SE 
 
 N SICILY 
 
 AND 
 
 ANNE HOYT
 
 LIBRARY I 
 
 ONiveRsry OF 
 
 CALIFOKVWI 
 SAN DIEQO I
 
 SEEKERS IN SICILY
 
 'DEMETER'S WELL- BELOVED CHILDREN"
 
 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 BEING A QUEST FOR PERSEPHONE 
 BY JANE AND PERIPATETICA 
 
 Done into the Vernacular 
 
 By 
 
 ELIZABETH BISLAND AND ANNE HOYT 
 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMIX 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
 
 Copyright, 
 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
 
 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"
 
 NOTE 
 
 ' f HE designs upon the cover of this book, 
 and at the beads of the chapters, are the 
 tribe signs or totems of the original inhab- 
 itants of the island of Sicily, which have 
 survived all conquests and races and are still 
 considered as tokens of good luck and de- 
 fenders from the Evil-eye.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 
 
 WHEN this book was written in the spring of the 
 year the Land of the Older Gods was unmarred by 
 the terrible seismic convulsions which wrought such 
 ruin in the last days of 1908. 
 
 Very sad to each of us it is when time and the sorrows 
 of "this unintelligible world" carve furrows upon our 
 own countenances, but when the visage of the globe 
 shrivels and wrinkles with the lapse of ages then the 
 greatness of the disaster touches the whole race. Sicily, 
 whose history is so full of blood and tears, has been the 
 victim of the greatest natural tragedy that man's 
 chronicles record because of this line drawn by Time 
 upon our planet's face yet it leaves her still so fair, 
 so poignantly lovely, that pilgrims of beauty will- 
 forgetting this slight blemish still journey to see the 
 sweetest remnant of the world's youth. Happily 
 
 9
 
 10 PREFACE 
 
 Messina, the one city injured, was the one city where 
 travellers rarely paused. All the others remain 
 unmarred and are still exactly as they were when this 
 chronicle of their ancient beauty and charm was set 
 
 down. 
 
 E. B. AND A. H.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 ON THE ROAD TO THE LAND OF THE GODS . 15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 45 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 126 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 178 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 192 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 229 
 
 11
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "Demeter's Well-Beloved Children" .... Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "A Place Where the Past Reveals Itself" 68 
 
 "Pan's Goatherd" 132 
 
 "yEtna, The Salient Fact of Sicily" 186 
 
 " The Saffron Mass of Concordia " 198 
 
 "Lifting Themselves Airily From a Sea of Flowers" . 218 
 
 "Sicily's Picture-book, The Painted Cart" .... 234 
 
 "The Last Resting Place of Queen Constance" . . . 249 
 
 13
 
 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ON THE ROAD TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 
 
 " He ne'er is crown'd with immortality 
 Who fears to follow where airy voices lead." 
 
 "On, Persephone, Persephone! . . . Surely Kore* 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 vernac- 
 ular 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 
 
 15
 
 16 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Kore " read Peri- 
 patetica, " 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 out- 
 cry 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."
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 17 
 
 "Let's!" agreed Jane, with sympathetic enthusiasm, 
 and they went. 
 
 Now, being Americans, and therefore accustomed to 
 the most obliging behaviour on the part of the male sex, 
 it never occurred to them that Pluto might be ungallant 
 enough to object to their taking a hand in. But he 
 did as they might have foreseen would be likely in a 
 person so unmannerly as to snatch lovely daughters 
 from devoted mothers. 
 
 It began on the ocean. On quite a calm evening a 
 wave, passing from under the side of the ship, threw 
 its crest back perhaps to look at the stars and fell 
 head over heels into their open port. Certainly as much 
 as two tons of green and icy Atlantic entered impulsively, 
 and by the time they were dried out and comforted by 
 the tight-corseted, rosy, sympathetic Lemon every object 
 they possessed was a mere bunch of depressed rumples. 
 Throughout the rest of the voyage they presented the 
 unfortunate appearance of having slept in their clothes, 
 including their hats. These last, which they had be- 
 lieved refreshingly picturesque, or coquettish, at start- 
 ing, 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
 
 18 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 numbered 1 2 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 dis- 
 trusted 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 obser- 
 vant eye, something sinister and meretricious in so much 
 dressiness, but Jane and Peripatetica yielded them- 
 selves up to that serpent lodging without the smallest 
 precaution, and lived to rue their impulsive confi- 
 dence. 
 
 To begin with, Naples, instead of showing herself all 
 flowers and sunshine, tinkling mandolins, and moon- 
 light 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 19 
 
 of tea-roses she was prating all day of American com- 
 forts, 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 in- 
 stead 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 dream- 
 ing 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
 
 20 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 mil- 
 dewed 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 treach- 
 erous 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 con- 
 cierge'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 arti-
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 21 
 
 chokes. . . . The clouds held up; thinned, and parted, 
 showing rifts of blue. . . . Vesuvius pushed the mists 
 from her brow, and purple shadows dappled her shin- 
 ing, 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 pea- 
 cock. 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 stereo- 
 typed 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 mas- 
 querading in straw bottles in America under the same 
 names, than they to Hercules. The seekers of Per- 
 sephone 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
 
 22 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 purple as a dove's neck, five hundred feet below, and 
 where orange, lemon, and olive groves climbed the nar- 
 row 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 con- 
 quests! 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 superi- 
 ority 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 acknowl- 
 edged that after Venezuela this was the very best scenery 
 she knew. 
 
 At Amalfi 
 
 " Where amid her mulberry trees 
 Sits Amalfi in the heat, 
 Bathing ever her white feet 
 In the tideless summer seas," 
 
 they climbed 175 steps to the Cappucini convent 
 which hangs like a swallow's nest in a niche of the cliffs, 
 flanked by that famous terrace the artists paint again
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 23 
 
 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 his in motor car. 
 
 If one cranes one's neck from the Cappucini terrace, 
 on a small peak will be seen what purports to be a 
 town, but the conclusion will be irresistible that the 
 only way to reach such a dizzy eminence is by goat's 
 feet, or hawk's wings, and the natural inference is that 
 the fellow tourist is fibbing. Nevertheless one hates 
 to be outdone, and one abandons all desire to sleep in 
 one of those coldly clean little monk-cells of the con- 
 vent, 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 ap- 
 pointment 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 ap- 
 peared 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 in- 
 considerate; 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
 
 24 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 ex- 
 plosions 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 25 
 
 the dusk a stone stairway that called itself a street 
 meekly and weakly unwitting of their possible destina- 
 tion. The destination proved to be a vaulted court- 
 yard, opening behind a doorway which was built of a 
 choice assortment of loot from four periods of archi- 
 tecture and sculpture; proved to be a reckless jumble 
 of winding steps, of crooked passages, of terraces, bal- 
 conies, 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 dark- 
 ness bathed their spirits as with a blessed chrism. The 
 place was, for the night, theirs alone, and for one holy 
 moment the swarming tourist failed to swarm. 
 
 " In the Highlands ! In the country places 1 " 
 
 murmured Jane, gratefully declining upon a broad 
 balustrade, and Peripatetica echoed softly declining 
 in her turn 
 
 . . . "Oh, to dream; oh, to awake and wander 
 There, and with delight to take and render 
 Through the trance of silence 
 Quiet breath." . . . 
 
 And Jane took it up again 
 
 . . . "Where essential silence cheers and blesses, 
 And forever in the hill recesses 
 Her more lovely music broods and dies."
 
 26 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 recog- 
 nized 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 seem- 
 ingly 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 aU 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 27 
 
 undertone of dreams within dreams. The clank of 
 armed feet moved in the street. Ghostly bells rang 
 whispered tocsins of alarm, and shadowy life swept 
 back and forth in the broken, deserted town. The 
 "Brass Hats" glimmered in the darkness. Goths set 
 alight long extinguished fires. Curved Saracen swords 
 glittered faintly, and Normans grasped the heights 
 with mailed hands. The Rufolis, the d'Affliti, the 
 Confalones, and della Maras married, feasted, and 
 warred again in dumb show, and up and down the 
 stairs of this very house rustled the silk robes and soft 
 shod feet of sleek prelates. 
 
 Even the sea below where the new moon floated 
 at the western rim like a golden canoe was astir with 
 the myriad sails of revenants. First the white wings of 
 that 
 
 "Grave Syrian trader . . . 
 
 Who snatched his rudder and shook out his sail . . . 
 Between the Syrtes and soft Sicily." 
 
 After him followed hard the small ghostly sails of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 " They were very perfect men, and could do all and 
 bear all that could be done and borne by human flesh 
 and blood. Taking them all together they were the 
 most faultlessly constructed human beings that ever 
 lived, and they knew it, for they worshipped bodily 
 health and strength, and spent the lives of generations 
 in the cultivation of both. They were fighting men, 
 trained to use every weapon they knew, they were 
 boxers and wrestlers, athletes, runners and jumpers, 
 and drivers of chariots; but above all they were sea- 
 men, skilled at the helm, quick at handling the sails, 
 masters of the oar, and fearless navigators when half
 
 28 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Cou- 
 tance 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 29 
 
 he united a marvellous astuteness with immense 
 ambition, and his bodily strength was prodigious. His 
 whole desire was to attain to the wealth and power of 
 the greatest living men; he was extremely tenacious 
 of his designs and most wise in finding means to attain 
 his ends. In stature he was taller than the tallest; of 
 a ruddy hue and fair-haired, he was broad-shouldered, 
 and his eyes sparkled with fire; the perfect proportion 
 of all his limbs made him a model of beauty from head 
 to heel, as I have often heard people tell. Homer says 
 of Achilles that those who heard his voice seemed to 
 hear the thundering shout of a great multitude, but it 
 used to be said of the de Hautevilles that their battle 
 cry would turn back tens of thousands. Such a man, 
 one in such a position, of such a nature, and of such 
 spirit, naturally hated the idea of service, and would 
 not be subject to any man; for such are those natures 
 which are born too great for their surrounding." 
 
 When morning dawned all spirits of the past had 
 vanished, and only the noisy play of the young hopes 
 of the Caruso family disturbed the peace of the echoing 
 court. Jane insisted upon calling these innocent in- 
 fants 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
 
 30 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 clas- 
 sic style." Marbles were broken, mosaics torn out, 
 dim aisles despoiled, brass and bronze melted, carv- 
 ings 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 ruthless- 
 ness was perfectly expressed by Addison, who, com- 
 menting upon the great Cathedral of Siena, said 
 pragmatically: 
 
 "When a man sees the prodigious pains that our
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 31 
 
 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 sim- 
 plicity" of dull plaster! 
 
 Much has been said of the irreverence of the Nine- 
 teenth 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 pul- 
 pit 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 pat- 
 terns of precious mosaics, wrought with lapis lazuli, 
 with verd antique, and with sanguine Egyptian mar- 
 bles. 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 Ra vello'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
 
 32 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 medi- 
 aeval 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 exist- 
 ence 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 33 
 
 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 Cathe- 
 dral too has been spoiled and desecrated, but there 
 still remain the fine bronze doors by the same Bari- 
 sanus who made the famous ones in the church at 
 Monreale in Sicily, and here they find the most beau- 
 tiful 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 Pan- 
 taleone's Cathedral. The richness of its sixteen enor- 
 mous 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 
 3
 
 34 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 chron- 
 icles 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 be- 
 fore the eccentric curiosity of Forestieri. 
 
 Rosina Yokes 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,
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 35 
 
 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 in- 
 stead, 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 mo- 
 saics; 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 mediaeval 
 Carnegie. 
 
 Sigelgaita's bust is an almost unique example of the 
 marble portraiture of the Thirteenth Century if in- 
 deed 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 rec- 
 ords 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
 
 36 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Re- 
 public, the rival of Venice and Genoa, to a mere fish- 
 ing 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 37 
 
 owner. He, much absorbed in the opera dancers and 
 the small intrigues of the city, was secretly and scorn- 
 fully 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 Peri- 
 patetica 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 daffo- 
 dils 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 neigh- 
 bouring 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.
 
 38 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 moon- 
 light, 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 mediaeval mon- 
 astery, 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 impres- 
 sion of their indifference from the fact that our fore- 
 bears 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 exu- 
 berance of their own verbosity.' . . . And now, Jane,
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 39 
 
 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 Paestum, 
 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 Passtum which lay, so they said, far back in a coun- 
 try as cursed and horrible as the dreadful land of the 
 Dark Tower. About it, they declared, stretched lep- 
 rous marshes of stagnant ooze choked with fat reeds, 
 where fierce buffalo wallowed in the slime. The con- 
 tadini 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 tem- 
 ples by moonlight. It was such a strange, tremendous 
 story, that of the Greek Poseidonia, later the Roman 
 Paestum. 
 
 Long ago those adventuring mariners from Greece 
 had seized the fertile plain which at that time was cov- 
 ered 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
 
 40 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 de- 
 struction crept up the mountain sides and they too were 
 left naked to the sun and the rains. 
 
 At first these rains, sweeping down torrentially, un- 
 hindered 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, vomit- 
 ing mud into the ever-shallowing harbours, and the 
 knds 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-
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 41 
 
 haunted population went more and more languidly 
 about their business. The natives, hardy and vigor- 
 ous in the hills, were but feebly repulsed. Carthage 
 demanded tribute, and Rome took it, and changed the 
 city's name from Poseidonia to Passtum. After Rome 
 grew weak Saracen corsairs came in by sea and grasped 
 the slackly defended riches, and the little winged poi- 
 soners 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 in- 
 nocuous-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.
 
 42 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "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 knd, 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
 
 TO THE LAND OF THE GODS 43 
 
 about the dare-devilisliness 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 semi-circle be- 
 hind 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 reproduc- 
 tions, 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 ex- 
 pression 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
 
 44 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Posei- 
 don's temple stood almost on the sea's edge. The old 
 pavement of the street before its portals being disin- 
 terred shows the ruts made by the chariot wheels still 
 deep-scored upon it, and it was here 
 
 "The merry Grecian coaster came 
 Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, 
 Green bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine " 
 
 anchoring almost under the shadow of the great fane 
 of the Lord of the Waters; and here, when his cargo 
 was discharged, he went up to offer sacrifices and 
 thanks to the Sea-god of Poseidonia, and 
 
 "Hung his sea-drenched garments on the wall," 
 
 and prayed for skill to outwit his fellows in trade; for 
 fair winds to blow him once more to Greece. 
 
 Besides the temple of Neptune there was, of course, 
 the enormous Basilica, and a so-called temple of 
 Ceres, and some Roman fragments, but these were so 
 much less interesting than the golden-pillared shrine 
 of the Trident God, that the rest of the time was spent 
 in looking vainly and wistfully for Paestum's famous 
 rose gardens, of which not even the smallest bud re- 
 mained, and then Berliet gathered them up, and went 
 in search of the Station of La Cava.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 
 
 "So underneath the surface of To-day 
 Lies yesterday and what we call the Past, 
 The only thing which never can decay." 
 
 TRUSTFULLY and sleepily Jane and Peripatetica, in 
 the icy starlight of La Cava, boarded the express of 
 European de Luxe. Drowsy with the long day's rush 
 through the wind, they believed that the train's clatter 
 would be a mere lullaby to dreams of golden temples 
 and iris seas and "the glory that was Greece." No 
 robbers or barbarians nearer than defunct corsairs 
 crossed their imaginings; the hoodoo had faded from 
 mind, shaken off by the glorious swoop of Berliet, and 
 they supposed it left behind at Naples, clinging bat- 
 like under the gaudy frescoes of Room 13 to descend 
 on other unwary travellers. 
 
 Half of their substance had been paid to the Com- 
 pagnie Internationale des Wagon Lits for this night's 
 rolling lodging, and they begrudged it not, remember- 
 ing that it entitled their fatigue to the comforts of a 
 
 45
 
 46 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 room to themselves in all the vaunted superior civil- 
 ization 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, "a 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 gener- 
 ous 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 imi- 
 tation ventilators not made to open. Their fury deep- 
 ened at the slow struggles of the porter to adjust the 
 inadequate little partitions, at the grimy blankets and
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 47 
 
 pillows on the little shelves, at the curtains which didn't 
 conceal them, the wash-room without water or towels 
 and the cattlc-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 glow- 
 ing seas; one last swooping turn of the rails, and an- 
 other 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, "Zan- 
 cle," 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
 
 48 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 of beauty and wisdom, and of poetry which should 
 move through the ages. Their eyes were wide to see 
 the land where man's imaginings had brought the 
 divine into all surroundings of his life, until every tree 
 and spring and rock and mountain grew into semblance 
 of a god. Oh, was it all a "creed outworn"? Here 
 might not one perchance still see 
 
 "Proteus rising from the sea, 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn " ? 
 
 In these very mountains before them had man him- 
 self been shaped; hammered out by Vulcan upon his 
 forge in ^Etna. Here, in this knd he had been taught 
 by Demeter to nourish himself from the friendly earth, 
 taught how to shelter himself from the inclement ele- 
 ments 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 ./Etna, upon the bound 
 body of the kst 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 .<Etna 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;
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 49 
 
 and though it was in truth the actual land of their 
 pilgrimage, of the birthpkce 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 Pull- 
 man 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 Ro- 
 man remains; much surviving Spanish quaintness, but 
 to two unbreakfasted Wagon Lit passengers all this 
 was but ashes in the mouth. They felt that the at- 
 tractions 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 
 4
 
 50 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 
 Etna'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'hote 
 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 unex- 
 pressed 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 enor- 
 mous age in spite of having led a vie orageuse. When- 
 ever 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 51 
 
 again with a new master and be enticing and treacher- 
 ous all over again." * 
 
 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 i5th 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 eye- 
 brows Peripatetica began to read aloud of that extraor- 
 dinary 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 dif- 
 ferent stories; poor babies with painted wings made 
 to fly around on iron orbits up to the very top of the 
 
 * Messina suffered a terrific earthquake shock in 1708 and has 
 had in her history serious damage from seismic convulsions no less 
 than nine times.
 
 52 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 erection; of the great blue globe upon which stands 
 a girl dressed in spangled gauze, representing the 
 Saviour, holding upon her right hand luckily sup- 
 ported 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 Calab- 
 ria 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 unfor- 
 tunate 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 de- 
 lighted 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 53 
 
 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 trap- 
 pings of red, with arabesques of flowers and rib- 
 bons." ... * 
 
 "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 i5th 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 
 
 * All this, along with every treasure of her past, has now disap- 
 peared.
 
 54 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 deter- 
 mined 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 hun- 
 dred 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.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 55 
 
 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 Euro- 
 pean 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 prosper- 
 ous; 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 liber- 
 ally 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 ap- 
 pealing 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 Peri- 
 patetica, 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 his- 
 tories, could see it clearly. The little narrow viking- 
 like boats of Theocles, the Greek merchant, driven be- 
 fore 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
 
 56 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 the dramas of their mythology as happening there. It 
 was sacred ground, too sacred to be explored by pro- 
 fane foot; and was besides the home of fierce canni- 
 bals, 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 Laestrygones, from 
 Polyphemus, and Hephaestos at his nearby smoking 
 forge. And Apollo must have found it good, the savour 
 of that his first sacrifice on Sicilian land, for straight- 
 way 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, im- 
 pressed 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.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 57 
 
 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 Hephaestos, 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 Euboea the Chalcydians were won to 
 him. After the oracle of Apollo had promised them 
 his protection and all good fortune, more lonians 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 re- 
 turned, 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
 
 58 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 re- 
 vived, 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 choco- 
 late. 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 re- 
 serve rooms," said the cheerful porter heartlessly; "no 
 doubt other hotels could accommodate them." He
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 59 
 
 didn't seem to feel his cheerfulness in the least dimin- 
 ished by the dismay pictured in the dusty faces before 
 him. 
 
 " Oh, well," said Jane bravely, " picturesque monas- 
 teries 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 omni- 
 bus 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 ap- 
 proaching 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? Under- 
 neath 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 hill- 
 side, grey dust thick on parched bushes and plants,
 
 60 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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, follow- 
 ing 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 ro- 
 mance 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 be- 
 low, a towering peak crowned with a brown rim loomed
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 61 
 
 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 I 
 
 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 Peri- 
 patetica. "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
 
 62 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 faces became proud again. They looked with approv- 
 ing 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 din- 
 ing-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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 63 
 
 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 pkce a look. 
 
 Through the dust and shrivelled almond blossoms 
 they trailed back into town. The sun was still be- 
 hind 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 deli- 
 cate 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.
 
 64 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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. Every- 
 thing 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 squab- 
 bled. 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 Ger- 
 man 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 set- 
 tled 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 re- 
 turned beaming to the friendly Concierge.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 65 
 
 And all Taormina looked different now. The bro- 
 cades and laces waved enticingly at the "antichita's" 
 doors, old jewels and enamels gleamed temptingly; 
 mountains rose more majestic, the sea seemed less dis- 
 appointingly kcking 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'h6tes; 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 pour- 
 ing 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 furni- 
 ture to rearrange the rooms according to American 
 ideas, which demanded that dressing-tables should have 
 light on their mirrors, and sofas not be barriered be- 
 hind 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 
 5
 
 66 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 com- 
 pliments; but when it comes to the solid substantiate 
 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 dic- 
 tionary's, and produce the article at last. 
 
 But then according to Maria's vocabulary "qwsto?" 
 "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 every-
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 67 
 
 thing from mosquito-bars to vegetables; and the com- 
 bination 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 break- 
 fast trays in the mornings to the hot-water bottles at 
 night it rang through the villa all day long; for the in- 
 tricacies of her duties, the demands of the lodgers, 
 scoldings from the Fraulein, chatter with other maids, 
 "questo! qui!" sounded near and echoed from the 
 distance like a repeated birdnote. 
 
 No nurse ever showed more pride in a precocious 
 infant's lispings than did Maria when they caught up 
 her phrases and repeated them to her when the right 
 words to express the arrangement of tub and dinner 
 table were remembered and stammered out. She 
 seemed to feel that there might be hope of her charges 
 eventually developing into rational articulate beings, 
 and "questo-ed" every article about to them, with all 
 the enthusiasm of a kindergartner. 
 
 Next morning the sun had come out, and so had 
 ^Etna. There it suddenly was, towering over the ter- 
 race, 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 awe- 
 somely full of menace, of the times when the prisoned 
 Titan turned and groaned and shook the earth with his
 
 68 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 ^Etna 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 patron- 
 ising chorus of "Kolossals" and "achs reizends." 
 But once seen, it remained impressed on sense and 
 spirit, that vision whether visible or not. It was al- 
 ways 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 blos- 
 soming land below, whether from its summit were sent 
 down icy winds and grey mists or shrivelling fire and 
 black pall of lava. 
 
 Equal in importance with this vision of iEtna was 
 the appearance of Domenica both events happening 
 in the same day. Domenica too began as a bland out- 
 line. 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
 
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 A NEST OF EAGLES 69 
 
 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 repeat- 
 ing 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 bkck 
 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 washer- 
 woman, demanded her insistently. A more competent 
 interpreter was found, and their needs explained at 
 length. Domenica's eyes sparkled with willing intelli- 
 gence; 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 ex- 
 pected, 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 inter- 
 preter, bravely breasting the fury. 
 
 "What is the matter?" they cried. 
 
 "Oh nothing," smiled the interpreter, "she is say- 
 ing it isn't enough; that the ladies at the hotels pay
 
 70 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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. Re- 
 newed 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 bob- 
 bings and bowings as she departed that it seemed im- 
 possible to believe that furious transformation had ever 
 really happened. 
 
 They felt a little uneasy. Had they caught a Tar- 
 tar ? 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 doubt-
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 71 
 
 fully. 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 ap- 
 palling. At first they watched its effects with mutual 
 congratulations; such an accumulation of the dilapi- 
 dations 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 Etna's during an eruption, only 
 unlike the mountains it never seemed to know a sur- 
 cease. Dust departed from skirts instantly at the 
 fierce onskught 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 dila- 
 toriness of Irish Abigails at home, Peripatetica and Jane 
 were quite dazzled with delight at first but then in- 
 credibly 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, Sig- 
 nora?" 
 
 "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
 
 72 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 fur- 
 nace until some new task was procured her. Desper- 
 ately they took to giving her afternoons off, and in- 
 variably dismissed her before the bargained time in the 
 evening. But still to find grist for the mill of her in- 
 dustry kept them racking their brains unsuccessfully 
 through all their Taormina days. 
 
 Home comforts and maid once secured they could 
 turn to Taormina itself with open minds, and plunge 
 into a flood of beauty and queernesses and history. 
 Of the guide books some say that Taormina was the 
 acropolis of Naxos, an off-shoot of that first Greek 
 town, others that it, like Mola, was a Sikilian strong- 
 hold long before the days of the Greeks. Jane's pri- 
 vate theory was that neither Greeks nor Sicilians 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.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 73 
 
 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 pan- 
 niers; women going to the fountain, balancing slender 
 Greekish water jars on their heads; the painted carts 
 carrying up the tourists' luggage; the tourists them- 
 selves in veils and goggles bargaining at enticing shop 
 doorways, or peering into the windowless room of 
 Taormina's kindergarten, where a dozen or more in- 
 fants 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 Polichi- 
 nello man obstructs traffic with the delighted crowds 
 of boys collected by Punch's nasal chantings and the 
 shrill squeaks of " II 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 squawk- 
 ing from market, and poor little kids going to the 
 butchers. The busy tide of every-day life never ebbed
 
 74 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 moderness. 
 
 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 
 Andrbmachus, 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 set- 
 ting forth of these allies. How great Demeter and 
 Persephone herself had appeared to the servitors of 
 their temple, promising divine assistance and protec- 
 tion 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 Timo- 
 leon'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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 75 
 
 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 an- 
 swered 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, crudest 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 hel- 
 mets 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
 
 76 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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, de- 
 nounced; so passionately, that as long as man's appre- 
 ciation 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 des- 
 perately 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 Caesar, 
 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.
 
 A NEST OP EAGLES 77 
 
 Roger had completely surrounded the strong pkce 
 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 wield- 
 ing 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, re- 
 covers 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, re- 
 gains her name and the Cross. . . . 
 
 Picking their way one morning up through the pud- 
 dles and hens of their own alley-way, 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 sup- 
 pose . . ." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Why, that it could have been the Fata Morgana?
 
 78 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 Her island first appeared somewhere off the Sicilian 
 coast." 
 
 "Oh, Peripatetica ! how could a fairy, lovely and en- 
 chanting, 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 be- 
 haviour. 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 great- 
 est 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, shin- 
 ing 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."
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 79 
 
 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 sud- 
 denly 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 sol- 
 diers to cleanse themselves from their sins before de- 
 struction 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 smugglings 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 Mu- 
 seum, "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
 
 80 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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; con- 
 soling 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, contrast- 
 ing with the creamy marble fragments, has an undeni- 
 able charm, Greek and Roman together. It is an ex- 
 quisite ruin of human conceivings, contrived to have 
 blue sea and curving shore and Etna'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 re-
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 81 
 
 veal itself in all that it had most of beauty and splen- 
 dour. Peripatetica and Jane thought themselves fortu- 
 nate 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 chang- 
 ing 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 differ- 
 ent 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 ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and 
 Euripides. 
 
 Looking wonderingly at the curious drains and holes 
 and underground passages below the stage, they won- 
 dered if jEschylus, 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. 
 /Eschylus, who was inventor of stage realism, first to 
 introduce rich costuming, accessories, and stage ma- 
 chinery, the mutter of stage thunder, shrieks, and 
 sounds from behind the scenes suggestive of the deeds 
 6
 
 82 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 considered too shocking to happen in the audience's 
 sight inventor of the " Deus ex Machina," that oblig- 
 ing god popping from out his trap-door to divinely 
 straighten out a situation snarled past natural conclu- 
 sion. 
 
 As one sat there in the calm splendour of the setting 
 of earth and sky, sun, and great winds streaming over- 
 head, 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; ^Eschylus 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 element- 
 ary simplicity of their plays had not been necessary 
 and inevitable. 
 
 "In the Greek tragedy the general point of view pre- 
 dominates 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 con- 
 versations between two persons representing two op- 
 posed 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 in- 
 serted 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 83 
 
 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 specta- 
 tors, 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 beauti- 
 ful measure of the rolling majestic verse which a real- 
 istic 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
 
 84 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 the intenser intervals of the chorus," and the specta- 
 tors found themselves "without being drawn away by 
 an imitative realism from the calm of impassioned con- 
 templation 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 accom- 
 panying appeal to the senses of perfect groupings of 
 forms and colours, of swaying dance, and song and re- 
 citative, until it all blended into one perfect satisfying 
 whole perhaps the most wonderful form of art pro- 
 duction 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 Peri- 
 patetica 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 any- 
 thing good that has ever been done since is only copy- 
 ing them." 
 
 Jane had a deep respect for the Greeks herself, but 
 she sometimes turned against too much laudation o 
 them.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 85 
 
 "Do you suppose the aesthetic effect of their trage- 
 dies 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 anal- 
 ogy of their drama ! He had the same idea of painting 
 on a huge canvas great heroic figures in the flat, keep- 
 ing 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 com- 
 bined!" 
 
 " 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 acqui- 
 sition, 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 
 circuktion, 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
 
 86 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 jEtna. "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 even- 
 ing 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 be- 
 coming in this supposedly Southern land. If Perseph- 
 one had ever been as cold as they, they doubted if 
 that enlbvement to Pluto's warm, furnace-heated realm 
 could have been so distasteful after all! 
 
 Paddling out in the rain to hotels for meals was at 
 first a drawback to life in the Villa Schuler. To sit 
 with damp ankles through the endless procession of
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 87 
 
 table d'hdte meals, and afterwards have the odorifer- 
 ous 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 sit- 
 ting-room would be more satisfying than all the tri- 
 umphs 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 maca- 
 roni, meat and vegetables, perfect in seasoning and 
 succulence, crisp salad from the garden, and with it 
 the demanded poached eggs which were to have con- 
 stituted the whole dinner, almond pudding with a won- 
 drous 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 con- 
 tinued to give originality by the vagaries of their ap- 
 pearance. 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 com- 
 panionships they might form, lent a sort of prize- 
 packet excitement to each succeeding course. Dinner 
 at the Villa Schuler, with little Vesuvius glowing warm- 
 ingly through all his fiery eyes and steaming out spicy
 
 88 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 incense of lemon and mandarin peel, the soft low lamp- 
 light, 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 Peri- 
 patetica 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 ha!rsh 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 bloom- 
 ing terraces and loggias, all stairways, springing bridges, 
 and queer little passages leading to buildings and 
 courts on different levels. Peripatetica and Jane wan- 
 dered 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 89 
 
 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 hollow- 
 ness of earthly delights. Courteously he exhibited 
 everything, taking them to still higher and more glow- 
 ing terraces where his laden orange trees were bur- 
 nished green and gold, and his violets sheets of deep- 
 est, 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 com- 
 ment upon human and monkey nature, comment not 
 unspiced with wit. Peripatetica, always ready for phi- 
 losophy, immediately plunged into the depths of her 
 French vocabulary and responded in kind. The dis- 
 cussion 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
 
 90 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 they passed a bed of purple marvels. Emperors they 
 were among violets. The Padrone immediately prof- 
 fered 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 sweet- 
 ening 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 bright- 
 ness 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 in- 
 venting romantic pretexts to explain his air of blighted 
 hopes and poetic pain.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 91 
 
 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 pa- 
 trons 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 be- 
 fore encountered in such numbers and contrasts. Rosy, 
 bland English curates and their meek little wives; 
 flashy fat Austrians, with powdered ladies of unappe- 
 tizing look ; limp English spinsters of the primmest pro- 
 priety; seedy old men with dyed moustaches and loud 
 clothes, diffusing an aroma of shady gambling-rooms. 
 Scholarly old English professors; and Germans, Ger- 
 mans, Germans of all varying degrees of fatness, shini- 
 ness, 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, ap- 
 peared with omelettes. Omelettes of such melting per- 
 fection as to explain the solemn expectancy of the 
 waiting faces.
 
 92 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 Followed a meal in which every course fish, vege- 
 tables, meat, and salad, in a land where the tourist ex- 
 pects to subsist alone on oranges and scenery was of 
 a deliciousness to have made a Parisian epicure com- 
 pliment 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 pktter. 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 shy- 
 ness but German persistence she firmly insisted on 
 human intercourse with the French commercial travel- 
 ler across the table. He clung manfully to the tradi- 
 tional gallantry of his race, though the Hamburgian's 
 accent in his mother tongue threw him into wildest con- 
 fusion as to the lady's meaning. When he confided 
 his wife's confinement to bed with a cold, and his in- 
 effectual struggles to get the proper drugs for her in 
 Taormina, the German lady announced the theory
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 93 
 
 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 French- 
 man 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 pour- 
 ing 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 pud- 
 dings for hungry tourists. How wonder at the irony 
 with which he had watched the monkeys feed! 
 
 Maria and Vesuvius were not the only possessors of
 
 94 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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. Peri- 
 patetica 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 cook- 
 ing. 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 possi- 
 bly be accomplished in that family without his valu- 
 able 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 some- 
 thing 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!"
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 95 
 
 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 Frau- 
 lein, 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 in- 
 truders, 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 con- 
 tinued steadily in mounting crescendo all the while she 
 clothed herself in haste to go to the rescue. Follow- 
 ing 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 indigna- 
 tion 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
 
 96 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 ac- 
 quired the mannerisms and habits of his profession 
 curbing his exuberance of sociability, imposing on him- 
 self a post on the door mat, when strangers appeared, 
 confining all welcome to his tail end, which would still 
 wag friendlily though head did its duty in theatrical 
 staccato growls. 
 
 In Taormina everything happens in the street. 
 Houses are merely dark damp holes in which to take 
 shelter at night, but life is lived outside them. Food 
 is prepared in the street, clothes are mended there, 
 hair is combed and arranged, neighbours gossiped with, 
 lace and drawn work made. The cobbler soles his 
 shoes in the street, the tinsmith does his hammering 
 and soldering there. It is the poultry run of hens and 
 turkeys, the pasture grounds for goats and kids, the 
 dance hall for light-footed children to tarantelle in, the 
 old men's club, the general living-room of all Taor- 
 mina. Peripatetica and Jane found endless amuse- 
 ment there, though they seldom tarried in town. Like 
 Demeter they wandered all day in meadow and moun- 
 tain seeking Persephone, and found her not. Prepa- 
 ration for her beloved coming Mother Demeter seemed 
 to be making everywhere; grass springing green when 
 once the cold rain ceased, and carpets of opening blos- 
 soms 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 dis- 
 solved into cold tears hiding the face of the sun, and
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 97 
 
 the chill winds told of nothing but ^Etna's snow, and 
 the Lost One did not return. 
 
 But though they searched for her in vain in the set- 
 ting of sunshine and blossom their fancy had pictured, 
 Peripatetica and Jane found much else on their ram- 
 bles 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 mod- 
 ern huts, they stumbled upon those remains of antiq- 
 uity, debased and crumbled and inexplicable often, but 
 beautiful with a lost strange charm, sad and haunting. 
 
 Taormina prides herself more on scenery than an- 
 tiquities, 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 luxuri- 
 ous 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 re- 
 ceptive natures. They made plans only to break them; 
 for inevitably they were distracted by something of in- 
 terest 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 
 7
 
 98 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 thrust- 
 ing 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 re- 
 quires time and patience to disentangle each, and not 
 to put the whole down as a further evidence of moun- 
 tain 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 ^Etna. 
 
 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 gar- 
 den opened unexplored paths of sweetness, or a brown 
 old sea-dog, Phrygian-capped, smiled a "buongiorno" 
 on his bare-footed way up from the shore, showed
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 99 
 
 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' land- 
 ing place, they embarked in a heavy boat pulled by 
 their friend, and another old gold-earringed mariner, 
 to the " grotte molto inleressante" 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 won- 
 derful keenness, and pictures, bestowed safely behind 
 their eyes, of deliciously moulded mountain sides ris- 
 ing straight from clear green seas, of wave-carved fan- 
 tasies 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 Car- 
 mela and her sunny mountain meadow. 
 
 It was a day of shifting clouds and cold winds. Peri- 
 patetica 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 com-
 
 100 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 forting. She complained of what had been troubling 
 her for some time, a sense of feeling a mere ghost her- 
 self in these Past-pervaded spots; a cold and shiver- 
 ing ghost aimlessly blown about in the wind, pressed 
 upon by all the thronging crowds of other ghosts haunt- 
 ing these places where through the centuries each suc- 
 ceeding 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 in- 
 effectual. 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 exceed- 
 ingly 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 twirl- 
 ing 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 101 
 
 unexpected they at once accepted, and found them- 
 selves 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 thriv- 
 ing 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 re- 
 fined 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 under- 
 stand, 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 mod- 
 estly to suit her, she fell on her knees and gathered 
 great handfuls, thrusting on them besides all the oranges
 
 102 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 beau- 
 tiful. They would rather have continued their inter- 
 rupted 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 care- 
 lessly 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 pan- 
 niered 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 103 
 
 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 har- 
 monious 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 un- 
 known 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
 
 104 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 hu- 
 manity 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 inter- 
 course 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.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 105 
 
 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 stick- 
 ing 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 inscrip- 
 tion hospitably let into church walls, exciting imagina- 
 tion 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 cy- 
 presses, like exclamation points emphasizing its rhythms 
 of colour, have their roots among the very bones of an- 
 tiquity. In this garden Protestant worship has suc- 
 ceeded 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 embel- 
 lishment are, of course, even more numerous, almost 
 every house on the street breaking out into some odd
 
 106 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 and delicate bit. The facade of the palace in which 
 dwelt the Frau Schuler's antiquity shop is freaked 
 with charming old lava inlays and queer forked "mer- 
 luzzi" 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, tempta- 
 tion, 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 bal- 
 conies, 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 
 hawklike, keen-eyed faces passing through Taormina's 
 streets as haughtily as in the days when their progeni- 
 tors 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 reguktion were still in force! They 
 might go on worshipping freely in all existing churches 
 and convents, though to build new ones was not al- 
 lowed. In matters of religion the Arab was strangely
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 107 
 
 liberal, but in civil matters he reduced the conquered 
 people to a sort of serfdom. Christians were not al- 
 lowed to carry arms, to ride on horseback, or even 
 donkeyback, to build houses as high as the Mussul- 
 man's, to drink wine in public, to accompany their 
 dead to burial with any pomp or mourning. Chris- 
 tian 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 con- 
 quering 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 mul- 
 berry, 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 popuktions of the mainland 
 under the Lombards and Franks." 
 
 Jane and Peripatetica were taking tea in the San 
 Domenico gardens a flowery terrace dizzily flung out 
 to sea, and almost as high as their own. There is 
 nothing prettier in Taormina than that garden; tile- 
 paved, mossy stone pergolas of dense shade still breath-
 
 108 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 ing of quiet monkish meditations; open, yet sheltered, 
 nooks to bask in the sun, and the loveliness of the out- 
 look on ^Etna and his sweeping foothills, and the milky- 
 streaked green sea; mats of fragrant sweetness, purple 
 and ivory, of violets and freesias; royal splash of bou- 
 gain villa against the buff stucco of old convent walls; 
 coast steamers, white yachts, and tiny black fishing 
 boats far, far below, the only hint of the world's bustle; 
 here in the garden was only slumberous quiet and 
 fragrant peace. 
 
 "On his terrace high in air 
 Nothing doth the good monk care 
 
 For such worldly themes as these. 
 From the garden just below 
 Little puffs of perfume blow, 
 And a sound is in his ears 
 
 Of the murmur of the bees 
 In the shimmering chestnut trees. 
 Nothing else he heeds or hears. 
 All the landscape seems to swoon 
 In the happy afternoon." 
 
 Little has been changed since the good monk really 
 dozed there. The charm of his peaceful days still 
 lingers in cloister and garden, and the conventual at- 
 mosphere 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 bed- 
 room door; walks under saintly frescoes, hangs his hat 
 on the Father's carved towel-frame outside the Re- 
 fectory 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 109 
 
 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-a-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. When- 
 ever 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 peace- 
 fully benignant. 
 
 "Jane," queried Peripatetica, "do you notice that 
 these Saints are all women? a gentle kdy 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 Taor- 
 mina'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
 
 110 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Gloeden'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 shy- 
 ness 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 with- 
 out any whirling. He began to chatter. 
 
 "Yes, it was very high that cliff, and of much inter- 
 est 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 111 
 
 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 find- 
 ing arms and power to mete to masters the same cruel- 
 ties 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, in- 
 domitably, 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
 
 112 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 bends his head and draws his cloak over it as if shield- 
 ing his eyes to better collect his thoughts. . . . Under 
 the cloak he grips his throat between his fingers and 
 with the last remnant of once phenomenal physical 
 strength crushes his own windpipe, and falls safely 
 silent at the Consul's feet. 
 
 But the horrors of Taormina in that siege are too 
 much for another slave a Syrian. He betrays the 
 town to the Romans . . . and Publius disposes of all 
 the remaining garrison over the edge of the cliff. 
 
 Shopping is an important part of a stay in Taor- 
 mina. 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; ear- 
 rings 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 abund- 
 ance; 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 con- 
 taining varied treasures, from brocades and embroid-
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 113 
 
 cries and splendid kce of priestly vestments, to drawn - 
 work altar cloths and the kce 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 mix- 
 tures 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 pro- 
 tectors against the evil eye. Peripatetica and Jane in- 
 stantly proceeded to combat their Hoodoo with valiant 
 processions of fat little many-horned stags romping 
 around throat and wrist and of all the many exor- 
 cisms they had tried this truly seemed the most effective! 
 
 Taormina's naive native pottery, too, drapes the out- 
 side 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 pktters 
 of every possible form and design. Some of it reminis- 
 cent of Sevillian pottery in ekborate Renaissance deco- 
 ration, but for the most part rough little shapes of cky, 
 covered with hard bright gkze 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 be- 
 8
 
 114 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 hind 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 con- 
 sider 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 par- 
 ticular exploitation they had long ago become.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 115 
 
 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. Tay- 
 potem 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, be- 
 loved 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 ad- 
 mitted. Oh, that was mollo 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 Pal- 
 ace with which they were already familiar. But not 
 as it was shown by Domenico. The surly old conta- 
 dina 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
 
 116 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 lighting up the vaulted cellar in which by graphic pan- 
 tomime 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 Peripate- 
 tica 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 shop- 
 ping tour, to point out an antiquity or garden to in- 
 spect 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. ALtna. 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
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 117 
 
 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 ^Etna, 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 when- 
 ever 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 rub- 
 bing 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 lhal!" cries the appalled Peri- 
 patetica 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 Gio- 
 vanino's powers after their mutual tussles, puts more 
 faith in his head and knees than in her own, and goes
 
 118 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 per- 
 fect chart of the way, with the safest hoof-placings 
 plainly marked out on it, and he follows it im- 
 perturbably. 
 
 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 de- 
 jected 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. Cor- 
 ragio! only one-half hour more!" . . . 
 
 But Peripatetica and Jane plant their feet on that 
 little level platform with more than donkey obstinacy
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 119 
 
 with reeling heads they look out into the great blue 
 gulfs of a ir 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 tele- 
 graph 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 skele- 
 ton 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 convic- 
 tion 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 some- 
 thing called coffee had been swallowed, and numbed 
 fingers thawed out over the tiny fire of grapevine prun- 
 ings in the tratoria kitchen, they succumbed to Do- 
 men ico'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 moun- 
 tains to fill a whole world roll confusedly on every 
 side. They felt more than ever like earth-worms too
 
 120 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 far removed from friendly earth, and stayed only to 
 listen to the pipings of a curly-headed goatherd fling- 
 ing trills out into space; while Domenico, pained at 
 their indifference to his vaunted coup d'etat of "bella 
 vistas," but benevolent still, clambered about like a 
 goat himself, gathering for them the "mountain vio- 
 lets" as he called the delicate mauve flowers starring 
 the sod. 
 
 So soon they were back at the tratoria that Fran- 
 cesco 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, wag- 
 ging his beard and rolling watery pink-rimmed eyes 
 with such evangelical air of pious complacence Peri- 
 patetica and Jane instantly recognized him as an in- 
 carnation 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. Slip- 
 ping, 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 con- 
 fident 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.
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 121 
 
 Mola is a climb again, the narrow path twisting up 
 the one accessible ledge to its sharp peak. One won- 
 ders 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 be- 
 fore the first Greek colonists landed at Naxos, Mok 
 was already a town. It looked down on infant Taor- 
 mina when the Naxos refugees fled to its heights. It 
 loomed above, still Siculian and intact, on its bare un- 
 assailable crags, through all the squabbles and scream- 
 ings below of the different eagle broods taking posses- 
 sion 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 Mok still 
 lives to-day. All its huddled houses seem to be in- 
 habited, though only bent old men, palsied crones, 
 bkck 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 inter- 
 est in the spread of country and sea stretching below 
 its parapet. Once Mok had a sister town, he told, on 
 another crag across the valley; but ^Etna opened a 
 sudden mouth and kva 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.
 
 122 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 But then, as Domenico said, there is ^Etna, and there 
 the lava mound still black and ugly, as proof! 
 
 Again it rained, and ^Etna 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 reap- 
 peared, pale but proud, with a fashionably dressed 
 young lady of fourteen, herfiglia 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 ar- 
 ranged 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 plac- 
 ings to exhibit pointed toes that very little else could be
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 123 
 
 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 every- 
 thing, 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 JEtna." 
 
 "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 won- 
 derful pudding eaten, ^Etna seen looming vapory white 
 above the terrace for the last time, Old Nina had car- 
 ried 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 pom- 
 padour more aggressive than ever, appeared to offer 
 them violets and hint a receptivity to a parting douceur 
 herself. Every one was bidding them regretful fare- 
 wells. 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 de- 
 duction for the days you were first ill, and we had no 
 one; nor for the days when we had your little girl in- 
 stead," said Jane.
 
 124 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 Oh! had ^Etna burst into eruption? The whole smil- 
 ing 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,
 
 A NEST OF EAGLES 125 
 
 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 morn- 
 ing 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 pergok for the last time, and 
 out of the pink gate to continue their quest.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 
 
 "Where he fell there he lay down and died." 
 
 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK tells a story and this story 
 teaches an obvious lesson of certain red warrior ants, 
 who capture black fellow pismires, and hold them as 
 slaves; an outrage which must certainly shock all true 
 pismitarian ants. The captors become in time so de- 
 pendent 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 pur- 
 poses were highly inefficient. So when she and Jane 
 dropped down and down the zigzags to Giardini each 
 
 126
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 127 
 
 of those famous views self-consciously presenting itself 
 m 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 confi- 
 dence of a goat, proved to be not a wing-heeled Mer- 
 cury 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 um- 
 brella. . . . 
 
 From Giardini a spacious pkin curves all the way 
 to Syracuse. This broken level is built upon a 
 foundation of inky lava cast out from Hephasstos' 
 forge in ^Etna, 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 busi- 
 nesses the mere wretched astonishing fate of the un- 
 fortunate she rejoiced loudly and fatiguingly over the 
 blessedness of a return to a sweet land of farms.
 
 128 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "I don't call that Taormina window-box-garden- 
 ing 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. "Be- 
 sides, 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 jagged, 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 atten- 
 tion or not." 
 
 Which was why, while Jane settled down com- 
 fortably to a copy of Theocritus, Peripatetica contin- 
 ued to entertain her own soul with spoken and un- 
 spoken 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, succeed- 
 ing 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 shin- 
 ing 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,
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 129 
 
 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; arm- 
 ing 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 cun- 
 ning, with the same naive relish with which the mod- 
 ern 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 escap- 
 ing Greeks. He was a great stone-thrower, was Poly- 
 phemus, 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 rac- 
 ing 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 
 Gaktea. 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 
 9
 
 130 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 mus- 
 tard 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 in- 
 habitants had fled for safety in the old days of Levan- 
 tine 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. In- 
 variably 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 131 
 
 bread; here Demeter first taught man to sow and reap, 
 and despite ^Etna's fires, despite the destruction and 
 ravaging of a thousand wars, and thousands of years 
 of careless unrcstorative use of the soil, corn still grows 
 on this pkin, 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 con- 
 templative attitudes on long staves as every right- 
 minded shepherd should so old a picture, so un- 
 changed 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," remon- 
 strated 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. . . .
 
 132 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 tama- 
 risks, on this sloping knoll, and pipe while in this place 
 I watch thy flocks? 
 
 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
 
 1 PAN'S GOAT HERD "
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 133 
 
 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 vine- 
 yard 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 kd, 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.
 
 134 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 For this bowl I paid to a Calydonian ferryman a goat 
 and a great white cream cheese. Never has its lip 
 touched mine, but it still lies maiden for me. Gladly 
 with this cup would I gain thee to my desire, if thou, 
 my friend, wilt sing me that delightful song. Nay, I 
 grudge it thee not at all. Begin, my friend, for be 
 sure thou canst in no wise carry thy song with thee to 
 Hades, that puts all things out of mind! 
 
 The Song of Thyrsis. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! Thyr- 
 sis of ^Etna am I, and this is the voice of Thyrsis. 
 Where, ah! where were ye when Daphnis was lan- 
 guishing; 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 ^Etna, nor by the sacred water 
 of Acis. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 For him the jackals, for him the wolves did cry; for 
 him did even the lion out of the forest lament. Kine 
 and bulls by his feet right many, and heifers plenty, 
 with the young calves bewailed him. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 Came Hermes first from the hill, and said, "Daph- 
 nis, who is it that torments thee; child, whom dost 
 thou love with so great desire?" The neatherds came, 
 and the shepherds; the goatherds came; all they asked 
 what ailed him. Came also Priapus, 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 And said: "Unhappy Daphnis, wherefore dost thou 
 languish, while for thee the maiden by all the fountains, 
 through all the glades is fleeting, in search of thee?
 
 135 
 
 Ah! thou art too laggard a lover, and thou nothing 
 availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now thou 
 art like the goatherd. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 "For the goatherd, when he marks the young goats 
 at their pastime, looks on with yearning eyes, and fain 
 would be even as they; and thou, when thou behold- 
 est the laughter of maidens, dost gaze with yearning 
 eyes, for that thou dost not join their dances." 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 Yet these the herdsman answered not again, but he 
 bare his bitter love to the end, yea, to the fated end he 
 bare it. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 Ay, but she too came, the sweetly smiling Cypris, 
 craftily smiling she came, yet keeping her heavy anger; 
 and she spake, saying: "Daphnis, methinks thou didst 
 boast that thou wouldst throw Love a fall, nay, is it 
 not thyself that hast been thrown by grievous Love ? " 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 But to her Daphnis answered again: "Implacable 
 Cypris, Cypris terrible, Cypris of mortals detested, 
 already dost thou deem that my latest sun has set; nay, 
 Daphnis even in Hades shall prove great sorrow to 
 Love. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 "Get thee to Ida, get thee to Anchises! There are 
 oak trees here only galingale blows, here sweetly hum 
 the bees about the hives! 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 "Thine Adonis, too, is in his bloom, for he herds 
 the sheep and slays the hares, and he chases all the 
 wild beasts. Nay, go and confront Diomedes again,
 
 136 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 and say, 'The herdsman Daphnis I conquered, do 
 thou join battle with me.' " 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 "Ye wolves, ye jackals, and ye bears in the moun- 
 tain caves, farewell! The herdsman Daphnis ye never 
 shall see again, no more in the dells, no more in the 
 groves, no more in the woodlands. Farewell Arethusa, 
 ye rivers good-night, that pour down Thymbris your 
 beautiful waters. 
 
 Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! 
 
 "That Daphnis am I who here do herd the kine, 
 Daphnis who water here the bulls and calves. 
 
 "O Pan, Pan! whether thou art on the high hills of 
 Lycasus, or rangest mighty Maenalus, haste hither to 
 the Sicilian isle! Leave the tomb of Helice, leave that 
 high cairn of the son of Lycaeon, which seems wondrous 
 fair, even in the eyes of the blessed. 
 Give o'er, ye Muses, come, give o'er the pastoral song! 
 
 "Come hither, my prince, and take this fair pipe, 
 honey-breathed with wax-stopped joints; and well it 
 fits thy lip; for verily I, even I, by Love am now haled 
 to Hades. 
 Give o'er, ye Muses, come, give o'er the pastoral song! 
 
 "Now violets bear, ye brambles, ye thorns bear vio- 
 lets and let fair narcissus bloom on the boughs of juni- 
 per! Let all things with all be confounded from 
 pines let men gather pears, for Daphnis is dying! Let 
 the stag drag down the hounds, let owls from the hills 
 contend in song with the nightingales." 
 Give o'er, ye Muses, come, give o'er the pastoral song! 
 
 So Daphnis spake, and ended; but fain would Aphro- 
 dite have given him back to life. Nay, spun was all 
 the thread that the Fates assigned, and Daphnis went
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 137 
 
 down the stream. The whirling wave closed over the 
 
 man the Muses loved, the man not hated of the nymphs. 
 
 Give o'er, ye Muses, come, give o'er the pastoral song! 
 
 And thou, give me the bowl, and the she-goat, that 
 I may milk her and pour forth a libation to the Muses. 
 Farewell, oh, farewells manifold, ye Muses, and I, 
 some future day, will sing you yet a sweeter song. 
 
 The Goatherd. Filled may thy fair mouth be with 
 honey, Thyrsis, and filled with the honey-comb; and 
 the sweet dried fig mayest thou eat of ^Egilus, 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, Cissaetha: do thou milk her, Thyrsis. 
 And you young she-goats, wanton not so wildly lest 
 you bring up the he-goat against you. 
 
 "What a crowded place Sicily is!" cried Jane, 
 heaving an oppressed breath. 
 
 "Isn't it?" sympathized Peripatetica. "Here we 
 are on our way to the very fountain, as it seems, of 
 history Syracuse, where nearly everything happened 
 that ever did happen, and yet one has to mentally push 
 one's way through a swarming crowd of events to get 
 there, because almost everything that didn't happen 
 in Syracuse occurred in these Sicilian plains. When 
 you think of the kyer on layer of human life, like geo- 
 logic strata, that lies all over this place, you realize 
 that it would take half a lifetime to come to some un- 
 derstanding of the significance of it all, and that it's
 
 138 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 in- 
 tervened 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, speak- 
 ing 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 en- 
 joyed 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 139 
 
 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 pub- 
 lic, 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 provin- 
 cial 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 Athe- 
 nians rotting in the Latomiae, 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 pas- 
 sages by the light of a smoky candle, for JEtna. 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
 
 140 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 incal- 
 culable mountain whose soaring outlines had been com- 
 ing 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. JEtna, 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 JStna, 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, en- 
 gulfing cities, tearing the earth apart in his furies. 
 
 Some of the myths accuse Demeter herself of having 
 set ^Etna 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 for- 
 ever 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 Ran-
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 141 
 
 dazzo; up to Bronte, the "thunder town," given to 
 Lord Nelson by Marie Antoinette's sister, then Queen 
 of the Two Sicilies, where the Dukes of Bronte, Nel- 
 son'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 erup- 
 tions, 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 yEtna 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 mean- 
 ing 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 what- 
 ever 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 be-
 
 142 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 came the victim of some wild melancholy, some cor- 
 roding 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 lin- 
 gering 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 vanish- 
 ing in an instant in a hiss of steam, a puff of gas, upon 
 the most stupendous funeral pyre ever chosen by man. 
 
 There was endless history waiting to be looked into 
 at Catania; frightful passagings and scufflings, mas- 
 sacres and exilings, murders, conspiracies and poison- 
 ings, 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 al- 
 most heartlessly indifferent to tradition, and when the 
 last tartlet was consumed the two seekers for Perseph- 
 one were dragged Syracuse-ward, along with the 
 crumby Tedeschi, divided during the long afternoon 
 between increasing drowsiness and reproachful Baede-
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 143 
 
 kers. At last came sea marshes, where salt-pans evap- 
 orated 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 en- 
 gaged 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 mur- 
 mur soft nothings from lips surrounded with the shad- 
 ows 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 vilks, up to bare, 
 wind-swept heights. 
 
 Strong in the possession of a note from the proprie- 
 tor 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 al- 
 most consoling in its histrionic effectiveness.
 
 144 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Signer Antonio. He left it to Signer Antonio's 
 beautiful bride, his "bellissima sposa." Could he? 
 He asked that! . . . 
 
 The two seekers were sternly sarcastic. Signer 
 Antonio imitated the histrionic attitude. The Bellis- 
 sima Sposa simply smiled fatuously. Beloved An- 
 tonio 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 w r ith 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 with- 
 in 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 145 
 
 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 noc- 
 turnal 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 mon- 
 sters 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 un- 
 hindered 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 
 10
 
 146 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 out of them, who formed the rising population of Taor- 
 mina. 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 147 
 
 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-be- 
 haved citizens. One does not slap or jerk or scold val- 
 uable and important members of the community, and 
 no youthful Taorminian would permit such an unjusti- 
 fiable 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 Cen- 
 tury, 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 facade of yellow stone. But through 
 all disfigurements and defacements the temple still 
 showed its soaring majesty, and Peripatetica, at sight 
 of it, cried:
 
 148 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "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 gath- 
 ered sullenly into little ships his wealth, his family, and 
 his servants, and had fled far down the horizon, an 
 execrated fugitive because of the skying of beautiful 
 Actaeon. 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 frag- 
 ments 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 149 
 
 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 Cathe- 
 dral with an offer to guide them, and though they 
 sternly endeavoured to brush the insect aside, doubt- 
 ing his infantile capacity to direct their older intelli- 
 gences, the Spider was not of the to-be-brushcd-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, car- 
 ried a cup of burning ashes from her altar to sprinkle on 
 the waves as the glittering landmark faded down the sky.
 
 150 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 su- 
 perb 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 151 
 
 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 shad- 
 owy 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 prim- 
 itive forests, with bayings of lean questing hounds and 
 echoing call of silver horns, hard on the track of crash- 
 ing boar, of leaping deer ? There is something as glim- 
 meringly elusive, as magically haunting in the person- 
 ality 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 conun- 
 drum 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 ore on the left contained the half- 
 mummy, half-skeleton of a man. A young, beardless
 
 152 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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-scab- 
 barded 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, look- 
 ing through the transparent pane of his last home 
 toward the opposite crystal sarcophagus. This op- 
 posite coffin contained a half-mummied, half-skeleton 
 woman a woman also young and fair-haired; art- 
 fully caiffed, her tresses wrapped with pearls. Neither 
 was her face repulsive; some strange process had pre- 
 served 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?
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 153 
 
 The Spider could not tell. They had always been 
 there. He did not know their names or their story. 
 He could not refer to anyone who did. Baedeker was 
 equally indifferent and uncommunicative; he made no 
 mention of them. Hare was silent. Sladen ignored 
 them. No questioning of guide-books or guides ever 
 unravelled that mystery. 
 
 From the temple of Diana the Spider led Jane and 
 Peripatetica through more narrow, crooked streets 
 thronged with rough, fierce Syracusan children, to see 
 the Sixteenth Century palace of the Montaltos, now 
 fallen on grimy days. The windows with their ogives 
 and delicate twisted columns were crumbling, and the 
 noble court through which silken guests and mailed 
 retainers had passed to mount the great stairs and 
 throng the long balconies was now full of squalid, 
 squalling populace, and flocks of evil-savoured brown 
 goats being milked for the evening meal. 
 
 For some unexplained reason the mere presence of 
 the Spider was an offence to the lowering boys who 
 laired in this court. His grown-up air of being capa- 
 bly 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 Eng- 
 lish 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,
 
 154 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 pas- 
 sionate illustration that even Hercules could not over- 
 come 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 ques- 
 tions, applied a lire to the wounded heart with the hap- 
 piest results, and it was a once more united and cheer- 
 ful 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 pro- 
 tectress" and for safety is turned into a sparkling 
 pool which feeds all Syracuse with its sweet waters. 
 Now Artemis is dead. Her cool groves have given way 
 to acres of arid stone convents; earthquakes have 
 cracked Arethusa's basin, letting the sea in and the 
 sweet water out; modern bad taste has walled her 
 vulgarly about, and the poor old nymph can only 
 gurgle reiterantly, "I was once a beauty; long ago, 
 long ago!" with not the smallest hope that any tourist 
 will believe it. 
 
 The Spider has retired to his web. Pranzo has been 
 discussed, and Jane and Peripatetica, refreshed, are taking 
 another nibble at the vast mouthful of Syracuse's past. 
 
 It was a thrilling pranzo. Not because of the food, 
 nor of its partakers. The food was the same old stereo-
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 155 
 
 typed menu. Gnocchi with cheese. Vegetables, di- 
 vorced from the meats they cannot apparently occupy 
 the same course in any part of Italy. More cheese a 
 jardiniere 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; domi- 
 neering a plain, red cheek-boned, flat-chested daugh- 
 ter 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 dis- 
 trait that the crunching horde felt their forks strain
 
 156 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 re- 
 spectful 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 sym- 
 pathetic bosom of the concierge. 
 
 The cyclone had expended itself; the courses re- 
 sumed their course, but what had taken place behind 
 that closed door was never known. It remained an- 
 other Syracusan mystery.
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 157 
 
 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 autochtho- 
 nous 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 deaden- 
 ingly 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 Mes- 
 sina 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 astonish- 
 ingly like those of our own Pueblo Indians. 
 
 There are fragments of Phoenician 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 in- 
 tricate, 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
 
 158 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 flowering; an apogee of beauty is reached. Vases of 
 exquisite contours covered with spirited paintings, pic- 
 tures 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 sar- 
 cophagi, and burial urns still holding ashes and cal- 
 cined bones, and tiny clay reproductions of the death 
 masks of the departed, full of tender human individual- 
 ity, 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.
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 159 
 
 "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 dread- 
 ful 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 Peri- 
 patetica 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 com- 
 fortable 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! . . .
 
 160 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 It is some days later. They have "done" the river 
 Amapus; have been rowed among the towering feath- 
 ery 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 Perseph- 
 one'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 guar- 
 dians 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 cour- 
 age 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
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 161 
 
 prone to do about anything really interesting. Eurya- 
 lus, 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 sud- 
 denly 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. Diony- 
 sius 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 tram- 
 pling 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 Latomiae 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 ^Etna ravaging the oak woods for huge beams. 
 When Himilcon comes the wall is complete. 
 
 Then there are more appearings and disappearings 
 11
 
 162 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 through the years, and suddenly Euryalus fills the fore- 
 ground again. Archimedes is helping Hieronymus to 
 fortify it against Marcellus is designing veiled sally 
 ports, and oblique apertures from which his "scor- 
 pions" 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 sol- 
 dier, 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 Ro- 
 mans 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 wit- 
 nesses to look out Archimedes' resting place. He finds
 
 . ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 163 
 
 it overgrown with thistles and brambles, but recog- 
 nizes it by the sphere and cylinder, and sets it once 
 more in order. 
 
 "So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of time, 
 On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime, 
 Where at his feet in honoured dust disclosed 
 The immortal Sage of Syracuse reposed." 
 
 "You cribbed that from one of the guide-books," 
 jeered Jane. 
 
 " Of course I did," admitted Peripatetica with calm 
 unblushingness. "Do you imagine I go around with 
 samples of formal Eighteenth Century Pope-ry con- 
 cealed about my person?" 
 
 They are on their way to the theatre, passing by the 
 ancient site of the Forum, which site is now a mere 
 dusty, down-at-heels field where goats browse and 
 donkeys graze, and where squads of awkward recruits 
 are being trained to take cover behind a couple of grass 
 blades, to fire their empty rifles with some pretence at 
 unanimity. 
 
 The road winds between walled orange and lemon 
 groves, in which contadini are drying and packing 
 miles of pungent golden peel for transportation to 
 French and English confectioners. The air is redolent 
 with it. 
 
 Themistocles Jane doubts his sponsors in baptism 
 having had any hand in this, but the grubby card he 
 presented with so pleasant a glance, so fine a gesture at 
 the time of striking a bargain for the day, bore it printed 
 as plain as plain Themistocles, then, dismounts be-
 
 164 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 fore a small drinking shop lying at the foot of an ele- 
 vation. With one broad sweep of his hand he signi- 
 fies 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 un- 
 blown 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 pkces, 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;
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 165 
 
 where even the sound of dripping moisture is magni- 
 fied 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 con- 
 spirators, 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 Dic- 
 tator 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 in- 
 teresting, 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 dark- 
 ness, 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.
 
 166 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "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, defi- 
 nitely, 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 un- 
 veiled 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 con- 
 spirators. 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 consult- 
 ing 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 choic- 
 est 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.
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 167 
 
 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 trag- 
 edy, 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, hasten- 
 ing 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. ^Eschy- 
 lus, sitting beside Hiero L, saw all his plays produced 
 here; "The jEtnaiai" and "The Persians" were written 
 for this stage. Pindar was often here; so were Bac- 
 chylides and Simonides, and a host of lesser play- 
 wrights. Indeed, no theatre has ever known such 
 famous auditors. Theocritus, Pythagoras, Sappho, Em- 
 pedocles, 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:
 
 168 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "I fear you will not speak kindly of me in Athens." 
 
 To which the philosopher, with still more insolent 
 sarcasm, replies: 
 
 "We are little likely to be so in want of a topic in 
 Athens as to speak of you at all." 
 
 Yet it would seem as if no good effort was ever 
 wholly lost, for when Dion, earning his bread in exile 
 as an obscure schoolmaster, is sneeringly asked what 
 he ever learned from Plato, his dignified answer is, 
 "He taught me to bear misfortune with resignation." 
 
 Themistocles has conducted them, with much crack- 
 ing of his whip, much irrelevant conversation, quite to 
 the other side of what once was Syracuse, and has de- 
 posited 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 im- 
 plement. The garden is full of pansies growing be- 
 tween low hedges of sweet-smelling thyme and rose- 
 mary. 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 Teu- 
 tons. It is somewhat of a shock to Jane and Peripate-
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 169 
 
 tica when their slim, supple, handsome Sicilian explains 
 to them that this contest has its reason not in their per- 
 sonal charm, but is owing to a reluctance to guide the 
 hated Tedeschi. 
 
 There is something inexplicable in this universal un- 
 popularity of the Teuton in Italy. Germany has been 
 dotingly sentimental about Italy for generations. 
 
 "Kennst du das Land" 
 
 has hovered immanent on every lip from beyond the 
 Rhine ever since the days of Goethe. They passion- 
 ately study her language, her literature, her monu- 
 ments, 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 neces- 
 sarily leave in the Peninsula hundreds of thousands of 
 their hard-earned, laboriously hoarded marks, which 
 they have not grudged to spend in the service of beauty. 
 Yet Italy seems possessed of a sullen repugnance to the 
 entire race. 
 
 "Tedeschi!" hisses the monk. "Tutto 'Ja! Ja! 
 W undersch on!'" 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
 
 170 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 walls, though the interior is in the usual dusty and 
 neglected gaunt desuetude. The whole place is in de- 
 cay, 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. "Every- 
 body 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 democ- 
 racy, but this is clearly the usual fine monkish superi- 
 ority 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 relig- 
 ions, 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 Soph- 
 ocles, 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." . . .
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 171 
 
 The monk only smiles bitterly when it is demanded 
 of him to explain why a spot of so reverent an associa- 
 tion should be abandoned to dust and decay, and to 
 the interest of curious tourists, when the mere apocry- 
 phal vision of an hysterical peasant girl should draw 
 hordes of miracle-seeking pilgrims to Lourdes. 
 
 Perhaps there was something typical in that an- 
 guished Christ painted upon the great flat wooden 
 crucifix that hung over the altar in the crypt; a Christ 
 fading slowly into a mere grey shadow; the dim, 
 hardly visible ghost of a once living agony. . . . 
 
 The monk goes before, the flickering candle which 
 he shades with his fingers throwing a fan of yellow rays 
 around his tonsured head. These are the Catacombs 
 of Syracuse. 
 
 "On every hand the roads begin." 
 
 Roads underground, these, leading away endlessly 
 into darkness. At long intervals they widen into 
 lofty domed chapels rudely hewn, as is all this place, 
 directly from the rock. Here and there a narrow shaft 
 is cut upward through the earth, letting in faint gleams 
 of sunshine through a fringe of grass and ferns, show- 
 ing 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, ex- 
 tending 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 nar- 
 row niches for half a dozen bodies graves where four
 
 172 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 inhabi- 
 tants have departed. 
 
 This is the crowning mystery of mysterious Syra- 
 cuse. Who were this vast army of the buried? And 
 where have their dead bodies gone? . . . Christians, 
 everyone says. 
 
 "But why," clamours Peripatetica, "should Chris- 
 tians 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 suc- 
 cessfully 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 mil- 
 lion inhabitants. Now, you can't successfully mar- 
 tyrize 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 help- 
 fully. "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 under-
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 173 
 
 ground 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 ex- 
 cavations would have to be put somewhere? And 
 how could the presence or the removal of all that 
 refuse stone escape attention? The persecuted Chris- 
 tian 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 krgest to the smallest, has 
 been opened and entirely emptied. The Saracen pop- 
 ulation 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 Syra- 
 cuse 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,
 
 174 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Arsinoe or so they named her 
 whose face was touched with that strange, secret arch- 
 ness, that sweet smiling scorn so often seen on faces 
 one day dead. The broad brow with its drooping hair, 
 the full tender lips so instinct with vivid personality, 
 went with them, and became to them like the record 
 of some one seen long ago and dimly remembered, 
 though the lovely benignant original must have been 
 mere dust of dust for more than a thousand years. 
 
 A nun in a faded blue gown has been showing them 
 the relics of Santa Lucia. She has also been telling 
 them how the Saint, when a young man admired her 
 eyes, snatched them out of her head with her own hands 
 and handed them to the young man on a plate. 
 
 "What a very rude and unpleasant thing to do!" 
 comments Jane in English. "But invariably saints 
 seem so lamentably deficient in amiability and social 
 charm." 
 
 The nun unlocks the gate of the Cappucini Latomia, 
 and Jane and Peripatetica descend the long stair cut 
 in the rocks. They are seeking the place where the 
 remnant of that army Alcibiades so skilfully intro- 
 duced into Catania, finally perished. 
 
 They have been reading tales of the Athenians' long
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 175 
 
 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 sur- 
 rendered 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, demoral- 
 ised with long fighting and the horrible final debdcle 
 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 demon- 
 iacal story a touch characteristically Greek. Some 
 of the prisoners had beguiled the tedium of dying by
 
 176 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 rec- 
 ord 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 grave- 
 yard, was laid to rest alone in this place of hideous 
 memories. 
 
 Poor kd! 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 isola- 
 tion Peripatetica quoted that amused saying of an 
 ironic old Pagan world, "Behold, how these Christians 
 love one another!" 
 
 It is the terrace of the Villa Politi. They have 
 finally forgiven the villa, and have climbed up here 
 from the Latomia to sit on its lovely terrace, to drink 
 tea and eat the honey of Hybla, to look down on one 
 side into the blossom-hung depths of the Athenians'
 
 ONE DEAD IN THE FIELDS 177 
 
 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 move- 
 ment. 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 pas- 
 sion and pain that I've got an historic heartache. / 
 leave to-morrow." 
 
 Peripatetica dind'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 La- 
 tomia; had come suddenly. That bleak unkindness 
 in the atmosphere of which they were always con- 
 scious 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 con- 
 tent. 
 
 " Jane," said Peripatetica, turning shining eyes upon 
 her, "Persephone has returned. Let us go to Enna 
 and meet her!" 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 
 
 "God's three chief gifts, Man's bread and oil and wine." 
 
 No doubt the usual things that happen to travellers 
 happened to Jane and Peripatetica at Enna-Castro- 
 giovanni, 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 mem- 
 ories of other things seen before and seemingly but 
 slightly related to these new impressions, mere faint 
 associations but partly realised, along with keen emo- 
 tions and strong pleasures; all tumbled in together 
 and rubbing corners with petty vexations, small incon- 
 
 178
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 179 
 
 veniences, 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, ar- 
 ranging, 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 back- 
 ground, 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 im- 
 pressions otherwise flat and ineffective. All at once 
 the picture is seen; a complete delineation of an epi- 
 sode, taking form and warmth, and vivid life; and 
 over the whole she spreads the magic bloom of dis- 
 tance, 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, look- 
 ing 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
 
 180 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Theo- 
 critus 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 sing-
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 181 
 
 ing and the hedge birds, and the turtle dove moaned; 
 the bees flew round and round the fountains, murmur- 
 ing 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 pre- 
 sides over the threshing floor. May it be mine once 
 more to dig my big winnowing-fan through her heaps 
 of corn; and may I see her smile upon me, holding 
 poppies and handfuls of corn in her two hands!'" 
 
 Instead of being accompanied on their arcadian 
 journey by Eucritus and the fair Amyntichus, they have 
 as companions in the little carriage of the Regie Fer- 
 rovia the two dark foreigners from Syracuse, upon 
 whose nationality they have specukted at idle moments. 
 They prove to be Poles. Two gentlemen from Cra- 
 cow, escaped for a moment from its snows to make a 
 little "giro" in the Sicilian sunshine. 
 
 Conversation develops around ^Etna of all places! 
 Peripatetica catches sight of it, as the train rounds a 
 curve, sees it suddenly looming against the sky, a glit-
 
 182 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 tering cone of silver swimming upon a base of misty 
 hyacinth-blue. By a gesture she calls everyone's at- 
 tention to this new and charming pose of that ever 
 spectacular mountain. 
 
 Jane glances up from her book and signifies a con- 
 descending 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, "^Etna! 
 >tna!" 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 dis- 
 tant 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
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 183 
 
 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 sooth- 
 ing 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 ^Etna. 
 The gentlemen from Cracow have never met Americans 
 until now, and make no attempt to disguise the exhila- 
 ration of so unwonted a spectacle confessing that in 
 their turn they too have been speculating upon the 
 racial identity of "the foreign ladies," whose national- 
 ity 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 neces- 
 sary 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 resem- 
 bles the Sicilian donkey ... no; he does not ordi- 
 narily spend his life toiling humbly under the intoler- 
 able loads laid upon him by his imperious mate. . . . 
 No; he is not a dull unintelligent drudge wholly un- 
 worthy of the radiant beings who permit him to sur- 
 round them with an incredible luxury. . . '. No; the
 
 184 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Euro- 
 pean 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 Peri- 
 patetica at their feet. 
 
 Memory has cast out, or has pushed into the back- 
 ground, 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 pro- 
 files, but grey Norman eyes. Has left well in the fore- 
 ground 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 imag- 
 ination 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 "um- 
 bilicus Sicilian," the Key of Sicily, Enna "the inex- 
 pugnable," 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 Nor- 
 mans 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
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 185 
 
 skve 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 won- 
 der 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 Demcter 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 mur- 
 muring 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
 
 186 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 hap- 
 pened. 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 in- 
 tolerable longings, and dies dreadfully, raving of his 
 own folly. 
 
 Neither Greeks, Romans, Saracens, nor Norman 
 heed this parable, told ages and ages before the mean- 
 ing 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 con- 
 tains 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 gar- 
 den of Paradise, and now a rocky waste burned to the 
 bone. 
 
 Always from the very earliest records the goddess of 
 the harvest was worshipped in this place. Long be- 
 fore 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
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 187 
 
 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 shad- 
 owy 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 peo- 
 ple timidly kid 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 denned 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 sooth- 
 ingly 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;
 
 188 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 the earth hangs in its place. And there were divers 
 colours in it; she illuminated the stars with gold, in- 
 fused 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 per- 
 petual 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 god- 
 desses 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 Deme- 
 ter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 189 
 
 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
 
 190 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 melan- 
 choly 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
 
 THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE 191 
 
 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 in- 
 fernal 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 tem- 
 ple where her mother was, who, seeing her, ran out 
 quickly to meet her, like a Maenad 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 wav- 
 ing corn," and, having seen it, they passed on through 
 Sicily satisfied.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 
 
 " 'Tis right for him 
 
 To touch the threshold of the gods." 
 
 THEY were running swiftly through the dark. On 
 either hand was a dim and gloomy land of bare, shriv- 
 elled peaks, grey cinder heaps, and sulphurous smells. 
 Intermittently visible by the strange subterranean 
 glowings rose black, glowering mountains in the back- 
 ground, 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, re- 
 moving 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 sur- 
 roundings in which he should have been worshipped." 
 
 192
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 193 
 
 "A temple to Pluto?" replied Peripatetica sleepily. 
 "Where? ... I never heard of one that I can remem- 
 ber; 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 an- 
 other mystery of the past, to which there was no an- 
 swer, 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 liv- 
 ing 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 sac- 
 rifices on every hill-side 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 
 13
 
 194 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 glori- 
 ous, 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 mediaeval mor- 
 bidity, 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 benefi- 
 cent increase, is also Ceres Deserta the Mater Dolo- 
 rosa 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 frui- 
 tion . . . her emblem the blood-red poppy, symbol in 
 its drowsy juices, of sleep and death, as in its multi- 
 tudinous seeds the symbol of life and resurrection. 
 
 And her daughter, like herself the most specially and 
 intimately beloved by the Greeks among all their dei- 
 ties, 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 bear-
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 195 
 
 ing always in the swallowed pomegranate seeds the 
 secret of ultimate decay, of return to the grave." 
 
 Kore, the maiden, the incarnation of all fresh and 
 sweet and innocent joyousness, was also symbol of its 
 evanescence "a helpless plucked flower in the arms of 
 Aidoneus," so that upon the sarcophagi of women who 
 had died in early youth the Greeks were wont to carve 
 Pluto's stealing of Persephone, picturing the Divine 
 Maiden with the likeness of the dear dead one's face. 
 
 Dark, blurred shapes in Greek-like drapery of many- 
 folded cape and shawl, appeared now and then in 
 shifting crowds upon station platforms, like the uneasy 
 shades of Pluto's kingdom seeking escape. 
 
 To Peripatetica and Jane it began to seem as if their 
 quest for the Lost Spring had taken them into the Under 
 World of her imprisonment to behold with thrills of 
 half pity, half awe, in "that dim land where all things 
 are forgotten" her transformation into the mate of 
 gloomy Dis, no longer bright, golden-haired girl-flower, 
 but veiled Proserpina Despana, the Queen of the Dead, 
 where now: 
 
 "Pale, beyond porch and portal, 
 
 Crowned with calm leaves, she stands, 
 Who gathers all things mortal 
 With cold immortal hands; 
 
 She waits for each and other, 
 
 She waits for all men born, 
 Forgets the Earth, her mother, 
 
 The life of fruits and corn." 
 
 Escaping at kst from the sulphur fumes, the strange
 
 196 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 glares and the Hades visions, they found themselves 
 standing under a clear star-strewn sky with a gentle 
 air blowing in their faces. In an open carriage they 
 were whirled off, they knew not where, into the night, 
 stars bright overhead and lights like fallen stars on a 
 high hill to the right, the soft wind of the darkness 
 breathing of spring and green growing things. 
 
 Suddenly there was the welcoming door of the Hotel 
 des Temples, and then little white bedrooms and quick 
 oblivion. 
 
 There is a pounding on Jane's door. 
 
 "Hurry, you sluggard!" says Peripatetica's voice. 
 "Come out and see what a delicious place this is!" 
 and she enters radiant. "There's no mistake about 
 spring this time; everything is riotous with it and it's 
 real country. Not mere theatrical scenery like Taor- 
 mina, 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 drink- 
 ing 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.
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 197 
 
 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 sweet- 
 ness 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 high- 
 road 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 in- 
 spect 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 ap- 
 peared 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 in- 
 stead led into a farm-yard inhabited by fiercely bark- 
 ing 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 im- 
 passable 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.
 
 198 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 hur- 
 ried tourists with its calm still unbroken. It em- 
 bodies the permanence of peace through all the evanes- 
 cent 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. 
 
 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 pre-
 
 a 
 EB 
 H
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 199 
 
 cincts around its out-door altar and her renowned pic- 
 ture 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 occu- 
 pancy. And so the Temple is to-day the best pre- 
 served 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 
 Paestum 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 Ger- 
 man to be carried away by mere preservation, and to
 
 200 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 prefer this sugary-slightly-melted-vanilla-caramel tem- 
 ple to that solemn splendour of Paestum." 
 
 "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 flip- 
 pantly. "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 ad- 
 mitted 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 Akra- 
 gas. 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 rugged- 
 ness of Castrogiovanni's mountains. To the north lie 
 fields and groves and orchards, with dottings of farm- 
 house 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 Abun- 
 dance must have here appeared to the Greek; how
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 201 
 
 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 fruit- 
 fully, 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 propiti- 
 ated 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 Peri- 
 patetica, 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 majestic- 
 ally simple. There is just the little enclosure to shel- 
 ter the statue of the god, and all the rest is clear open- 
 ness, 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."
 
 202 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "No," pondered Jane, "there is no room for su- 
 perstitious 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 orig- 
 inal 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 scor- 
 ings 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 sculp- 
 ture. Sculpture was an essential part of its planning, 
 not a mere decoration, and without it pediment, met- 
 opes, frieze, and pedestals are meaningless forms. 
 That sculpture that stood and walked on the pedi- 
 ments 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 Concor- 
 dia, bare of sculpture, would seem but a melancholy 
 skeleton of a once fair shrine." 
 
 But Jane was obstinately sure that nothing could
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 203 
 
 be better than the natural harmonies of the naked 
 stone. 
 
 "Nothing," she insisted with bland firmness, "not 
 even your blind conviction that everything the Greeks 
 did was exactly right just because they did it will 
 persuade me that they improved these temples by any 
 marble plaster. Come over here and look at the warm 
 red gold of those soaring fluted stems against the vivid 
 blue! It is as if the splendour of sunset glowed upon 
 them all day long. As if they had soaked in so much 
 sun through all the bright centuries that now even the 
 very stones gave it out again." 
 
 Peripatetica had been half inclined to believe this 
 herself at first, but of course Jane's opposition clinched 
 her wavering suffrages for the stucco. 
 
 "You lack in imagination," she announced loftily. 
 "You see only what you see. Try to realize what the 
 marble background meant to the saffron-robed, flower- 
 garlanded priests, and to the worshippers massed on 
 the steps and in the peristyles in delicate-tinted chiton 
 and chamyle crocus, daffodil, violet-rose, ivory like 
 a living flower wreath from out the spring meadows 
 encircling the white temple's base 
 
 "Oh, do stop trying to be Pater-esque!" scoffed 
 Jane, "and let's go to luncheon. That sounds too 
 much like sublimated guide-book, and the hotel looks 
 miles away to my unimaginative eye." 
 
 "We won't, will we?" said Jane hah* an hour later, 
 with her irreverent mouth full. 
 Peripatetica knew what she meant. 
 "Go on to-morrow? No, indeed. We'll telegraph
 
 204 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 tem- 
 ples, 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 per- 
 sonnel 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 star- 
 tledly 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
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 205 
 
 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 linger- 
 ingly 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 del 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
 
 206 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Fortunate. They were forever fall- 
 ing into some one's hands and finding the results agree- 
 able, 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 trav- 
 eller" usually misses all the good of travel by the cut- 
 and-driedness of his aims. 
 
 Fortunate was sure that he could "spika da Eng- 
 lishy," though what led him to suppose so, other than 
 a large command of illuminative gesture, never became 
 clear. Some half-dozen words adorned with super- 
 fluous vowels to a point of unrecognizability he did 
 possess; the rest was Sicilian, sympathy, and vivid in- 
 telligence, 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 sim- 
 ple annals of his career as he judged to be suited to 
 their limited forestieri minds, having first firmly as- 
 sumed 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
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 207 
 
 combined ravages of marriage, the army, and emigra- 
 tion. When time and the growth of his juniors en- 
 abled 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 under- 
 stand 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 Peri- 
 patetica 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 mas- 
 ter of Englishy before landing in Nuova Yorka if he 
 hoped to escape being "plucked" (great business of 
 illuminating gestures of rapacity) he employed in guid- 
 ing Americans such brief hours as he could snatch from 
 school. 
 
 They discovered later that Fortunate 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 Fortunate 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 gilly- 
 flowers 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 be- 
 tween two gigantic stone pines.
 
 208 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Car- 
 thage, 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 Fortu- 
 nato, whom they consulted, seemed to think it was 
 probably eventually broken up for the purpose of man- 
 ufacturing 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 win- 
 dow 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,
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 209 
 
 apparently. It was built from stones niched 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 Em- 
 pedocle, 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 bare- 
 ness 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 in- 
 tervention. Indeed, he was a general jobber in mira- 
 cles, for the naive, rude b'ttle 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 prepar- 
 ing 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 
 
 14
 
 210 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Fortunate dragging them aside later to 
 see a little "Casa Greco," where they could trace deli- 
 cate 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 krger 
 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 ma- 
 sonry. 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 Cathagenian 
 captives, and no doubt a memory of their frightful 
 toilings in the Sicilian noons inspired the Carthagen- 
 ians, when they captured the city, to their fury of de- 
 struction 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 kst expended itself nothing of 
 all that incredible mass of masonry remained standing 
 save three of the enormous Telamone the male cary- 
 atids that had supported the entablature. And so
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 211 
 
 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, tremen- 
 dous 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, over- 
 run by gnawing lichens, smeared by lapse of time to a 
 mere vast adumbration of the human form. 
 
 This temple had been the supreme effort of Akragas, 
 the richest and most beautiful city the Greeks ever 
 built. The stories of its wealth, of its luxury, of its 
 gardens, palaces, theatres, baths, its gaieties, and its 
 pomps, sound like a description of Rome under the 
 Empire, and would be incredible if such ruins as this 
 did not exist to attest to the facts. 
 
 Far more characteristic of the Greek were those twin 
 temples of Castor and Pollux 
 
 "These be the great Twin Brethren 
 To whom the Dorians pray" 
 
 to which Fortunate turned their steps as a refreshing 
 counteraction of the stern immensities of Zeus. Light, 
 delicate, gracious fragments they were, lifting them- 
 selves airily from a sea of flowers on the edge of the 
 ravine-like Piscina, once the reservoir for the city's
 
 212 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 water, but now full of lemon orchards, and fringed by 
 immense dark carouba trees. . . . 
 
 Another day, conducted by Fortunato always, they 
 pilgrimed to the temple of Hercules, oldest and most 
 archaic of them all, containing still in the cella remains 
 of the pedestal on which stood that famous bronze 
 statue of the muscular hero and demigod. The statue 
 which that unscrupulous collector, Verres, tried to re- 
 move 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 be- 
 neath, and the waters under the earth. He mimicked 
 deliciously the characteristics of English, French, Ger- 
 man, and American tourists, differentiating their na- 
 tional 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 hope- 
 less and lifelong irreconcilability in their two points of 
 view. Marriage, he frankly conceded to be a neces- 
 sity, 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 pas- 
 sion, 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
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 213 
 
 Juno Lacina, special deity of mothers, which crowns 
 the edge of a sheer cliff of orange-yellow tufa four hun- 
 dred 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, bear- 
 ing 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 hah 
 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 Fortunate 
 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. Tour- 
 ists whirled up dustily for a cursory inspection Baede- 
 ker 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 hill- 
 side, where the contadini cut the glowing crop, heap- 
 ing it upon asses until they seemed but a moving mass 
 of blossom trotting home on brown legs. Goats, Fortu- 
 nato 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 su- 
 perlative explanation "the donkey macaroni."
 
 214 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 This short cut led, too apparently to Fortunato's 
 surprise and dismay directly through a walled farm- 
 yard 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 inhab- 
 itant'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 pkinly 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 per- 
 suasive Sicilian, that at last, and reluctantly, the heavy 
 portal 
 
 "Ground its teeth to let them pass," 
 
 the furious dogs having first been chained. Very arid 
 and ruined and poor this jealously guarded dwelling 
 seemed. Nothing was visible the protection of which 
 required those four big wolf-like dogs that shrieked 
 and bounded and tore at their chains as the intruders 
 passed; nor that the lean fierce man and his leaner 
 and fiercer wife and children should accompany them
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 215 
 
 like a jailer's guard to the exit. Fortunately this nether 
 door was unbarred before the lean man demanded 
 money for having permitted them to cross his land, 
 and having a sense of Fortunato's imploring eyes upon 
 them they made the gift a lire instead of a copper, 
 and pushing through the door fled as for their lives. 
 
 "So there really was an Italy like the Italy of the 
 romantic Georgian novel!" said Jane wonderingly, as 
 soon as she could catch breath. 
 
 "It's only another proof," gasped Peripatetica, 
 " that travellers really do tell the truth. It's the igno- 
 rant stay-at-homes who can't believe anything they 
 haven't seen themselves. Fortunate," she demanded 
 sternly, "who 'are those people, and why do they be- 
 have so absurdly? What are they concealing?" 
 
 But no explanation was to be had from that erst- 
 while fluent and expansive homme du monde. He was 
 frightened, he was vague, and simply darkened counsel. 
 
 "I strongly suspect there is some Mafia business be- 
 hind all this you naughty boy!" said Jane reprov- 
 ingly, but Fortunate only pulled his cap over his eyes 
 and slunk away without claiming his day's wage. 
 
 Because of this episode Fortunate 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 foot- 
 path, and rounding that rise. . . . 
 
 An hour later, panting, dripping, and disgusted, they 
 climbed into the rear of the town, having stumbled
 
 216 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 suc- 
 cessor 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 in- 
 habitants where Girgenti nourishes but twenty thou- 
 sand 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 Cor- 
 inth. 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,
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 217 
 
 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 gal- 
 lons 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 win- 
 ter, presented each man with new warm garments. 
 
 They delighted in pageants and splendid public fes- 
 tivals, 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-ram- 
 part, 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 popula^ 
 tion 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
 
 218 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 cleaner rags was chosen to show the way to the Cathe- 
 dral. Once given an official position he furiously put 
 his competitors to flight, and with goat-footed light- 
 ness 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 char- 
 acter to the exterior of this thousand-foot-long Cathe- 
 dral of San Gerkndo perched aloft in the windy blue, 
 but inside the Eighteenth Century had done its worst. 
 Baroque rampant; colossal stucco mermaids and cu- 
 pids, interspersed with gilded whorls and scrolls as 
 thick as shells upon the "shell-work" boxes of the sea- 
 side 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. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinued their devotions, quite undisturbed, and no pass-
 
 TEMPLES OF CASTOR AND POLLUX, GIRGENTI 
 'LIFTING THEMSELVES AIRILY FROM A SEA OF FLOWERS"
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 219 
 
 ing 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 
 Phaedra. 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 Phaedra 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 chil- 
 dren, 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
 
 220 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 nurse pleading her shameful embassy. And on the 
 other end is carved the tragedy of his death, the re- 
 venge of Aphrodite in anger at his obduracy against 
 herself and her votary Phaedra. "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 deli- 
 cately into white and blue, when angry Aphrodite 
 awoke from the deep betimes, rent the tranquil sur- 
 face; a great wave leapt suddenly into the placid dis- 
 tance of the little shore, and was surging here to the 
 very necks of the plunging horses, a moment since en- 
 joying so pleasantly with him the caress of the morn- 
 ing air, but now, wholly forgetful of their old affection- 
 ate habit of obedience, dragging their leader headlong 
 over the rough pavements." 
 
 Life seemed to breathe from the ivory-coloured 
 marble. So vividly had its creator's hand carried out the 
 conception of his brain that all the elapsed centuries 
 since the vision of beauty had come to him were but as 
 drifting mists. Races, dynasties, powers, the very form 
 of the earth itself, had altered, in the changing ages, but 
 the grace of this little dream was still a living force. 
 
 "Oh Attic shape! Fair Attitude! with brede 
 Of marble men and maidens, over wrought 
 With forest branches and the trodden weed; 
 Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
 As doth eternity; Cold Pastoral! 
 When old age shall this generation waile 
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
 ' Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 221 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected 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 un- 
 faltering 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-hop- 
 pers even as they plunged within the sacred portal. 
 Little boys enlivened their pilgrimage with chasings
 
 222 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 rub- 
 bings on clothes of dirty little paws; still casting re- 
 luctant 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 ex- 
 change 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 mun- 
 dane charms of the streets, lingering as long as possi- 
 ble 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-
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 223 
 
 book cksped 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 dis- 
 approvingly 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 sup- 
 pose 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
 
 224 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 reas- 
 surance 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 evi- 
 dently feared to find both his clients and the silver re- 
 wards 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 thun- 
 derstorm and the clatter of a tinman's wagon came 
 their "carrozza." Its cushions were in rags, the har- 
 ness 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 passen- 
 gers felt as if they were being conducted homeward in 
 a chariot of state. 
 
 Fortunate, restored to favour, was leading them up 
 the Rupe Athena, that rose steeply immediately be-
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 225 
 
 hind their hotel; he was leading them not straight up, 
 but by a series of long "biases" as Jane expressed 
 it. The end of the first bias reached the little lonely 
 church of San Biago, dreary and uninteresting enough 
 in its solitary perch, save for the fact that it stood upon 
 the site of a temple to Demeter and Persephone: 
 
 "Our Lady of the Sheaves, 
 And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet 
 Of Enna" 
 
 placed here no doubt because this high spur was the 
 only point in Girgenti from which one could catch a 
 glimpse of the lofty steeps of Enna-Castrogiovanni. 
 
 Turning at a sharp angle again they went slanting 
 up across the bare hillside, the wild thyme sending up 
 a keen sweet incense beneath their climbing feet, until 
 they came to the verge of the great yellow broken cliff 
 that shot up more than a thousand feet from the valley 
 below. Some crumpling of the earth's crust, ages ago, 
 had forced up this sheer mass of sandstone, hung now 
 with cactus, thyme, and vines, which served as one of 
 the natural defences of Akragas, behind whose unscal- 
 able heights the unwarlike city had been enabled peace- 
 fully 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 incomprehen- 
 sible through the vagueness of legend, was first flat- 
 tered and then threatened by the Tyrant, who feared 
 15
 
 226 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 character- 
 istically Greek Pythagoras rounded a burst of elo- 
 quence 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 Akra- 
 gantines. 
 
 "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 detour to Theron's tomb. 
 
 They drew themselves laboriously up to the crest, 
 and sank breathlessly upon the verge among the crum- 
 bled 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 Car- 
 thagenians 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 sap-
 
 A CITY OF TEMPLES 227 
 
 phire sea, and redden the hill where the little shrunken 
 Girgenti sent down the soft pealing of Cathedral 
 chimes from her airy distance. Beside them Concor- 
 dia'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 laugh- 
 ter 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 beau- 
 ties 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
 
 228 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 blos- 
 soming 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 go- 
 ing lightly homeward, with his cloak draped in long 
 classic folds from one shoulder, and singing under his 
 breath. A shepherd who may have been merely a 
 commonplace, handsome young Sicilian by day, but 
 who in this magic shining dusk was the shepherd of all 
 pastoral verse, strayed for a moment from Arcady. 
 Following his swift light feet they were set at last into 
 the broad road among the herds and the asses and the 
 homing labourers Demeter's well beloved children. 
 
 "E'en now the distant farms send up their smoke, 
 And shadows lengthen from the lofty hills. 
 
 Now the gloaming star 
 Bids fold the flock and duly tell their tale, 
 And moves unwelcome up the wistful sky. 
 
 Go home, my full-fed goats, 
 
 Cometh the Evening Star, my goats, go home."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 
 
 "Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen bluh'n ?" 
 
 WHEN Ulysses Grant had ended the Civil War in 
 America and was made President, he turned from 
 uttering his solemn oath of office before the cheering 
 multitudes and said under his breath to his wife who 
 stood beside him, in that tone of half-resentful, half- 
 weary patience the American husband usually adopts 
 in speaking to his mate, "Well, now, Julia, I hope 
 you're satisfied!" 
 
 There was the same exasperated patience in Jane's 
 voice as she climbed into the railway carriage for Pa- 
 lermo 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 god- 
 desses and columns and myths cloy as a steady diet for 
 months, and even the ridiculous pompous old Eigh- 
 
 229
 
 230 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 teenth 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 Vart nouveau 
 simply by way of contrast." 
 
 Peripatetica treated this shameful outburst with all 
 the stern contempt it so truly merited, as she was en- 
 gaged 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 con- 
 queror, 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 hun- 
 dred 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 in- 
 dustries 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 per- 
 mitted 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 de- 
 lightful instance of one small ghostly grotesque, to 
 change owners. 
 
 While the two seekers of Persephone were gather-
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 231 
 
 ing 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 home- 
 sick dream "das Land, wo die Citronen bliih'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 pre- 
 cious 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 util- 
 ized 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. Mil- 
 lions and millions of the yellow globes hung still un- 
 picked, 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.
 
 232 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 And, mark you, how nations are influenced by their 
 trees! In the bad old days of constant war and tur- 
 moil 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 gar- 
 den! 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
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 233 
 
 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 allies 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 
 Mare'chale 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 hap- 
 pily upon a great curved marble seat whose back had 
 lettered upon it a reminder to the "Shadowed Soul" 
 that wisdom comes only in shade and peace. 
 
 "E La Sagezza Vieni Solo 
 Nel' Ombra E Pace." 
 
 And finally they mounted the little tiled and columned 
 belvedere hanging at the corner of the garden's lofty 
 wall to gaze upon a view unrivalled of this most beau- 
 tifully placed city. 
 
 Palermo lay stretched before them in its plain of the 
 Conca d'Oro the golden shell. Round it as a gar-
 
 234 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 land 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. 
 
 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
 
 
 A
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 235 
 
 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 ob- 
 stinacy, 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 de- 
 parture, 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 nec- 
 essary between every two days of sight-seeing, and hav- 
 ing been banished from the Travia garden by their 
 own innate sense of decency, they took lunch in their
 
 236 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 tire- 
 some form of Eighteenth Century gardening a cross 
 between a wedding cake and a German Noah's Ark. 
 All rigid, glaring, gravelly little allees, 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 pose busts in self-conscious bowers. Not here 
 could these Eden-exiled Eves lunch, nor yet in the un- 
 tidy, uninteresting Botanic Gardens next door a wil- 
 derness 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 commem- 
 orated in marble Roman armour and a curled marble 
 wig, and his rickety, anaemic majesty moved them to 
 smiling pity, so feeble and miserable he looked, for- 
 gotten 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
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 237 
 
 swept away the airy avenue, the wilding flowers, the 
 poor spineless little King, and the two bid it all a wist- 
 fully 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 prog- 
 ress, and smile indulgently at one of our foolishly feeble 
 statues, in granite frock coats, tottering to lichened ob- 
 livion ? No doubt. Palermo has seen so many changes 
 since the Phoenicians 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 mean- 
 ing all harbour, for in their day deep water curved 
 well up into the town, where are now streets and pal- 
 aces 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 Hau-
 
 238 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 kal, 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 scar- 
 city of water, and the merchant from Bagdad, accus- 
 tomed 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, how- 
 ever, 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 demoli- 
 tion, 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 seri- 
 ous defect of the citizens was their universal consump- 
 tion 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 al-
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 239 
 
 ways been sure that people who eat onions must be 
 those to whom 'almost everything appears quite differ- 
 ent 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, hav- 
 ing jumped, to be as aggravatingly cocksure in stick- 
 ing 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 arch- 
 way, 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 lu- 
 cent sides and honeycomb vaultings, for a shining
 
 240 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 hav- 
 ing glinted over its shining path of gold and green and 
 blue, and having filled the place with cool moisture and 
 clear song. 
 
 "With fierce noons beaming, 
 Moons of glory gleaming, 
 Full conduits streaming 
 Where fair bathers lie " 
 
 Quoted Peripatetica who might be safely counted on 
 to have a tag of verse concealed about her person for 
 every possible occasion. 
 
 " Did you ever see anything that so adequately em- 
 bodied 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 sup- 
 pose that this would be the home-ideal of those wild 
 desert dwellers who always loved and fought like de- 
 mons; 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 contempkte 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, com- 
 posed patterns of the tiled walls a layer of lime-wash
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 241 
 
 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 dili- 
 gently scrubbed away, but enough remained to make 
 Peripatetica splutter indignantly: 
 
 "Well, of all the hideous barbarians! The Eigh- 
 teenth 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 com- 
 panions 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 de- 
 feated, but to those other helpless creatures, women, who 
 16
 
 242 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 his- 
 tory 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 sol- 
 diers captured Robert, who was disguised and spying. 
 He with difficulty rescued Robert from the angry cap- 
 tors, 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
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 243 
 
 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 re- 
 sentfully. "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 splen- 
 dours 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 en- 
 trance 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
 
 244 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 in- 
 terior! 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 win- 
 dow 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,
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 245 
 
 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 thou- 
 sands 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 re- 
 mains unaltered except the delicious cloistered court 
 with its fountain, and its two hundred and sixteen deli- 
 cate, 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 Nor- 
 mans, who have almost ousted the Greeks in their 
 affections, to the Cappelk 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
 
 246 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 oc- 
 casionally take snuff. Mass goes on at a dozen side 
 altars, oblivious of the more stately ceremonies con- 
 ducted 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. Aris- 
 tocrats and their servants kneel side by side. The 
 crowd thickens and melts again, and companions sepa- 
 rate to choose different altars and different masses, 
 according to taste. All are familiar, friendly, at ease. 
 The divine powers are holding a reception, and wor- 
 shippers, 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 pakce 
 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 al-
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 247 
 
 ways 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 de- 
 light 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 mo- 
 saics 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 deco- 
 ration from second-rate German hotels. Fancy any 
 one seeing the high purity and beauty of Roger's cham- 
 bers 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
 
 248 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 they would have the whole place made epoque in a 
 week, if they had to corner the lard market, or form a 
 breakfast-food trust to be able to afford it!" 
 
 "God made the day to be followed by the night. 
 The moon and stars are at His command. Has He 
 not created all things ? Is He not Lord of all ? Blessed 
 be the Everlasting God!" 
 
 Jane was reading aloud from her guide-book. 
 
 They had been to Cefalu, looking for Count Roger 
 in the great Cathedral built by his son, but found that 
 he had vanished long ago, and his sarcophagus was in 
 Naples. They had found instead traces of Sikel, 
 Greek, and Roman; had lingered long before the 
 splendid church, so noble even in decay, and now they 
 were back again in Palermo, still on the track of their 
 Normans. What Jane read from her book was also 
 inscribed over the portal of Palermo's Cathedral be- 
 fore 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. 
 
 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 abomina- 
 tion, the Eighteenth Century, had been there before
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 249 
 
 them, and that they would find it but an extremely 
 mitigated joy in consequence. 
 
 They knew that the swamp full of papyrus 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 Cathe- 
 dral, making it glorious within and without, and time 
 and additions only made it more lovely until the mod- 
 ern 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 beau- 
 tiful had been swept away. Also there was the splen- 
 did silver sarcophagus of Santa Rosalia, weighing more 
 than a thousand pounds, and other such matters, but
 
 250 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 the real attraction of the Cathedral was the great por- 
 phyry tombs of the Kings huge coffers of ensan- 
 guined 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 daugh- 
 ter Constance, and near at hand her husband Henry 
 VI. of Germany, and their son, the Emperor Frederick 
 the Second. 
 
 Jane and Peripatetica longed that Constance, like 
 Hamlet's Father might 
 
 "ope those ponderous and marble jaws" 
 
 and come forth to tell them the real story of her strange 
 life. For she too had been one of those hapless fem- 
 inine pawns used so recklessly in the game of king- 
 doms played by the men about her; yet a whisper still 
 lingered that this pawn had not been always passive, 
 but had reached out her white hand and lifted the king 
 from the board, and thus altered the whole course of 
 the game! 
 
 Constance, King Roger's daughter, had early made 
 her choice for peace and safety by retiring into the 
 veiled seclusion of the convent. But even the coif of the 
 religieuse was no sure guard if the woman who wore it 
 was an heiress, or of royal blood, and, the German alli- 
 ance 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
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 251 
 
 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 Em- 
 peror 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 mur- 
 dered, and there ensued a reign of abominable oppres- 
 sions 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 attrib- 
 uted to some secret malfeasance by drugs. The fear 
 of it fairly obsessed the mediaeval mind, and gave rise 
 to legends of poisoned gloves and rings, deadly smell- 
 ing-balls and pounce boxes, and fatal chalices. A 
 whole series of myths grew around it. Modern bac- 
 teriological 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 poison- 
 ing really died an innocent martyr to medical igno- 
 rance. Yet Henry's taking off was so welcome and so
 
 252 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 opportune, and that Constance had struggled to pro- 
 tect 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 Ger- 
 mans, 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 L, 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 devouee, ou Phomage 
 ironique d'une reine contrainte k choisir entre deux 
 devoirs; place'e entre son epoux et son peuple, entre 
 sa famille et sa pa trie."
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 253 
 
 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 Peripa- 
 tetica 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 de- 
 licious 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 pur- 
 chase honey which bees had brewed from orange 
 flowers into a sublimated perfume; and he introduced 
 them to certain patisseries at Cafleisch's that gave after- 
 noon 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 rev- 
 erence upon the people of Palermo that they enshrined 
 her as the city's patron saint, and still celebrate her
 
 254 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 memory every year with a great festival. All the pop- 
 ulation 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 un- 
 roofed 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, Gas- 
 pero 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, gor- 
 mandising in honour of the anaemic, ascetic girl who 
 passed long, lonely, silent days and nights in passion- 
 ate ecstasies and visions in those high, voiceless soli- 
 tudes. Gaspero made it all very vivid, with hands, 
 lips, eyes. He was possessed with the drama and 
 strange irony of it.
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 255 
 
 "Have the Signorine ever seen a Sicilian puppet 
 show?" Gaspero demanded, apropos of nothing in partic- 
 ular, 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 com- 
 posed 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 Peripa- 
 tetica 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 dawd- 
 ling 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 hair-
 
 256 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 pins, which she contemplated stonily, with no move- 
 ment 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 hair- 
 pins. 
 
 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 lassi- 
 tude 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 over- 
 taken 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 de- 
 vious route of the Street of the Washerwomen. This 
 roundabout way of reaching the Convent was one of 
 Gaspero's artful devices.
 
 HIM COLDKX SHELL 
 
 Down each side of the broad tree-shadowed way, 
 bordered on either hand by the little stone-built cubi- 
 cles 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 kced 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 facade, guarded by a bearded and 
 rather grubby monk in a brown robe. The eye does 
 not linger upon the grubby monk, being led away in- 
 stantly by the vista through the arched doorway be- 
 hind 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 pos- 
 sessing the peculiar property of quickly desiccating and 
 17
 
 258 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 re- 
 flects 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, dishev- 
 elled 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 un- 
 seemly 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.
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 259 
 
 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 rib- 
 bons swathe the tragic ruins of beauty. And these 
 women, too, all simper horribly, voicelessly, remember- 
 ing perhaps how dear these faded gauds once were be- 
 fore they passed beyond thought of "tires and crisping 
 pins." 
 
 "Why do they do it?" demanded Peripatetica in 
 whispered disgust. "What strange passion for pub- 
 licity prompts them thus to flout and outrage the de- 
 cent 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 dis- 
 gusting 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 hypo- 
 geum." 
 
 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
 
 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 univer- 
 sal open-hearted gentleness and courtesy, and yet the 
 Mafia holds the whole land in a grip of iron a danger- 
 ous, 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, remem- 
 bering 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 gkss 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. . . .
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 261 
 
 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 Span- 
 ish 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 t he- 
 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 Chi- 
 noiseries, bought blue hawthorn jars, ate from old 
 Pekin plates, set up lacquered cabinets, and built 
 Pagoda-esque pleasure houses. The Chateau is but a 
 flimsy and rather vulgar example of the taste of the 
 day, but the Eighteenth Century often planted deli- 
 cious gardens, and the pleached allies, 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 triumph- 
 ant verdure. 
 
 But Gaspero is not content with La Favorita. He 
 has things even better in store for Jane and Peripa- 
 tetica explaining that by giving the most minute gra- 
 tuity 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 lead- 
 ing 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
 
 262 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Gas- 
 pero 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 con- 
 fidently in the dimly seen wake of Gaspero's festa rich- 
 ness 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 mas- 
 culine commonality, for Gaspero explains in a whisper
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 2G3 
 
 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, hand- 
 somely, all things are permitted to forestieri, whose 
 bold fantasticalities are taken for granted. 
 
 The groundlings appear to be such folk as fishped- 
 dlers, 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 con- 
 sidering 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; immedi- 
 ately 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 mando- 
 lins. 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 spot- 
 light, he strikes his tin-clad bosom a resounding blow 
 with his good right wooden hand, and bursts into pas- 
 sionate recitative.
 
 264 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "The cursed 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 hali- 
 dome, 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 Rin- 
 aldo, more shining, more resplendent, more befeath- 
 ered 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 uncon- 
 trollably 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
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 265 
 
 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 candle- 
 light; 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 sec- 
 ond 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, dongl Rinaldo is beaten to his knee and the 
 Soldan shortens his blade for a final thrust, but Bra- 
 mante 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! hat He trusted in his false god, Mahound! 
 
 Bramante hops violently. 
 
 Enter suddenly, rescued Christian Maid. Also in 
 armour; also possessing piercing falsetto.
 
 266 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 in- 
 tensity. 
 
 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 after- 
 noon 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 ckp 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 re- 
 tires to innocuous desuetude. 
 
 Opportune entry of Orlando miraculously cured of
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 267 
 
 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 every- 
 body has fallen on every one else's mail-clad bosom! . . . 
 
 Dear Gaspero! It has been a wonderful day. 
 
 A slow, fine rain falls. Vapours roll among the 
 vapoury hills. 
 
 It is just the day for the museum, and such a mu- 
 seum! 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, ambu- 
 latories, 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 fra- 
 grance in the damp air. The rain makes sweet tin- 
 klings in the old fountains and in the sculptured well- 
 heads 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 dis- 
 play their beauties. There is not even a catalogue to 
 be had, which gives a delightful sense of freedom at
 
 268 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 first, but this has its drawbacks when Jane and Peri- 
 pa tetica 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 wit- 
 ness the grief of those who lost her: 
 
 "Sicilia, Hie Jacet Aprilis. Miseranda Puella 
 
 Unicce Quaelugens Occultipa Diem 18 Otobre 
 
 XIII 1495." 
 
 Of course, the guide-books ignore her. Trust the 
 guide-books to preserve a stony silence about any- 
 thing 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 con- 
 trasted 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 Seli- 
 nunto like some splendid sharded insect in her helmet 
 and b'on 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 de- 
 scription, and there they, too, had wondered at the 
 astonishing remains of those astonishing Greeks.
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 
 
 . . . "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, com- 
 paring one's small human stature with their mass, and 
 the intellect strains hopelessly to recall their original posi- 
 tion; one climbs in and out among them, sometimes 
 mounting, sometimes descending, as one might pick 
 one's way through an enormous quarry, scarcely un- 
 derstanding 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 wan- 
 dered in the transformed monastery, staring at the 
 great metopes; lingering among the Saracenic carv- 
 ings and jewelled windows, poring over Phoenician 
 seals; over the amazing ecclesiastic needlework, the gold 
 monstrances, the carved gems, and last and best of all
 
 270 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 some delicious reliefs at sight of which they forgave at 
 once and forever their old enemy, the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury, for all its disgusting crimes against beauty. They 
 sought madly through the books for some mention of 
 these tall, adorable nymphs in adorably impossible 
 attitudes, these curled and winged and dimpled babies, 
 fluttering like fat little wrens sweetly ignorant of the 
 laws of gravitation; but as always on any subject of 
 interest Baedeker and the rest frigidly refused to tell 
 the name of the man out of whose head and hands had 
 grown these enchanting figures. 
 
 "Oh, dear Unknown!" cries Jane regretfully, "why 
 is your noble name buried in silence! I wish to make 
 a pilgrimage to your tomb, to cover it with Sicilian 
 roses, and breathe a prayer for the repose of your sweet 
 and gracious soul." 
 
 "Me too!" echoes Peripatetica, in tender scorn of 
 the stodgy rules of English grammar. 
 
 The Paschal season is near. 
 
 Always, in all lands of all faiths, the coming of Spring, 
 the yearly resurrection of life and nature, has been wel- 
 comed 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 popula- 
 tion exchanges cakes. Cakes apotheosized by surpris- 
 ing splendours of icing; icing, gilded, silvered, snowily
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 271 
 
 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 play- 
 mates. 
 
 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 car- 
 dinals, 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 con- 
 vents. 
 
 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, fol- 
 low, bearing holy vessels. Behind these a row of men 
 in mediaeval 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
 
 272 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 Span- 
 ish 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 cot- 
 ton, 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 Vit-
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 273 
 
 torio 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 uni- 
 forms keep open the way for the marching fraternities 
 and sodalities with their crucifixes and Virgin-em- 
 broidered 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 shfcaves 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, gulp- 
 ing breath. Gaspero passes his sleeve across the tears 
 in his dark eyes. 
 
 This version of the tragedy is lifted above the real- 
 ism of pain into a penetrating and lovely symbolism 
 that swells the heart with poignant and tender emo- 
 tions as the divine funeral train winds slowly away, 
 18
 
 274 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 be- 
 hold 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 mani- 
 fold with the white wheaten flour, all that is wrought 
 of honey sweet, and in soft olive-oil, all cakes fashioned 
 in semblance of things that fly, and of things that creep, 
 lo, here they are set before him. 
 
 " Here are built for him shadowy bowers of green, 
 all laden with tender anise, and children flit overhead 
 the little Loves as the young nightingales perched 
 upon the trees fly forth and try their wings from bough 
 to bough. . . . 
 
 " But lo, in the morning we will all of us gather with 
 the dew, and carry him forth among the waves that 
 break upon the beach, and with locks unloosed, and 
 ungirt raiment falling to the ankles, and bosoms bare 
 we will begin our shrill sweet song. 
 
 "Thou only, dear Adonis, so men tell, thou only of
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 275 
 
 the demigods, dost visit both this world and the stream 
 of Acheron. . . . Dear has thine advent been, Adonis, 
 and dear shall it be when thou comest again." 
 
 Gaspero never permitted Jane and Peripatetica to 
 lose anything. Doubling through narrow, black streets 
 where lofty buildings nearly met above their heads 
 and where they snatched hurried, delighted glimpses 
 of intricate old grilles, of arched and wheeled windows, 
 of splendid hatchments and fine carved portals he 
 brought them out at admirable view points for all the 
 many similar parades in widely separated parts of the 
 city. 
 
 As the purple dusk came down they found themselves 
 in the Marina, watching the last of the processions 
 moving slowly down the broad avenue to the sea-street. 
 The crowd had thinned. The small angels and John 
 the Baptists went wearily upon dusty little feet, their 
 crowns of now wilted roses canted at dissipated angles 
 over their flushed and tearful faces, the heavy, half- 
 burned wax torches wabbling dangerously near the 
 draggled veils and drooping gilt wings. 
 
 The bearers of the images paused often to set down 
 their heavy burdens. The balconies began to blos- 
 som with tinted lights. Here and there the Virgin 
 with her twinkling candles was turned toward a bal- 
 cony filled with some specially faithful children of the 
 church, and stood facing them a moment, tall, ghostly, 
 tragical, in the gathering darkness, before passing on- 
 ward 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 flicker-
 
 276 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 ing 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 bot- 
 som to the sound of the wailing De Profundis. Sun- 
 day 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 asi- 
 nelli 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 re- 
 splendent in new caparison; with towering brass 
 collars heavy with scarlet chenille, flashing with mir- 
 rors and inlays of mother-of-pearl, glittering from head 
 to tail with brass buckles, with bells and red tags in- 
 numerable, 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, grand- 
 mothers in purple kerchiefs tied under the chin and 
 yellow kerchiefs crossed upon the breast, with gold
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 277 
 
 hoops in their cars; daughters in flowered cottons, 
 their uncovered heads wrought with fearful and won- 
 derful 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 pic- 
 nic, 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 confrere of Gaspero celebrates the betrothal of 
 his only daughter, a plump and solid heiress, who be- 
 neath an inky and mighty pompadour simpers at the 
 broad jokes of her pursey, elderly fiance. A solid 
 fiance", 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 elabo-
 
 278 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 rate steps of dancers swinging about singly with grace- 
 steps, with high prancings, with tarantella flourishes. 
 Male dancers, all. Gaspero explains that no respect- 
 able 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 mediaeval 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, lun- 
 ging daringly and playing to the gallery. He flourishes 
 unnecessarily, pursues recklessly, assumes a contempt- 
 uous 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 him- 
 self 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.
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 279 
 
 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 meniscule 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 conspir- 
 acy, 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 asso- 
 ciations. The plain little building, high on the hill- 
 side, 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 ame- 
 thyst, 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
 
 280 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 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 sus- 
 pected 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 sug- 
 gestion 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 Peri- 
 patetica 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,
 
 THE GOLDEN SHELL 281 
 
 Jane. Let's abandon the commonplace and 'follow 
 the Gleam.' " 
 
 "Very well," laughed Jane, climbing into the car- 
 riage. "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 de- 
 terminists, contends that she exercised a certain meas- 
 ure 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 out- 
 lying villages where old women span and wove in the 
 doorways and young women made lace; where copper- 
 workers sat in the street and with musical clang of little 
 hammers beat out glittering vessels of rosy metal. 
 They scattered flocks of goats from their path, the 
 shaggy white bucks leaping nimbly upon the wall and 
 staring at them with curious ironic, satyr-like glances; 
 and far, very far up, they came upon a mountain 
 meadow mistily shadowed by enormous gnarled olive 
 trees a meadow knee-deep in flowers. A meadow 
 that was a sea of flowers, orange, golden and lemon, 
 rippling and dimpling in the light and shade, breathed 
 upon by the faint flying airs of those high spaces: 
 
 "In Arcady, in Arcady! 
 Where all the leaves are merry " 
 
 cried Peripatetica joyously. 
 
 " Of course it's Arcady," said Jane, with conviction. 
 "And we have come upon it in the Age or perhaps 
 the moment of Gold. "Gaspero," she announced 
 firmly, " we will lunch right here."
 
 282 SEEKERS IN SICILY 
 
 "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 deter- 
 mination 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 thought- 
 less silence, wrapped in a fold of the Earth Mother's 
 the great Demeter's mantle; a fold embroidered by 
 the fine fingers of her daughter Persephone, the Opener 
 of Flowers. 
 
 That night, when the full moon rose over the silky 
 sea, far down the horizon behind them slowly faded 
 into the distance the ghostly silver peaks of the en- 
 chanted Land of the Older Gods. 
 
 THE END
 
 THE COMPLETE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM J. LOCKE 
 
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