XIISYRACUSE

MESSINA. AMERICAN QUARTER.Page 309.

AN ERUPTION OF MT. ETNA.Page 318.

THE ROAD TO TAORMINA.Page 312.

“Behold the garden of his Excellency the Duca di Bronté,” Ciro pointed to a row of white columns, glimmering in the darkness.

Bronté, the name of the old Sicilian Titan, means thunder; a good title for that modern Titan, Lord Nelson, the great admiral, the friend of Italy. History repeats itself; his descendant, the present Duke, leader of the British relief work here, has proved the hereditary friendship. In 1799 the estate of Maniace and Bronté with the title, Duca di Bronté, were conferred in perpetuity upon Lord Nelson and his descendants. The present Duke, the second son of the house, inherited the title because he devoted his life to the care of this valuable estate, famous for its vineyards, almond and olive groves. I have heard Marion Crawford tell of a visit to Maniace, of the picturesque old house, the moat, the Norman church, the regiment of armed retainers, the feudal state the Duke maintains. When you meet the Duke in London, he is the Honorable A. Nelson Hood. Isn’t that a splendid pose? An English “Honorable” is worth more than a foreign title of Duke. Ah, that’s the grand spirit that makes England what she is, that makes us what weare today! Later I found out the history of that garden. The Duke bought the land, meaning to build a house and make a garden at Taormina. It was found that the soil was not firm enough; it lay too thinly over the great rock. The architect could not guarantee that the whole hillside would not come sliding down into the sea—at least this was the gossip of Taormina. The Duke, therefore, had to be content with his garden. It is a perpetual joy to all who pass up the long hill; by day you see its white columns shining in the sun, its flowers spread like a rich Persian carpet; by night you catch the glimmer of the pillars, the scent of mignonette.

Hotel Timeo (named for Timæus, the great historian of the place) is a creature-comfortable house where the guests dress for dinner. Two fashionable American ladies sat at a table near ours, a family of Sicilians in deep mourning farther away. At a glance we saw that the guests were all men and women of the world.

“Quite a contrast to the camp,” said Patsy, as the French waiter brought our consommé. “Don’t you miss Gasperone, the Africano, the carpenters sitting below the salt?”

Early next morning nightingales and blackbirds called and called me to the window. I stepped on the balcony and saw Etna at dawn, clear against a pearl-gray sky. The mountain rises out of the sea to an enormous height; it is snow-covered at this season a third of the way down. In the crystal clearness of early morning the summit was unclouded; the smoke was blown from the cone like a gray feather.

Two hours later Assunta, the Sicilian beauty, who brought the breakfast tray with honey, white bread and golden butter, threw wide the shutters.

“The Signora will eat outside? It is the habit of the strangers.”

In the South spring comes with one stride, as night in the tropics. It was here. A jessamine clambered up from the garden, bringing its starry blossoms, its delicate perfume; a tall lemon tree in full blossom, a rose tree touched the balcony—I leaned down and picked a blush rose. Beyond was a feathery mimosa, covered with fine yellow flowers; splendid savage cactus plants raised their armed spikes like spears; a pergola was lost underan amethystine rain of wistaria, an arbor hidden by the harsh glory of bourganvillia; a row of amphoræ, that once held wine or oil, overflowed with purple heliotrope. On a wall stood a jewelled bird, the prince of peacocks, sunning himself, his long tail sweeping the path. Below lay the turquoise sea, the scalloped shore, the long point of Naxos, tawny sand, rimmed with white foam; in the lovely bay a fishing boat slipped before the wind. Beyond Naxos the sloping line of Etna begins, rising grandly from the blue sea; the flanks are covered with white villages, shining in the sun. Slowly, smoothly, the line mounts and mounts, broken here and there with little mounds. The color is smoky blue to the snow-line. Now the smoke, instead of blowing aside, hangs above the cone in two snowy rings. On the shore glisten the white houses of Giardini; close at hand is Taormina—the old city wall, the flame-shaped battlements of the Badia, the clock on the cathedral. The hum of bees as they delve in the flower-cups, rifling honey for their hive—honey that Assunta will in turn ravish for some stranger, fills the air; the ceaseless chirrup of the tree-toads makes a soft alto to the bees’ treble; the fragrance of the flowers floats up like incense, that delights yet does not stupefy; every sense is fed on beauty. Is not this the one perfect hour to which one might say “stay”?

A sense of terror comes after I have watched the cone of Etna for an hour. Sometimes when the little white puffs of smoke stop, my heart stands still. While the great monster blows out his rings of smoke, I feel safe; in those moments of suspended breathing there is terror. It is as if I were listening to the long breaths of a sleeping giant, who, when he stops breathing, may awake and destroy me. The tension is over, he breathes again; his breath goes up in a white feather, like the souls of dying saints as the Italian primitives painted them, coming out of the mouth in a white scroll. This is a place of fearsome beauty; to choose it out of the wide earth for a home, to establish one’s house here, shows a gambler’s nature. What if that great monster should awake, pour out his deadly floods of scorching lava on farm, villa, town? Etna must have counted for much in forming the fiery Sicilian nature. The Swiss, from looking on the iron calm of their deadsnow-capped mountains, have caught something of their steadfastness. The Sicilian has before him day and night this splendid savage creature, sleeping now but sure to wake again, whose sleep means life and safety, whose waking means death and torture; how can it but affect his character? The very grapes grown on its flanks make potent inflaming wine; if its fever is in the blood of the grape, a thousand times more is it in the hot blood of its men and women.

The earthquake? It is as if the giant had turned over in his bed, shaken his great shoulders, brought down town and city, destroyed a district, snapped ancient temple columns like pipestems, crushed cathedral and hut alike in one awful blood-curdling welter of pain, that has darkened the earth, made the whole world mourn.

These words—I copy them exactly—were hardly jotted down in my diary, when I was startled by a violent barking of dogs, a terrified braying of donkeys, the groan of cattle, then—the earth heaved like the sea, once, twice, thrice! Next complete silence; for a long moment Nature held her breath. Men, beasts, tree-toads, were silent; not a leaf stirred, the very winds were stilled.

The shocks were light; we had felt far worse at Messina, but there we had expected them.

“There has never been a severeterramotoin Taormina,” said Alessandro, the porter of the Timeo. “That is why theforestierihave settled here. The town stands on solid rock and cannot be shaken. There is nothing to fear.”

Every person I met said the same thing. As the day wore on, the strange faintness born of the earth tremors passed away, yet during all the weeks we stayed at Taormina the memory of it lingered. The giant who sleeps below Etna had but turned in his sleep; if he should awake and roar at us as he had roared at those others!

We spent much of our first day in the old theatre; Patsy had been there since dawn.

“The larks were singing when the sun leaped over the Calabrian mountains,” he said; “with their help and thecustode’s, I have reconstructed the theatre as it was in the Greek time, before the Romans made it over. The stage is better preserved than any I have seen; the arena is finer at Italica—you remember?”

Italica, Italica by Seville, the song of the bees, the scent of wild thyme—unforgettable!

“Look at that pretty girl perched up there! She is posing for a picture of Sappho. Lucky you can’t see the artist, a fellow with a beard and pipe!”

Yellow blossoming sage, asphodel, mint, lavender, glossy acanthus with its exquisite leaves, its lilac spikes of flowers, grow in the old theatre. I gathered a small acanthus leaf, and smoothed it between the leaves of a book for comfort in the days to come. Do you know why the Greeks plucked out the very heart of Beauty? Because they lived with beauty. Their minds were formed, perhaps their very bodies were affected by the beauty that surrounded the race from its beginning. The lines of their hills and coasts; the colors of their sea and sky are the most beautiful on earth. Their eyes were trained by these things, their imagination roused, their minds exalted. Like Greece, Sicily is noble in its very foundation. Strip it of trees, of flowers, of grass, the beauty of its lines remains indestructible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TAORMINA. EXAMPLE OF SICILIANGOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.Page 324.MT. ETNA FROM TAORMINA.Page 315.

TAORMINA. CHOIR STALLS, SAN DOMENICO.Page 331.

TAORMINA. FRIAR JOSEPH’S MISSAL.Page 332.

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

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

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

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

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

“San Pancrazio—molto bello.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every third house in Taormina had this mourning badge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Molto antico, four hundred years old and still in use,” thecustodedeclared. “Will one of the gentry be pleased to play? I will blow the bellows.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You are Americans?” the Torinese asked.

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not what they say at camp.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Italia e Vittorio Emanuele!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Amerigo, behold! thy compatriots!Piano,piano, so; that was a goodriverenza!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Fever?” Patsy interrupted.

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

“You are a Syracusan?” I said.

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

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

“We have no influence, we areforestieri—” I began.

“Si capisce,” said thecustode, “allow me at least to write the name of the gentleman.”

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

I asked thecustodeto take us to the Roman amphitheatre.

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

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

Thecustodewaited patiently, then took up his thread:

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

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

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

“The animals belong to you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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