I quoted this to my priest, and he admitted its justice; also he was so polite as to waive his objection about anacronismo, which, I then saw, had only been started in consideration of my being a professor; not that I am really a professor but he had introduced me to our host as one, and I had accepted the distinction so as to avoid the dreary explanation that would have been forced upon me after a disclaimer. He having waived his anacronismo so generously, it was now my turn to trump up an objection which I could deal with afterwards as circumstances might require. In making my choice I did not forget his cloth and, imitating as well as I could his tone of tolerant contempt, muttered the word "Irriverenza" several times. He saw what I meant at once and, in his reply, somewhat followed my lead.

"Where," he asked, "is the irreverence in making S. Joachim's friends arrive in tall hats and dress clothes? Why should they not read the Giornale di Sicilia and play cards? Where is the irreverence in making the children celebrate his daughter's birth by dancing to a piano? Why should not the Madonna have her baby-linen made on an American sewing-machine?"

As he took this line so decidedly and we had given up the anacronismo, I gave up the irreverence at once and agreed with him that there is no reason against any of these things being done if it helps the spectators. The arts are concerned more with faith than with reason, more with the spirit than with the flesh, more with truth than with fact, and we can never get away from the intention of the artist. Even in that Art of Arts which we call Life, our judgment must always be influenced by the spirit in which we believe that a thing is done. I have read somewhere that one coachman will flick flies off his horse with the intention of worrying the flies, while another (Mario, for instance) does the same thing with the intention of relieving the horse. When a modern Frenchman in the spirit of the Scenes de la Vie de Boheme paints the guests in modern evening dress at a Marriage in Cana of Galilee we are offended. The Nascita is not done by such an artist; it is peculiarly a woman's subject, being a picture of home life with a birth for its occasion, and is usually made by a girl who has never heard of Bohemia. She has seen trains in the railway station and ships in the port, but probably has never herself travelled in either. Her father or her brother has perhaps been fishing for sponges off Sfax and may have returned with stories of the wonders of Tunis, and so she may have heard of a boulevard, but she is not affected by it. She makes her Nascita as the medieval painters made their pictures, and is not seeking to attract attention or to astonish or to advertise herself or to make money. Sicilians are all artists, and the Nascita is the girl's pretext for making as close a representation as she can of the life to which she and her friends are accustomed. It is for her what the Shield of Achilles was for Homer, what the Falstaff scenes in King Henry IV were for Shakespeare, or what the Escape from Paris was for my buffo in Palermo.



MOUNT ERYX

CHAPTER IX THE COMPARE

Michele Lombardo, a goldsmith of Trapani, came to me one day and said he wished me to be his compare. I at once had a vision of myself as a black man riding round a circus on a bare-backed horse and jumping through hoops. That was because, at the time, all my knowledge about a compare was derived from a conversation I had had in the house of the Greco family at Palermo. Among the photographs grouped on the wall was one of a pleasant-looking nigger in European costume. I asked who he was, and Carolina said he was an African, a compare. I asked what she meant and she said that her father had held the African's niece at its cresima. The African's name was Emanuele, but she had never known his family name. I asked whether he had a profession and she replied:

"Faceva cavallerizza."

I knew no more about cavallerizza than about a compare or a cresima. She explained the first by saying that the horse goes round and Emanuele on the horse's back performs gymnastics. That is, he used to do so, but he went to Paris, where a duchess saw him performing and, on account of his agility and his attractive physiognomy, fell in love with him. She was an Egyptian duchess and wore diamonds because she was rich. She was so rich she could do as she liked in other respects besides diamonds, and, liking to marry Emanuele, she did so and made him padrone of a grand hotel in Madrid or Vienna, I forget which, but it was a hotel of the first class, frequented by Russian princesses and American millionaires.

I told Michele about this and he assured me that his proposal concealed no equestrian circus and no Egyptian duchess; to become his compare I should only have to hold his eldest son Pietro, aged seven, at his cresima. Here was an opportunity of solving the mysteries of the cresima and the compare, which Michele, who took my consent for granted, assured me would solve themselves as we proceeded. We went to the bishop's palace and were shown into his private chapel, where the sagrestano entertained us with conversation while we waited. Only once before had he ever approached an Englishman, and that was at Messina. He was a very rich Englishman and a devout son of the Church; his card with his name and address was still preserved as a ricordo in the sagrestano's house. This gentleman afterwards died in Naples under dramatic circumstances. He had stepped out one evening to take a mouthful of air, and on returning went upstairs to his room; as he put his latch-key into the door he fell down dead. By his will, which was found in the drawer of his writing-table, he bequeathed all his great wealth to the church of S. Antonio. I wanted to know whether this church is in Messina, or Naples, or England; or, it might be in America or Australia, for they sometimes speak of an Inglese Americano and of an Inglese Australiano. Once I took some of my superfluous luggage to a forwarding agent in Palermo to have it sent to England by piccola velocita. It included a figure of Buddha which I had bought in a curiosity-shop in Malta. The clerk declined to forward the image because it was a product of art, and such things may not be sent out of Italy. I said it was a product of religion; he accepted my correction and proposed to describe it in the form he was filling up as a Madonna. Again I objected, pointing out that anyone could see it was not a lady; it was Buddha. He was as puzzled as I had been over the compare. I attempted a short sketch from memory of Buddha's life and works, and was so far successful that the figure travelled to London as a Cristo Indiano.

The arrival of the bishop cut short the sagrestano's reminiscences. There also came a woman with a baby in arms who was to receive its cresima at once, in case it might not live to reach Pietro's discreet age of seven. The bishop in magnificent vestments of brocade and gold stood with his back to the altar; the woman with the baby knelt before him to his right and the sagrestano put his hand on the baby's shoulder; Pietro knelt to the bishop's left and I put my hand on his shoulder. The ceremony, it seems, is a partial repetition of the baptism, or a performance of a part omitted from the baptism, or it is an addition to the baptism—for I did not understand so fully as Michele said I should. Unless accelerated, as in the case of the baby, it takes place when the child is old enough to have mastered the more elementary teaching of the Church but does not yet understand enough to be confirmed; and it consists in the bishop's using a great many words and gestures and making the sign of the Cross in oil on the child's forehead. Almost before the oil was on, the sagrestano wiped it off with cotton-wool and the bishop, after cleaning his thumb with half a lemon which the sagrestano had thoughtfully placed on the altar, held out his ring to be kissed by the woman and by Pietro.

In this way I became compare of Michele Lombardo and padrino of Pietro, who is my figlioccio. Being Michele's compare I am in a way related to all the family and, when I arrive at Trapani, Michele brings as many of his children as he can gather to salute me. Last time he brought five and said:

"Excuse my not bringing more."

In calling Emanuele her compare, Carolina Greco was not speaking very strictly; the relationship exists between her father and Emanuele's brother, whose child he held; but family relationships are so close in Sicily, and they speak so loosely about them, that a compare of one member of a family may be said to be compare of them all.

A compare is, however, primarily he who holds a child at its baptism, and this, no doubt, is why S. Giovanni Battista is padrone of compari. Thus I am Compare di Battesimo of Peppino and Brancaccia at Castellinaria. It was the grandfather who actually held Ricuzzu at the baptism, but he did it as my deputy, and the spiritual relationship of compare which exists between Peppino and myself is closer than that of padrino and figlioccio which exists between Ricuzzu and myself.

The first step in establishing the relationship of Compare di Battesimo is usually taken at the wedding of the parents, when he who holds the cup or tazza containing the ring becomes Compare di Anello of the bride and bridegroom and also receives the privilege, or undertakes the obligation, of holding the first baby at its baptism. At Ignazio's wedding someone held the tazza with the ring and handed it to the priest at the right moment, but I did not see this done because between the happy couple and myself the lady-guests interposed a forest of hats, but I saw the tazza among the wedding presents and thought it was an ash-tray till one of them corrected me. There must have been a Compare di Anello also at the wedding of S. Joachim and S. Anna, and this person, whoever he was, ought to have appeared, and perhaps did appear, in the Nascita as padrino of the Madonna at her baptism, but I did not visit a Nascita on the Day of the Sacred Name of Maria, so I did not see the baptism.

A fourth kind of compare is the Compare di Parentela; the name is used for those relationships by marriage which have no special name. The brother-in-law, for instance, though he may be a compare is not necessarily one, he is a cognato; but the parents of a husband and the parents of his wife are compari to one another, and the husband's cugino, or cousin, is compare of the wife and so on.

There is yet a fifth kind—the Compare di San Giovanni. The first time I saw Turiddu Balistrieri after his escape from the earthquake at Messina (see Chapter XVII post) it seemed an occasion proper to be solemnised in some way, and we determined to become compari to one another, but as there was no wedding and no baptism or cresima we did not know how to proceed. We consulted an expert in Catania, Peppino Fazio, who said it was an exceptional case. This did not alarm us because exceptional cases are treated tenderly in Sicily. Our expert took time to consider and in a day or two gave his opinion:—The relationship could be established by our going into the country on the 24th June, the day of S. Giovanni, and exchanging cucumbers or pots of basil. Nothing could be simpler, and accordingly on the 24th of June, 1910, Turiddu and I went into the country. He was in Catania, so he spent the day on the slopes of Etna. I was staying with friends at Bath, so I went for a walk on Lansdown. In choosing our tokens we had regard to the arrangements of the postal union; he sent me a few dried leaves of basil and an elaborate drawing of an emerald-green plant in a gamboge pot tied round with a vermilion ribbon as a sign of goodwill and friendship. He drew the design out of his own imagination and coloured it with paints which we had bought together in Naples. I might have sent him a volume of Keats containing a Pot of Basil in an equally transmissible form, but as he does not read English he would not have understood; so I sent him a young cucumber about three inches long. The ceremony was complete, and we are as good a pair of compari as any in the island.

Thus there are five kinds of compari, namely:—

1. The Compare di Battesimo.

2. The Compare di Cresima.

3. The Compare di Anello.

4. The Compare di Parentela.

5. The Compare di San Giovanni.

It may be said that there are more kinds; the woman who washes the cap in which a baby is baptised becomes comare, but I do not know whether this is so anywhere but in Catania. And the word is sometimes used in a figurative sense as a term of endearment in addressing a partner or any intimate friend, and sometimes with the intention of inspiring confidence in addressing a stranger in a lower station of life. When two plump gentlemen and one thin one entered the yard of the "White Hart" where Mr. Samuel Weller happened to be burnishing a pair of painted tops, the thin gentleman advanced.

"My friend," said the thin gentleman.

"You're one o' the adwice gratis order," thought Sam, "or you wouldn't be so wery fond of me all at once." But he only said, "Well, Sir."

A Sicilian Mr. Perker might have said, "Compare" instead of "Amico," and one is expected to believe that no unworthy suspicion would have crossed the mind of a Sicilian Sam Weller.

Between compari there is such complete trust and devotion that no request is ever refused; there is also the conviction, based first on intuition and afterwards on experience, that no request which ought to be refused will ever be made—a conviction which is, I suppose, an element in all friendship. A compare is received in the house as a member of the family and is looked upon as a relation closer than a brother. One can choose as compare a friend in whom one has confidence, whereas there is no choosing a brother, and cases have been known in which brothers did not agree. But any compare taking advantage of his position would be a contemptible traitor and among the sulphur-miners would provide material for a play at the Teatro Machiavelli. Talking it over with Peppino Pampalone he told me that sometimes things do go wrong, so that they say there are three relations more dangerous than enemies—the cognato (the brother-in-law) the cugino (the cousin), and the compare. And they say:

Dagli amici mi guardi Iddio Che dai nemici mi guardo io.

May God protect me from my friends For I can protect myself from my enemies.

Peppino says: "If it is the man that would robber you in the street, this man would put his life in danger because every movement of this man you are looking. But if it is a friend then is it other; then you are depending in him that he is coming to salvare you, you are embracing him, kissing him, don't be regarding the revolver that shall be in his pocket and sometimes would kill you. If it would not be Bruto, he would not succeed to take the life of Cesare. Did you understand?"

But these are exceptional cases.



CHAPTER X COMPARE BERTO

In 1901 I spent ten days on Mount Eryx, now usually called Monte San Giuliano, near Trapani, where I went to see the nocturnal procession of Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge (Diversions in Sicily, Chapter X). During those days I made the acquaintance of about twenty young men of whom Alberto Augugliaro, the son of the professor of mathematics in the Ginnasio, was the chief. I have seen him nearly every year since, first as a student at Trapani, then at the University of Palermo, and again when he was at home on the Mountain for the holidays, in villeggiatura, or doing the practical work for his diploma in the chemist's shop of his uncle. When he became qualified, his uncle handed the shop over to him and he is now established in it.

One starry September evening in 1909 we were walking together in the balio (the garden on the top of the Mountain), and I asked whether, as he was now over thirty, it was not time for him to think of getting married. He confessed that negotiations were in progress. I inquired the lady's name, and he came close to me, took my arm and whispered a word in my ear. If he had shouted the word it would have reached no other ear but mine. We were alone upon the Mountain; the Ericini were sleeping within their walls of stone; over their tiled and terraced roofs the stars were pacing through the night; in front of us and to our right and left, far below, encircled by its mountainous amphitheatre, the spacious plain was cooling after the heat of yesterday; behind us, the sea was drowsily patting the shore round the foot of Monte Cofano and along by happy Bonagia, swaying idly in and out of the harbours of Trapani and among the islands—Levanzo, Favognana, and distant Marettimo. Berto need not have whispered the word; but it was a secret—it was the name of his lady.

Soon after Christmas he announced in the most open manner, that is to say on a post-card, that the preliminaries were over and that his engagement to Giuseppina had been made public; I sent congratulations to them both and he replied in a letter which, omitting the formalities, runs thus in English:

I, on my part, and Giuseppina, on hers, are extremely contented because we both love you with that love which is strong and powerful enough to raise the heart and to transport us above the breathable air; and, as our thoughts frequently fly to you, our distant English friend, we make you a proposition, but you will understand that we lay no obligation upon you and we do not ask you to take any trouble. Here it is in two words: It is our most vivid desire that you should become our compare: that is, that you should hold the tazza containing the ring at our wedding. I repeat, it is our most vivid desire that you will accede to our request for this honour and we shall be most grateful to you if you will content us. It is for you to send your answer which we await with anxiety.

Now, I cannot be more dear to Berto than he is to me—I am not sure about the breathable air, but he is one of the best fellows I know—so I wrote saying I was more flattered, honoured, and pleased by his request than I could express in words. Moreover, it fell out very conveniently because the ceremony was to take place in the following April at a time when I intended to be in Sicily. Then came the difficulty about the wedding present, and whether there was any special duty for a compare to perform besides holding the ring. I remembered Ignazio's ash-tray and asked whether perhaps I ought to bring something of the kind from London. Berto replied that the tazza is a sacred object belonging to the church and is lent for the ceremony and, as I did not seem to know much about it, he kindly informed me that the customs of his country on the occasion of a wedding are as follows:

The father and the mother of the bridegroom and the father and the mother of the bride invite the relations and friends, who all offer presents of greater or less value according to the degree of relationship and friendship. The ring is chosen by the bridegroom in consultation with the bride. The compare, of his own accord, offers a present to the couple, more usually he offers it only to the bride.

All this I have told you merely as information with regard to the customs of my country; it is not necessary for you to give any present but, if you wish to do so, do as you wish. Wedding presents are lifelong records of relationship and of friendship.

If I am to speak frankly, loyally and sincerely to you as the friend I have always been to you, I recommend you to bring some present for the bride because, as you who have travelled so much must know, in small places not to receive a present from the compare would be to provoke the remark among all who talk that the bride and bridegroom were not complimented by the compare. I tell you this because you are my dearest friend and not because I wish to be critical. Bring anything you choose and be sure that whatever may be offered by you will be accepted by my bride. For me—nothing. I have sufficient in the thought and the comfort of your friendship.

So I consulted my sister, who recommended me to visit a jeweller's shop. There is one in Regent Street where I take my sleeve-links to be repaired when I have the misfortune to break them. She approved and I went and explained the situation to the young man, who was very kind about it and, after a few false starts, cordially advised one of a line of gold pendants much in vogue to be worn with a light chain. He had an apparently inexhaustible stock, and I became as confused and helpless as when some change is necessary in my spectacles and the oculist wants to know whether I see better with this or with that. I have no idea how long I was there, but in the end I selected a meaningless object of a design which the young man assured me was original and exclusive, and which I hoped would appear fairly unobjectionable to the recipient. After which, not being at all content to leave Berto resting solely on the thought and comfort of my friendship, I chose for him a dozen silver teaspoons. My sister, to whom I showed these articles, approved and, of her own unprompted generosity, added a piece of Irish lace as a special gift from herself to the bride, though she is unacquainted with any of the family except from my description. Thus loaded I travelled to Trapani and went up the Mountain in the public automobile, arriving on a Thursday morning early in April, 1910, the wedding being fixed for the following Saturday.

Berto met me at the Trapani gate of the town and took me to the Albergo Sicilia, where I had stayed when I was on the Mountain in 1901. Signor Bosco has died since, and his widow keeps on the inn with the help of some members of her family of six daughters and four sons. One of these sons is Peppi, a blacksmith, who plays a trombone in the municipal band. Another is Alberto, one of the chauffeurs who drive the automobile up and down the Mountain. Alberto and one of his sisters appeared as children in the procession of the Universal Deluge. They were sitting at the feet of Sin and holding one another's hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction. Alberto is now married. His wedding took place in the morning, and at three o'clock in the afternoon three hundred guests were entertained at dinner in the Albergo Sicilia, after which they danced till dawn and, as the wedding was in December, they must have been rather tired; but it was an exceptional case.

In the afternoon Berto came for me and took me to the house of his bride to pay my respects. The house belongs to her; she has two brothers and a sister all married and settled, and on Berto's marriage he will leave the house of his parents and go and live in his wife's house. We entered through a door that led through a high blank wall into a courtyard where there were flowering plants in pots, and steps leading up to the living-rooms on the first floor over a basement which is used partly as stabling and partly as storage. This is the form of most of the houses on the Mountain, and the blank wall and courtyard give them an air of seclusion. We went up the steps and were received by the bride and many of her relations, some of whom I had already met, for Giuseppina is a cousin of Berto's mother. They showed me over the house; the rooms all led into one another and, though they were not in a row, it was rather like going over S. Joachim's house when it is being prepared for the family festa of the Nascita. It would have been still more like it if we had come in by the other front door, for the side we entered is on a street that goes up-hill and the house is at a corner with another front door in the other street at the top of the hill and level with the living-rooms. This other front door leads straight into a hall, which will be occupied by the musicians on the evening of the wedding, from this one passes to the dining-room where the servants are to dance, then to the salone where the guests are to dance.

We sat in the salone, about twenty of us in a circle, talking the usual talk, and one of the young ladies asked me whether we had compari at an English wedding. I said we had something of the kind. She inquired what I should be called if I were compare at an English wedding, and, seeing no way out of it, I modestly murmured:

"In England I should be called the Best Man."

This naturally led to a torrent of compliments, which I battled with for some moments, and finally subdued by asking to see the rest of the house. We went to the room which had been arranged as the buffet; the walls were adorned with large looking-glasses, and in the middle was a table for the cakes and sweets. The buffet is to be my bedroom next time I come to the Mountain. We passed through two other saloni and then inspected two bedrooms, one for the happy couple, the other for Berto's mother, who is to stay with them for the first few days. The presents were arranged on a table by the side of the nuptial couch, which had arrived that morning from Palermo together with the rest of the bedroom suite, very handsome, and made of Hungarian ash. The presents were rather as I have seen wedding presents in England, plenty of spoons and forks, gold brooches, rings, bracelets, some set with diamonds and some with other stones, and I was glad I was not really back in Regent Street choosing my pendant.

We went into the courtyard and into the stable where we saw Mille-lire the donkey, who is scarcely bigger than a Saint Bernard dog and only cost thirty-five lire. It was Berto who gave him the name of Mille-lire to signify that his value far exceeds his price. He has a cart to match and can take four people, but I think they must be rather small people. He shares his stable with thirty-eight chickens, old and young, and two ducks, who all come out into the courtyard to be fed in the sun. There are also three pigeons, making a total of forty-four creatures. In addition there are two cats who live in the house and two tortoises who live in the courtyard. Tortoises are found wild among the rocks in the mountains and the peasants bring them up to the town and sell them. These came from Monte Asparacio, which is near Cofano; they cost forty centimes each, and bring good luck to the house. On Mount Eryx there is a convent of nuns of S. Teresa, to whom flesh is forbidden, but the prohibition does not extend to tortoises, which the nuns eat with tomato sauce. When the nuns begin to feel the infirmities of age they are no longer limited to this strange meat, the prohibition is withdrawn, and they live like other old ladies, eating what they choose. I have no idea how many fourpenny tortoises would make a meal for a healthy young nun on Monte San Giuliano, where one's appetite is sharpened by the air. They occasionally add a few snails, which are also permitted; there is a kind of snail which is found underground and is considered a luxury by others besides the nuns of S. Teresa.

After the stable and the courtyard we went to the terrace whence, over the roofs and cupolas and among the towers and belfries of the town, there is a view of the sea and the plain. Then we visited the kitchen and saw the oven for baking the bread. All the well-to-do families on the Mountain possess land on the campagna where they grow their own corn; they take it to the mill to be weighed and ground, and fetch back the flour which is also weighed; they know that if they leave a hundred kilograms of grain they must receive ninety-nine of flour, and in this wasted kilogram of flour lurks the true reason why the miller wears a white hat. They bake their own bread and sometimes make their own maccaroni at home. They grow their own grapes and make their own wine. They have olive trees for oil, and goats whose milk they drink, considering it lighter and more digestible than cows' milk. Berto's sister has a private goat of her own, who lives down in the country and comes up every morning, a journey of three-quarters of an hour, and she milks it herself. Thus they pass their lives very close to Mother Earth, and the seasons sensibly affect their comfort. They have little use for money except to buy coffee, fish, sugar, meat, and clothes, or the stuff of which they make their clothes, and some of them raise their own linen and wool. But they want money when there is a family festa; Berto told me he had spent 700 lire merely for the sweetmeats and cakes at his wedding.

All Friday and most of Saturday I spent in being presented to various members of the family and in making preparations. Berto recommended me to visit the barber on Saturday afternoon and, as a good Sicilian, I followed his advice and went to the salone of Peppino. When Samuel Butler first came to Mount Eryx in 1892 to see whether he could identify the localities with those described as Scheria and Ithaca in the Odyssey, he slipped in the street and put his ankle out of joint. The doctor was away, and his foot was set by Peppino, who is a barber-surgeon with a salone close to the spot where the accident happened. Accordingly Peppino is the barber I employ when I am on the Mountain. While he was attending to me I observed a change in the salone, and, on asking where the looking-glasses were, was told they had been lent to Berto to ornament the buffet of his wedding festa.

After the barber, I had my dinner, as I found there would be no opportunity to do so when once the wedding ceremonies had begun, and then I dressed. In the meantime a cloud began to collect on the Mountain and the wind began to blow.



CHAPTER XI BERTO'S WEDDING

A Sicilian wedding is conducted either on system a, when the happy couple go away for their honeymoon and the ceremony is performed in the morning, or on system b, when they do not go away but have a ball at home, and then the ceremony is performed in the evening. The wedding of Ignazio proceeded on system a, that of Berto and Giuseppina on system b. As for Alberto Bosco, his wedding was either a combination of a and b or an exceptional case.

Berto's brother Nicolao came to fetch me at 5.30 p.m. and took me to the house of the bride's brother in the piazza, where the bride was waiting. Her dress was of pale grey crepe trimmed with dull silver embroidery and she wore zagara in her bonnet. Exceptional cases being excepted, it may be said that brides only wear white silk and a veil and wreath of orange blossom, as Ignazio's bride did at the religious ceremony, when the wedding is conducted on system a. I failed to discover any rule about a cortege of bridesmaids, if there is such a rule it is probably elastic. The other ladies wore dresses as for a dance in England in the country in the winter. The gentlemen, like the guests at the Nascita, wore evening dress. And of course we all had cloaks or over-coats.

When we were about to leave the house, Peppi Bosco, with his trombone and the rest of the municipal band, began to play, and to the strains of their music we crossed the piazza in the fog. The bride was conducted by her brother, the bridegroom came next escorting a lady cousin, I followed, as compare, with Berto's mother, and the others came after. We entered the municipio and went upstairs into a large room. The sindaco sat behind a table, the bride and bridegroom sat facing one another in two armchairs on the opposite side of the table and we ranged ourselves about the room.

The sindaco had often before sat at that table and received other wedding parties, nevertheless he appeared at a loss, or perhaps he disapproved of matrimony. At any rate he was not going to acquiesce in the proceedings until he had dwelt, as elderly people will, on the serious nature of the duties the young people were proposing to undertake. He went so far as to put clearly before them aspects of the case which they might have overlooked and to read them legal extracts of a discouraging nature. They were unmoved, and the sindaco, still dissatisfied, asked Berto point-blank whether he really wished, under the circumstances, to take Giuseppina to be his wife. Berto replied in the affirmative. Concealing his surprise, the sindaco turned to Giuseppina and asked her whether she wished to be married to Berto. She said she did; and indeed it was the reason why we were all there, as the sindaco must have known if he had given the matter a thought, for the wedding had been the talk of the town since Christmas; but the law does not regard hearsay evidence. Finding there was no help for it, he pronounced the necessary words and, no doubt with a view of disclaiming personal responsibility should he hereafter be taxed with marriage-mongering, invited them to sign the book with a pen made entirely of gold in the form of a feather, which he afterwards offered them as a wedding present with his best wishes and a paper on which his clerk had neatly engrossed the legal extracts.

We descended into the piazza now vacated by Peppi Bosco, who had been playing in it with his municipal music during the ceremony, and, forming ourselves into a procession as before, walked down the principal street of the town, and I was thinking of many things. As we passed the club I remembered how once in the winter Berto had taken me there and introduced me to all the notabilities of the place and I had wondered how the fog agreed with the billiard table. We passed the farmacia where Berto spends his time making up prescriptions and gossiping with his friends. We went on down the street and my thoughts wandered to other subjects. In the first place there was my hat, or rather Berto's uncle's hat, for, though I had remembered about the guests at the Nascita wearing evening clothes, I had forgotten that they brought their cylindrical hats, and Berto had borrowed one for me, which was so small I had to hold it on. And the wind blew and roared and shook the shutters and banged the windows and doors and smashed the glass down on to the roughly paved streets, and the dense, chilly cloud went through the cracks and penetrated into every house and damped the beds and discoloured the whitewash of the walls. And I had Berto's mother on one arm and could not keep his uncle's hat on my head. At last I took it off and carried it under my other arm, putting on my head a cap which I happened to have in my pocket.

We came to the steep part of the street near the salone of Peppino and I thought of his looking-glasses that were temporarily adorning the future bedroom of Berto's compare, and I thought of Butler's accident and of the authoress of the Odyssey writing her poem up here three thousand years ago. And what are three thousand years to Time in his flight? An interval that he can clear with a flap or two of his mighty wings. No one knows how often he has flapped them since these narrow roughly paved streets began to give the town its irregular shape; no one knows anything of the prehistoric incarnations of her who has reigned here as Phoenician Astarte, as Greek Aphrodite, as Roman Venus, and who now reigns here as Italian Maria. We were adding one more to the processions that during unnumbered ages have passed along the streets of Mount Eryx worshipping the Mystery of Birth.

We turned down by the Palazzo Platamone and at last reached the Matrice. The floor was hidden by the people standing on it and the ceiling by thousands of wax candles hanging from it. The organ was playing antiphonally with Peppi Bosco, who had preceded us with his trombone and his municipal music. We went into the sagrestia and I did not at first recognise the Arciprete Messina who received us, for I had not previously seen him in his vestments, but he knew me. We had met in the street when he was wearing his ordinary clothes the day before and I had told him I had his photograph taken by Butler, who wanted his face because it is particularly round, like that of so many of the Ericini, and Butler used to say they are descended from the Cyclopes who formerly lived here—Cyclopes means circle-faced, not one-eyed.

After signing the register we left the sagrestia, pushed our way through the people, and stood outside the altar-rails in a circle, the arciprete, Berto, Giuseppina, myself and another priest. I held an old silver tazza, on which the ring was placed. The music was tremendous and had to be made to play piano. The arciprete read the words and, at the proper moment, I handed the tazza, from which he took the ring and gave it to the bridegroom, who placed it upon the bride's finger. And the Madonna di Custonaci sat over the altar with the Child at her breast smiling down upon our little circle and giving her blessing to Berto and Giuseppina who, with the sanction of their relations and friends, were taking the first step on the path that leads to motherhood.

We were not in the church ten minutes, and the music became forte again as our procession passed out into the fog. We went to the bride's house and entered by the door that leads into the courtyard which was occupied by Peppi Bosco, who had again preceded us with his trombone and municipal music. The bride retired and, after a few moments, reappeared among the guests, escorted by Berto and accompanied by someone bearing a large tea-tray piled up with sugared almonds, which she ladled to us in handfuls with a silver coffee-cup. On whatever system a Sicilian wedding is conducted it would be incomplete without sugared almonds, and they are sent in boxes to all friends who are unable to attend. Several boxes were given to me for my near relations who, by virtue of my having become compare of Berto and Giuseppina, are now in a manner related to them. And the bride also gave me for my sister a special gift of a handkerchief embroidered by someone in the neighbourhood.

After the almonds, the music began in the front hall and we danced. There were waltzes, polkas and contraddanze, also games involving dances. I did not try to dance the waltzes or the polkas, they were quite different from those I used to be taught; Berto said they were dancing the ballo figurato. Nor did I dance the tarantella, which I never was taught in any form, but I saw it danced by Berto's mother and a brother of the bride. I danced in three contraddanze, first with Berto's mother, then with his bride, then with his sister. One of the dancers called out in French what we were to do, and the mistakes we made added to the amusement. Frequently there was a promenade, the partners walking arm-in-arm round the room, which gave time to recover ourselves when we had got into any great confusion. Sometimes he who directs the contraddanza is so fertile in invention that he can make it last two hours. I do not think any that I danced lasted above half an hour, and they always ended by our promenading away to the buffet, which was under the joyous direction of Berto's father. Here we ate sweetmeats and cakes and drank rosolio, which is any kind of light liqueur.

Berto's brother Nicolao took me away at 3 a.m., and I wanted someone to show me the road because the cloud was still on the Mountain, and they do not keep the streets lighted all night. But the rest danced for another hour and then departed, leaving Berto's mother to attend to the bride and to stay in the house.

Next day at noon we all called to inquire and I remained to dinner at two. While we were at table we heard the drum beating a Saracen rhythm and went to the window. It was the festa of S. Francesco da Paola; he was coming out of his church and going up to the balio on the top of the Mountain. The fog had cleared away, leaving a few light clouds whose shadows chased one another across the campagna and out to sea, where they played with the islands that were swimming in it, each separate and distinct in the brightness like those on a China plate. S. Francesco turned his back to the islands; he had not come out to bless the sea. Nor had he come to bless Cofano; he knew it was beyond his power to make that rocky wilderness to blossom as a rose. The translucent mountains stood back in a rugged amphitheatre before him, reverently saluting the throne of Venus; he acknowledged their salute, but he did not bless the barren mountains; he remembered the words of his Master: To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.

Good old San Cicciu da Paola turned his eyes away from the mountains and looked down upon the exuberance of the campagna. Every patch was a mother's breast suckling the young bread and wine and oil, making the little figs to swell on their branches and the big blobby oranges to grow bigger and blobbier among their leaves. The salad was pushing, pushing up through the soil; peaches, apples, pears, medlars and plums were forming inside their faint pink and snowy blooms; there were almonds and blossoming pomegranates, asparagus and tomatoes, artichokes in disorderly tufts and beans combed into tidy rows. In the hollow places, like marshy pools reflecting the sky, lay beds of pale blue flax to be woven into wedding sheets for Mount Eryx.

San Cicciu looked upon it and saw that it was good, and he blessed all that fertility. He was doing for the campagna what the Cyclopean arciprete had asked the Madonna to do for Berto and Giuseppina.



TRABONELLA

CHAPTER XII SULPHUR

Caltanissetta is a busy town of some 45,000 inhabitants near the middle of the island and about 2000 feet above the sea. It depends for its prosperity on almonds, grapes, olives and sulphur, especially the last, for there is much sulphur in the pores of the rock. I have several friends there of whom one, Beppe (Giuseppe) Catena, is an engineer with an interest in Trabonella, the largest sulphur mine in the neighbourhood, and another, Gigino (Luigi) Cordova, is an advocate. Sometimes Beppe is in the town and sometimes Gigino and I go to Trabonella and find him there. It is an hour's drive along a road that winds among rolling hills. Through the depressions between the near hills other hills appear, and through their depressions higher hills, and beyond these are higher hills again until the view is bounded by the Monti delle Madonie where the snow lingers until May. It must have been some such country as this that was in the mind of him who first spoke of the sea running mountains high.

I do not know whether it is more beautiful in spring or in autumn. I know that in spring the grass under the orange trees is spotted with purple flowers, and that crimson vetch incarnadines the hills, as though Lady Macbeth had dipped her little hand into their multitudinous green; the hedges bloom with rosemary and scarlet geranium, the banks with sweet pea and brilliant mesembryanthemum, and the rough places are full of asphodel; there are a few eucalyptus trees and now and then a solemn row of cypresses; we may pass a hut of grey thatch and perhaps a few horses or a sprinkling of tethered goats; sometimes we see a herd of bullocks tended by a boy who has come out this morning in black sheep-skin leggings up to his hips, and I think he learnt his song from happy nightingales that set the April moonlight to music.

But in autumn the prospect is as fair. The harvest is over; the earth, bronzed by the summer heat, is resting after her labour and nature is making variations in the ochres and umbers that in spring were half hidden, huddled together in the steep places where nothing will flourish; the stubble shows in lines of pale yellow on the brown earth among patches of almost colourless green and other patches black with burning which change the value of the olives, pistachios, carubas and aloes; here and there is a shrivelled thistle, here and there a lone pine; sometimes we see a string of mules winding in and out on its way home, losing and finding itself among the undulations like a little fleet of fishing boats that rise and fall with the swell, and I think Schubert must have passed this way when he felt stirring within him the mellow loveliness of the second Entr'acte to Rosamunde:

[Picture: Rosamunde]

We need not choose one or the other, we need only wait to have both; for spring is the modulation to the dominant, the awakening, the going out in search of adventure, while autumn is the return to the tonic, the coming home in search of repose, the falling asleep; the first leads to the second as naturally as youth leads to age.

Last time Gigino and I went to Trabonella it was spring, and we took with us his young brother Michelino, aged thirteen, who had never been there before. We arrived in the afternoon and found Beppe, who took us round, and we showed Michelino the works. Empty trucks were gliding down a sloping railway into the mine, while others were gliding up filled with the harvest of the deep. We saw the broken pieces of rock being put into great furnaces and we watched the treacly sulphur that was melted out of the pores and came oozing through a tap into a mould. It is then purified and made into shapes like candles, and I thought of Kentish giants handling such bars of sulphur to fumigate the hops in the glow of an oast-house fire. We introduced Michelino to the overseers, directors and managers and to the doctor. We returned to the hut where Beppe lives, and dined out of doors in the yard behind. It all seemed to me very healthy and like the accounts one reads and the illustrations one sees of life in a new country, with the advantage that Caltanissetta is only about eight kilometres away. But Beppe objected that the nearness of Caltanissetta was no advantage because it induces a feeling of "Well, it doesn't matter; I can always go to town for that," and so they put up with much that they might remedy if they were really beyond the reach of civilisation. Consequently he was not able to treat us as we deserved. We replied that we were glad it was so, because he was treating us much better.

After dinner we joined the other managers and directors in a room of a larger building; a mandoline and guitar were brought and some of them played. Presently Michelino sang. He surprised me by the beauty and power of his young voice and by his management of it, also by his musical intelligence and by his complete self-possession. He sang the tenor songs of many operas and other popular melodies, especially I remember his singing the Stornelli Montagnoli, which is so beautiful that the buffo said it would save itself in the Escape from Paris. To all this the guitar-player vamped an accompaniment which Michelino relentlessly silenced by a gesture when it became unbearable. It was absurd to see him lording it over the company, nearly a dozen of us and the youngest nearly old enough to be his father. When it was time to retire, beds were found for the visitors and I passed a comfortable night in Beppe's hut.

Next day we were taken into the mine to see what goes on underneath the freedom of the rolling hills. We dived down in a lift, ever so deep into the darkness, and probably it was dangerous, but when I go down lifts and see over mines, as when I wander among the tottering ruins of Messina, I have learnt to hope that the accident will be some other day. We saw nearly naked men, monsters of the abyss, crouching in cavernous places, pick-axing the sulphurous rock in the dim light of their miner's lamps, while others were bringing broken pieces along the low, dark galleries and sending them up in the trucks to the light. And the workers were groaning and moaning as they worked. Day after day, always the same monotonous groaning and moaning, always the same monotonous pick-axing the rock in the dim light, always the same monotonous sending up the broken pieces. It was very hot in some places and very cold in others, and I was glad to follow the broken pieces up and return to the fresh air and the sunshine.

Beppe told me that Trabonella is the largest sulphur mine in Europe, that the total length of its galleries is thirty kilometres, which is about as far as from the Albert Hall to Windsor Castle. They employ a thousand miners, and the boys begin work outside the mine at twelve and inside at fifteen. There has been an alteration in the law; formerly they began younger and were deprived of the little education for which they now have time, and the hard work so deformed their tender bodies that they could not pass the army test. This is their modulation to the dominant, their awakening to life. It is not a pleasing prospect; nor is the early autumn of ill-health and decrepitude to which it naturally leads any more pleasing. They pass their lives in the dark, morally and physically, and frequently a sudden fall of rock cripples, if it does not destroy, the victim; then there are broken pieces of a different kind to be taken along the low dark galleries and brought up to the light.

I was in Caltanissetta one Saturday evening and saw the funeral of two who had been killed in this way that morning. First came a band playing a funeral march, that was all the more melancholy because the instruments were distressingly discordant, as though in their grief the men had not had time to tune them. Then came comrades carrying candles, and comrades bearing first one coffin, then the second, plain wooden coffins with no pall. Others carried chairs on which the coffins were rested when the bearers were changed. There were no priests. But there were priests the next day for the wedding of another comrade. Beppe told me that about 90 per cent of their funerals are conducted without priests and about 90 per cent of their weddings are conducted with priests.

They told me of one sulphur-miner who, having seen enough funerals, left the mine and went to Palermo in search of work. He was taken on by a contractor who was levelling a piece of high ground, on which blocks of dwellings have since been erected behind the Teatro Massimo, and began work at six o'clock one morning. Five minutes later he was killed and buried by a fall of earth.

In the mine they are in constant fear of this death. They work very hard and the air is bad; they come up to sleep, to eat and to gamble. The air they sleep in cannot be much better than that in the mine, for they are laid out in close huts on shelves, like rolls of stuff in a draper's shop. They hardly know the difference between youth and age, between spring and autumn. They scarcely get a glimpse of the landscape except on Saturdays and Sundays, and then they are intent upon something else. After their week of labour they feel the necessity of expansion; they receive their wages and go to Caltanissetta; those who are married sleep with their wives, while those who are unmarried sleep quite alone as the soldiers did after the death and burial of l'Invincible Monsieur d'Malbrough. They become free human beings for two days. I have seen the piazza full of them on Sunday morning—so full that I thought it would have been easier to walk across it, treading on their heads, than to push through the crowd. Unfortunately their notion of the life of a free human being does not stop at loafing about in the piazza. They also go to the wine shops, where they offer one another the means of forgetting that their oases of rest lie in a desert of drudgery, and sometimes this becomes the means of their forgetting everything else as well.

Gigino has written a paper upon the connection between alcoholism and crime. He told me that the consumption of alcohol in Sicily is less than in northern countries, but that there is more crime. I naturally inquired whether it would not tend to lessen the crime if the Sicilians would drink rather more. He replied that, as so often happens at the beginning of any inquiry, there are other considerations and I must not be in a hurry. As for the sulphur-miners, they need not drink more, but if they would spread fairly over the week the amount they consume during Saturday and Sunday, then, although they would risk incurring the consequences of chronic alcoholism, they would avoid those of acute alcoholism. For the need of expansion causes them to drink more than they can stand all at once, then they quarrel and commit murders. So that many of those who begin life as boys in the mine, and week after week escape the falling rocks, live to be killed in a drunken brawl, and one does not know which prospect is the more ugly.

I asked whether their condition could not be improved by raising their wages. They asked whether I wished to dislocate the commerce of the world by raising the price of sulphur. I had no such desire and, indeed, did not know, till they told me, that sulphur enters into so many manufactures as it does. Here again in seeking to ameliorate conditions with which one is imperfectly familiar one must not be in a hurry. It is not altogether a question of raising their wages, they receive from four and a half to five francs a day, which, for five days, amounts to between twenty-two francs fifty and twenty-five francs a week; there are many labourers who receive less and do more with it. Of course, they would like more wages—everyone would like more wages—but what the sulphur-miners really want is the intelligence to use wisely what they have and also some change, if it were possible, in the conditions under which their work is done. Beppe assured me that the question is not being overlooked, but it has roots which extend further and are more complicated than the galleries in the mine—roots which are tangled with the roots of other questions affecting other interests, and these again affect others. So I bowed before the other considerations and hoped that with the changes that are continually taking place in Sicily something may soon be done for the sulphur-miners, trusting that in the meantime we are not paying too dearly for the advantage of getting our sulphur so cheap.



CHAPTER XIII OMERTA AND THE MAFIA

When the drunken sulphur-miners quarrel and kill one another on Saturdays and Sundays, the murderers are seldom brought to justice because of Omerta; a word which is said to be derived from uomo and to signify manliness in the sense of power of endurance, the power, for example, of keeping silence even under torture; hence it comes to be used for an exaggeration of that natural sense of honour, that Noblesse Oblige or Decency Forbids, which makes an English schoolboy scorn to become a sneak. It may be false and foolish, it may be noble and chivalrous, whatever it is, they say, it has such a firm growth among them because the history of Sicily is the history of an island which has for centuries been misgoverned by foreigners, and the people have lost any faith they may ever have had in professional justice. If one were to be involved with a Sicilian in committing a crime, one might be perfectly certain that he would never turn King's evidence, he would say, "Io son uomo, io non parlo" ("I am a man, I know how to hold my tongue") and he would rather die than betray an accomplice who is his friend and probably his compare. Nor need the criminal fear that the victim or anyone in the secret whether accomplice or not, will blab. A man with a wound on his face, made obviously by a knife, will swear to the police that in drawing a cork he fell and cut himself with the bottle. He does not intend his assailant to go unpunished, but he will not have the police interfering if he can prevent it; he means to look after his own affairs himself. If a murder has been committed a crowd will collect round the murdered man—a crowd that includes the police and also the murderer—but no one has any idea who committed the crime, not even those who saw it done, and not even the dying man, who may carry his assumption of ignorance so far as to call his murderer to his side, embrace him affectionately and give him a Judas-kiss which bears a double meaning; for the police and the general public it is evidence that there can have been no ill-feeling between the two, while for the friends of the murdered man it confirms their suspicions as to the one on whom the vendetta is to be executed. So many have told me this that I cannot help thinking that, if it really is done as often as they say, it must by now have lost some of its power of deceiving the police. Probably it was done on some occasion which took the public fancy, and they keep on repeating it because it makes a dramatic close.

Giovanni Grasso has a play called Omerta: La Legge del Silenzio. Don Andrea has been murdered by or at the instigation of Don Toto (Salvatore), who is an overbearing bully, nevertheless Saru (Rosario) has been sent to prison for the crime and, during his absence, his girl has married Don Toto. The play opens with the return from prison of Saru, acted by Giovanni. He comes to the house of his mother, with whom Don Toto and his wife are living. The length of the play is provided by the disappointments attending his return: his setting up for himself and painting paladins on Sicilian carts; a scene of passionate tenderness with his mother, during which he convinces her of his innocence, but refuses to reveal the name of the murderer which he has learnt in prison; a beautiful interview with Pasqualino, his young brother, who shows he is the right sort of boy by declaring of his own accord that he hates Don Toto; a magnificent interrupted quarrel with Don Toto, and scenes with the police and with the priest to whom Saru refuses to give any information about the murder. Towards the end Saru staggers in wounded. They all try to make him tell the name of his murderer, but he will not. Finally, he is left alone with Pasqualino to whom he gives his revolver with these dying words:

"For Don Toto, when you shall be eighteen."

Pasqualino understands, kisses the pistol and accepts the obligation, saying:

"I will see to it."

The others return and ask Pasqualino whether Saru told him anything before he died, and Pasqualino, concealing the pistol in his bosom as the Spartan boy concealed the fox, bravely answers:

"Nothing."

One may object to the play on the ground that it breaks off instead of coming to a conclusion—one is left wishing to see Pasqualino, grown up and acted by Giovanni, executing the vendetta—but it is a good play and shows what is meant by omerta. The dramatic critic of the Times (2 March, 1910), on the morning after Giovanni produced it in London, opened his notice of it thus: "Omerta must make things very difficult for the Sicilian police." This is precisely what they intend.

Without omerta the mafia would hardly flourish, and the mafia is not so easy to understand. I suppose the reason why Sicilians explain it badly is that they understand it too well. The inquiring outsider cannot see the trees for the wood, and the explaining insider cannot see the wood for the trees. They labour to make clear things with which I am familiar, and take for granted things which are strange to me, treating me rather as my father treated the judges before whom he was arguing some legal point. Their lordships interrupted him:

"Yes, Mr. Jones, you say this is so and that is so, but you do not produce any authority in support of your statements."

"Authority, my lord?" exclaimed my father, as though perhaps he might have forgotten something: then, leaning over the desk, he said, in a stage whisper: "Usher, bring me Blackstone—or some other elementary work."

Thus we do not make much progress, but by degrees one picks up a few ideas about it.

My friend Peppino Fazio, of Catania, allowed me to copy and translate part of an article he wrote in a newspaper. He is speaking of Palermo as long ago as 1780:

The Albergheria was the quarter that harboured those men who were most ready with their hands and most quarrelsome; they were expert also in using their knives, with which they fenced by rule and according to art; they obeyed a certain code of chivalry of their own, not permitting the weak or the unarmed to be bullied, treating as criminals those who used fraud and treachery, and not brooking the intervention of the police. They were men whom an exaggerated sentiment of honour and of individual courage had decoyed from the path of social conventions, but in whom there was a fundamental notion of right conduct and a generosity at times magnanimous. They held each other in great mutual respect, free from any element of servility or cowardice, not recognising grades, nor conferring any right to command—a respect that was the more profound according as its object was the more distinguished for acts of valour and grandeur of soul. It was the tacit homage that one pays to heroes, poets, artists and to every kind of genius.

These men, slowly degenerating, have produced the mafia, which is associated with bullying, blackmailing and crime. The word mafia has been applied in this bad sense only in more recent times, as we are assured by those who have studied the subject. The ancestors of the mafiosi used to call themselves Cristiani—that is Men in the sense of men of courage and silence.

The Cristiano carried in one pocket his rosary and in the other his knife. Outside his own class he recognised the higher social distinctions and, while preserving his own self-respect and never stooping to obsequiousness, felt for the galantuomini (that is for the townspeople) and for the signori (that is for the patricians) a real submission which he displayed both in acts and words by protecting their persons and their reputations; so that no thief or evil-liver dared to commit any crime against one who was known to be protected by a Cristiano.

One recognises about this something of the chivalry of Robin Hood and of more modern highwaymen. The conditions of life in the albergheria are not identical with those of life in the open country, either in England or in Sicily, nor with those of life in the orange-groves of the Conca d'Oro round about Palermo. Both in the Conca d'Oro and in the open fields the guardians employed to protect the crops are all mafiosi and are able to prevent the employment of any who are not. The conditions in a sulphur-mine again are different. Confusion arises unless one knows which conditions are present to the mind of him who is trying to explain the mafia. Besides which, the words mafia and mafioso are still often used in a good sense.

There was something mafioso about Michelino when he was singing to us at the mine, keeping us all in order and silencing the guitar with a wave of his hand. There is something of it in a girl who is not ashamed of her beauty and does not blush to be admired. It was the mafiosita of Guido Santo, the mule, at Castellinaria, that sunny morning when he trotted up and down in his new harness before taking us to the shore, which put it into our heads to make it also his festa. There is something of it in the attitude of King Henry VIII, with his hat on one side and his arm a-kimbo, as he appears in a full-length portrait by Holbein. There was a good deal of it in the conduct of Giovanni in his Teatro Machiavelli on one occasion when a lady music-hall singer failed to please; the public hissed her and made such an uproar that she could not proceed. Giovanni was, or pretended to be, furious. He behaved to his audience as Nino Bixio behaved to his men on the Sicilian expedition. He came on and abused them with gesticulation and language; he swore and stormed at them; he appealed to their sense of chivalry; he threatened to come down among them and teach them manners; he declared that they should hear her. He made the piano-man play; he went and fetched the lady; he stood by her side, frowning, with his arms folded, ready to break out, the personification of angry determination and suppressed energy. The people acquiesced and listened. When the singer had finished, they applauded; and they were applauding not only her, but also Giovanni because he had dominated them. It is a small theatre and their numbers may have been four or five hundred—it would depend upon the programme and the kind of evening it was—but if it had been the Teatro Bellini he would have subdued them just as well, unless there had been present someone to resist him with a stronger personality, and his experience had taught him that the chances were against that.

An imposing personality is a useless possession unless there are others willing to be imposed upon, and it is this willingness to be dominated quite as much as the love of dominating that makes the mafia possible. If I may "quote from memory":

Surely the pleasure is as great Of being beaten as to beat.

Possibly the Sicilian charm contains among its many ingredients a trace of this love of being dominated which, in England, we associate more particularly with women, spaniels and walnut trees; and if it were not so, history might contain less about the misgovernment of the island by foreigners.

The mafia is not like the Neapolitan Camorra, it is not an organised society such as one reads about in books for boys, nor is it a recognised trade union with a president, secretary, officers and so on. It is rather an esprit de corps, and no more a secret society than omerta is a secret society; nevertheless, they speak of the mafia as being more highly organised in some districts than in others, and there are secret societies whose members are mafiosi, so that for a foreigner to speak of the mafia as a secret society would appear to be an excusable error.

Among every collection of men, and even in a herd of bullocks, one is always the acknowledged leader, and in a sulphur-mine it naturally happens that one man has a more dominating personality, more prepotenza, than any of the others; this capo-mafioso takes the lead and is king. When, as often happens, he is a man with a respect for law and order, willing to be useful to the managers, the mafia can and does supplement in an amateur fashion the deficiencies of professional justice. If Giovanni Grasso were really a worker in a sulphur-mine, as he sometimes appears to be on the stage, he would certainly take the lead, and no one who knows him will believe that he could ever be capable of a bad action. But few men can safely be trusted with absolute power. Sometimes this capo-mafioso is a villain who glories in a record of crime, a brow-beating bully who will stick at nothing. Here is a situation for a melodrama—the Wicked Despot. He does as he chooses with those around him, who fear lest he should treat them as Don Toto treated Don Andrea before the opening of Omerta, and as he treats Saru in the course of the play; and they not only fear, they also admire an unscrupulousness of which they feel themselves to be incapable. They refer their disputes to him and execute his orders. They do not pay him money for adjudicating between them, it is enough for him to have the satisfaction of being asked to arbitrate and, by giving his decision and seeing that it is carried out, he consolidates his power. But he exacts from them a percentage of their winnings at cards as tribute, and they pay it willingly so as to keep on good terms with him. Of course, under the throne of any of these tyrants, among those who have sufficient daring, conspiracies are continually surging and, sooner or later, whether he is a good or a bad man, he has to give way to a stronger—perhaps a fresh arrival, who takes the public fancy. Sometimes there are two with apparently an equal power of dominating; they agree not to quarrel openly, but, between themselves, each is on the look-out for an opportunity to annihilate the other's influence.

One Saturday, in the street at Caltanissetta, Beppe showed me marks of bullets on the wall. He said that only a week before there had been a row among a score of men with revolvers about some question of precedence among the mafiosi in a neighbouring mine arising out of the terms proposed for ending a strike. One of the men was killed and several were wounded, but the question of precedence could not be settled that day because the survivors were all put into prison.

According to the plays, the prisons are to the mafiosi what the ganglia are to the nerves, and give the prisoners an opportunity for talking matters over, thus providing an effective means of continuing the plot of the drama. And though the criminals feel secure in the knowledge that omerta will prevent their confederates from giving information, yet the police, of course, know who is who all the time, just as the police in London know who are the criminals; the law, however, is jealous of the rights of the people and does not move on suspicion. And too much of the modern police methods would not combine well with the requirements of melodrama.

Beppe assured me that in his mine the mafiosi are mostly good fellows and do not do any harm, except among themselves when they quarrel, get drunk and murder one another. He admits that the making use of them in the management of the men is like playing with fire, but he agrees with all who have gone into the matter that a stranger falling among them, wherever he might meet them, would be treated with the most extreme respect and courtesy. This is not because they are afraid of giving themselves away, distrusting the stranger's omerta, it is because they have a real self-respect and wish to pass in the eyes of the world for men of good position. The presence of a stranger among them is a challenge to their chivalry and to their oriental sense of hospitality.

Anyone wishing to study the mafia from books might begin with La Mafia e I Mafiosi, by Antonio Cutrera, Delegato di Pubblica Sicurezza (Palermo. Alberto Reber, 1900), and continue with La Mala Vita di Palermo (I Ricottari), by the same author. If he will also read all the numerous books by other authors cited in the notes to these two works he ought to gain a fair knowledge of the subject.



CHAPTER XIV MALA VITA

Sicilians sometimes claim that much of what has been stated in the foregoing chapter is now out of date, and that, with the advance of civilisation, the power of the mafia and the respect for omerta are giving way to confidence in the police. And they go on to regret that Giovanni Grasso should have so much success with his plays in foreign countries, because they contain a great deal of mafia and mala vita which he presents with so much realism that foreigners are encouraged in the idea that all Sicilians are for ever sleeplessly going about with knives in their belts seeking to execute vendettas. But most theatre-goers know by this time that melodramas are not made up of the events of ordinary life. A man does not discover every day that he has been deceived by his wife or that his sister has been betrayed by his compare; when he does make such a discovery he may be pardoned if he loses his self-control. Anyhow, the sleepless vendetta notion is so ludicrously contrary to the fact that Sicily can afford to take the risk. One might as well treat seriously the complaint against the marionettes, that the swaggering talk of Orlando and Rinaldo encourages the boys to behave in real life as though every fancied insult must be wiped out with blood. The boys certainly do fight—they can be seen fighting in the fish-market, one armed with a basket for his shield and another with a stick for his sword, his Durlindana. But boys fight, even in England, with no marionettes to inflame their imaginations, and sometimes they cut one another; still, no one would take too seriously the exclamation of that schoolmaster who, on being called to deal with some such incident, hurried from his study muttering:

"Knives, knives—dangerous weapons; would to heaven they had never been invented!"

What was he going to do at dinner-time? And if the marionettes are to be abolished, what is the Sicilian boy to do when it is time for him to sit down to his evening meal of romance? It is even possible that if he were starved of his marionettes he would more frequently substitute the dangerous weapon for the stick.

We see Sicilian life only in bits at a time and any bit we see may turn out on investigation to be only a bit of acting; and, whether real life or acting, we see it through the veil of romance which is held in front of it by their language and by their gestures, which cause their acting to appear more real—that is, which help it to be more deceptive. By their language I do not mean merely their words and their grammar—we also have a grammar, and our dictionary contains words as many and as expressive as theirs—the romance is rather in their attitude of mind and the consequent use they make of their words. I have read with disgust in an English newspaper an account of a squalid Pentonville murder which, as described in a contemporary Italian journal, appeared worthy to be set to music by Puccini. We are like the audience in Giovanni's theatre—dominated by the imposing romance of the language, and we prefer to be so dominated. Or we are like the audience in the teatrino at Palermo, when the buffo performs a miracle; as soon as we get behind "la mala vita" and see it as "the life of the criminal classes" we have caught a glimpse of how the illusion is worked.

By their gestures I mean something about which in England, in France and even in Northern Italy, nothing is known. It is true that we Northerners can and do communicate with one another in gesture, but in England we mostly omit gesture and use speech, while in France and Northern Italy the gesture is only slight. A Sicilian sometimes omits words, but if he omits gestures it is only by exercising great self-control. When he is talking naturally, every muscle of his body is at work helping him to express his meaning. It is as though he had not yet learnt to trust speech, everything must be acted too, as half-educated people have not yet learnt to trust the written word and if they read must read aloud. At a cinematograph show, when a letter or telegram or the title of the piece is shown on the screen, a murmur goes round the hall; it is the people reading the writing out loud to assure themselves of its meaning. So the talking Sicilian is telling everything twice, once with his voice and once with his gestures and there is so much oil in his backbone that there is nothing creaky, awkward or grudging in his movements; the gestures are made with an exuberance, an intensity and a natural unconscious beauty which seem to lift the matter above the plane of ordinary life. So habitual is this gesticulation that it is often useless. I have been behind the scenes in a marionette theatre, watching the man declaiming for the figures. His energy was tremendous, no wonder he drank out of a black bottle from time to time. I knew he was hidden from the audience and thought he might be suggesting movements for the marionettes to the man who was manipulating them, but that man could not see him either and was improvising the movements of the figures unaided.

The gesticulating Sicilian, however, is not more deeply moved by what he is describing than the phlegmatic Englishman is when he is quietly telling something. I have sometimes ventured to laugh at the Sicilian for his unnecessary vehemence, and he has stopped in the middle of it all and joined in the laughter. It would be extremely interesting to see Giovanni Grasso in the part of an English gentleman, a Wyndham or a Hawtrey part. I believe he would succeed because I believe he would succeed in anything he set his mind to do, but for him to reproduce an Englishman's tranquillity would be as much of an effort as it would be for an English actor to reproduce a Sicilian's mobility.

Their power of acting is not confined to those who are actors by profession; the love of improvising little scenes in daily life may be said to be characteristic of them. To suppose that they do this from a love of lying would be to simplify unduly; they have the artist's power of seeing a thing in two senses at once, and they assume that they will not be misunderstood, at all events, they are not going to give it all away by explaining, and if the stranger is taken in—well, as a rule, it does not very much signify. Just as omerta makes things difficult for the Sicilian police, so this love of acting makes things difficult for the foreign traveller. There is a story in the form of a dialogue between a foreigner in Palermo inquiring of a native about a tree that was clipped into a fantastic shape. It can hardly be given in English because it turns on the double meaning of "naturale," which means sometimes "natural" and sometimes "naturally," but if it be added that "scusi" = "excuse me"; "quest' albero" = "this tree"; "e" = "is"; "o" = "or," any reader will be able to understand it:

FOREIGNER: Scusi, Signore; quest' albero e artificiale o naturale?

PALERMITAN: Artificiale.

FOR: Oh, artificiale?

PAL: Naturale.

FOR: E naturale?

PAL: Artificiale.

FOR: (getting irritated): Scusi, Signore; quest' albero e artificiale o naturale?

PAL: Artificiale, naturale.

And then the foreigner goes home and writes a book about his travels, saying that the natives are so stupid they do not even know whether their trees are clipped into odd shapes by nature or art. But the apparently grave and courteous Palermitan knew what he was doing all the time and was enjoying it as a child enjoys committing a harmless piece of mischief.

If one were to pierce through it and understand them as they may be supposed to understand themselves, one would not necessarily be in a position to give an opinion about the mafia, for, besides those who speak of the growing confidence in the police, there are others who assert that the improvement, if any, is slight and only on the surface, and that the spirit of the mafia is not confined to the mala vita, but extends to the upper classes and influences even the administration of justice and the elections. When the natives differ on such a point, a mere foreigner can hardly decide; but I have more frequently heard the opinion expressed in favour of improvement. Certainly, in the Teatro Machiavelli, when murderers are taken by the police it is often done now with the approval of the audience, which they tell me would not have been the case some years back.

Before writing about the mala vita one ought at least to have seen a man murdered in the street. I have never seen this, nor have I ever even seen the body of a murdered man lying in the street. All that I know about the mala vita in Sicily has been gathered from conversation, books and plays. Lest it should be thought that in thus disclaiming practical knowledge of the subject I am inspired by omerta—as a traveller may shut his eyes to unpleasant incidents out of regard for his hosts—I will here collect together all the occasions when I have thought myself to be in the immediate neighbourhood of the mala vita.

At Castellinaria the barber who keeps the shop opposite the Albergo della Madonna—the shop in which Alfio Mascalucia was assistant—always seemed to me to be a man one would readily trust with all one's possessions. He must be now over forty, married and with a family. Peppino told me the other day that in his youth, meaning between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, this barber had been a notorious ricottaro and had often been in prison for crimes of various kinds. When I heard this, his extremely courteous manner reminded me of the Robin Hood side of the Cristiani, and of the oriental hospitality of the mafiosi towards strangers. I asked Peppino whether I ought to discontinue my custom. He said not unless I was dissatisfied with him as a barber. Then I realised that I must have forgotten where I was for the moment.

Carmelo and his brother Rosario at Castellinaria have both been in prison for attempting to murder, but they can neither of them be said ever to have belonged to the class of habitual criminals.

In the Teatro Machiavelli Peppino Fazio gave me as a ricordo one of the knives used by the mafiosi. The blade doubles on the handle, so that when open it is about twice as long as when shut; some are as long as twenty-four inches when open, mine is only eighteen. Being intended for the theatre, it has never been sharpened or pointed but, except for this it is a real mala vita knife. They told me there would be nothing to fear so long as I continued the life of blameless respectability which had no doubt become habitual to me—or some nonsense of that kind—but that if I should happen to be caught by the police in doubtful surroundings and searched, even this knife, in spite of its arrested adolescence, might get me into trouble.

"So you had better be careful," said one of them; "but if you do get put into prison, let us know and you shall be treated as well as any ricottaro. I will bring you a good dinner every day."

"Yes," said another, "and I will bring you cigarettes."

"And I," said a third, "will fetch your linen and bring it back to you nicely washed and ironed."

Whenever I show my knife to any of my English friends, for I am happy to say I got it safely home, they always exclaim that it is an entirely prosaic object. And so it is. It is as unromantic as an escape of gas.

Several times I have been in a theatre when the performance has been interrupted by a disturbance among the audience, but I have never seen it develop into a serious row.

Once in Palermo my bedroom looked over a small piazza, and one night I heard talking and looked out. I saw a crowd and distinguished a man disputing from below with another man on a balcony about fifteen feet from mine, and there was a woman in the room behind him. The dispute was all in dialect, but evidently they were very angry. Presently the man on the balcony drew a revolver, it shone in the doubtful light, and he threatened the man below; but nothing further happened and presently the crowd dispersed, the man on the balcony retired and all was quiet. Perhaps this was the prelude to a murder, and I may have read about it afterwards in the newspaper without knowing how near I had been to the crime.

There was one other occasion when I thought I was going to see something of the mala vita. On the cliff at Castellinaria are some remains of polygonal buildings which have been made a national monument. The custode's cabin is just below, in a sheltered place where Peppino and I sometimes go and sit after supper. One moonlight evening, it was rather late, but the lamp was still shining in the cabin and the custode was still hanging about, I heard someone approaching and, looking up, saw, against the sky, a sinewy, slight woman in a long black dress with a black shawl over her head. She was coming rapidly along the edge of the cliff with a shuffling, swaying motion, and as she came she was continually rearranging the shawl over her head and chattering volubly to herself in a hoarse, coarse, raucous voice. The custode glanced at her as she drew near and I thought he flinched. I do not know how I knew it, but I was sure she was his wife. She was beside herself with passion. She must have found out something—something about some other woman. I felt as I have felt at an Ibsen play—as though I were looking through the keyhole into a room where dirty linen was about to be washed. She shook and trembled all over like an express train approaching a country station. Reason told me that Peppino and I were safe, we were on the platform; nevertheless accidents do happen and there was the poor custode on the line. She drew up in front of us, and her draperies swirled round her with the suddenness of her stopping. She became silent and still, while she looked at me as though fixing my appearance on her brain for this life and the next; she looked at Peppino in the same way and at the custode. Then the chattering began again and the restless rearranging of her shawl over her head. Suddenly she turned, poured herself into the cabin and exploded. It was not as with an earthquake, for the walls were left standing and the roof and foundations were unshaken, and an earthquake, they say, seems to last for an eternity, whereas this woman seemed to take but a moment to complete her work of desolation. She pounced upon something among the debris and laughed hysterically as she hid it in her bosom.

The storm was over. She was transformed into a rather beautiful and extremely graceful woman of about thirty. She exchanged a few words of friendly chaff with her husband, smiled at Peppino and bowed to me as she passed out, went up the path against the moonlit sky and faded into the night.

All this was about a pack of cards. She had promised to lend the cards to a neighbour that evening; her husband was to have brought them home early in the day; he had forgotten to do so and she had come to fetch them. So there was no murder and no dirty linen, but the cabin had to be tidied.

What would this woman do had she the motive and the cue for passion that I had supposed for her? If her husband ever does entertain another lady in his cabin and his wife hears of it, I hope I may not be in the neighbourhood. But if I were to be there and to witness the crime, omerta would forbid me, as a good Sicilian, to say anything about it. I should have to forget the claims of justice and go to prison, if necessary, rather than give such information as might lead to the conviction of the person or persons guilty.

Lastly, there was the lady in the restaurant-car—but perhaps she ought not to be included in the list. Let her have the benefit of the doubt and a chapter to herself.



CASTELLINARIA

CHAPTER XV THE CARDINALESSA

One day, as I was travelling through the island by rail, I lunched in the restaurant-car and divided my attention between the colazione, the view and the other lunchers.

At the table in front of me sat three gentlemen; beyond them, at a separate table, sat a distinguished-looking lady, quietly but well dressed in foamy white musliny stuff, with a good deal of lace and a few touches of pale green. She had a lovely hat and a veil, which she wore in such a way that I thought how well she would look in a motor-car. She did not appear to be much over thirty, and she was alone except that she had a little dog, whom she fed from her plate and who was evidently very fond of her. She was not strictly beautiful, her face depended for its charm more on its expression than on the regularity of its features, but there was about her a certain indescribable combination of dignity and vivacity that was curiously attractive, and that soon attracted the three gentlemen, who, I presently became aware, had entered into conversation with her. Possibly they had asked the waiter to introduce them while I was looking out of the window. Certainly they cannot have met her before, because I heard them ask her her nationality, and she told them that her father was an Italian, a native of Rome, and that her mother was French. And where was she going? To some place whose name I did not catch. Then she must change at the junction. Yes, but there would be no difficulty because she was accustomed to travelling, she had travelled in China, India, Egypt and America. No doubt she was gifted by nature with that happy temperament which enables its possessor to make friends easily, and her extensive travels had provided opportunities for its cultivation. I supposed the three gentlemen to be accountants or advocates or perhaps engineers; but I thought from her manner that she would have been just as much at her ease if they had been carabinieri. I heard her tell them she was twenty-two; she must have been very young when she began her travels.

While the waiter was making out our bills, one of the gentlemen begged her to grant him a favour. She smiled in her frank open way as an encouragement to him to name it, and he declared that he should consider it an honour if she would permit him to pay for her luncheon. The lady accepted his generosity, and granted his request with a smile of such queenly condescension that I had a vision of great Elizabeth stepping upon Raleigh's cloak.

Presently this gentleman went and sat by himself at a table for two and the lady joined him. This appeared to me a little odd; he might just as well have sat at her table, or have invited her to sit at his with the other two gentlemen, there was room and it would have been less marked. But they seemed to prefer to start a little colony of their own, as it were, on neutral ground. The gentleman made another proposal: A glass of wine? With pleasure. So the waiter brought it, and then the lady accepted a cigarette.

At the junction the lady and the gentleman both got out, and I saw him help her into her train, which started first for the place whose name I had not caught. Then he got into his train, which was labelled "Castellinaria," and I went on without changing. A few days later, however, I returned to the junction, changed there and followed the accountant to Castellinaria, where I was going to see my friend Antonio, who happened to be engaged there on an engineering job. In the evening I told him about the lady in the restaurant-car. He laughed and said:

"But this lady is a particular friend of mine. She is often here, she returned two days ago and told me all this herself, only last night. If you would like to make her acquaintance I will take you to see her."

So we went to her hotel, which was not the Albergo della Madonna. She received us in her bedroom, for which she apologised charmingly—so charmingly as to make it appear the most natural thing in the world to be received by her in her bedroom. She remembered seeing me in the train, and begged me to sit down. She had a visitor—a gentleman. It was the gentleman who had paid for her luncheon in the restaurant-car. I was introduced, and he was, as I had supposed, an accountant. The lady was less elaborately clad than on the occasion of our previous meeting. Just as her other costume was precisely what it should have been for a restaurant-car, so this was precisely adapted to her present surroundings. She evidently understood dress. And very pretty it was to see her busying herself about the room, entertaining her guests and playing with her little dog. He was not the only little dog she had ever had. Her previous companion, who had been given her by a Neapolitan gentleman, died, and she wept for six weeks and was inconsolable until another friend gave her this one. She thought first of calling him Vesuvio, which was the name of his predecessor, but could not bring herself to do so. Then she had the inspiration to call him Etna, which suited him better, because he was a trifle bigger; it was also a kind of complimentary reference to her first love. While she told us this she was making coffee with a spirit lamp on the chest of drawers. She had a speciality for making coffee, and really it was quite drinkable.

She gave us the story of her life. She was the niece of a cardinal, in whose person were accumulated all the apostolic virtues, and her mother was a French lady of noble birth and almost incredible beauty, who, when Mary, or Mery as she prefers to write it, was about two months old, married the cardinal's coachman and had eleven more children. When one draws a conclusion from insufficient data, it is always satisfactory to discover, as one too seldom does, that one was right. I had been right about the gentleman being an accountant, and here I was right again in my surmise that the lady was exceptionally highly connected, so highly that one could overlook her mother's mesalliance with the coachman. Her uncle was only a bishop at the time of her birth, he became a cardinal soon after Mery's mother married the coachman, and then he forced the coachman to legitimise Mery, and in this way the coachman became Mery's legal father; and all this was part of a scheme to accelerate the ecclesiastical preferment of her uncle. Ah! but he was an ambitious man and aspired to the throne of S. Peter. His scheme failed, however, owing to the wicked intrigues of the Jesuits.

Parts of this might have borne, I do not say amplification, for it was quite long enough, but a word or two of elucidation. I have no doubt Mery would have been quite ready to explain everything, for she had nothing to conceal and the subject would have done as well as any other to display her feminine charm, but I did not interrupt, because I have observed that when a thorough woman of business undertakes to elucidate a point of law, she does it so much in the manner of Mrs. Nickleby that she not infrequently leaves it more obscure than she finds it. Mery did not expressly say she was a woman of business, she, in fact, disclaimed any such pretension, but she did it with a delightful mock modesty that forbade us to take her words literally.

No expense was spared over Mery's education. She was sent to a convent at Marseilles and the nuns were very kind to her, not because of her ecclesiastical connection, but because they were holy women with large and noble hearts. Before her education was completed, however, she was sent for to return home, and oh, what a home it was! Her mother's health had broken down because the cardinal beat her, her legal father drank instead of protecting his wife, the younger children were uncared-for and the elder children, though they were growing up, had not Mery's business capacity and powers of management. She put her shoulder to the wheel, did the marketing, the cooking and the cleaning; she washed and mended the children's clothes and saw to everything. She hated the life, but woman was born to suffer and she did her duty.

In time her next sister married a music-hall singer—I should say a dramatic artist. Mery, who was now entering upon the heyday of her youth and beauty, was naturally introduced to the friends of her sister's husband. Every man in the company fell in love with her; all the bachelors proposed, and without her natural firmness, reinforced by the teaching of the holy nuns, she could scarcely have escaped matrimony. There was another thing that helped to save her—she was waiting for her anima gemella. I may here say that her anima gemella has not yet crossed her path and that her real age is twenty-seven. She told us this in confidence and it is not to go any further. For people in restaurant-cars she is any age she thinks proper at the moment, they do not matter, but she will never deceive her friends.

Her sister's husband was a man of real insight; he divined that Mery was a heaven-inspired dancer, and devoted himself to the development of her genius. She did not say he had taught her to dance; she said he encouraged and developed her natural genius for dancing. She made her debut with a success which the newspapers declared to be even more "phenomenal" than that which attends the debut of every artist. Engagements followed, and soon she was dancing practically all over the globe, creating a furore wherever she went and leaving the younger children's socks to wash and darn themselves. Her mother was too ill and her legal father too drunk to know what she was doing or where she was doing it, but His Eminence heard and was so much scandalised that when she danced into the Eternal City the doors of the Vatican were closed to her. Cardinals are delightful men, most of them—and Mery knows because she is on terms of intimacy with every member of the College—but too frequently they have a fault; they do not understand the artistic temperament. Nevertheless, if her uncle could have heard the cheers that greeted her in Shanghai and New York, and the encores that called her back in Cairo and Calcutta, if he could have seen the flowers that choked the wheels of her carriage in St. Petersburg and the diamonds that were showered upon her in Brazil, even his commonplace heart must have been moved.

She did not dance for us because, it seems, they do not dance when they are resting, which was perhaps the psychological reason, but there was also a geographical reason in the want of space, for the room was small and contained, besides Mery and Etna in one arm-chair, another arm-chair and two ordinary chairs occupied by her visitors; also there was the chest of drawers on which she had made the coffee and all such other articles of furniture as one usually sees in a hotel bedroom, including two beds. The extra bed was there because Mery was, she confessed it, of luxurious habits and in the hot weather liked to be able to change and finish the night in a cool bed.

Here there came a pause, not that she was exhausted, but something had happened about the little dog, who required attention. When Etna's business had been settled I thought it might be tactful if I suspended the inconvenience, as they say, so I asked Antonio whether we ought not to go and we begged leave to retire. She wished us good night in her frank, open way, thanked me for my visit, inquired how long I was staying in the town and concluded with the hope that I would call again, she never went out, so I should be sure to find her at any time. It should not be Addio, it should be Arrivederci.

There are few places where I am more at home than I am in Castellinaria, but as I had come there this time expressly to see Antonio he considered it his duty to look after me; he was engaged next day, however, so he deputed two of his friends to amuse me, and they invited me to come for a drive to the lighthouse. On the way, one of them said:

"And so Antonio took you yesterday to pass an intellectual evening with the cardinalessa."

"Yes," I replied. "What a charming woman and what a strange life!"

They agreed, somewhat coldly as it seemed to me, and they rather markedly refrained from developing the subject I had offered them; but they proposed a counter subject. In a few days it would be Mery's onomastico and they were going to send flowers. I should be in Palermo, would not I send her a message on a picture post-card? Of course I would. So between us we composed it:—