XIIIPALERMO

SYRACUSE. FORT EURYELUS.Page 353.

SYRACUSE. EXAMPLE OF SICILIAN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.Page 352.

GIRGENTI. A WINE CART.

GIRGENTI. A SICILIAN CART.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You are the son of thecustode?” Isaid to my guide, a lad perhaps eleven years old.

“No, I am thecustode!”

“And your father, what does he do?”

“Oh, he is acustodetoo.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sixty—it’s not possible!”

“Yes, myfestawas a week ago; how old should you have said?”

“Less than forty.”

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

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

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

“What a kind man was that captain—he spoke French like a Frenchman and the youngbiondinowho kept the lists;tanto simpatico!”

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

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

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

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

“Your husband—” I began.

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

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

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

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

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

“Your health!”

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

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

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

“What do you pay a flask?”

“We are fortunate, we do not payforestieriprices, we have it from a friend for two francs—“

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

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

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

“My cab has come—“

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

“It would be most kind.”

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

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

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

SYRACUSE. CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI.Page 354.

THEATRE, PALERMO.

ETRUSCAN SARCOPHAGUS, PALERMO MUSEUM.

IN THE MUSEUM, PALERMO.

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

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

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

“Arethusa aroseFrom her couch of snowsIn the Acroceraunian mountains;From cloud and from cragWith many a jag,Shepherding her bright fountains.”

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

“Like friends once parted,Grown single-hearted. . . . . . . . . .Like spirits that lieIn the azure skyWhen they love, but live no more!”

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

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

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

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

“You know Miss Davis?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Girgenti—” I began.

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

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

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

“They are economical?”

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

“Americans all come in cabs?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How did Sesostris look?”

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

“What did he say?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PALERMO. VILLA TASCA.

PALERMO. VILLA D’ORLEANS.

PALERMO. FOUNTAIN OF THE PRETORIA.

PALERMO. CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI.Page 393.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pronto!” cried the guard, lifting his horn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We were passing a small forlorn station without stopping.

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

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

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

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

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

“What does it mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For Palermitan dishes? Go to the Ristorante Trinacria, orderpasta con sarde,baccalà à ghiotto,melone d’inverno,zibibbi, afiascoof Vino di Zucco—Ah, behold us arrived at Termini—here is made the bestpasta(macaroni) in Sicilia.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do we know about Palermo?”

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

First: The Athenian defeat at Syracuse.

Second: The Sicilian Vespers at Palermo.

Third: The great earthquake at Messina.

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

“Now let these Frenchmen die at last!”

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

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

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

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