unfaltering
steady advance of the devout—heads brushed,
shirts and frocks clean, faces set and solemn, no words
or smiles for their companions, minds fixed on duty.
Little girls came in bands, tongues going like mill-hoppers
even as they plunged within the sacred portal.
Little boys enlivened their pilgrimage with chasings
.pn +1
.bn 234.png
and scuffles. Wee tots, timidly attached to the hand
of some patriarch of eight or nine; receiving therefrom
protecting encouragement, or being ruthlessly dragged
along at the top speed of chubby legs, regardless of their
streaming tears. Loiterers arriving with panting pink
tongues, stockings half off and dragging, clothes all in
disarray from some too delightful game on the way,
plodding breathless up the steps with worried rubbings
on clothes of dirty little paws; still casting reluctant
looks at the sunshine before they made the
plunge behind the dark leather curtain. Reprobates,
at the very last refusing to enter at all; refusing to exchange
the outer darkness of play and sunshine for the
inner light of wax tapers and the Catechism; giving
themselves boldly over to sin on the very Cathedral
steps in merry games of tag and loud jeerings and
floutings of the old beggar men who had given up their
sunny posts at the doors in attempts to drive these
backsliders in. And the Reluctant, coming with slow
and dragging feet; heads turned back to all the mundane
charms of the streets, lingering as long as possible
before final hesitating entrance. For these last it
was very hard that, straight in their way, just in front
of the Cathedral, a brother Girgentian, whose very
tender age still rendered him immune from religious
duties, was thrillingly disporting himself with an iron
barrel-hoop tied to a string, the leg of a chicken, and
two most delightful mud-puddles. The care-free
sportings and delicious condition of dirt of this Blessed
Being made their own soaped and brushed virtue most
cruelly unsatisfying to many of the Pilgrims. But
there was the Infant Example, who, with crisp short
skirts rustling complacency, and Mother’s large Prayer-book
.pn +1
.bn 235.png
clasped firmly to her bosom, climbed the steps
with eyes rolled raptly heavenwards and little black
pig-tails vibrating piety. And some little boys with
both stockings firmly gartered, jackets irreproachably
buttoned, and a consciousness of all the answers to the
Catechism safely bestowed in their sleek little heads,
made their way in eagerly, wrapped in the “showing off”
excitement. These little Lambs passed coldly and disapprovingly
through those who had chosen to be goats
in the outer sunshine. But many small ewes sent
glances of fearful admiration from soft dark eyes at
those bold flouters of authority, and many proper
youths looked sidewise at them so longingly it was
plain that only the fear of evil report taken home by
sisters in tow, kept them from joining the Abandoned
Ones.
Peripatetica, amused and interested, forgot the flight
of time. Jane, suddenly realizing it, cried:
“That boy has been gone a half hour—do you suppose
you really told him to get a cab? I believe you
must have said something wild and strange which the
poor thing will spend the rest of his life questing while
we turn into lichens on this parapet.”
Peripatetica, indignantly denying this slur on her
Italian, insisted she had clearly and correctly demanded
a cab, and a cab only.
“I remember,” she reflected, “the boy looked very
troubled as he went off—and now that I come to think
of it, we haven’t met a horse in this town to-day. The
Romans must have looted all the conveyances in their
last sack of the city; the only one left is now kept in
the Museum in a glass case, and allowed out for no
less a person than the German Emperor—but I won’t
.pn +1
.bn 236.png
walk back. I should suppose the boy had deserted
us, except that he hasn’t been paid.”
“Poor little wretch! That was why he looked so
troubled,” exclaimed Jane. “He knew the long and
difficult search he was being sent upon, and perhaps
thought it was a mere Barbarian ruse to shake him off,
so that we could get away without paying him.”
As she spoke the sound of thudding hoofs echoed
from the walls of the Cathedral, and the white anxious
face of their guide appeared on flying legs. The reassurance
that changed his expression into a beaming
smile at sight of the two still there, made it clear that
Jane’s supposition had been correct. He had evidently
feared to find both his clients and the silver rewards
of his labours vanished. The relief with which
he gasped out his explanation of having had to go all
the way down into the valley to the railway station to
get a carriage which was now on its way while he had
dashed ahead on foot up a short cut, was so pathetic
they gave him double pay to console him for his worry.
And then with a noise between the rumble of a thunderstorm
and the clatter of a tinman’s wagon came
their “carrozza.” Its cushions were in rags, the harness
almost all rope, one door was off a hinge and swung
merrily useless—but two lean steeds drew this noble
barouche and two men in rags sat solemnly on its
ricketty box with such an air of importance its passengers
felt as if they were being conducted homeward in
a chariot of state.
.tb
Fortunato, restored to favour, was leading them up
the Rupe Athena, that rose steeply immediately behind
.pn +1
.bn 237.png
their hotel; he was leading them not straight up,
but by a series of long “biases”—as Jane expressed
it. The end of the first bias reached the little lonely
church of San Biago, dreary and uninteresting enough
in its solitary perch, save for the fact that it stood upon
the site of a temple to Demeter and Persephone:
.nf b
“Our Lady of the Sheaves,
And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet
Of Enna”
.nf-
.ni
placed here no doubt because this high spur was the
only point in Girgenti from which one could catch a
glimpse of the lofty steeps of Enna-Castrogiovanni.
.pi
Turning at a sharp angle again they went slanting
up across the bare hillside, the wild thyme sending up
a keen sweet incense beneath their climbing feet, until
they came to the verge of the great yellow broken cliff
that shot up more than a thousand feet from the valley
below. Some crumpling of the earth’s crust, ages ago,
had forced up this sheer mass of sandstone, hung now
with cactus, thyme, and vines, which served as one of
the natural defences of Akragas, behind whose unscalable
heights the unwarlike city had been enabled peacefully
to pursue its gathering of wealth and luxury.
Fortunato, leaning over the marge, clapped his hands
suddenly, and a cloud of rock pigeons flew forth from
the crevices, to wheel and flutter and settle again
among the vines. Probably descendants of those
pigeons who lived in these same crevices in the days of
the monster Phalaris, and helped to compass his death.
Pythagoras—that strange wanderer and mystic,
whose outlines loom so beautiful and so incomprehensible
through the vagueness of legend, was first flattered
and then threatened by the Tyrant, who feared
.pn +1
.bn 238.png
the philosopher’s teachings of freedom and justice.
At one of those public discussions, so impossible in any
other country ruled despotically, and yet so characteristically
Greek—Pythagoras rounded a burst of eloquence
by pointing to a flock of these pigeons fleeing
before a hawk.
“See what a vile fear is capable of,” he cried. “If but one of these
pigeons dared to resist he would save his companions, who would
have time to flee.”
Fired by the suggestion the old Telemachus threw
a stone at the Tyrant and despite the efforts of his
guards, Phalaris was ground to a bloody paste by the
stones and fury of the suddenly enfranchised Akragantines.
.tb
“It is our last day,” Jane had said; “we will go and
bid the temples good-bye.”
Which was why she and Peripatetica were scaling
in the sunset the golden cliffs which Concordia crowned,
having come to it by a détour to Theron’s tomb.
They drew themselves laboriously up to the crest,
and sank breathlessly upon the verge among the crumbled
grave pits, where the Greeks buried their dead
along the great Temple road. Not only their beloved
human companions they interred here, but the horses
who had been Olympian victors, their faithful dogs,
and their pet birds. It was in rifling these graves, in
search of jewels and treasure, that the greedy Carthagenians
had reaped a hideous pestilence as a price
of their impiety. Now the graves were but empty
grass-grown troughs, and one might sit among them
safely to watch the skyey glories flush across the sapphire
.pn +1
.bn 239.png
sea, and redden the hill where the little shrunken
Girgenti sent down the soft pealing of Cathedral
chimes from her airy distance. Beside them Concordia’s
columns deepened to tints of beaten gold in the
last rays, and across the level plain far below—already
dusk—the people streamed home from their long day’s
labour. Flocks of silky, antlered goats strayed and
cropped as they moved byre-wards, urged by brown
goatherds who piped the old country tunes as they
went. The same tunes Theocritus listened to in the
dusk thousands of summers since, or that Empedocles,
purple-clad, and golden-crowned, might have heard
vaguely fluting through his dreams of life and destiny
as he meditated beneath these temple shadows as night
came down.
Asses pattered and tinkled towards the farms, laden
with crimson burdens of sweet-smelling lupin. Painted
carts rattled by with oil or wine; and cries and laughter
and song came faintly up to them as the evening
grew grey.
“How little it changes,” said Peripatetica wistfully.
“We will pass and vanish as all these did on whose
tombs we rest, and hundreds of years from now there
will be the same colours and the same songs to widen
the new eyes with delight.”
“Let us be grateful for the joys of Theocritus, and
for our joys and for the same joy in the same old beauties
of those to come,” said Jane, sententiously. “And
let us go home, for the moon is rising.”
Large and golden it came out of the rosy east, the
west still smouldering with the dying fires of the ended
day.
Their way led through the olive orchards, grown
.pn +1
.bn 240.png
argent in the faint light, and taking on fresh fantasies
of gnarling, and of ghostly resemblances to twisted,
convoluted human forms. Among the misty olives the
blooming pear-trees showed like delicate silvery-veiled
brides in the paling dark, and with the falling dew
arose the poignant incense of ripening lemons, of blossoming
weeds, and of earth freshly tilled.
Wandering a little from the faintly traced path,
grown invisible in the vagueness of the diffused moon-radiance,
they called for help to a young shepherd going
lightly homeward, with his cloak draped in long
classic folds from one shoulder, and singing under his
breath. A shepherd who may have been merely a
commonplace, handsome young Sicilian by day, but
who in this magic shining dusk was the shepherd of all
pastoral verse, strayed for a moment from Arcady.
Following his swift light feet they were set at last into
the broad road among the herds and the asses and the
homing labourers—Demeter’s well-beloved children.
.nf b
“E’en now the distant farms send up their smoke,
And shadows lengthen from the lofty hills.
.nf-
.tb
.nf b
—Now the gloaming star
Bids fold the flock and duly tell their tale,
And moves unwelcome up the wistful sky.
. . . . . . Go home, my full-fed goats,
Cometh the Evening Star, my goats, go home.”
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 241.png
.pb
.if h
.il fn=illus_241.jpg w=250px
.if-
.if t
.nf c
[Illustration: Decoration]
.nf-
.if-
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI || The Golden Shell
.sp 2
.nf c
“Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blüh’n?”
.nf-
When Ulysses Grant had ended the Civil War in
America and was made President, he turned from
uttering his solemn oath of office before the cheering
multitudes and said under his breath to his wife who
stood beside him, in that tone of half-resentful, half-weary
patience the American husband usually adopts
in speaking to his mate, “Well, now, Julia, I hope
you’re satisfied!”
There was the same exasperated patience in Jane’s
voice as she climbed into the railway carriage for Palermo
and, throwing herself back upon the cushions,
exclaimed:
“Well, now, Peripatetica, I hope you’ve had enough
of the Greeks! For my part I go on to the next course;
something a little more modern. Tombs and goddesses
and columns and myths cloy as a steady diet for
months, and even the ridiculous pompous old Eighteenth
.pn +1
.bn 242.png
Century would seem rather home-like and
comfy as a change. I could find it in my heart to
relish a bit of the odious decadence of l’art nouveau
simply by way of contrast.”
Peripatetica treated this shameful outburst with all
the stern contempt it so truly merited, as she was engaged
in making the acquaintance of a descendant of
that great race of Northmen who had made history all
over Sicily and the rest of Europe. He too was a conqueror,
though his weapon was a paint-brush and a
modelling tool instead of a sword, and kings received
him with all the honours due an acknowledged ruler
of a realm. He dwelt by a great lake far to the north
in that “nursery of kings” in a home built five hundred
years ago of huge fir-trees; logs so sound and clean-fibred
that the centuries had left the wood still as firm
as stone. Making his play of resurrection of the old
wild melodies of the North, of the old costumes and industries
of the people from whose loins had sprung half
the rulers of the continent. The Sea Rover’s blood was
strong in him too, driving him to wander in a boat no
bigger than those of his Viking ancestors along the stormy
fjords and fierce coasts to the still more distant north.
For the adornment of the log-built home Sicily had
yielded to his wise searching various relics of antiquity,
Greek, Norman, Saracen, and Spanish, and in the
ensuing days in which Jane and Peripatetica were permitted
to tread the same path with the Northman and
his beautiful wife, these treasures came out of pockets
to be fitted with dates and history, and even, in the delightful
instance of one small ghostly grotesque, to
change owners.
While the two seekers of Persephone were gathering
.pn +1
.bn 243.png
and savouring this refreshing tang of the cold salt
of the northern seas, this large vista of the gay, poised
strength of a mighty race—their train was looping and
coiling through summer hills to the seat of summer—cherry
and apple, peach and pear trees tossed wreaths
of rose and white from amid the grey of olives and the
green of citron, for this was the land of Mignon’s homesick
dream—“das Land, wo die Citronen blüh’n.”
Miles and miles and miles of orange and lemon
groves ran beside their path; climbing the hills and
creeping down to the edge of the tideless sea. Trees
that were nurtured like babies; each orchard gathered
about old grey or rose-washed tanks holding the precious
water which is the life-blood of all this golden
culture during the rainless summer. Tanks moist
and dripping and fringed with ferns, mirroring the
overhanging yellow fruit, or the pink geraniums that
peeped over the shoulders of the broad-bladed cacti to
blush happily at their own reflections in the water.
An exquisite form of orcharding, this, as delicate and
perfect as a hot-house, with every inch of the soil utilized
for the vegetables set about the trees’ roots, and
the trees themselves growing in unbelievable numbers
to the acre. For not one superfluous leaf or branch
was there—just the requisite number to carry and
nourish the greatest possible quantity of fruit. In
consequence of which the whole land was as if touched
by some vegetable Midas and turned all to gold. Millions
and millions of the yellow globes hung still unpicked,
though already the trees were swelling the buds
which within ten days were to break forth into a far-flung
bridal wreath, and intoxicate all the land with
honeyed perfumes.
.pn +1
.bn 244.png
And, mark you, how nations are influenced by their
trees! In the bad old days of constant war and turmoil
the isolated family was never secure, and the
people clung to the towns, but modern careful culture
of the orange has forced orchardists to live close by
their charges, and the population is being slowly pushed
back into rural life, with the result of better health,
better morals, and a great decrease of homicides. One
has really no convenient time for sticking knives into
one’s friends when one is showing lemon-trees how to
earn $400 an acre and orange-trees half as much....
“It is the most beautiful town in the whole world,”
said Peripatetica in that tiresomely dogmatic way she
has of expressing the most obvious fact.
They had wandered out of their hotel, and through
a pair of stately iron gates crowned with armorial
beasts. Beyond the gates lay a garden. But a garden!
Acres of garden, laced by sweeping avenues,
shadowed by cypress and stone pines, by ilex and laurel.
From the avenues dipped paths which wound through
boscoes, looped under bridges veiled with curtains of
wisteria and yellow banksias, climbed again to pass
through pleached walks; paths that tied themselves
about shadowy pools where swans floated in the gloom
of palm groves, or debouched across emerald lawns
where clumps of forget-me-nots and cinerarias made
splashes of bold colour in the grass.
“They do these things so well in Europe,” remarked
Peripatetica approvingly, as a splendid functionary, in
a long blue coat and carrying a silver-headed staff,
lifted his cockaded hat to them as they entered the
gates. “Now where at home would one find one of
our park guardians with such a manner, and looking
.pn +1
.bn 245.png
so like a nobleman’s servant? This,” she went on, in
an instructive tone, being newly arisen from a guide-book,
“is the Giardino Inglese; one of the public
parks, and it has exactly the air of loved and carefully
tended private possession.”
They lounged over the parapets of the carved bridges,
with their elbows set among roses, to look down into
the little ravines where small runnels flowed among the
soft pink-purple clouds of Judas-trees. They were
tempted into allées bordered their whole length with the
white fountains of blossoming spireas, or hedged on
both sides by pink hermosas. They strolled past
clumps of feathery bamboos to gaze along the shadowy
vistas of four broad avenues meeting at a bright circle
where a sculptured fountain tossed its waters in the
sun. They lingered in paths where tea-roses were
garlanded from tree to tree, or by walls curtained by
Maréchale Niels. They inspected the nurseries and
admired the greenhouse. They came with delight upon
a double ring of giant cypresses lifting dark spires
into the dazzling blue of the sky, and sat to rest happily
upon a great curved marble seat whose back had
lettered upon it a reminder to the “Shadowed Soul”
that wisdom comes only in shade and peace.
.nf b
“E La Sagezza Vieni Solo
Nel’ Ombra E Pace.”
.nf-
And finally they mounted the little tiled and columned
belvedere hanging at the corner of the garden’s lofty
wall to gaze upon a view unrivalled of this most beautifully
placed city.
Palermo lay stretched before them in its plain of the
Conca d’Oro—the golden shell. Round it as a garland
.pn +1
.bn 246.png
rose a semicircle of vapoury mountains like rosy-purple
clouds, bending on beyond the plain on either
side to clasp a bay of dazzling violet whose waters
glowed at the city’s feet; the city itself warmly cream-tinted
and roofed with dull red tiles. A city towered,
columned, arched; with here the ruddy bubbles of San
Giovanni degli Eremiti’s domes, there the tall spires and
fretted crest of the Cathedral; and flowing through it
all, or resting here and there in pools, the green of
orange groves, the flushing mist of Judas-trees, the
long stream of verdant parks and gardens.
“Not only is this the loveliest city in the whole
world,” said Jane, “but this is also the sweetest of all
gardens, and a curious thing is that we seem to have
it quite to ourselves. You’d suppose all Palermo
would want to come here for at least half of every day,
but not a soul have we met except those two dear,
queer old gardeners sitting on the tank’s edge playing
a game with orange seeds.”
“Well, if the Palermians haven’t intelligence enough
to use such a garden, we have,” announced Peripatetica.
“And we will come here every day.”
Which they did for a while; bringing their fountain
pens to write letters in the bosco, or resting after sight-seeing
in the cool shade of the cypress ring. And it
might have served them to the end as their intimate
joy had it not been for Peripatetica’s insane passion
for gardening.
.if h
.il fn=illus_247.jpg w=527px id=illus_247
.ca
“Sicily’s Picture-book, The Painted Cart”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: “Sicily’s Picture-book, The Painted Cart”]
.if-
All about the edge of the long tapis vert which lay
before the handsome building at the end of the garden—a
building which they supposed housed some lucky
park official—stood at intervals fine standard roses.
Now one unlucky day Peripatetica descried aphides upon
.bn 247.png
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
.bn 249.png
the delicate shoots and young buds of these standards.
That was sufficient. An aphis, to her rose-growing
mind, is a noxious wild beast, and promptly stripping
off her gloves she ravened among them.
“Perhaps you’d better leave them alone,” warned
Jane in a whisper. “The gardeners look so surprised.”
“By no means!” objected Peripatetica in lofty obstinacy,
with a backward glance of contempt at the
visibly astonished attendants. “The city no doubt
pays them well to grow roses, and I mean to shame
them for this indecent neglect of their duties. Besides,
I am enjoying it immensely; I’ve been hungering and
thirsting for a little gardening.”
That very day it was conveyed to their intelligence—or
their lack of it—that they had not been enjoying
the Giardino Inglese, a dull park which lay almost
opposite, but had been calmly annexing the private
grounds of Prince Travia. He, however, being a
model of princely courtesy, was glad to have the foreign
ladies amuse themselves there as much as they liked.
Only once more did they see it; on the day of departure,
when they blushingly left a tip in the hands of
the handsome old silver-staffed portiere, who had truly
looked like a nobleman’s servant, and behaved like
one as he saluted them with unprotesting dignity each
time they had passed in and out of that beauteous spot
in which they had no right to be.
There were many other gardens in Palermo, but
none so fair. The green world was so enchanting in
this glowing spring that a day of villegiatura was necessary
between every two days of sight-seeing, and having
been banished from the Travia garden by their
own innate sense of decency, they took lunch in their
.pn +1
.bn 250.png
pockets and set out for the famous Villa Giulia which
had aroused such enthusiasm in Goethe.
The Villa Giulia, as they might have foreseen, was
just the sort of thing Goethe would have liked—and
they had been violently disagreeing with Goethe all
over Sicily. An untouched example of the most tiresome
form of Eighteenth Century gardening—a cross
between a wedding cake and a German Noah’s Ark.
All rigid, glaring, gravelly little allées, with trees as
denuded of natural luxuriance as a picked chicken;
sugar-icing grottoes; baroque fountains; gaudy music
kiosks; cages of frowzy birds and mangy monkeys;
and posé busts in self-conscious bowers. Not here
could these Eden-exiled Eves lunch, nor yet in the untidy,
uninteresting Botanic Gardens next door—a wilderness
of potted specimens and obtrusive labels—but
wandering melancholily around a vast egregious gas
tank, they came upon a long, neglected avenue of great
trees; all that was left of some once lovely villa swept
out of existence by the gas works. And here upon a
stone bench in the glimmering shade they fed at the
feet of a feeble little knock-kneed marble King. One
of the Spanish monarchs of Sicily it was, thus commemorated
in marble Roman armour and a curled marble
wig, and his rickety, anæmic majesty moved them to
smiling pity, so feeble and miserable he looked, forgotten
and overshadowed by modern gas tanks, his
boneless legs ready to give under him, and his peevish
face smeared with creeping lichens. The green tunnel
of the trees framed a blazing sapphire at the other end—a
glimpse of the bay—and ragged pink roses, and
neglected purple iris bloomed together along the path.
Ere another year the blight of the gas works will have
.pn +1
.bn 251.png
swept away the airy avenue, the wilding flowers, the
poor spineless little King, and the two bid it all a wistfully
smiling farewell, knowing they should never again
eat an April day’s bread and cheese under those sweet
auspices.
... Will travellers from the roaring cities of Central
Africa come a couple of centuries hence and mark with
regret the last bit of some now flourishing boscage
being eaten away by Twenty-Second Century progress,
and smile indulgently at one of our foolishly feeble
statues, in granite frock coats, tottering to lichened oblivion?
No doubt. Palermo has seen so many changes
since the Phœnicians used to trade and build along
this coast. For this was the Carthagenian “sphere of
influence” from the first, and the Greeks were here
but little, and have left no traces in Palermo, though
in the long wars between Carthagenian and Greek it
was captured by the latter from time to time, and held
for a space. The Greeks called it Panormous—meaning
all harbour, for in their day deep water curved
well up into the town, where are now streets and palaces
and hotels. Of course Rome held it for a while,
as she held pretty nearly everything. Held it for close
upon a thousand years—with the Goths for its masters
at one interval—but there are few traces of Rome
either, and then the Arabs took it and set their seal so
deep, in less than two centuries, that after the lapse of
nearly another thousand years their occupation is still
visible at every turn. For under the Saracens it was
a capital, and after their destruction of Syracuse, which
ended Greek domination in the Island, it gained a pre-eminence
among Sicilian cities never afterwards lost.
That garrulous old traveller from Bagdad, Ibn Haukal,
.pn +1
.bn 252.png
writing in 943, says that Palermo then had a most
formidable nine-gated wall, a population of close upon
half a million, and many mosques. He also says that
near where the Cathedral now stands was a great swamp
full of papyrus plants, serving not only for paper but
for the manufacture of rope.
Already Sicily was beginning to suffer from the scarcity
of water, and the merchant from Bagdad, accustomed
to the abundant pools and conduits of his own
city, makes severe comments upon the lack of these in
Palermo. It could only have been by contrast, however,
that the Palermians could have seemed to Haukal
dirty, because Jane and Peripatetica, going to see a
part of the old Moorish quarter, in process of demolition,
found multitudinous water-pipes in the houses,
entering almost every chamber. Haukal says that the
Greek philosopher Aristotle was buried in one of the
mosques of Palermo, and he opines that the most serious
defect of the citizens was their universal consumption
of onions. Peripatetica—to whom that repulsive
vegetable is a hissing and an astonishment—read aloud
in clamant sympathy this outburst of Haukal’s:
“There is not a person among them, high or low,
who does not eat them in his house daily, both in the
morning and at evening. This is what has ruined their
intelligence and affected their brains and degraded their
senses and distracted their faculties and crushed their
spirits and spoiled their complexions, and so altogether
changed their temperaments that everything, or almost
everything, appears to them quite different from what
it is.”
“That gentleman from Bagdad is a man after my
own heart,” she declared triumphantly. “I have always
.pn +1
.bn 253.png
been sure that people who eat onions must be
those to whom ‘almost everything appears quite different
from what it is,’ for if they had the slightest idea of
‘what it is’ for other people to be near them after they
have indulged that meretricious appetite they would
certainly never do it!”
This Arab impress, though visible everywhere, is
more a general atmosphere than definite remains; for
with but few exceptions their creations are so overlaid
and modified by subsequent Occidental work that it
glows through this overlay rather than defines itself.
It was while searching for Moorish fragments that Jane
and Peripatetica came upon La Ziza. The guide-books
unanimously asserted that Al Aziz—La Ziza—was
the work of the Norman King, William I., but the
guide-books, they had long since discerned, were as
prone to jump to unwarranted conclusions, and, having
jumped, to be as aggravatingly cocksure in sticking
to their mistakes as was Peripatetica herself. So
they took leave to doubt this assertion, and concluded
that William probably seized the lovely country-house
of some Moorish magnate, adding to it sufficiently to
make of it a “lordly pleasure dome” for himself in the
wide orange gardens, but the core of the place was
wholly Moorish in character; well worth the annexing,
well worth its name Al Aziz—The Beloved.
They came through the hot, white sunshine up wide,
low steps, through a huge grille in an enormous archway,
to find a windowless room where the glaring day
paled to glaucous shadow against the green tiles of a
lofty chamber, as cool and glistening as a sea cave.
And the sound of rippling water echoed from the lucent
sides and honeycomb vaultings, for a shining
.pn +1
.bn 254.png
fountain gushed from the wall into a tiled channel of
irregular levels, artfully planned to chafe the sliding
water into music before it slept for awhile in a pool,
and then slipped again through another channel to
another pool, and so passed from the chamber—having
glinted over its shining path of gold and green and
blue, and having filled the place with cool moisture and
clear song.
.nf b
“With fierce noons beaming,
Moons of glory gleaming,
Full conduits streaming
Where fair bathers lie—”
.nf-
Quoted Peripatetica—who might be safely counted on
to have a tag of verse concealed about her person for
every possible occasion.
“Did you ever see anything that so adequately embodied
the Arab conception of pleasure? Coolness,
moisture, the singing of water, noble proportions, and
clean colour wrought into grave and continent devices?
Was there ever anything,” she went on, “so curious as
the contradictions of racial instincts? Who could suppose
that this would be the home-ideal of those wild
desert dwellers who always loved and fought like demons;
who were the most voluptuous, the most cruel,
the most poetic and the ‘so fightingest’ race the world
has probably ever seen!”
“Oh, contradictions!” laughed Jane. “Here’s a
flat contradiction, if you like. Please contemplate the
delicious, the exquisite absurdities of these frescoes.”
For, needless to say, the Eighteenth Century had not
allowed to escape so exquisite an opportunity to make
an ass of itself, and had spread over the clean, composed
patterns of the tiled walls a layer of lime-wash
.pn +1
.bn 255.png
on which it had proceeded to paint in coarse, bright
colours indecently unclad goddesses, all flushed blowzy
and beribboned; all lolloping amourously about on
clouds or in chariots, or falling into the arms of be-wigged
deities of war or of love. Fortunately the
greater part of these gross conceptions had been diligently
scrubbed away, but enough remained to make
Peripatetica splutter indignantly:
“Well, of all the hideous barbarians! The Eighteenth
Century was really the darkest of dark ages.”
“My dear,” Jane explained contemptuously, “the
Eighteenth Century wasn’t a period of time. It was
merely a deplorable state of mind. And the mind
seems to have been slightly tipsy, it was so fantastic
and ridiculous, and yet so gravely self-satisfied.”
La Cuba, another Saracenic relic, was so obliterated
into the mere military barrack to which it had been
transformed that there was nothing for it but to pass
on to the Normans, and to great Roger de Hauteville,
a fit companion of the Paladins, so heavy a “Hammer
of the Moors” was he—so knightly, so romantic, so
beautiful.
Not until twelve years after that bold attempt at
Messina to conquer a kingdom with only sixty companions
was Roger able to enter Palermo, and he and
his nephews chose for themselves “delectable gardens
abounding with fruit and water, and the knights were
royally lodged in an earthly paradise.”
No hideous massacre or sack followed the taking of
Palermo, for though Roger had conquered the island
for himself he was a true mirror of chivalry, and was
never cruel. He was chivalrous not only to the defeated,
but to those other helpless creatures, women, who
.pn +1
.bn 256.png
in his day were mere pawns in the great military and
political games played by the men; married whether
they would or no, and unmarried without heed of any
protest from them; thrust into convents against their
wishes, and haled out of convents if they were needed.
And swept ruthlessly from the board when they had
served their purpose, or when they got in the way of
those fierce pieces passaging back and forth across the
chequered squares of the field of life. Roger loved the
Norman maid Eremberga from his early boyhood, it
appears, and as soon as his hazardous fortunes would
permit she was had out from Normandy, and the history
of the great soldier is full of his devotion, and of
her fidelity and courage. As at the siege of Troina,
when the two were reduced by hunger and cold to the
greatest extremities, sharing one cloak between them,
so that finally Roger, rendered desperate by his wife’s
sufferings, burst through the ring of Saracens, leaving
her to defend the fortress with unshaken valour until
he returned with a force adequate to save her, and raise
the siege.
There is an amusing story of Roger and his eldest
brother, that ruthless old fox, Robert Guiscard. They
were fighting one another at the time, and Roger’s soldiers
captured Robert, who was disguised and spying.
He with difficulty rescued Robert from the angry captors,
took him to a private room, kissed him, helped
him to escape, and promptly next day fell upon his
forces with such fury that Robert was glad to make
peace and fulfil the broken promises which had caused
the dispute....
It was not Roger, the great Count—he had little time
in his busy life for building—but his son Roger the
.pn +1
.bn 257.png
King, who raised the great pile at Monreale which
Jane and Peripatetica were on their way to see. Not
by way of the winding rocky road which for centuries
the pious pilgrims had climbed, but whisked up the
heights by an electric tram which pretended it was a
moving-picture machine, displaying from its windows
an ever widening panorama of burning blue sea, of
pink and purple mountains, of valleys down which
flowed rivers of orange groves, of a domed and spired
city in the plain, and a foreground freaked with an
astonishing carpet of flowers.
“If you were to see that in a picture you wouldn’t
believe it,” quoted Jane from the famous Book of
Bromides, writhing her neck like an uneasy serpent in
an endeavour to see it all at once.
“No, of course, you wouldn’t,” said Peripatetica resentfully.
“And when we try to tell it to people at
home they’ll simply say our style is ‘plushy.’ There’s
nothing so resented as an attempt to carry back in
words to a pale-coloured country the incredible splendours
of the south. The critics always call it ‘orchid
and cockatoo writing,’ and sulkily declare, whenever
they do have a fairly nice colourful day, that they are
sure the tropics have nothing finer, whereas, if they
only knew, it is but an echo of an echo of the real
thing, and—” but words failed even Peripatetica.
On the breezy height, dominating all the deep-toned
landscape, stood the Abbey church of Monreale—truly
a royal mount, crowned by one of the finest shrines in
Europe. The famous bronze doors of the main entrance
had been oxidised by time and weather with a
patine of greens and blues that lent subtle values to
the bold delicate modelling of the metal, framed in a
.pn +1
.bn 258.png
toothed doorway of warm, cream-tinted stone, whose
magic harmony of colour was a fitting preliminary to
the lofty glories of the interior. An unbelievable interior!
faced throughout its three hundred and thirty-three
feet of length with millions upon millions of tiny
stones, gold and red and blue—stones of every colour.
For all the interior they found, up to the very roof,
was of this dim, glowing, gold-mosaic set with pictures
of the Christian faith—the creation of Adam and Eve,
the temptation by the Serpent, the casting out from
Eden, the wrestling of Jacob, the whole Bible history,
culminating above the altar in a gigantic Christ. More
than 700,000 square feet of pictures made of bits of
stone; and around and about pulpit, ambo, and altar,
across steps and pavement, and enclosing every window
and door, lovely mosaic patterns and devices, no
two alike....
Brown-faced old peasants pushed aside the leathern
curtain at the entrance and knelt, crossing themselves,
in the shadow of enormous pillars, as their forebears
had knelt and crossed themselves there for a thousand
years. A mass droned from a side altar. Groups of
young priests-in-the-making sauntered gossipping in
whispers, or coming and going on ecclesiastic errands.
Knots of tourists stared and wandered about the great
spaces, and from behind the high altar rose boys’ voices
at choir practice, echoing thin and pure from the painted
roof.
Of all the Norman print upon Sicily nothing gave
like this great church a sense of the potency of Tancred
de Hauteville and his mighty brood. For no defacing
hand has been laid upon this monument to their piety
and power. It stands as they wrought, tremendous,
.pn +1
.bn 259.png
glorious; commemorating the winning of the kingship
of the Land of the Gods. A story as strange as any of
the myths of the mythic world. And perhaps thousands
of years hence the historians will relegate the
Norman story, too, to the catalogue of the incredible—to
the list of the sun-myths; and Tancred will be
thought of as a principle of life and fecundity—his
twelve strong sons be held to be merely signs of months
and seasons.
Of the great Benedictine Abbey founded by William
in connection with the Cathedral almost nothing remains
unaltered except the delicious cloistered court
with its fountain, and its two hundred and sixteen delicate,
paired columns, no two alike, and with endless
variations of freakish capitals.
All this freshness and richness of invention resulted
from the mingling of the Saracen with the Norman, all
this early work being wrought by Moslem hands under
Norman direction, since King Roger and King William
were no bigots, and, giving respect and security to their
Saracen subjects, could command in return their skilled
service and fine taste. So that this bold, springing,
early Norman architecture, Gothic in outward form, is
adorned by the chaste, delicate minuteness of the grave
Arab ornament.
... It is Palm Sunday, and Jane and Peripatetica
are at a reception—otherwise a Sicilian high mass.
They have come, still on the trail of their beloved Normans,
who have almost ousted the Greeks in their
affections, to the Cappella Palatina in the Royal Palace.
The chapel is less than a third as large as Monreale
but is even more golden, more dimly splendid, more
richly beautiful than the Abbey Church. It is crowded
.pn +1
.bn 260.png
to the doors. Everywhere candles wink and drip in
the blue clouds of incense. The voices of boys soar in
a poignant treble, and the organ tones of men answer
antiphonally. The priests mutter and drone, and occasionally
take snuff. Mass goes on at a dozen side
altars, oblivious of the more stately ceremonies conducted
in the chancel. The congregation comes and
goes. A family with all the children, including baby
and nounou, enter and pray and later go out. Aristocrats
and their servants kneel side by side. The
crowd thickens and melts again, and companions separate
to choose different altars and different masses,
according to taste. All are familiar, friendly, at ease.
The divine powers are holding a reception, and worshippers,
having paid their respects, feel free to leave
when they like. Long palm branches are carried to
the altar from time to time by arriving visitors, each
branch more splendid than the last. Palms braided
and knotted, fluttering with ribbons, tied with rosettes
of scarlet and blue, wrought with elaborate intricacies—hundreds
of branches, which are solemnly sanctified,
asperged, censed, with many genuflections. Priests in
gold, in white, in scarlet, accompanied by candles,
swinging censors and chanting, take up the palms and
make a circuit of all the altars among the kneeling
worshippers, and finally distribute the branches to
their owners who bear their treasures away proudly.
With them go Jane and Peripatetica, joining a group,
who, having paid their respects to heaven, are now
ambitious to inspect the state chambers in the palace
of their earthly sovereign. These prove to be the usual
dull, uninviting apartments—flaring with gilt, and with
the satins of criard colours which modern royalty always
.pn +1
.bn 261.png
affect. There are the usual waxed floors, the
usual uncomfortable fauteuils ranged stiffly against
walls hung with inferior pictures, that are so tediously
characteristic of palaces, and it is with relief and delight
that Jane and Peripatetica find sandwiched amid
these vulgar rooms two small chambers that by some
miracle have escaped the ravages of the upholsterer.
Two chambers, left intact from Norman days, that are
like jewel caskets. Walls panelled with long smooth
slabs of marble, grown straw-coloured with age, the
delicate graining of the stone being matched like the
graining of fine wood; panels set about with rich mosaics
of fantastic birds and imaginary beasts framed in
graceful arabesques. These are the Stanza Ruggiero;
the rooms occupied by King Roger, the furnishings,
such scant bits as there are, being also of his time.
“In Roger’s day,” commented Jane, “kings were
not content with housings and plenishings of the ‘Early
Pullman, or Late Hamburg-American School’; they
knew how to be kingly in their surroundings.”
“It’s a curious fact,” agreed Peripatetica, “that there
isn’t a modern palace in Europe that a self-respecting
American millionaire wouldn’t blush to live in. No
one ever hears of great artists being called upon to
design or beautify a modern royal residence. Bad
taste in furnishing seems universal among latter-day
kings, who appear to form their ideas of domestic decoration
from second-rate German hotels. Fancy any
one seeing the high purity and beauty of Roger’s chambers
and then ordering such ruthless splashings of gilt
and cotton satin! Why, even ‘the best families’ of
Podunk or Kalamazoo would gibe at the contrast, and
as for the Wheat and Pork Kings of Denver or Chicago—they
.pn +1
.bn 262.png
would have the whole place made époque in a
week, if they had to corner the lard market, or form a
breakfast-food trust to be able to afford it!”
.tb
“God made the day to be followed by the night.
The moon and stars are at His command. Has He
not created all things? Is He not Lord of all? Blessed
be the Everlasting God!”
Jane was reading aloud from her guide-book.
They had been to Cefalu, looking for Count Roger
in the great Cathedral built by his son, but found that
he had vanished long ago, and his sarcophagus was in
Naples. They had found instead traces of Sikel,
Greek, and Roman; had lingered long before the
splendid church, so noble even in decay, and now they
were back again in Palermo, still on the track of their
Normans. What Jane read from her book was also
inscribed over the portal of Palermo’s Cathedral before
which they stood, but being carved in Cufic script,
and Jane’s Cufic being—to put it politely—not fluent
enough to be idiomatic, she preferred to use the guide-book’s
translation rather than deal with the original.
.if h
.il fn=illus_263.jpg w=539px id=illus_263
.ca
The Cathedral at Palermo—“The Last Resting Place of Queen
Constance”
.ca-
.if-
.if t
[Illustration: The Cathedral at Palermo—“The Last Resting \
Place of Queen Constance”]
.if-
They had been skirting about the Duomo for days,
for it dominated all Palermo with its bigness. Seated
in a wide Piazza that was dotted about with mussy-looking
marble saints and bishops, and a great statue
of Santa Rosalia, the city’s patron, the Cathedral was
flanked by the huge Archepiscopal Palace, by enormous
convents and public buildings, so that one couldn’t hope
to ignore or escape it. Yet they had deferred the Duomo
from day to day because they knew their pet abomination,
the Eighteenth Century, had been there before
.bn 263.png
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
.bn 265.png
them, and that they would find it but an extremely
mitigated joy in consequence.
They knew that the swamp full of pxapyrus plants
of Haukal’s time had given way to the “Friday
Mosque” which the two Rogers and William the Bad
had left undisturbed, but which had been pulled down
by William the Good—being somewhat ruinous, and
also seeing that William was “the Good” in the eyes
of his ecclesiastic historians because he reversed the
old Norman liberality to his Moslem subjects. Then
Walter of the Mill, an Englishman, built the Cathedral,
making it glorious within and without, and time
and additions only made it more lovely until the modern
tinkering began. A foolish, unsuitable dome was
thrust among its delicate towers, and the whole interior
ravaged and vulgarised.
Still, if one were hunting Normans, the Cathedral
must be seen, and most of all they wished to find the
last resting-place of Constance, around whose memory
hung a drama and a mystery, and drama and mystery
were as the very breath of their nostrils to Jane and
Peripatetica.
The interior was impressive for size despite all the
scrolled and writhed and gilded mud pies with which
Ferdinand Fuga, the Neapolitan, had plastered it by
way of decoration, and here and there still lingered
things worth seeing. Such as the delicious bas reliefs
of Gagini, Sicily’s greatest native sculptor; his statues
of the Apostles and the fine old choir stalls, only making
clearer by their ancient beauty how much that was beautiful
had been swept away. Also there was the splendid
silver sarcophagus of Santa Rosalia, weighing more
than a thousand pounds, and other such matters, but
.pn +1
.bn 266.png
the real attraction of the Cathedral was the great porphyry
tombs of the Kings—huge coffers of ensanguined
stone, as massive and tremendous as the
mummy cases of the Pharaohs. Here lay Roger the
King in the sternest and plainest of them, under a
fretted Gothic canopy. In one more ornate, his daughter
Constance, and near at hand her husband Henry
VI. of Germany, and their son, the Emperor Frederick
the Second.
Jane and Peripatetica longed that Constance, like
Hamlet’s Father might
.nf c
“ope those ponderous and marble jaws”
.nf-
.ni
and come forth to tell them the real story of her strange
life. For she too had been one of those hapless feminine
pawns used so recklessly in the game of kingdoms
played by the men about her; yet a whisper still
lingered that this pawn had not been always passive,
but had reached out her white hand and lifted the king
from the board, and thus altered the whole course of
the game!
.pi
Constance, King Roger’s daughter, had early made
her choice for peace and safety by retiring into the
veiled seclusion of the convent. But even the coif of the
religieuse was no sure guard if the woman who wore it
was an heiress, or of royal blood, and, the German alliance
being needed after her father’s death, she was
plucked forth by her brother, and in spite of her vows
wedded to Henry of Hohenstaufen, son of Frederick
Barbarossa, a man of such nature she must have hated
him from the first. She bore him one son, and when
her brother and her nephew—William the Bad and
William the Good—were both dead without heirs,
Henry Hohenstaufen immediately laid claim to the
.pn +1
.bn 267.png
Sicilian crown in the name of his son. The Sicilians,
however, had no mind to be ruled by the Germans,
and chose instead Tancred, son of the House of de
Hauteville, though with a bar sinister upon his shield.
Tancred—a good and able sovereign—fought off Henry
for five years, but then he too was dead, and only his
widow and infant son stood between Henry, now Emperor
of Germany, and the much-lusted-after throne of
Sicily. Against the wish of Constance, who would
have gladly abjured her rights, the German invaded
the island and after incredible cruelties and ravagings
reduced the widow and baby King to such straits that
they negotiated an honourable surrender. But no sooner
were they in Henry’s hands than the child was murdered,
and there ensued a reign of abominable oppressions
and furious revolts, stamped out each time with
blood and fire, and followed by still bitterer injustice
and plunderings. When matters had reached a stage
of desperation Henry died suddenly while besieging a
rebellious town.
Now in the Middle Ages no charge was so frequently
and lightly made as that of poisoning. Nearly all
sudden deaths not wrought by cold steel were attributed
to some secret malfeasance by drugs. The fear
of it fairly obsessed the mediæval mind, and gave rise
to legends of poisoned gloves and rings, deadly smelling-balls
and pounce boxes, and fatal chalices. A
whole series of myths grew around it. Modern bacteriological
discoveries, and a knowledge of ptomaines,
incline the modern mind to believe that many a poor
wretch brutally done to death for the crime of poisoning
really died an innocent martyr to medical ignorance.
Yet Henry’s taking off was so welcome and so
.pn +1
.bn 268.png
opportune, and that Constance had struggled to protect
her fellow countrymen and kinspeople from his
cruelties was so well known, it began to be breathed
about that she was a second Judith who had reached
out in agony to protect her people, even though the
blow fell upon the father of her child. At all events,
whatever the truth may have been, she, when she buried
Henry with imperial pomp, cut off her magnificent hair
and laid it in his tomb. Then, sending away the Germans,
she ruled “in peace with great honour” until the
son she had trained to mercy and virtue was ready to
take her place.
Now they all lie here together under their pompous
canopies, and whatever may be the real dramas of
those fierce and turbulent lives, the great porphyry
sarcophagi combine to turn a face of cynical and haughty
silence to the importunate questioning of peeping
tourists.
In 1781 the tombs were opened by the Spanish King
Ferdinand I., who found Constance’s son Frederick
robed and crowned, with sword and orb beside his
pillow, and almost lifelike in preservation. Henry too
was almost unchanged by the six hundred years that
had passed in such change and turmoil beyond the
walls of his silent tomb, and he lay wrapped from head to
heel in yellow silk with the heavy blond tresses of his
wife laid upon his breast, still golden despite the lapse
of long centuries, but “nulle ne peut dire si c’est le
dernier sacrifice d’une femme dévouée, ou l’homage
ironique d’une reine contrainte à choisir entre deux
devoirs; placée entre son époux et son peuple, entre
sa famille et sa patrie.”
.tb
.pn +1
.bn 269.png
Gaspero was a gift—a priceless parting gift from the
Northman, who had gone farther south to the Punic
shores from whence had come the first settlers of the
Palermian Coast. And to console Jane and Peripatetica
for the loss of his charming boyish gaiety he had
made over to them that treasure. For Gaspero not
only drove the smartest and most comfortable of all
the victorias on hire to the public, but he was an artist
in the matter of sight-seeing. A true gastronome,
mingling flavours with delicate wisdom; keeping delicious
surprises up his sleeve lest one’s spirit might
pall, and mingling tombs and sunshine, crypts and
“molto bella vistas,” history and the colourful daily
life of the people, with a masterhand. And all so fused
in the warm atmosphere of his own sympathetic and
indulgent spirit that “touristing” became a feast of the
soul unknown to those not guided by his discreet and
skilful judgment. He knew where one might purchase
honey which bees had brewed from orange
flowers into a sublimated perfume; and he introduced
them to certain patisseries at Cafleisch’s that gave afternoon
tea a new meaning.
It was Gaspero who took them to the lofty shrine of
Santa Rosalia on Monte Pellegrino; that grotto where
lived the royal maiden hermit, and where lie her bones
within the tomb on which Gregorio Tedeschi has made
an image of her in marble with a golden robe, glowing
dimly in the light of a hundred lamps. On that rosy
height, dominating the beautiful landscape, Gaspero
told them the story of the niece of William the Good,
whose asceticism and devotion set so deep a seal of reverence
upon the people of Palermo that they enshrined
her as the city’s patron saint, and still celebrate her
.pn +1
.bn 270.png
memory every year with a great festival. All the population
climb the hill in July to say a prayer in her
windy eyrie, and the enormous car bearing her image
is dragged through the city’s streets, so towering in its
gilded glories that one of the city gates has been unroofed
to permit of its entrance. At that time the
Marina—the wide sea-front street—instead of being
merely a solemn Corso for the staid afternoon drive
of the upper classes, becomes the scene of a sort of
Pagan Saturnalia. The Galoppo takes place then—races
of unmounted free horses—delicious races, Gaspero
says, in which there can be no jockeying, and in
which the generous-blooded animals strive madly to
distance each other from sheer love of the sport and
the rivalry. A gay people’s revel, this, of flying hoofs
and tossing manes; of dancing feet; of cries and songs;
mandolins, pipes, and guitars fluting and twittering.
The water-sellers with their glittering carts and delicate
bubble-like bottles crying acqua fredda, offering golden
orange juice, and the beloved pink anisette. The
Polichinello booths, the open-air puppet shows, the
toy-sellers with their tall poles hung with sparkling
trifles, the tables spread with dainties of rosy sugar,
with melting pastries, with straw-covered flasks of
wine. All perspiring, talking, laughing, guzzling, gormandising
in honour of the anæmic, ascetic girl who
passed long, lonely, silent days and nights in passionate
ecstasies and visions in those high, voiceless solitudes.
Gaspero made it all very vivid, with hands,
lips, eyes. He was possessed with the drama and
strange irony of it.
.tb
.pn +1
.bn 271.png
“Have the Signorine ever seen a Sicilian puppet
show?” Gaspero demanded, à propos of nothing in particular,
turning from a brown study on the box to inquire.
He plainly intended that this should be a memorable
day.
No; the Signorine had not seen a puppet show. If
they properly should see one then they would see one.
It was for Gaspero to judge. Very well, then. He
would come for them at half past eight that evening—at
least, he added with proud modesty, if the Signorine
would not object to his wearing his best clothes. His
festa garments, and not the uniform of his calling.
Object! On the contrary, they would be flattered.
Gaspero settled back to his duties with the triumphant
expression of the artist who by sudden inspiration has
added the crowning touch to his picture. He composed
the days for them on his mental palette, and this
one he plainly considered one of his masterpieces.
Yesterday had been a failure. Jane and Peripatetica
had waked full of plans, but before the breakfast
trays had departed they were aware of a heavy sense of
languor and ennui which made the pleasantest plans a
prospect of weariness and disgust.
“If you sit around in a dressing-gown all day we’ll
never get anything done,” suggested Peripatetica
crossly, as Jane lounged in unsympathetic silence at
the window.
“Considering that you’ve been half an hour dawdling
over your hair and have got it up crooked at last,
I wouldn’t talk about others,” snapped Jane over her
shoulder without changing her attitude.
A strained silence ensued. Peripatetica slammed
down a hand mirror and spilled a whole paper of hairpins,
.pn +1
.bn 272.png
which she contemplated stonily, with no movement
to recover them.
A hot wind whirled up a spiral of dust in the street.
“My arms are so tired I can’t make a coiffure,”
wailed Peripatetica.
Jane merely laid her head on the window sill and
rolled a feeble, melancholy eye at the disregarded hairpins.
The wind sent up another curtain of hot dust.
“I don’t know what’s the matter,” complained Jane,
“but I don’t feel as if I wanted to see another sight—ever—as
long as I live.”
“Perhaps this is the sirocco one hears of,” piped
Peripatetica weakly. “The guide-book says ‘the effect
of it is to occasion a difficulty in breathing, and a lassitude
which unfits one for work, especially of a mental
nature.’”
By this time there could be no doubt of the sirocco.
A hot, dry tempest raged, whipping the rattling palms,
driving clouds of dust before it, so that Jane could only
dimly discern an occasional scurrying cab, or an overtaken
pedestrian pursuing an invisible hat through the
roaring fog of flying sand. The day had turned to a
brown and tempestuous dusk, and the voice of a hoarse
Saharan wind shouted around the corners.
But that was yesterday. To-day was golden and
gracious. Rain in the night had cooled and effaced
all memory of the sirocco, and Gaspero was outdoing
himself in astonishing and piquant contrasts.
He drove them to the Cappucini Convent by the devious
route of the Street of the Washerwomen. This
roundabout way of reaching the Convent was one of
Gaspero’s artful devices.
.pn +1
.bn 273.png
Down each side of the broad tree-shadowed way,
bordered on either hand by the little stone-built cubicles
washed pink or white or blue, in which lived the
multitudinous laundresses, ran a clear rushing brook.
These brooks flowed through a sort of shallow tunnel
with a wide orifice before each dwelling, and in every
one of these openings was standing a bare-legged
blanchisseuse, dealing strenuously with Palermian
linen, with skirts tucked up above sturdy knees that
were pink and fresh from the rush of the bright water.
Vigorous girls trotted back and forth with large baskets
heaped with wet garments, and bent, but still energetic,
granddams spread the garments to dry. Hung them
from the tree branches, swung them from the low
eaves of the little dwellings, threaded them on lines
that laced and crossed like spiderwebs, so that the
whole vista was a flutter of fabrics—rose and white and
green—dancing in the breeze. A human and homely
scene, with play of brown arms and bright eyes amid
the flying linen and laces; with sounds of rippling
leaves, of calls and laughter, and the gurgling of quick
water—drudgery that was half a frolic in the cheerful
sunshine.
Now behold Gaspero’s sense of dramatic contrast!
A plain, frigid façade, guarded by a bearded and
rather grubby monk in a brown robe. The eye does
not linger upon the grubby monk, being led away instantly
by the vista through the arched doorway behind
him of a cloistered court; a court solemn with the
dark spires of towering cypresses, and brilliant with
roses—roses wine-coloured, golden, pink. Behind this
screen of flowers and trees lies the bit of ground possessing
the peculiar property of quickly desiccating and
.pn +1
.bn 274.png
mummifying the human bodies buried in it. Many
hundreds have been laid in this earth for awhile, and
then removed to the convent crypts to make room for
others. It is to these crypts another monk leads the
way. A saturnine person this, handing his charges
over to another, still more gloomy, who sits at the foot
of the stairs and watches at the crypt’s entrance. A
perfectly comprehensible depression, his, when one reflects
that all the sunshiny hours of these golden Sicilian
days he sits at the shadowed door of a great tomb,
mounting guard over surely the most grisly charge the
mind can conceive; over Death’s bitterest jest at Life.
The walls of the high, clean corridors are lined with
glass cases like a library, but instead of printed books
the shelves are crammed with ghastly phantoms of
humanity, all grinning in horrible, silent amusement as
at a mordant, unutterable joke.
Jane and Peripatetica gasp and clutch one another’s
hand at the grey disorder of this soundless merriment—breathless,
fixed, perpetual.
Here and there a monk, crowded for lack of space
from the shelves, hangs from a hook in limp, dishevelled
leanness, his head drooped mockingly sidewise,
his shrunken lips twisted in a dusty fatuous leer, a lid
drooped over a withered eye in a hideous wink. Others
huddle in fantastic postures within their contracted
receptacles, as if convulsed by some obscenely wicked
jest which forces them to throw back their heads, to
fling out their hands, to writhe their limbs into unseemly
attitudes of amusement. One lies flat, with
rigid patience in every line of the meagre body, a rictus
of speechless agony pinching back the mouldy cheeks.
Coffins are heaped about the floor everywhere.
.pn +1
.bn 275.png
Through the glass tops the occupants grin in weary
scorn from amid the brown and crumbling flowers that
have dried around their faces.
The ghastliest section of this ghastly place is that
where the women crouch in their cases, clad in the
fripperies of old fashions. Earrings swing from dusty
ears; necklaces clasp lean grey throats; faded hair is
tortured into elaborate coiffures; laces, silks, and ribbons
swathe the tragic ruins of beauty. And these
women, too, all simper horribly, voicelessly, remembering
perhaps how dear these faded gauds once were before
they passed beyond thought of “tires and crisping
pins.”
“Why do they do it?” demanded Peripatetica in
whispered disgust. “What strange passion for publicity
prompts them thus to flout and outrage the decent
privacies of death”—for they noted that each case
bore a name and the date of decease, and that some of
these dates were but of a few years back. “Didn’t they
know, from having seen others, how they themselves
would look in their turn? Why would any woman be
willing to come here in laces and jewels to be a disgusting
nightmare of femininity for other women to
stare at?”
“Vanity of vanities—all is vanity!” murmured Jane.
“Now they all lie here laughing at the strange vanity
that brought them to this place—at the vanity that will
bring others in their turn to this incredible hypogeum.”
Then they turned a corner and came suddenly upon
the little horribly smiling babies, and instantly fled in
simultaneous nausea and disgust—flinging themselves
at Gaspero, who with a tenderly sympathetic manner
.pn +1
.bn 276.png
suggested an expedition to La Favorita as a corrective
of gruesome impressions. Carrying them swiftly to it
by way of the long double boulevards of the newer
Palermo, between the smiling villas of creamy stone
that were wreathed with yellow banksias and purple
wisteria, their feet set among gay beds of blossoms and
facing the cheerful street life of the town.
“How odd these Sicilians are!” reflected Jane, as
they drove. “An incomprehensible mixture to an
Anglo-Saxon. For example one finds almost universal
open-hearted gentleness and courtesy, and yet the
Mafia holds the whole land in a grip of iron—a dangerous,
murderous, secret society as widespread as the
population, yet never betrayed, and uncontrollable by
any power, even so popular and so democratic a one
as the present government.”
“Yes; their attitude to life is as puzzling as the face
they turn toward death,” agreed Peripatetica, remembering
that almost every other building in Taormina
and many in Palermo wore nailed to the door a broad
strip of mourning—often old and tattered—on which
was printed “Per mio Frate,” or “Per mia Madre”—that
even a newspaper kiosk had worn weeds—“Per
mio Padre.”
At that very moment there passed a cheerful hearse,
all glass and gilding, wreathed with fresh flowers into
a gay dancing nosegay, and hung with fluttering mauve
streamers which announced in golden letters that the
white coffin within enclosed all that was mortal of some
one’s beloved sister Giuseppina. It might have been
a catafalque of some Spirit of Spring, so many, so sweet,
so daintily gracious were the blooming boughs that
accompanied Giuseppina to her last resting-place....
.pn +1
.bn 277.png
And yet they had but just come from the grim horrors
of that crypt of the Cappuccini!...
La Favorita, curiously, is one of the few monuments
of beauty or charm left by that long reign of the Spanish
monarchs of Sicily, which, with some mutations,
lasted for about six hundred years. They loaded the
land with a weight of many churches and convents, yet
what one goes to see is what was done by the Greeks,
the Moslems, and the Normans. La Favorita is not
old, as one counts age in that immemorial land of the
High Gods. A slight century or so of age it has, being
built for the villegiatura of Ferdinando IV. at the period
when the Eighteenth Century affected a taste in Chinoiseries,
bought blue hawthorn jars, ate from old
Pekin plates, set up lacquered cabinets, and built
Pagoda-esque pleasure houses. The Château is but a
flimsy and rather vulgar example of the taste of the
day, but the Eighteenth Century often planted delicious
gardens, and the pleached allées, the ilex avenues,
the fountains and plaisances of La Favorita, make an
adorable park for modern Palermo, having by time
and the years grown into a majestic richness of triumphant
verdure.
But Gaspero is not content with La Favorita. He
has things even better in store for Jane and Peripatetica—explaining
that by giving the most minute gratuity
to the guardian of the park’s nether portal they
may be allowed to slip through into a private path that
leads to the sea. They do give the gratuity, and do
slip through, winding along a rough country road leading
under the beetling red cliffs of Pellegrino; by way
of olive orchards, mistily grey as smoke, through which
burn the rosy spring fires of the Judas-trees, whose
.pn +1
.bn 278.png
drifting pink clouds are so much more beautiful than
the over-praised almond blossoms. They skirt flowery
meadows all broad washes of gold and mauve, past a
landscape as fair as a dream of Paradise, and Gaspero
draws up at last upon a beach of shining silver
upon which a sea of heaving sapphire lips softly and
without speech. A sea that strews those argent sands
with shells like rose petals, like flakes of gold, like little,
curled, green leaves. And dismounting they rest there
in the sunset, forgetting “dusty death,” and glad to be
alive; glad of Gaspero’s tender indulgent joy in their
pleasure as he gathers for them the strewn sea-flowers,
tells them little Sicilian stories of the people, and makes
them entirely forget they haven’t had their tea.
It was in returning from this place of peace that he
had that crowning inspiration about the puppet show,
which is why in the darkness of that very evening they
are threading a black and greasy alleyway which smells
of garlic and raw fish. But they go cheerfully and confidently
in the dimly seen wake of Gaspero’s festa richness
of attire.
An oil torch flares and reeks before a calico curtain.
This curtain, brushed aside, shows a pigeon-hole room,
nine feet high, very narrow, and not long. On either
wall hangs a frail balcony, into one of which the three
wriggle carefully and deposit themselves on a board
hardly a palm’s breadth wide. From the vantage point
of these choice and expensive seats—for which they
have magnificently squandered six cents apiece—they
are enabled to look down about four inches on the
heads of the commonality standing closely packed into
the narrow alley leading to the stage. A strictly masculine
commonality, for Gaspero explains in a whisper
.pn +1
.bn 279.png
that the gentler sex of Palermo are not expected to
frequent puppet shows, lest their delicate sensibilities
may suffer shock from the broad behaviour of the
wooden dolls. Of course, he hurries to add, handsomely,
all things are permitted to forestieri, whose
bold fantasticalities are taken for granted.
The groundlings appear to be such folk as fishpeddlers,
longshoremen, ragpickers—what you will—who
smoke persistent tiny cigarettes, and refresh themselves
frequently with orange juice, or anisette and water.
These have plunged to the extent of two cents for their
evening’s amusement, and have an air of really not considering
expense. The gallery folk are of a higher
class. On Peripatetica’s right hand sits one who has
the air of an unsuccessful author or artist; immediately
upon the entrance of the forestieri he carefully
assumes an attitude of sarcastic detachment, as of one
who lends himself to the pleasures of the people merely
in search of material. Opposite is an unmistakable
valet who also, after a quick glance at the newcomers,
buttons his waistcoat and takes on an appearance of
indulgent condescension to the situation.
A gay drop curtain, the size of a dinner napkin, rolls
up after a preliminary twitter from concealed mandolins.
The little scene is set in a wood. From the left
enters a splendid miniature figure glittering in armour,
crowned, plumed, and robed, stepping with a high
melodramatic stride. It is King Charlemagne, the
inevitable deus ex machina of every Sicilian puppet
play. Taking the centre of the stage and the spotlight,
he strikes his tin-clad bosom a resounding blow
with his good right wooden hand, and bursts into passionate
recitative.
.pn +1
.bn 280.png
“The cursèd Moslem dogs have seized his subjects
upon the high seas, and cast them into cruellest slavery.
Baptised Christians bend their backs above the galley
oars of Saracen pirate ships, and worse—oh, worst of
all!”—both hands here play an enraged tattoo upon
his resounding bosom-pan—“they have seized noble
Christian maidens and haled them to their infernal
harems.
“S’death! shall such things be? No! by his halidome,
no! Rinaldo shall wipe this stain from his
‘scutcheon. What ho—without there!”
Enter hastily from right Orlando.
“His Majesty called?”
“Called? well rather! Go find me that good Knight
Rinaldo, the great Paladin, and get the very swiftest
of moves on, or something will happen which is likely
to be distinctly unpleasant.”
Orlando vanishes, and in a twinkling appears Rinaldo,
more shining, more resplendent, more befeathered
even than the King; with an appalling stride
(varied by a robin-like hop), calculated to daunt the
boldest worm of a Moslem.
He awaits his sovereign’s commands with ligneous
dignity, but as the King pours out the tale his legs
rattle with strained attention, and when the Christian
maids come into the story his falchion flashes uncontrollably
from its sheath.
“Will he go? Will a bird fly? Will a fish swim?”
Charlemagne retires, leaving Rinaldo to plan the
campaign with Orlando.
Enter now another person in armour, but wearing
half an inch more of length of blue petticoat, and with
luxuriant locks streaming from beneath the plumed
.pn +1
.bn 281.png
helmet. ’Tis Bramante, the warrior maiden, who in
shrill soprano declines to be left out of any chivalric
ruction. Three six-inch swords flash in the candlelight;
three vows to conquer or die bring down the
dinner napkin to tumultuous applause.
The pit has been absorbed to the point of letting its
cigarettes go out, and the author and the valet hastily
resume their forgotten condescension.
Every one cracks and eats melon seeds until the second
act reveals the court of a Saracen palace.
The thumps of the three adventurers’ striding feet
bring out hasty swarms of black slaves, who fall like
grain before the Christian swords. Better metal than
this must meet a Paladin!
Turbaned warriors fling themselves into the fray,
and the clash of steel on steel rings through the palace.
Orlando is down, Rinaldo and Bramante fight side by
side, though Rinaldo staggers with wounds. The
crescented turbans one by one roll in the dust, and as
the two panting conquerors lean exhausted upon their
bloody swords—enter the Soldan himself!
Now Turk meets Paladin, and comes the tug of war.
Bramante squeaks like a mouse; hops like a sparrow.
Ding, dong! Rinaldo is beaten to his knee and the
Soldan shortens his blade for a final thrust, but—Bramante
rushes in, and with one terrific sweep of her
sword shears his head so clean from his shoulders
that it rolls to the footlights and puts out one of the
candles.
Ha! ha! He trusted in his false god, Mahound!
Bramante hops violently.
Enter suddenly, rescued Christian Maid. Also in
armour; also possessing piercing falsetto.
.pn +1
.bn 282.png
Saved! saved! She falls clattering upon Rinaldo’s
breast, and Bramante, after an instant’s hesitation,
falls there on top of her, with peculiarly vicious intensity.
More dinner napkin. More frenzied applause.
Gaspero draws a long breath. His eyes are full of tears
of feeling.
Scene in the wood again. Charlemagne has thanked
Rinaldo. Has thanked Bramante. Has blessed the
Christian Maid, and has retired exhausted to his afternoon
nap!
Christian Maid insists upon expressing her gratitude
to the Paladin with her arms round his neck.
Bramante drags her off by her back hair, a dialogue
ensuing which bears striking likeness to the interview
of cats on a back fence.
Christian Maid opines that Bramante is no lady, and
swords are out instantly.
One, two, three!—clash, slash, bang!
Rinaldo hops passionately and futilely around the
two contestants.
Ladies! Ladies! he protests in agony, but blood is
beginning to flow, when, suddenly, a clap of thunder—a
glitter of lightning!
The cover of an ancient tomb in the wood rolls away,
and from the black pit rises a grisly skeleton. Six legs
clatter and rattle like pie-pans; swords fall. It is the
ghost of Rinaldo’s father. Christian Maid is really
Rinaldo’s sister, he explains, carried off by Saracens
in her childhood.
Skeleton pulls down the cover of the tomb and retires
to innocuous desuetude.
Opportune entry of Orlando miraculously cured of
.pn +1
.bn 283.png
his wounds. Rinaldo has an inspiration, and bestows
upon Orlando the hand of the Christian Maid.
All the tins of the kitchen tumble at once—everybody
has fallen on every one else’s mail-clad bosom!...
Dear Gaspero! It has been a wonderful day.
.tb
A slow, fine rain falls. Vapours roll among the
vapoury hills.
It is just the day for the museum, and such a museum!
Not one of those cold and formal mausoleums
built by the modern world for the beauties of the dead
past, but a fine old monastery of the Philippines with
two cloistered cortile; with a long, closed gallery for the
hanging of the pictures; with big refectories, ambulatories,
and chapels for housing the sculpture, and
with its little cells crammed with gold and silver work,
with enamels, with embroideries, with jewels. A
gracious casket for the treasures of old time.
The rain is dripping softly into the open cloister,
where the wet garlands of wisteria and heavy-clustered
gold of the banksias are distilling their mingled fragrance
in the damp air. The rain makes sweet tinklings
in the old fountains and in the sculptured wellheads
gathered in the court; on the cloister walls are
grouped bas-reliefs—tinted Madonnas by Gagini;
Greek fragments, stone vases standing on the floor,
twisted columns, broken but lovely torsos.
Indeed, it is not like a museum at all. No ticketed
rigidity, no historical sequence—just treasures set
about where the setting will best accord with and display
their beauties. There is not even a catalogue to
be had, which gives a delightful sense of freedom at
.pn +1
.bn 284.png
first, but this has its drawbacks when Jane and Peripatetica
come to the tomb of Aprilis in a side chamber,
and wish to know something more of this sad little
maid sculptured into the marble of the tomb’s sunken
lid—wrapped in a straitly folded wimple, with slim
crossed feet, and small head turned half aside; smiling
innocently in the sleep which has lasted so long. Aprilis,
whose April had never blossomed into May, and whose
epitaph has for five hundred years called Sicily to witness
the grief of those who lost her:
.nf b
“Sicilia, Hic Jacet Aprilis. Miseranda Puella
Unicce Quælugens Occultipa Diem 18 Otobre
XIII 1495.”
.nf-
Of course, the guide-books ignore her. Trust the
guide-books to preserve a stony silence about anything
of real human interest!...
Another court; a great basin where papyrus grows,
where bananas wave silken banners amid the delicate
plumes of tall bamboo, where are more purple wreaths
of wistaria and snow-drifts of roses, and where the
treasures are mostly Greek. Very notable among these
a marble tripod draped with the supple folds of a
python; the lax power of the great snake subtly contrasted
with, and emphasized by, the rigid lines of the
seat of the soothsayer. More notable still, in the Sala
del Fauna, is an archaic statue of Athene from Selinunto—like
some splendid sharded insect in her helmet
and lion skin—rescued from that vast wreck of a city.
They had travelled from Palermo a few days before to
see that city, drawn by Crawford’s fine passages of description,
and there they, too, had wondered at the
astonishing remains of those astonishing Greeks.
.pn +1
.bn 285.png
... “There is nothing in Europe like the ruins of
Selinunto. Side by side, not one stone upon another,
as they fell at the earthquake shock, the remains of
four temples lie in the dust within the city, and still
more gigantic fragments of three others lie without the
ruined walls. At first sight the confusion looks so
terrific that the whole seems as if it might have fallen
from the sky, from a destruction of the home of the
gods—as if Zeus might have hurled a city at mankind,
to fall upon Sicily in a wild wreck of senseless stone.
Blocks that are Cyclopean lie like jackstraws one upon
another; sections of columns twenty-eight feet round
are tossed together upon the ground like leaves from
a basket, and fragments of cornice fifteen feet long lie
across them, or stand half upright, or lean against the
enormous steps. No words can explain to the mind
the involuntary shock which the senses feel at first
sight of it all. One touches the stones in wonder, comparing
one’s small human stature with their mass, and
the intellect strains hopelessly to recall their original position;
one climbs in and out among them, sometimes
mounting, sometimes descending, as one might pick
one’s way through an enormous quarry, scarcely understanding
that the blocks one touches have all been
hewn into shape by human hands, and that the hills
from which men brought them are but an outline in the
distance.”...
All that quiet falling day Jane and Peripatetica wandered
in the transformed monastery, staring at the
great metopes; lingering among the Saracenic carvings
and jewelled windows, poring over Phœnician
seals; over the amazing ecclesiastic needlework, the gold
monstrances, the carved gems, and last and best of all
.pn +1
.bn 286.png
some delicious reliefs at sight of which they forgave at
once and forever their old enemy, the Eighteenth Century,
for all its disgusting crimes against beauty. They
sought madly through the books for some mention of
these tall, adorable nymphs in adorably impossible
attitudes, these curled and winged and dimpled babies,
fluttering like fat little wrens sweetly ignorant of the
laws of gravitation; but as always on any subject of
interest Baedeker and the rest frigidly refused to tell
the name of the man out of whose head and hands had
grown these enchanting figures.
“Oh, dear Unknown!” cries Jane regretfully, “why
is your noble name buried in silence! I wish to make
a pilgrimage to your tomb, to cover it with Sicilian
roses, and breathe a prayer for the repose of your sweet
and gracious soul.”
“Me too!” echoes Peripatetica, in tender scorn of
the stodgy rules of English grammar.
.tb
The Paschal season is near.
Always, in all lands of all faiths, the coming of Spring,
the yearly resurrection of life and nature, has been welcomed
with gladness. The occultation of Osiris, of
Baldur, of Persephone, of the Christ, is mourned; their
coming again hailed with flowers and feasting.
Palermo is filling with visitors; with a glory of flowers
and verdure in which the loveliest city in the world
grows daily lovelier. The Conca d’Oro—the Shell of
Gold—swims in a golden sea of sunshine.
On the Wednesday before Easter the whole population
exchanges cakes. Cakes apotheosized by surprising
splendours of icing; icing, gilded, silvered, snowily
.pn +1
.bn 287.png
sculptured into Loves and angels and figures of national
heroes. Icing wrought into elaborate garlands tinted
rose, purple, and green; built into towers and ornate
architectural devices. Structures of confectionery three
feet high are borne on big platters between two men.
Every child carries gay little cakes to be presented to
grandparents and godparents, to cousins and playmates.
All Maundy Thursday the population moves from
church to church. Masses moan incessant in every
chapel. Before the Virgins on every street-shrine,
draped in black, candles blaze and drip. Priests and
monks hurry to and fro, bent upon preparations for the
great spectacle of the morrow.
Friday morning early all Palermo is in the streets in
its best attire. Small children dressed as little cardinals,
as nuns, as priests, bishops, angels with gilded
wings, as Virgins, as John the Baptist, are on their way
to the churches from which the processions are to flow.
Monks and friars gather from outlying country convents.
At ten o’clock a throbbing dirge begins. The first
of the processions is under way. A band plays a
funeral march, and is followed by acolytes swinging
censers. Pious elderly citizens, perspiring in frock
coats, carry tall, flaming candles that drop wax upon
their clothes. A few priests, in black and purple, follow,
bearing holy vessels. Behind these a row of men
in mediæval armour and carrying halberds, surround
a heavy, hand-borne bier hung with black velvet, on
which rests a glass and gilt case containing an image
of the Crucified—a life-sized image, brown with age.
Presumably it has been taken from some ancient and
.pn +1
.bn 288.png
revered Spanish crucifix, for it is crowned with thorns,
is emaciated, is writhed with pain, painted with the
dark, faded red of streaming wounds—one of those
agonised figures conceived by the pious realism of the
older Spanish sculptors.
Immediately follows another hand-borne litter upon
which is standing a tall Virgin clothed in black hood
and mantle—a pallid, narrow-faced Virgin—also Spanish
and realistic. The delicate clasped hands hold a
lace handkerchief, her breast is hung with votive silver
hearts. The features are distorted with grief, the lids,
reddened with tears, are drooped over sunken, deep-shadowed
eyes, and her countenance seamed and
withered—a poignant figure of unutterable maternal
woe! Burning candles alternate with mounds of roses
about the edge of the platform on which she stands.
As the dead Son and the mourning Mother pass, hats
come off and heads are bowed, signs of the cross are
made. A few of the older peasant women fall to their
knees upon the sidewalk and mutter an Agnus Dei, a
Hail Mary, with streaming tears. A priest walks last
of all, rattling a contribution box at the end of a long
stick, looking anxiously at the balconies and windows
from which the well-to-do spectators lean. For his is
but a poor church; the velvet palls and cloaks are cotton,
and frayed and faded, the bier and platform old,
and so massive that the stalwart bearers must set them
down often to wipe away the sweat, which is why it
takes advantage of the unpre-empted morning hours
and is early in the field.
Later in the day, in Gaspero’s cab and under his
guidance, Jane and Peripatetica take up a coign of
vantage in a square debouching upon the Corso Vittorio
.pn +1
.bn 289.png
Emanuele, along which the Jesuits are to parade
at four o’clock. Here the crowd is solidly packed, the
balconies and windows crowded with the aristocracy
of Palermo. The Guarda Mobili in their splendid uniforms
keep open the way for the marching fraternities
and sodalities with their crucifixes and Virgin-embroidered
banners, open a lane for the monks, for the
crowds of tiny angels and cardinals who must patter
for hours in the slow-moving procession. Priests and
acolytes swarm; censers steam, hundreds of candles of
all weights and heights flare and flame, and then slowly,
slowly, to the wailing music, moves forward a splendid
catafalque of crystal in which lies stretched upon a bed
of white velvet, richly wrought with gold, a fair youth.
A youth with white, naked limbs, relaxed and pure;
not soiled by the grimy, bloody agonies of martyrdom,
but poetised to a picture of Love too early dead—a
charming image. And the beautiful tall Virgin is not
the simple Mother of the Carpenter convulsed with
despair. She is a stately, sorrowful Queen, crowned,
hung with jewels, robed in superb royal weeds; proudly
refusing to show the full depth of her bereavement, as
she follows her dead Son amid the wax torches shining
palely in the sunshine through the white and green of
the sheaves of lilies that grow about her knees.
The emotional effect upon the crowd is intense; one
can hear like an undertone the sound of indrawn, gulping
breath. Gaspero passes his sleeve across the tears
in his dark eyes.
This version of the tragedy is lifted above the realism
of pain into a penetrating and lovely symbolism
that swells the heart with poignant and tender emotions
as the divine funeral train winds slowly away,
.pn +1
.bn 290.png
with perfume, with lights, and with the slow sobbing of
the muffled drums.
So had Sicilians two thousand years ago crowded
every spring to see a similar spectacle of a weeping
Queen of Love following an image of a lovely dead
youth....
“Ah! and himself—Adonis—how beautiful to behold
he lies on his silver couch, with the first down on
his cheeks, the thrice beloved Adonis—Adonis beloved
even among the dead.... O Queen, O Aphrodite,
that playest with gold, lo, from the stream eternal of
Acheron they have brought back to thee Adonis—even
in the twelfth month they have brought him, the dainty-footed
Hours.... Before him lie all that the tall tree-branches
bear, and the delicate gardens, arrayed in
baskets of silver; and the golden vessels are full of the
incense of Syria. And all the dainty cakes that women
fashion in the kneading-tray, mingling blossoms manifold
with the white wheaten flour, all that is wrought
of honey sweet, and in soft olive-oil, all cakes fashioned
in semblance of things that fly, and of things that creep,
lo, here they are set before him.
“Here are built for him shadowy bowers of green,
all laden with tender anise, and children flit overhead—the
little Loves—as the young nightingales perched
upon the trees fly forth and try their wings from bough
to bough....
“But lo, in the morning we will all of us gather with
the dew, and carry him forth among the waves that
break upon the beach, and with locks unloosed, and
ungirt raiment falling to the ankles, and bosoms bare
we will begin our shrill sweet song.
“Thou only, dear Adonis, so men tell, thou only of
.pn +1
.bn 291.png
the demigods, dost visit both this world and the stream
of Acheron.... Dear has thine advent been, Adonis,
and dear shall it be when thou comest again.”
.tb
Gaspero never permitted Jane and Peripatetica to
lose anything. Doubling through narrow, black streets
where lofty buildings nearly met above their heads
and where they snatched hurried, delighted glimpses
of intricate old grilles, of arched and wheeled windows,
of splendid hatchments and fine carved portals—he
brought them out at admirable view points for all the
many similar parades in widely separated parts of the
city.
As the purple dusk came down they found themselves
in the Marina, watching the last of the processions
moving slowly down the broad avenue to the sea-street.
The crowd had thinned. The small angels and John
the Baptists went wearily upon dusty little feet, their
crowns of now wilted roses canted at dissipated angles
over their flushed and tearful faces, the heavy, half-burned
wax torches wabbling dangerously near the
draggled veils and drooping gilt wings.
The bearers of the images paused often to set down
their heavy burdens. The balconies began to blossom
with tinted lights. Here and there the Virgin
with her twinkling candles was turned toward a balcony
filled with some specially faithful children of the
church, and stood facing them a moment, tall, ghostly,
tragical, in the gathering darkness, before passing onward
in her long pilgrimage of mourning that was to
end within the church doors as night came down.
“It is enough, Gaspero,” they cried, as the flickering
.pn +1
.bn 292.png
train passed away down the water avenue into the
blue blackness of the shadowy evening, and then they
went homewards full of that strange mingled sense of
languor and refreshment—that “cleansing of the soul
with pity and terror” which is the gift of the heroic
tragedies....
Every hour of that night the bells rang and masses
sang throughout the city. All day Saturday the churches
swarmed, and the purple veils, hung before the altar
pictures throughout Lent, were rent from top to bottom
to the sound of the wailing De Profundis. Sunday
the religious world seemed to exhale itself in music
and flowers and triumphant masses. Easter Monday
morning the populace hurried through the necessary
domestic duties at the earliest possible moment, for the
Pasqua Flora is the day of villegiatura for all Palermo.
Every one wears new clothes. Even the humble asinelli
are, for once in the year at least, brushed and
combed, and decorated with fresh red tassels if the
master is too poor to afford more elaboration of the
always elaborate harness. Those asses who have the
luck to be the property of rich contadini appear resplendent
in new caparison; with towering brass
collars heavy with scarlet chenille, flashing with mirrors
and inlays of mother-of-pearl, glittering from head
to tail with brass buckles, with bells and red tags innumerable,
drawing new carts carved and painted with
all the myths and legends and history of Sicily in crude
chromatic vivacity.
Whole families stream countrywards in these carts
to-day; babies clean and starched for once, grandmothers
in purple kerchiefs tied under the chin and
yellow kerchiefs crossed upon the breast, with gold
.pn +1
.bn 293.png
hoops in their ears; daughters in flowered cottons,
their uncovered heads wrought with fearful and wonderful
pompadours, sleek and jet black.
Along the seashore, up the sides of Pellegrino, in all
the open country about Palermo, they spread and sun
themselves, eat, sleep, make love, gossip, dance, and
sing in the golden air.
Gaspero drives slowly through the wide-spread picnic,
pausing wherever a characteristic group attracts.
Here lies a whole family asleep; gorged with endless
coils of macaroni, saturated with sun—a mere heap of
crude-coloured clothes, of brown open-mouthed faces,
of lax limbs that to-morrow must be gathered up again
for a hand-to-hand struggle for bread for another twelve-month.
Under this tree a long table is spread with loaves,
with meats, with iced cakes, and straw-covered flasks.
A rich confrère of Gaspero celebrates the betrothal of
his only daughter, a plump and solid heiress, who beneath
an inky and mighty pompadour simpers at the
broad jokes of her pursey, elderly fiancé. A solid
fiancé, financially and physically. Altogether a solid
match, says Gaspero. A dashing guest thrums his
guitar and sings throatily of the joys of love and of
money in the stocking.
Here a group of very old men watch about a boiling
pot hung above a little fire, and twitter reminiscences of
youth, catching one last pale gleam of the fast sinking
sun of their meagre, toilsome lives.
Everywhere music and laughter and the smell of
flowers and food and wine.
A big piano-organ is playing a rouladed waltz to a
ring of young spectators, crowding to watch the elaborate
.pn +1
.bn 294.png
steps of dancers swinging about singly with grace-steps,
with high prancings, with tarantella flourishes.
Male dancers, all. Gaspero explains that no respectable
girl would be allowed to join them, the Sicilian
girl’s diversions being distressingly limited.
One of the boyish dancers, with the keen, bold face
and square head of a mediæval Condottiere, flourishes
his light cane in fencing passes as he swings, which
challenge inspires a spectator to leap into the ring with
his own cane drawn. The newcomer, an obvious
dandy in pointed patent-leather shoes, blue-ribboned
hat, and light suit of cheap smartness, crosses canes
dashingly with the would-be fencer, and the rest of the
dancers drop back to see the fun.
The Condottiere finds in a few passes that he has
met his master and craftily begins a waiting game.
Lithe and quick as a cat, he circles and gives way, his
opponent driving him round and round the ring, lunging
daringly and playing to the gallery. He flourishes
unnecessarily, pursues recklessly, assumes a contemptuous
carelessness of the boy, always circling, always on
guard, always coolly thrifty of breath and strength.
The dandy grows tired and angry, rushes furiously
to make an end of his nimble evasive antagonist, who
at last turns with cold courage and by a twist of his
weapon sends the dandy’s cane flying clean over the
ring of spectators, who scream with delight. But the
Condottiere is a generous as well as a wily foe. He
offers an embrace. The dandy reluctantly allows himself
to be kissed on both cheeks, but the victor catches
him about the waist and waltzes him around madly
amid the laughter and bravas of the crowd.
.tb
.pn +1
.bn 295.png
It is Jane’s and Peripatetica’s last day in Sicily.
Gaspero has taken them to Santa Maria di Gesu, the
Minorite Monastery, but has paused by the way for a
look at San Giovanni degli Eremiti, whose little red
domes float clear against the burning azure sky like
coral-tinted bubbles, so airily do they rise from the
green of the high hill-garden with its tiny cloisters of
miniature columns and miniscule grey arches heavy
with yellow roses. And yet from this rosy, arch little
fane rang the Sicilian Vespers which gave the signal
for one of the bloodiest butcheries in history. It was
Pasqua Flora, and all Palermo, as it did yesterday, was
feasting and dancing out of doors. One of the French
soldiers—then in occupation, upholding the hated
House of Anjou—insulted a Sicilian girl and was
stabbed. Just then the Vesper bells rang from San
Giovanni degli Eremiti, and at the signal the conspiracy,
long festering, broke into open flame, and Palermo
rose and massacred the French till the streets ran with
blood.
The Gesu Monastery has no such sanguinary associations.
The plain little building, high on the hillside,
stands buried among enormous cypresses and
clouds of roses, and surrounded by the massive marble
tombs and mortuary chapels of Palermo’s nobility and
Sicily’s magnates. It is a place of great peace and
silence. A place of unutterable beauty of outlook
upon gorges feathered with pines, upon stern violet
mountains melting into more distant heights of amethyst,
into outlines of hyacinth, into silhouettes of
mauve, into high ghostly shadows that vanish into
floods of aerial blue. A place which looks on sea and
shore and city, and where the chemistry of sun and air
.pn +1
.bn 296.png
transmutes the multitudinous tones of the landscape
to an incredible witchery of tint, to living hues like
those of the colours of jewels, of flowers, of the little
burning feathers of the butterflies’ wings.
“Doubtless God might have made a more beautiful
view than this from the Gesu, but doubtless God never
did,” sighed Jane.
But still Gaspero is not satisfied. He can never rest
content with anything less than perfection. Yes; he
admits the Gesu is admirable, but he knows a still
more “molto bella vista.”
“There is nothing better than the best,” says Jane
sententiously. “I am drenched and satiated with all
the loveliness that I can bear. Any other ‘vista’ would
be an anticlimax.”
“Dear Jane,” remonstrated Peripatetica, “haven’t
you yet guessed that Gaspero is a wizard? I suspected
it the very first day. Of course, you can see
that he’s no ordinary guide and cab-driver, and, as a
matter of fact, I don’t believe there are any such sights
as the ones we think he has showed us. You’ve been
on Broadway? Well, can you lay your hand on your
heart, and honestly affirm that when you are there
again you won’t at once realize that there never were
such beauties as these we’ve been seeing? Won’t you
know then that this is all a glamour—a hypnotic suggestion
of Gaspero’s mind upon ours?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped Jane. “What is
all this rhodomontade leading to?”
“To a desire to follow the wizard,” answered Peripatetica
recklessly. “Whither Gaspero goeth I go!
I am fully prepared to wallow in glamours, and besides
we’ve luncheon in our basket, so don’t be tiresome,
.pn +1
.bn 297.png
Jane. Let’s abandon the commonplace and ‘follow
the Gleam.’”
“Very well,” laughed Jane, climbing into the carriage.
“Gaspero and ‘gleam’ if you like.”
Whether the molto bella vista ever existed remains
still a subject of dispute. Peripatetica insists that it
was only a pretext for leading them to a place where
Gaspero intended they should lunch, but Jane, who
always kicks against the philosophic pricks of the determinists,
contends that she exercised a certain measure
of free will in the matter. However that may be,
they wound among mountain roads, by caves Gaspero
said were once the dwellings of giants, by little outlying
villages where old women span and wove in the
doorways and young women made lace; where copper-workers
sat in the street and with musical clang of little
hammers beat out glittering vessels of rosy metal.
They scattered flocks of goats from their path, the
shaggy white bucks leaping nimbly upon the wall and
staring at them with curious ironic, satyr-like glances;
and far, very far up, they came upon a mountain
meadow mistily shadowed by enormous gnarled olive
trees—a meadow knee-deep in flowers. A meadow
that was a sea of flowers, orange, golden and lemon,
rippling and dimpling in the light and shade, breathed
upon by the faint flying airs of those high spaces:
.nf b
“In Arcady, in Arcady!
Where all the leaves are merry—”
.nf-
cried Peripatetica joyously.
.ni
“Of course it’s Arcady,” said Jane, with conviction.
“And we have come upon it in the Age—or perhaps
the moment—of Gold. Gaspero,” she announced
firmly, “we will lunch right here.”
.pn +1
.bn 298.png
.pi
“But Signorina—the Vista!” protested the Wizard
with a quizzical smile.
It was really (Peripatetica is convinced) Gaspero’s
subtle understanding of Jane’s character which led
him to offer just sufficient opposition to fix her determination
to stay at the very spot where he could best
work his magic, for a flowing world of shadowy purple
swam about them in a thousand suave folds down to a
shining sea, and he could not have showed them any
vista more beautiful. But why attempt to shake Jane’s
pleased conviction it was really owing to her that for a
few hours she and Peripatetica could truly say, “I too
have lived in Arcadia.” That it was owing to her they
cheerfully fed there, and lay cradled for long warm
hours in that perfumed flood of flowers in happy thoughtless
silence, wrapped in a fold of the Earth Mother’s—the
great Demeter’s—mantle; a fold embroidered by
the fine fingers of her daughter Persephone, the Opener
of Flowers.
.tb
That night, when the full moon rose over the silky
sea, far down the horizon behind them slowly faded
into the distance the ghostly silver peaks of the enchanted
Land of the Older Gods.
.sp 4
.nf c
THE END
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 299.png
.pb
.ni
.hr 80%
.nf c
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
WILLIAM J. LOCKE
“Life is a glorious thing.”—W. J. Locke
.nf-
.in 4
“If you wish to be lifted out of the petty cares of to-day, read one
of Locke’s novels. You may select any from the following titles and
be certain of meeting some new and delightful friends. His characters
are worth knowing.”—Baltimore Sun.
.in 1
.nf
The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
At the Gate of Samaria
A Study in Shadows
Where Love Is
Derelicts
The Demagogue and Lady Phayre
The Beloved Vagabond
The White Dove
The Usurper
Septimus
Idols
.nf-
.in 0
.nf c
12mo. Cloth. $1.50 each.
.nf-
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Eleven volumes bound in green cloth. Uniform edition in box.
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.in 4
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Septimus
.in 4
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The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
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.in 0
Where Love Is
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.pn +1
.bn 300.png
.in 0
The Usurper
.in 4
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conception, the descriptions are all vivid flashes from a brilliant
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.in 0
Derelicts
.in 4
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.in 0
Idols
.in 4
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season.”—The Daily Mail.
“A brilliantly written and eminently readable book.”
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.in 0
A Study in Shadows
.in 4
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.in 0
The White Dove
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realized.”—The Morning Post.
.in 0
The Demagogue and Lady Phayre
.in 4
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.in 0
At the Gate of Samaria
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is grateful for a refreshing sense of escaping the commonplace
path of conclusion.”—Chicago Record-Herald.
.pn +1
.bn 301.png
.in 0
.hr 80%
.ce
POEMS WORTH HAVING
Stephen Phillips
.in 4
New Poems, including Iole: A Tragedy in One Act;
Launcelot and Guinevere, Endymion, and many other
hitherto unpublished poems.
.nf c
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.nf-
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.in 4
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.in 0
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.in 4
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.in 4
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.nf c
By Arthur Symons
.nf-
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.pn +1
.bn 302.png
.hr 80%
.in 0
.ce
VERNON LEE
.in 4
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.nf c
Limbo and Other Essays: “Ariadne in Mantua”
Pope Jacynth, and Other Fantastic Tales
Hortus Vitæ, or the Hanging Gardens
The Sentimental Traveller
The Enchanted Woods
The Spirit of Rome
Genius Loci
Hauntings
.nf-
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ELIZABETH BISLAND
.nf-
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.in 4
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.nf-
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GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
.nf-
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CHARLES H. SHERRILL
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ANATOLE FRANCE
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The Well of Saint Clare. Translated by Alfred Allinson.
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.in 4
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.nf
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Our Lady’s Juggler
Amycus and Celestine
Madam de Luzy, etc.
.nf-
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.nf
In the Elysian Fields
Card Houses
Careers for Women
The Priory, etc.
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.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling was made consistent when a predominant \
form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.
.if t
.it Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text that was \
bold by "equal" signs (=bold=).
.if-
.ul-
.ul-