And then this giant made the mistake of losing his temper, and the further mistake of showing that he had lost it, and when giants do this, it means that they know they are in the wrong and don't care. He insulted Michele most grossly, and the knight very properly drew his sword and went for him, and a terrible battle ensued throughout which realism was thrown to the waves. The combatants rose off the ground so high that Michele's head and the giant's head and shoulders were frequently lost in the clouds; and they clanked down again upon the sandy shore two or three feet in front of where they had stood—or behind, just as it happened; and their swords banged against their breast-plates and shields, proving that they were real metal and not merely tinsel; and they twirled round and round like beef on a roasting-jack, until at last Michele dealt the inevitable blow and the giant fell dead on the sand with a thud that jolted the coast, shook the islands, rippled across the sunset sky and restored animation to the lifeless form of the princess.

While the battle raged she had been standing by, unmoved, blankly glaring at the audience; and yet she must have known as well as we did that it was all about her. The probability is that her operator had temporarily moored her to a convenient peg in the back of the clouds while he worked the giant, and that at the conclusion of the duel he was free to return to her. She first looked round and then swooped hurriedly across the stage, three inches from the ground; before quite touching her protector, however, she swung halfway back again, then a little forwards, and finally, coming to anchor at a suitable distance, raised her two hands and, as though offering him a tray of refreshments, said—

"Grazie."

He, pursuing his policy of frigid politeness, bowed in acknowledgment and followed her off the stage, leaving the corpse of the giant lying near the sea.

The back cloth was intentionally too long, so that the bottom was crumpled into folds which did well enough for little waves breaking on the shore. These waves now began to be agitated, and gradually rose gustily and advanced until they had covered the dead giant. It was a very good effect and avoided the banality of removing the body in sight of the audience; it looked as though the wind had risen and the depths had swallowed him. And this, as I afterwards was told, is what happens to the giant's body in the story.

When the back cloth went up for the next scene the corpse was gone, and we were in The House of the Poor Man where Michele came to take refuge—from what I did not clearly understand, but if from the Princess of Bizerta he would have been better advised had he sought some other sanctuary; for no sooner had he performed his usual meditation and soliloquy and got himself to sit down on The Poor Man's chair, where he instantly fell asleep with his head resting on his hand, than Her Highness entered and, addressing the audience confidentially, said that she loved him and intended to take this opportunity of giving him a kiss. She was, however, on the other side of the stage and had first to get to him, which she did so like a bird with a broken wing that he woke up before she reached him. She evidently did not consider that this added to her difficulties, but something else did.

A dispute had been simmering in the gallery just opposite where we sat, and now began to boil over, and threatened to swamp the play as the waves had submerged the Arabian giant. I thought perhaps we ought to leave, though it would have been impossible to pass out quickly, but the professor again assured me there was no danger; the management are accustomed to disturbances and know how to deal with them. So I sat still, and the proprietor came on the stage and stood in front of the gas-jets. He joined his hands as though in prayer and begged us to be quiet, saying that it was a complicated story and would require all our attention, that Michele would die on Wednesday, and he hoped we should not cause the speaker to die of starvation before that day by preventing him from earning his bread. The appearance of the proprietor among his puppets confirmed me in the conclusion I had arrived at as to their size; he may have been a small man, but he was about the size of the giant. He must have been a strong man, for, with all their armour, the figures must be very heavy.

The proprietor's appeal went to all our hearts; silence was restored and the princess repeated to the warrior what we already knew—that she loved him and desired to kiss him. Something of the kind was exactly what poor Michele had been dreading. He turned to her and, almost choking with despair, said, "Misericordia," not meaning to be hostile, but that the killing of her giant had already delayed him, and if he were to allow himself to yield to her blandishments he would be too late for the Saracens. No doubt he also had a vow. But when a lady has made up her mind on a matter of this kind, to thwart her is to invite disaster—think of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Not that Michele thought of them, nor would it have influenced him if he had, for he was a paladin and incapable of fear; but he had the instincts of a gentleman, so, in spite of his anxiety to be off to the wars, he rose as well as he could, which was unsteadily, and staggered towards the princess who made every effort to meet him. In time they drew close enough to fall into one another's arms, and the curtain descended as they were accomplishing not a passionate but a quite creditable embrace.

Then there was a scene between three kings with golden crowns who conversed at length of battles and the King of Athens, of Adrianopoli and the Grand Turk, of princesses and of journeys by sea and land. These were the things they spoke about as they stood together in the hall that had served for the first scene with a vista of columns behind, and when they had done they followed one another off. Then we also followed one another out of the theatre, not because of the Saracens, nor because we had any vow, nor because we feared a repetition of the uproar, nor even because of the coming-on disposition of the Princess of Bizerta, but because one open window was not enough.



TRAPANI

CHAPTER VI—FERRAU AND ANGELICA

My next experience in a marionette theatre was at Trapani. I approached the subject with Mario, a coachman whom I have known since he was a boy. He was quite ready to help me, and told me there were two companies in the town, one of large puppets, about as high as my umbrella, the others, to which he went every evening, being rather smaller. Accordingly, at about a quarter to eight, he called for me, wrapped in his melodramatic cloak, and hurried me through the wet and windy streets to the teatrino. He kept me on his right hand because he was the host and I the guest, and if, owing to obstructions, he found me accidentally on his left he was round in a moment and I was in the place of honour again. He insisted on paying for our seats, fifteen centimes each, and we went in.

This teatrino was in every way a much smaller place than that in Catania; it belonged to a private gentleman who had bought the puppets for his own amusement and spent much of his time among them, sometimes working them himself. He has since married and parted with them and the theatre is now (1908) closed. No complaint could be made about the seating arrangements or the ventilation. There were benches on the floor with a passage down the middle, a few rows in front were reserved for boys at ten centimes each and at the other end of the hall was a small gallery for ladies, twenty centimes each. I asked Mario so many questions that he proposed we should go behind the scenes, which was exactly what I wanted. He spoke to one of the authorities, who was politeness itself and, showing us through a door and up three steps, introduced us behind the curtain. Our heads were high above the opening of the proscenium, which was about the size and shape of the opening of the fireplace in a fairly large room. We were in a grove of puppets hanging up against the walls like turkeys in a poulterer's shop at Christmas—scores and scores of them. There were six or eight men preparing for the performance and a youth, Pasquale, took charge of us and pointed out the principal figures.

"This warrior," he said, "is Ferrau di Spagna."

He was in tin armour, carefully made and enriched with brass and copper ornamentation, all as bright as a biscuit-box. I said—

"He looks a very terrible fellow. Why is he so red about the eyes?" for the whites of his eyes were redder than his cheeks.

"Because he is always in a rage. And this lady is Angelica, Empress of Cathay; she wears a crown and will die this evening. This is her husband, Medoro; he is a black man and wears a crown; he will perish to-night by the sword of Ferrau."

I rapidly constructed by anticipation the familiar plot. The jealous husband would kill his erring wife and would then be killed by her lover; but, being unversed in the habits of Cathaian emperors and their entourage, I had run off the track. Pasquale put me straight.

"Prima Ferrau uccide Medoro." (Ferrau first kills Medoro.)

"And then kills Angelica?" I inquired.

"No. Angelica si uccide personalmente, so as not to marry Ferrau."

I was next introduced to Galafrone, the father of Angelica, who also wore a crown, and to two valorous knights, Sacripante, King of the Circassians, and the Duca d'Avilla.

There were more than two hundred marionettes altogether, including Turkish and Spanish soldiers. The knights and ladies were kept in green holland bags to preserve them from the dust, and taken out as they were wanted. They varied in height from twenty-four to thirty-two inches. Ferrau was thirty-one and a half inches from the soles of his feet to the top of his helmet; Angelica was twenty-six and a half inches; ordinary Turks and Spanish soldiers were only twenty-four inches each.

Pasquale was very proud of Ferrau who really was magnificent. He was made of wood with loose joints. An iron rod went through his head, and was hooked into a ring between his collar-bones. Another rod was fastened to his right wrist. There were three strings—one for his left hand, which held his shield, one to raise his vizor and one which passed through his right fist and across his body to his sword-hilt so that he could draw his sword. I should have liked to buy him and bring him to London with me; he would be an ornament to any house. But he was not for sale; and, besides, it would not have been right to break up the company. When Don Quixote, carried away by his feelings like a Sicilian facchino, came to the assistance of Don Gayferos by drawing his sword and attacking the Moorish puppets, he broke up Master Peter's company in a very literal sense, and had to pay four and a half reals for King Marsilio of Saragossa and five and a quarter for the Emperor Carlo Magno; but it is not clear how large or how splendid they were.

Each figure requires one operator who stands between the wings, which are about up to his waist and so solid that he can lean his elbows on them and reach comfortably more than halfway across the stage. There are four openings between the wings, and thus there can be eight puppets on the stage at once, operated by eight manipulators, four on each side. This could not be done with the life-sized marionettes in Catania, which were all operated from behind, and never came forward. At Trapani the stage was much deeper in proportion, and the flies from which the scenery descended were high above the heads of the operators, so that the figures could walk about backwards and forwards all over the stage. The footlights were in the usual place in front of the curtain, and during the performance boys got up from their seats in the front row and lighted their cigarettes at them.

I had not nearly completed my investigations; but, fearing we might be in the way, we returned to the front and inquired about play-bills. There was only one in the house, posted up near the box-office; we went and inspected it—

TEATRO DI MARIONETTE.

Per questa sera dara 2 recite la prima alle 5.5 la seconda alle 8 Pugna fra Sacripante e il Duca d'Avilla— Ferrau uccide Medoro e acquista Angelica— Morte di Sacripante per mani di Ferrau— Morte di Angelica.

MARIONETTE THEATRE.

This evening two performances will be given The first at 5.30, the second at 8 Fight between Sacripante and the Duke of Avilla— Ferrau kills Medoro and gains possession of Angelica— Death of Sacripante at the hands of Ferrau— Death of Angelica.

There was a pleasant-looking, retiring young man in the box-office, who was pointed out to me as "Lui che parla"—the one who speaks. They said he was a native of Mount Eryx and a shoemaker by trade.

We returned to our places and sat talking, smoking, eating American pea-nuts and waiting. The audience, which consisted of men of the class of life to which Mario belonged, all knew one another; most of them met there every evening. A subscription for one month costs three lire and entitles the holder to one performance a day, the performance at 8 being a repetition of that at 5.30.

The play now being performed is The Paladins of France; it was written by Manzanares in Italian prose and is in three volumes. It does not always agree with the other versions of the same story; but that is only as it should be, for romances have always been re-written to suit the audience they are intended for. It has been going on about four months, that is, since last October, when it began with Pipino, Re di Francia ed Imperatore di Roma, the father of Carlo Magno, and it will continue day after day till May, like the feuilleton in a journal. During the hot weather there is no performance in this theatre; but the same story will be taken up again next October and is long enough to last through two winters. It could last longer, but they bring it within reasonable limits by removing some of the boredom. It concludes with the defeat and death of Orlando and the paladins at Roncisvalle.

The portion of the story appointed for the evening's performance was in five acts, divided into a large number of very short scenes, and if I did not always know quite clearly what was going on, that was partly due to the distracting uproar, for nearly every scene contained a fight, and some contained several, the shortest lasting well over a minute. Whoever had been employed to shorten the story would have earned the thanks of one member of the audience if he had acted upon Pococurante's remarks to Candide about the works of Homer. He ought not to have left in so many combats; they were as like one another and as tedious as those in the Iliad, besides being much noisier, at least we are not told that the Homeric heroes were accompanied by a muscular pianist, fully armed, and by the incessant stamping of clogged boots. Nevertheless the majority of the audience enjoyed the fights, for no Sicilian objects to noise.

This is what I gathered: Angelica had come from far Cathay with the express intention of sowing discord among the paladins by inducing them to fall in love with her, and at the present moment Sacripante and the Duca d'Avilla were her victims. These two knights met in a wood, raised their vizors and talked matters over; there was to be a fight about it, of course, but the preliminaries were to be conducted in a friendly spirit—like a test case in Chancery. They separated, no doubt to give them an opportunity of going home to make their wills and take leave of their wives and families, if any. In the second scene they met again, lowered their vizors, drew their swords and fought till Angelica supervened. In the next scene the two knights and Angelica were joined by Medoro with whom one of the knights fought. I recognized Medoro when his vizor was up because he was a black man, but Sacripante and the Duca d'Avilla were so much alike that I did not know which was fighting and which was standing with Angelica looking on; say it was Sacripante that was fighting, being king of the Circassians he was probably entitled to precedence over a mere duke. Angelica, after some time, began to feel qualms of conscience, so she interrupted and mentioned who Medoro really was. Sacripante, in the most chivalrous manner, immediately desisted and apologized—he had failed to recognize his opponent and had no idea he had been fighting with the lady's husband. The apology was accepted in the spirit in which it was offered, all accusations, expressed or implied, were withdrawn, and friendly relations established. The four then set out together to pass the night in an albergo. Angelica, however, with her quick, womanly instinct, mistrusted the knights and, taking her husband aside, proposed that they two should depart by stealth and escape to Cathay, leaving Sacripante and the Duca d'Avilla asleep. Medoro demurred, saying it was a very good inn and he was quite comfortable where he was. So she told him a few facts which alarmed him to such a degree that he consented and they decamped.

On their way they encountered Ferrau who entered with a stamp of the foot, sforzando, attacked Medoro and killed him dead, thus obtaining possession of Angelica according to the play-bill. But she managed to get free and appeared upon the coast where she met a sea-captain and, telling him she was very rich, made terms with him, bought his vessel and embarked for the Court of her father, Galafrone. She might have made better terms had she not opened negotiations by telling him she was very rich, but it was a matter of life or death and she was reckless, knowing that Ferrau was after her. Sacripante and the Duca d'Avilla were after Ferrau and presently caught him up and attacked him. He fought with them both at once and killed one of them in a minute and a half. With the exception of myself, every one in the theatre knew which he killed, for they knew all the knights as they came on. Let us again give Sacripante the precedence and suppose that he was killed first. Ferrau went on fighting with the Duca d'Avilla and both were hard at work when the curtain fell.

It rose again, very effectively, on the continuation of the fight, and almost at once Ferrau cut off the Duca d'Avilla's head which rolled about on the stage. Immediately there came three Turks; Ferrau stabbed each as he entered—one, two, three—and their bodies encumbered the ground as the curtain fell.

It rose as soon as the bodies had been removed and disclosed Ferrau stamping about alone. There came three more Turks; he stabbed them each as they entered—one, two, three—and their bodies encumbered the ground. Then there came three knights in armour; Ferrau fought them all three together for a very considerable time and it was deafening. He killed them all and their bodies encumbered the ground with those of the last three Turks. It was a bloody sight that met the eyes of Galafrone who now entered.

The curtain fell, while Galafrone had the corpses cleared away, and rose again on the same scene which was the ante-chamber of Angelica's bedroom—for somehow we were now in her father's dominions, and it was she who had sent the knights and the Turks to kill Ferrau before he could approach her. Then there was an interview between Ferrau and Galafrone on the subject of Angelica. The knight, having made her a widow, now wished to make her his wife, the king saw no objection and promised to use his influence with his daughter.

The scene changed to Angelica's bedroom; her bed was at the far end of the stage with a patchwork quilt over it, but there was no other furniture in the room except a sofa near the front. Her father brought her in and I, knowing that she was to kill herself personally and that this must be her last entry, examined her closely and detected a string passing through her right hand and ending in the hilt of a dagger ostentatiously concealed in her bosom. Of course I knew what that meant. Her father, true to his promise, began to urge Ferrau's suit, saying that he had forgiven him for having killed Medoro. But Angelica had not forgiven him, and moreover she hated Ferrau with his bloodshot eyes and his explosive manners. She made a long speech, admirably delivered by the cobbler and as full of noble sentiments as a poem by Mrs. Browning, then, suddenly drawing her dagger with the string, she stabbed herself and fell dead on the couch, exclaiming—

"A rivederci."

It was an extremely neat suicide and her father concluded the entertainment by weeping over her body.

These marionettes were not nearly so comic in their movements as the life-sized ones in Catania, not because they were better managed, but because they attempted less and because, being so small, their defects were less obvious. A small one may, and generally does, enter like a bird alighting on a molehill, but he has such a short distance to go that he is at rest before one realizes that he has not attempted to walk. Besides it is a mode of progression we are all familiar with, having practised it in dreams since childhood. A life-sized marionette, on a larger stage, has, perhaps, two or three yards to traverse; he tries to take steps and is easily caught tripping, for without strings to his feet his steps can only be done in a haphazard way. There are marionettes with strings to their feet, and though they may do The Story of the Paladins, this is not their usual business, they are more elaborately articulated, and are intended for operas, ballets and other complicated things.

And then, again, in Catania a glimpse of the hand of an operator or of some one standing in the wings offended at once as a blot on the performance. But looking at the small figures at Trapani one accepted them almost immediately as men and women, and forgot all about absolute size, so that when the hand of an operator appeared and it was larger than the head of a marionette, it seemed to belong to another world, while a real man standing in the wings could not be seen above his knees, and it required a mental effort to connect his boots and trousers in any way with the performance.

The speaker at Catania did well with a good voice; nevertheless one felt that disaster was in the neighbourhood and was being consciously avoided. The idea of failure never crossed the mind of the cobbler from Mount Eryx. His voice was rich and flexible, full of variety and quick to express a thousand emotions. Listening to it was like looking long and long into a piece of Sicilian amber in whose infinite depth, as you turn it about in the sunlight, you see all the colours of the rainbow, from red, through orange, yellow, green and blue, even to a glowing purple. There was nothing he could not do with it, and he managed it with the quiet dignity and easy grace of a young lion at play.



CHAPTER VII—THE DEATH OF BRADAMANTE

Before the last act, which concluded with the death of Angelica, a dwarf had appeared in front of the curtain (not a human dwarf, but a marionette dwarf) and recited the programme for the following day, stating that the performance would terminate with the death of Ferrau. Unfortunately I was not able to witness his end, but I went to the teatrino the evening after. We arrived early and began by inspecting the programme—

Carlo ottiene piena vittoria contro Marsilio— Fuga di costui e presa di Barcelona— Marfisa trova Bradamante che more fra le sue braccia.

Charles obtains complete victory over Marsilio— Flight of the latter and taking of Barcelona— Marfisa finds Bradamante who dies in her arms.

We then went behind the scenes to spend some time among the puppets before the play began. First I inquired whether Ferrau had perished and ascertained that Orlando had duly killed him the night before with la Durlindana. This famous sword was won by Carlo Magno in his youth when he overcame Polinoro, the captain-general of Bramante, King of Africa. Carlo Magno, having another sword of his own and wishing to keep la Durlindana in the family, passed it on to his nephew Orlando. That is Pasquale's version. Others say that it was given to Orlando by Malagigi the magician. The most usual account is that la Durlindana belonged to Hector. After the fall of Troy it came to AEneas; and from him, through various owners, to Almonte, a giant of a dreadful stature, who slew Orlando's father. An angel in a dream directed Orlando, when he was about eighteen, to proceed to a river on the bank of which he found Carlo Magno and Almonte fighting. He took his uncle's part, avenged his father's death by killing Almonte, threw his gigantic body into the stream and appropriated his enchanted possessions, namely, his horse, Brigliadoro, his horn, his sword and his armour. He had the sword with him when he was defeated at Roncisvalle and threw it from him, about two hundred miles, to Rocamadour in France where it stuck in a rock and any one can see it to this day.

I do not remember that Homer speaks of Hector's sword as la Durlindana; perhaps he did not know. But every one knows that horses have had names, both in romance and real life, from the days of Pegasus to our own. Mario calls his horses Gaspare, after one of the Three Kings, and Toto, which is a form of Salvatore. They were so called before he bought them, or he would have named them Baiardo and Brigliadoro. Having no sword, he calls his whip la Durlindana. He assured me that the barber whom he employs calls all his razors by the names of the swords of the paladins, and that the shoe-blacks give similar names to their brushes.

If Pasquale's statements were at variance with other poetical versions of the story, they were, as might be expected, still more so with the prose authorities. In the books, Carlo Magno was born sometimes in the castle of Saltzburg, in Bavaria, and sometimes at Aix-la-Chapelle; which may be good history, but could not well be represented by the marionettes without a double stage, and even then might fail to convince. The Carlo Magno of romance, son of Pipino, King of France, and Berta, his wife, was not born until many years after the wedding; for Berta had enemies at the French Court who spirited her away immediately after the ceremony, substituting her waiting-maid, Elisetta, who was so like her that Pipino did not notice the difference. Elisetta became the mother of the wicked bastards Lanfroi and Olderigi, while Berta lived in retirement in the cottage of a hunter on the banks of the Magno, a river about five leagues from Paris. Pipino lost himself while out hunting one day, took refuge in the cottage, saw Berta, did not recognize his lawful, wedded wife and fell in love with her over again. Carlo Magno was born in due course in the cottage, and his second name was given to him, not for the prosaic reason that it means the Great, but because it is the name of the river. The bastards afterwards murder their father, which is a warning to any bridegroom among the audience to be careful not to mistake another lady for his bride upon the wedding night. And thus Romance becomes the handmaid of Morality.

Carlo Magno is now on the throne. I was presented to him, and found him in mourning for a nephew who had been killed a few evenings before and whose corpse was still hanging on a neighbouring peg, waiting for the slight alteration necessary to turn him into some one else. All the paladins who had recently lost relations were in mourning and wore long pieces of crape trailing from their helmets. Pasquale took me round, told me who they all were and explained their genealogies.

I was in a hades peopled with the ghosts of Handel's operas. I saw Orlando himself and his cousins "Les quatre fils Aymon," namely Rinaldo da Montalbano, Guicciardo, Alardo, and Ricciardetto. I saw their father, whose name in Italian is Amone, and their sister Bradamante, the widow of Ruggiero da Risa, and her sister-in-law, the Empress Marfisa, Ruggiero's sister. These two ladies were in armour, showing their legs, and in all respects like the men warriors, except that they wore their hair long.

"Bradamante will die this evening," said Pasquale.

I expressed regret, and asked for particulars.

"She will die of grief for the loss of her husband, Ruggiero da Risa, who has been killed by the treachery of Conte Gano."

Then I saw my fellow-countryman, Astolfo d'Inghilterra; he it was that brought back from the moon the lost wits of Orlando when he became furioso because Angelica would have nothing to say to him and married Medoro. And I saw Astolfo's father, Ottone d'Inghilterra, and Il Re Desiderio and Gandellino, who seemed undersized; but when I said so, Pasquale replied—

"Si, e piccolo, ma e bello—stupendo," and so he was.

I took down one of the knights, stood him on the floor and tried to work him. The number of things I had to hold at once puzzled me a good deal, especially the strings. Pasquale took another knight and gave me a lesson, showing me how to make him weep and meditate, how to raise and lower his vizor, how to draw his sword and fight. It was very difficult to get him to put his sword back into the scabbard. I could not do it at all, though I managed the other things after a fashion.

Then I saw the Marchese Oliviero di Allemagna and Uggiero Danese and Turpino, a priest, but a warrior nevertheless.

"This," said Pasquale, "is Guidon Selvaggio, and this is his sister Carmida. They are the children of Rinaldo."

"But spurious," interrupted another youth.

"Yes," agreed Pasquale; "they are bastards. Shall I tell you how?"

But I declined to rake up the family scandal and we passed on to Carmida's husband, Cladinoro, Re di Bizerta, a spurious son of the old Ruggiero da Risa, and so valorous that they speak of La Forza di Cladinoro.

All these knights and ladies were hanging on one side of the stage in two rows, one row against the wall and the other in front. I asked Pasquale how he knew which was which. He concealed his astonishment at such a simple question and replied—

"By the crests on their helmets."

I then observed that they all wore their proper crests, a lion or an eagle, or a castle, or whatever it might be; Ferrau had no crest, but he had a special kind of helmet, and these boys knew them all in the legitimate way by their armorial bearings, and that was how, on the evening of Angelica's death, the audience knew all the knights and said their names as they entered.

On the other side of the stage were two rows of pagans who in this hades, where the odium theologicum persists, are not admitted among Christians. Here hung Il Re Marsilio di Spagna, who was to be defeated this evening, and his two brothers, Bulugante and Falserone, his son the Infanta di Spagna, his nephew Ferrau, now dead, and Grandonio. Then I came upon a miscellaneous collection and could look at no more knights or ladies after I had found the devil.

He was not The Devil, he was only "un diavolo qualunque," but he was fascinating, and he had horns and a tail—Pasquale and the other youths showed me his tail very particularly and laughed at him cruelly for having one. But it was not his fault, poor devil, that he had a tail: except for the wear and tear of his tempestuous youth he was as he had left the hands of his maker.

There was also a skeleton; they made him dance for me and said that he is used to appear to any one about to die; but this cannot apply to the warriors, for they fight and die freely, and put whole families into mourning nightly, and if the skeleton appeared to them every time, a new one would be wanted once a month.

And there was "un gigante qualunque"—the raw material for a giant, something that could be faked up into this or that special giant when wanted. Similarly there was a lady having her dress and wig altered, they told me she was "una donna qualunque"—the very words I had seen a few weeks previously written up in Rome to advertise a performance in Italian of A Woman of no Importance. I suspect there must have been somewhere "un guerriero qualunque" so constructed that his head could be cut off, and that he had been disguised as and substituted for the Duca d'Avilla when Ferrau appeared to kill that warrior, for, without trickery, no sword in the teatrino, not even la Durlindana, could have cut off a head which had an iron rod running through it.

There was a confused heap of Turks and Spanish soldiers lying in a corner, and at the back of the stage, between the farthest scene and the wall of the theatre, was the stable containing seven war horses and one centaur. Pasquale told me that the centaur was "un animale selvaggio" which I knew, but he did not tell me what part he took in the play. One of the horses, of course, was Baiardo, the special horse of Rinaldo. Baiardo is still living in the forest of Ardennes, he formerly belonged to Amadis de Gaul and was found in a grotto by Malagigi when he found Rinaldo's sword, Fusberta, which used to belong to the King of Cyprus.

It appeared to me time to go to the front, but Pasquale said that this evening I might stay behind during the performance if I liked and I accepted his invitation, for I had a toy theatre of my own once and used to do The Miller and His Men with an explosion at the end; it had to be at the end, not only as a bonne-bouche, but also because my audience, not being composed of Sicilian facchini, were driven out of the room by its effects. Smokeless explosions may be possible now, but we did not then know how to do any better. I would have given much—even the explosion—if I could have had a teatrino and real marionettes of my own, as one of my Sicilian friends had when he was a boy; he dressed his own dolls and made his own scenery, and used to do the Odyssey—a first-rate subject that could easily be made to last two winters.

I was so much interested that I may have paid less attention this evening to the story than to the working of the puppets. The rods that pass through their heads have wooden handles and end in hooks; across the stage, pretty high up, were laid two horizontal laths with six or seven chains hanging from them; when the paladins appeared, marching in one after another and taking up their positions in two rows, as they frequently did, what really happened was that an operator on one side reached across and handed them over one by one to an operator on the other side, who hooked them up into the chains, choosing the link according to the height of the particular puppet in such a way that, if possible, its feet just rested upon the stage. After three or four had been hooked up, the first operator could hang up the rest, and as soon as the two rows were in their places Carlo Magno entered in front and addressed them in a majestic voice. During the pauses of his speech and at its conclusion the paladins all murmured in agreement or shouted "Evviva" which was done by us who were behind and, as there were thirteen of us, it ought to have sounded fairly imposing. Three of the thirteen were regular operators, pretty constantly employed, who took off their coats, waistcoats and shirts, and found it very hot work; of the remainder some were authorized assistants, some were friends and one was the reader—"Lui che parla."

The siege of Marsilio's city was managed in this way. First a scene was let down as far back as possible on the stage. This, Pasquale said, represented "una citta qualunque." The collection of little wooden houses on Captain Shandy's bowling-green was not a more perfect Proteus of a town than Pasquale's back cloth. This evening it was Barcelona. In front of it, about halfway to the footlights, was a low wall of fortifications. Just behind the fortifications the Spaniards were hooked up into rather high links of the chains, so that, from the front, they appeared to be looking over the wall and defending the city. Carlo Magno and his paladins brought ladders, scaled the wall, fought the Spaniards and effected an entrance. The fights were mostly duels. At one time there were three duels; that is, six knights were all fighting at once, three on each side. The places on the stage occupied by the front pair were worn into hollows by their feet. The damage sustained by the figures in the fury of the combats is very great; their armour gets broken, their draperies torn, their joints and the hinges of their vizors are put out of order and there is much to be done to them before they can appear again.

For the conclusion we came to the front and took our places as the curtain drew up on a wood. The Empress Marfisa entered in all her bravery, riding cross-legged on her charger and looking round, first this way, then that. She was searching the wood for Bradamante who had retired from the world to "una grotta oscura" to die of grief. The empress looked about and rode here and there but could see Bradamante nowhere, so she rode away to search another part of the wood and the scene changed. We were now in the obscure grotto and here came Marfisa, riding on her charger and looking about; she could see her sister-in-law nowhere and was overcome with anxiety. Presently, in the dim light, she spied something on the ground; she dismounted, went far into the cave, and—could it be?—yes, it was the unconscious form of Bradamante. She knelt down by her, embraced her and called her by her name, but there was no reply. She kissed her and called "Bradamante," still there was no reply. She fondled her, and called her her "dolce cognata,"—her sweet sister-in-law—and at length Bradamante raised herself with an effort, recognized Marfisa and saying, "Farewell, sister, I am dying," fell back and expired. An angel fluttered down, received her soul from her lips and carried it up to heaven, while Marfisa wept over her body.

Then the dwarf came on and recited the programme for the next evening. This was, as usual, followed by the last scene. The paladins all marched in—that is to say, they were handed over and hooked up in two rows, the audience recognizing each, and saying his name as he took his place, and Carlo Magna came and addressed them in a magnificent speech beginning—

"Paladini! noi siamo stanchi."

Their fatigue was caused by their exertions at the siege of Barcelona and their Emperor went on to promise them some repose before proceeding against Madrid.

This epilogue struck me as out of place; nothing ought to have followed the death of Bradamante, which was as affecting a scene as I have ever witnessed. The only hitch occurred when Marfisa dismounted; her left foot came to the ground capitally, but her right would not come over her saddle for some time; she got it free at last, however, and stood upright on both feet. I thought again of Master Peter's puppet-show and of how the petticoat of the peerless Lady Melisendra caught in one of the iron rails as she was letting herself down from the balcony, so that she hung dangling in midair, and Don Gayferos had to bring her to the ground by main force.

The rest of the scene in the grotto could not have gone better and the audience were enthralled by it. Yet what was it after all? Nothing but a couple of loosely jointed wooden dolls, fantastically dressed up in tin armour, being pulled about on a toy stage. Yet there was something more; there was the voice of the reader—the voice of "Lui che parla." In the earlier part of the evening he had been giving us fine declamation, which was all that had been required. The meeting between the two princesses brought him his opportunity and he attacked the scene and carried it through in a spirit of simple conviction, his voice throbbing with emotion as he made for himself a triumph.

Art abounds in miracles, and not the least is this, that a man can take a few watery commonplaces and by the magic of his voice transmute them into the golden wine of romance. The audience drank in the glowing drops that poured from his lips, and were stilled to a silence that broke in a great sob as the curtain fell. What did they know of loosely jointed wooden dolls or of toy stages? They were no longer in the theatre. They had wandered the woods with Marfisa, they had sought Bradamante in the leafy glades, they had found her dying in the grotto, they had received her last breath and the world would never be the same to them again. A voice that can do this is rare and, like the power of a giant, rarely found in the possession of one who knows how to use it worthily.



MOUNT ERYX

CHAPTER VIII—MONTE SAN GIULIANO

Three or four miles inland from Trapani, at the north-west corner of Sicily, rises a precipitous solitary mountain, nearly 2500 feet high, with a town on the top. A motor bus makes a circuit of the mountain, taking one up to the town in about an hour. It proceeds inland, past the church of the Annunziata, the famous shrine of the Madonna di Trapani, and the ascent soon begins. As one looks back towards the sea, Trapani gradually assumes the form that gave it its Greek name of Drepanum, for it juts out towards the island of Levanzo like a sickle "with the sea roaring all round it." Marsala is usually visible beyond the innumerable salt pans and windmills. One of these windmills is especially pleasing; it consists of five or six dummy ships with real sails on a pond; these ships form, as it were, the rim of a wheel lying on its side, the spokes being poles which attach the ships to the axle, an island in the middle of the pond. The wind blows and the ships race after one another round and round the pond, causing the poles to work the mechanism which is inside the island.

The manufacture of salt is one of the chief industries of Trapani and one of the chief causes of its wealth. In Sicily it practically never rains during the summer; the sea water is collected in large, open pans, being raised by means of the screw which has been in use all over the island for nearly twenty-two centuries, ever since Archimedes invented it to remove the water from the hold of one of Hiero's ships at Siracusa. All through the summer the heat of the sun evaporates the moisture, leaving the salt which is afterwards exported to Newfoundland, Norway, the North of France and many other countries and used for salting fish and other purposes.

The road continues to ascend and the horizon appears to ascend also, so that the sea takes up with it the AEgadean islands till, presently, Marettimo looks over the top of Levanzo, while Favognana lies away to the left. The Isola Grande (S. Pantaleo), the fourth island, is not a prominent object, being low and near the land, a good deal to the south towards Marsala; but in former times, when it was Motya, it was the most important of them all. The sea extends right and left till it is lost in the haze which so commonly obscures a Sicilian horizon.

The road goes more and more inland and, still rising, diverges from the shorter road taken by the old horse bus and passes through Paparella. Presently the mountain shuts out Trapani and the sea, and then the country lying inland about the base of the mountain comes into view bounded by a distant amphitheatre and, as the road completes the circuit of the mountain, and still rising joins the other shorter road at the Trapani gate of the town, the sea comes into sight again, with the horizon high above Trapani and the promontory of Capo S. Vito bounding it on the right.

This mountain, formerly world-renowned as Mount Eryx, and still often called Monte Erice, is now Monte S. Giuliano and gives its name both to the town on the top and to the comune of which that town is the chief place. The highest point of the town is towards the east of the mountain-top, and here are several towers, some belonging to the Castello, a Norman fortress, and others to Le Torri, the summer residence of Count Pepoli. On the north, east and south sides of the summit the mountain is precipitous, but towards the west it slopes from the towers through a public garden called the Balio, and then through a maze of narrow, winding streets, down to the Trapani gate. The normal population of the town is about 4000, but in the summer and autumn this is largely increased, inasmuch as the great heat of Trapani and the low country drives as many as can afford it to live on the summit where it is seldom too hot.

The rest of the comune lies dotted about on the plain at the foot of the mountain and consists of a dozen small villages, all visible from the summit. These have mostly grown up within the last hundred years or so as colonies from the chief town, for when the country was less secure the women and children were left within the town walls while the men went down to work in the fields and to fish in the sea, returning for Sundays and festas, and gradually, as it became possible, settlements were formed below to which the women and children could safely be moved. Custonaci, however, one of the villages of the comune, did not spring up in this way and is of older date than the others.

The peculiar charm of the mountain cannot be fully realized unless one visits it at all seasons and in all weathers. I have been there in the winter; the summit was hidden in a cloud which, as we drove up into it, obscured the view and chilled the marrow. It was before the days of the motor, when a horse bus did the journey by a shorter route in about three hours. I was on the box with the coachman who gave me a spare cloak with a hood to keep me dry and warm. Two of my friends, natives of the mountain, one a doctor and the other the accountant to the Municipio, were at the Trapani gate to meet me, both in hooded cloaks, so that I did not recognize them till they spoke. The wind was tremendous. The narrow sloping streets were running with water as we walked up through the town to the albergo, where Donna Anna received us. There was no blazing fire or warm room as there would have been in an English inn, only semidarkness and dampness. The damp had patched the painting on the ceiling and disfigured the whitewashed walls, on which were hung a few pictures—a lithograph of the Madonna di Custonaci, a cheap Crucifixion, a reproduction of the design for the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome, three shiny chromolithographs of English country scenes, representing the four seasons minus one, an absurd French engraving, Education Maternelle and S. Francesco da Paola, with a shell for holy water. S. Francesco belongs to South Italy, but he is a favourite in Sicily because he walked across the Straits of Messina to carry the Last Sacraments to a dying man. On the undulating tiled floor were a few of the rugs peculiar to the neighbourhood. They are made by the natives on looms, the length being thin, strong string and the width white, black and coloured cotton rags—old petticoats, shirts, aprons and so on, washed clean and torn into narrow strips. With a little ingenuity they make the colours go in simple patterns, chiefly diamonds and zigzags; but sometimes they are more daring and attempt drinking-cups, etc.: the most effective are made by running the strips in rows without any regard to pattern.

Some winds blow some clouds away, but the roots of this cloud were so firmly wedged in among the narrow streets and through the cracks of the doors and windows, which would not shut close, that this wind could do nothing with it but blow it more deeply in and the house was full of mist like the Albert Hall in a winter fog. The natives consider it more healthy to keep the same temperature indoors and out, so there is not a house on the mountain with a fireplace, and only a few with stoves. The absence of chimneys is a feature of the town, as it is of other Sicilian towns that can bear their absence better. And these are the people who commiserate an Englishman on being compelled to live in our cold, damp, foggy island! In support of my statement that we do occasionally see the sun, I showed them a picture-postcard of a house in London standing in a garden. It was midday, but we had to have a lamp to see the picture; nevertheless they supposed that the flowers were artificial and were renewed when we had a festa because, of course, real flowers will not grow in our perpetual fog. I told them that our fogs prevent flowers from growing in England just as much as their brigands prevent foreigners from travelling in Sicily, and that both are more spoken of than seen.

It must, however, be admitted that the natives do not appear to suffer from the effects of their climate. They boast that statistics show them to be particularly free from pulmonary complaints, and to have an unusually low death rate. As the doctor said, in a tone of professional discontent, they enjoy an epidemic of good health.

Supper consisted of maccaroni, bread and wine, and the table-cloth and napkins were as damp as one's towels after a bath. My two friends sat with me and introduced me to a student with a slight cast in one of his melancholy eyes, a misty tenor voice and the facile Italian smile, who had come up from Castelvetrano to study a little philosophy, and supped with me.

When it was bedtime, they all three came with Donna Anna into my bedroom to make sure that I was comfortable and the old landlady took the opportunity of consulting the accountant about the prisoners. Although the inhabitants of the province of Trapani are all good people, nevertheless now and then some slight crime is committed, an occasional wounding, a simple stabbing or so, and consequently it is convenient to have a prison handy. Part of the castle on the mountain is used for the purpose and Donna Anna provides the prisoners with their food and also sees to their sheets, bedding etc. They could not have a better matron and if she keeps everything in the prison as clean and good as it is in her house, I am afraid she may perhaps make the prisoners more comfortable than they deserve.

When she had disposed of her business she asked whether I should like some fire in my bed. I was going to decline, not being in the habit of using a warming-pan, but then I thought of the table-cloth and the napkins at supper—and my friends said that every one on the mountain always has fire in the bed in cold, damp weather—so I agreed, and Donna Anna fetched what looked like a flower-pot containing hot charcoal. She put this between my sheets with a wicker cage over it, and presently shifted its position. I wanted her to leave it all night in a corner of the room to take the chill off, but this met with opposition from all because they did not wish me to be found in the morning asphyxiated in my sleep like a Parisian milliner in a novel. I would have chanced it, had I been allowed, for the milliners always have the greatest difficulty in stopping up all the chinks, and even then occasionally survive; whereas, although Donna Anna pinned up a blanket across my window, it did not keep out the gale that was raging all about the room. The general opinion being against the charcoal, I acquiesced and it was taken back to its home in the kitchen. It was the only fire in the house and was what Dickens would have called an honest and stout little fire. It had cooked the maccaroni for supper and, after warming all the beds, went back to rest from its labour until the morning when it would be called to make the coffee for breakfast. It deserved its rest, not that it dried my sheets, but it warmed them; and the doctor assured me that it is the coldness and not the dampness of wet sheets that gives one a chill, so he considered me practically safe. If only I had had a cold at the time, he said, I should have been completely safe on the principle that one must be off with the old cold before one can be on with the new. Owing, doubtless, to the kindly influence of the good little fire, I passed a comfortable night and took no harm.

When I came down in the morning there was the student immersed in his philosophy; the industrious little fire had obligingly allowed itself to be coaxed into two, and he had secured part of it in a flower-pot on the floor between his feet and had a rug over his knees. The cloud was as thick and the wind as boisterous as it had been the day before, so I followed his example, got another flowerpot, split off a bit of fire for myself and sat down with a rug.

The next morning the cloud had gone and I returned to Trapani. The bus started very early and I had to rise before the sun, but the view would have repaid sitting up all night. We saw Marettimo hovering over Levanzo "on the horizon all highest up in the sea to the West," as Ithaca is described in the Odyssey. We saw Ustica floating over Cofano and Capo S. Vito. We looked down on Custonaci, the Sanctuary of the Madonna and the great curve of the bay from Cofano to the foot of the mountain. We gazed over the low, undulating country covered with villages, roads, fields and villas that lay all around us on the inland sides—the country through which in 1860 Garibaldi marched to Calatafimi with his thousand volunteers after landing at Marsala. We saw Monte Inice and the heights above Segesta. We saw Pantellaria, halfway to Africa, but we could not see Africa itself for Cape Bon is only visible under very exceptional atmospheric conditions.

I have been on the mountain in the spring and eaten quails for supper. It was the time of their migration, and they had been caught as they rested on the islands. I have never been able to ascertain exactly what it is that the quails do. First I read in a book that when going north in the spring they rest on Levanzo and when returning south in the autumn, on Favognana. Levanzo being north of Favognana this meant that, in both cases, they choose for their resting-place the second island they come to. There is no mistake about this being what I read, for I made a memoria technica about it at the time out of what Rockstro, my old counterpoint master, used to say musicians do in performing the diatonic major scale unaccompanied. In ascending they pass over the grave supertonic and take the acute supertonic, and in descending they pass over the acute supertonic and take the grave supertonic; the two supertonics being only a comma apart, as the two islands are only a very little way from one another.

Then I was told by a native of Trapani that this is just what the quails do not do, and that, in fact, they rest on the first island they come to, namely, on Favognana when going north, and on Levanzo when going south, being too tired to fly across the geographical comma that divides the two islands. I was next told by another native of Trapani that the quails rest on all the three islands indiscriminately and not merely on Levanzo and Favognana, thus destroying any attempt at purity of intonation and introducing equal temperament along with Marettimo, which had not hitherto been touched upon. He also said that if in any year it was found that the quails avoided any one of the islands, the reason would be that there were too many people on it. Finally, I was told by another native that when the quails were going north in the spring of 1906 the wind suddenly changed and blew most of them into Trapani itself, and people picked them up by hundreds in the streets. It does not matter, of course, so long as one gets the quails for supper, but if one really did want to know, one would have as much difficulty as in finding out how Orlando got hold of la Durlindana and where it originally came from.

The student from Castelvetrano was still there with his melancholy eyes, studying philosophy. He said he found the mountain more suitable for his purpose than his native town because it was more tranquil. I had been at Castelvetrano, but had not noticed that it was a particularly noisy place, indeed, I could no more have distinguished between the tranquillity of Castelvetrano and that of the mountain than between the acute and the grave supertonic.

The next time I met this student he had completed his studies and was employed as a clerk in the Italian railway station at Chiasso, the frontier town on the S. Gottardo, at an annual salary of 1,080 lire, which is about 43 pounds 4s. He could hardly have been sent to a station more remote from his native town. He had had a holiday of twelve days, and had gone home to embrace his adorata mamma. The government gave him a free pass, so he travelled by rail, crossing from Reggio to Messina, and it took him forty-six hours. When he arrived at Castelvetrano he was so knocked up by the journey and the change of air that he was obliged to go to bed, where he remained till it was time for him to get up and return to Chiasso, and this means that he was in bed for more than a fortnight, because his holiday was extended to twenty days in consideration of his illness. He was quite contented about his position and prospects and told me these facts without any complaint. On the whole, Mount Eryx would appear to be not such a bad school for philosophers: nevertheless, when one considers the large part played in evolution by the inherited desire of the organism to live beyond its income, one may doubt whether it is good for a country's progress that many of its men should be so philosophically contented with so little. They do not, however, include the whole of the population, for Italy cannot be said to be without examples of aggressive discontent. It is somewhere between the two extremes that practical commonsense should be looked for. In the meantime, if it is a question of sharing a supper of spring quails on Mount Eryx, a peaceful, gentle philosopher is probably a more agreeable companion than a socialistic nihilist.

If one had the power of choosing one's company, this philosopher would counsel one not to exercise it; for he looks upon choosing as a presumptuous kind of trying to control nature. I pointed out that one cannot altogether detach oneself from nature and that doing nothing is still choosing not to choose, but he replied that it is the lesser evil, as in choosing not to write a tragedy in five acts, which I had to admit can seldom be wrong. Further he asked, inasmuch as we had neither arranged our meeting nor ordered the quails, were we not at the moment both enjoying the advantage of having acted on his philosophy? I bowed and said I had been particularly fortunate this evening; but in Sicily one is always safe because the people are so charming that the art of travelling among them consists in allowing things to happen and in being ready to welcome whatever may come.

Perhaps the best season for going on the mountain is the late summer and early autumn, when the Trapanese come up for the villegiatura. It is not too hot during the day, as it is by the sea, and it can be almost chilly by night, which it never is below. Every one is in a holiday frame of mind; even the ladies of Eryx go out, whereas during the winter they seldom leave the house, unless, perhaps, after a storm for a turn in the balio to see how the trees look when laden with snow. There are picnics and excursions to other places on the slopes of the mountain where friends are passing the summer who presently return the visits by coming up to breakfast with us. There is a touring company performing in the theatre, there is music, there are drives and all manner of quiet amusements.

On the mainland of Italy, tobacconists' shops display the Royal Arms with a notice that they are licensed to sell tobacco and salt. Here a license is necessary only for tobacco, salt being free in Sicily. This combines with the absence of rain to make the manufacture of salt profitable; but should a thunderstorm dilute the pans, the fresh water must be evaporated out again and time and money are lost. Storms come so rarely in the summer, however, that the caprices of the weather interfere but little either with the salt works or the excursions.

If there is no excursion or no special occupation, we go to the caffe or the club, or call on the chemist who is sure to be surrounded by friends, or sit in the balio smoking and talking nonsense by the hour. And there is always the inexhaustible wonder of the great view. The spacious dome of the sky, which curves above and around, unites at the horizon with the inverted dome of the earth and sea, which curves around and below, the two together forming an enormous hollow globe in the midst of which the top of the mountain seems to be suspended like the floating island of Laputa. Conte Pepoli can sit in his castle and watch the half-tame ravens, with little silver bells on their necks, as they flit around the window and perch on the crazy wooden balcony where an old priest is asleep in a chair, over the edge of a precipice of many hundred feet, backed by leagues upon leagues of Sicily.



CHAPTER IX—THE MADONNA AND THE PERSONAGGI

In August, 1901, I was on the mountain and saw a procession representing Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge—one of those strange and picturesque cavalcades that were formerly more common than they are now.

Usually, in other parts of Italy, the same story is repeated at the same season: in one place, always the Passion at Easter; in another, always the Nativity at Christmas, and so forth. On the mountain they have the procession at irregular intervals, after perhaps three or four years, and the story, though now, as a rule, scriptural, is never the same again. When it does occur, it is as an extra embellishment of the annual harvest thanksgiving; it takes place by night and always introduces the Madonna di Custonaci. And now it is time to say a few words about this famous Madonna, whose influence is felt throughout the whole comune at all times, but nowhere more than on the Mountain, and at no time more than during the harvest thanksgiving.

Mount Eryx, as every one knows, was in classical times famous for the worship of Venus: here stood perhaps the most celebrated of all her temples—the one with which her name is most familiarly associated—and here, long before Horace wrote of "Erycina ridens," she was worshipped as Aphrodite by the Greeks, and as Astarte or Ashtaroth by the Phoenicians. Hardly any vestige of a temple can now be made out, but the remains of the Pelasgic walls that protected the city in prehistoric ages are still to be seen near the Trapani gate. The late Samuel Butler (author of Erewhon) wrote The Authoress of the Odyssey (Longmans, 1897) in support of his view that the Odyssey was written by a woman who lived at Trapani and upon the mountain, and who in the poem described her own country. In Chapter XII. he quotes Thucydides (vi. 2), to show that the Sicans had inhabited this corner of the island from a very remote period, having come probably from Spain. After the fall of Troy, some of the Trojans, who had escaped the Greeks, migrated to Sicily, settled in the neighbourhood of the Sicans and were all together called Elymi, their cities being Eryx and Segesta. The city walls were originally built by the Sicans, and restored by the Phoenicians when they came to the mountain; on many of the stones the quarrymen's marks in Phoenician characters are still visible.

It was believed that at certain seasons of the year the goddess left her shrine on the mountain and went over into Africa accompanied by all the pigeons of the neighbourhood, and this was the occasion for a festival of Anagogia. {151} A little later, when the pigeons returned, the goddess was believed to come back with them, and then there was another festival of Catagogia. {151} Seeing that she would have had to go little more than 120 miles in order to reach what is now Cape Bon, and then only to cross the gulf of Tunis to arrive at the Phoenician colony of Carthage, one may suppose it probable that these flittings began when Astarte was in power.

In our own time the Madonna di Custonaci reigns upon the Mountain, and is Protectress of the whole comune. Her sacred picture is normally in her sanctuary down at Custonaci, about 15 kilometres distant, but when any general calamity afflicts the district, it is brought up to the Matrice or Mother Church of the comune on Mount Eryx. On these occasions three days of humiliation are proclaimed, priests and men, their heads crowned with thorns, their necks encircled with cords, go about the town flagellating themselves; in the evening fires are lighted in the balio, and all the villages below answer by lighting fires too, to show that they are taking part in the general tribulation. A document is signed by the sindaco, and then the picture is brought from Custonaci and set over the great altar in the church of the Matrice. When it has become quite clear that the anger of Heaven has been appeased, the picture is taken back to Custonaci.

The calamity that most commonly befalls the comune is a drought, or the fear of a drought. Rain is not wanted while the salt is being made, but as soon as that is all under cover in the autumn it is time for the rain to begin, otherwise the crops will fail. In 1893 the rain was delayed until matters began to look so serious that it was determined to bring the picture up to the mountain. The proper formalities having been observed, the people all went out in crowds to welcome it and, as it was borne along, cried—

"Acqua, Maria, acqua!" ("Rain, Maria, rain!")

Meanwhile the clouds were gathering and presently a tremendous thunderstorm came on which drenched them all, and they returned to the mountain, shouting—

"Basta, Maria, basta!" ("Leave off, Maria, leave off!")

The lightning struck the church and injured four persons who were standing near the altar, but the Madonna was already in her place, and owing to her presence they recovered.

The picture, like many of the thaumaturgic representations of the Madonna, is the work of St. Luke the Evangelist—all except the head which was done by an angel who descended from heaven expressly for the purpose. This being so, one would expect to find its home on the top of the very Mountain itself, in the chief place of the comune, and not down at an insignificant little village like Custonaci. Some have thought that to allow the Sanctuary of a Madonna Ericina to take the place of the Temple of Venus Erycina would have been to insist on a parallelism about which it was desirable to say as little as possible. Others believe the real reason why we have a Madonna di Custonaci to be preserved in the following legend. {154}

A French vessel, laden with precious merchandise and also with this still more precious picture, was returning to Marseilles from Alexandria in Egypt, and, while sailing the Sicilian seas, encountered a furious tempest. The more the unhappy mariners laboured to govern their craft, the less they succeeded, and at last, despairing of earthly help, they turned their thoughts to the Madonna. With streaming eyes they knelt before the painting and prayed without ceasing to the Queen of Heaven that she would be graciously pleased to conduct them safely home. For a long time they met with no response, but when they were nearing Cofano, every sailor heard a voice, as though coming from the picture and declaring that the Madonna desired to be landed on the neighbouring coast. Whereupon they bound themselves by a vow that if they reached land in safety they would build a sanctuary then and there in memory of their miraculous preservation. No sooner was the vow uttered than the wind fell, the storm ceased and the surface of the waters became as smooth as polished glass, over which the fortunate bark glided without guidance into harbour—and this to the great astonishment of the crew who observed that her course lay among dangerous shoals and sunken rocks.

The joyful mariners returned thanks to their Blessed Protectress and immediately began to perform their vow; but while disembarking, they found themselves surrounded by a crowd of armed peasants who, taking them for Turkish pirates, ran to the spot with the intention of frustrating their supposed nefarious designs. Mutual explanations averted bloodshed, and the peasants then began to dissuade the sailors from performing their vow in so literal a manner, pointing out that they would be abandoning their precious charge to the risk, if not the certainty, of sacrilegious theft at the hands of the corsairs who frequented that harbour. In the end the simple mariners yielded to the arguments of the peasants, and with many tears consigned the picture to their care. The peasants put it into a cart harnessed with two oxen who started to draw it inland, but would only go in a direction chosen by themselves and, after proceeding two or three kilometres, lay down and by no means could be persuaded to go a step further. This was accepted as an indication of the Madonna's approval of what had been done and of her desire that her church should be erected there, and on that spot now stands the Sanctuary of Custonaci. The poor sailors, grieving bitterly for the loss of their treasure, returned to the ship and continued their interrupted voyage till they reached Marseilles in safety.

Owing to the culpable negligence of those who ought to have considered it a privilege to be permitted to chronicle the many important miracles which the Madonna performed in honour of the arrival of her picture, we have particulars of only two cures wrought in those times, one on a cripple and the other on a mute. Any one, however, who is disposed to doubt that there were many more has only to visit the sanctuary and take note of the large number of votive pictures there exhibited. Besides, how else could the fame of this wonder-working image have travelled abroad so extensively unless the wonders had been not less numerous than undoubted?

There is uncertainty as to the exact date of the arrival of the picture at the Sanctuary: some give the year 1570; others consider this too late, if only because wills exist dated as far back as 1422 bequeathing gifts to Santa Maria di Custonaci; others say that this need not have anything to do with our Madonna, because there has been a church or chapel at Custonaci dedicated to the Virgin from very early times, and there is nothing to show that these wills do not refer to the earlier Madonna; others believe 1370, not 1570, to be the true date. We should have something to guide us if we could ascertain how often the picture has been transported to the mountain in times of calamity, but here again the culpable negligence of the chroniclers has left us with records of only fifty-one such occasions from the beginning of the 16th century to 1794, viz. five when the pestilence walked by midday, four when the mountains trembled and the earth opened, two when the locusts came without number and devoured the fruits of the ground, four when war clouds gathered in the sky and thirty-six when the autumn rains were delayed.

The disputes extend also to the date of the painting, some even denying that it was painted by St. Luke. But to do this they are obliged to ignore all the considerations which support the orthodox view, viz. the place from which the sailors brought it, the many wonders performed by it, the miraculous preservation of the colouring during all the years that have elapsed since St. Luke's time, the widespread belief in the efficacy of its powers and lastly the fact that, though many have made the attempt, no artist has yet succeeded in producing a perfect copy of the original.

I asked several people what St. Luke had to do with Alexandria, and was always told that St. Mark's body was brought from there to Venice in 828, why then should not another of the Evangelists have been there also? Why not indeed? But this reply was as little satisfying as those with which pre-occupied age endeavours to silence inquisitive childhood, and produced much the same sort of result, spurring me on to further investigations.

A musician who desires to compose a tune that shall become popular must contrive something apparently original and yet not so original as to demand study; it must also contain echoes of other tunes previously popular, and yet they must be so indefinite that no one can tell for certain where they come from, which is what we mean when we say it is a wise tune that knows its own father. Similarly, the framers of the foregoing legend had to compose an entirely Christian story, as original as was compatible with the use of the forms of Christian legend, and yet they could not neglect all the pagan traditions with which their public had been impregnated for generations. In the first place the picture must come over the sea—everything that arrives in an island does so; one of the most effective of the common forms in legend is the arrival of a boat with a precious cargo from a distant land, often bringing corn to stay a famine, and every one is now familiar with the opening of Lohengrin. Tunis would not do for the point of departure, not only because it is where pagan Astarte came from when she arrived in Sicily, but also because it had been Moslem since the seventh century and could not have been accepted by the people as a Christian seaport. It is quite likely that the popularity of the St. Mark legend determined the selection of Alexandria, which had the advantage also of being on the coast of the same continent as Tunis. The storm, the vow and the oxen are as much common form in legend as the ship; and the next thing that strikes one is the curious similarity between the alternate domiciles of the Madonna on the mountain and at Custonaci, and the flittings of Venus Erycina to and fro between the mountain and Carthage. If we look upon the arrival of the picture at Custonaci as involving the transplanting of a piece of Africa into Sicily, much as an ambassador's house is regarded as being part of his own country transplanted into a foreign land, we may then consider that the Madonna, to all intents and purposes, still travels between the Mountain and Africa, only she now has an easier journey and avoids actually dwelling among heretics. In this view the transporting of her picture backwards and forwards should be looked upon as the modern version of the feasts of Anagogia and Catagogia.

It is admitted that the picture has, more than once, been placed in the hands of skilful modern painters whose services have been called in merely to repair any damage it may have sustained in its journeyings—they have had nothing to do therefore with the miraculous preservation of the colouring. What these experts thought about the date of the original painting is known only to themselves. We need not suppose that they agreed—that would have been indeed a miracle and quite a fresh departure for a picture with a reputation earned in a different branch of thaumaturgy. It does not much matter, however, what they thought, for experts in matters of art are the victims of such cast-iron prejudices that if once they fancy they see the influence of Leonardo da Vinci in a picture and take it into their heads that it comes from Piedmont, it will be found the most difficult thing in the world to persuade them that it really was painted in Egypt more than 1000 years before Giotto.

We shall probably not be far wrong if we assume that something like the processions of the Personaggi, involving the display of the most beautiful men and women that could be found, took place on the mountain in heathen times as part of the cult of the goddess and that, as a compromise, they were not abolished but accommodated to Christian usages.

Giuseppe Pitre, in his Feste Patronali in Sicilia, gives an account of the procession on the mountain held in 1752. We are to suppose that the wickedness of the good people of Eryx had attained to such monstrous proportions that the whole universe, incited thereto by observing the anger of God against them, took up arms in the cause of justice. The Madonna di Custonaci, however, intervened and saved her chosen people. It began with the Wrath of God, personified by a warrior armed with thunderbolts and lightning and setting forth to destroy the mountain. Then came the Angry Heavens, the Benignant Moon, Mars and Mercury ready to avenge the outrages done to God; Jove grasping a thunderbolt and about to hurl it against the comune, Venus anxious to overthrow the city, and Saturn whetting his golden scythe. The Sun is obscured, the Four Winds blow terribly, the Four Elements assist in the work of desolation, the Four Seasons threaten misery and affliction. Mount Eryx being convinced by this display that it is in a great danger, the Genius of the city appears next, bearing in his hand a figure of the Madonna di Custonaci. He calls to his assistance Divine Counsel, Devotion, Beneficence and Piety, and the procession closes with the Guardian Angel.

It must have been a magnificent spectacle. Many clouds have rested on Mount Eryx since 1752 and we do not now expose our bedrock of paganism quite so openly. This, indeed, but for the slight veneer of Christianity, might have passed for a downright pagan procession.

In 1894, L'Aurora Consurgens della Cantica was the subject. There were twelve figures showing the growth of idolatry and culminating with the Emperor Julius Caesar who, it will be remembered, accepted worship as a god; moreover, his death having occurred not half a century before the birth of Christ, he was naturally followed by the Aurora, symbolizing the Madonna di Custonaci, and the explanatory pamphlet contained a reference to the Song of Solomon vi. 10: "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" After the Aurora came the Rising Sun, Faith, Christian Civilization, Mount Eryx, Charity and Youth—meaning, probably, that Christianity will never grow old. In conclusion came a car with a copy of the sacred picture and a chorus of youths.

It would seem that the personages formerly appeared on foot, for the earliest record states that in 1750 they appeared for the first time on horseback. In 1897 the subject was Jael, and the cavalcade consisted of eight figures, of whom Deborah, seated in the shade of a palm tree surrounded with a chorus of damsels, Jael in the tent with Sisera nailed to the ground, and Triumph, appeared on cars, each of the others being on horseback and the horses being led by grooms suitably attired. A nocturnal procession, whether the figures go on foot, on horseback, or on cars, does not strike one as being a particularly favourable medium for the telling of a story. Nevertheless, by choosing a subject with which the people are more or less familiar, by emphasizing the climax and by providing an explanatory pamphlet for 2d., a more satisfactory result is produced than one would have supposed probable, as I realized when I saw the procession in August, 1901. The sacred picture had been on the mountain since 1893, an unusually long time, and was now to be taken back to the sanctuary at Custonaci, which, during its absence, had been beautified "in the Gothic style." The two events of the Procession and the Return synchronizing, there was a double festa, lasting four days on the mountain and four days more at Custonaci.



CHAPTER X—THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE

On the morning of Sunday, 25th August, 1901, every one on Monte San Giuliano was up early and at 7.30 a brass band began to perambulate the town to announce that the festa had begun. At 8.30 the band entered the Matrice, and before Mass the sacred picture was unveiled, the band saluting it with a burst of music. Much may be done in music by allusion and suggestion. The service concluded with an extremely graceful movement in six-eight time, that drove the Madonna out of the mind of at least one listener and substituted a vision of laughing girls swaying lightly to the rhythm and singing of the dancing waves whose foam gave birth to Venus.

When the church emptied we got a better view of the picture. It is about 6 ft. high by 3 broad, painted in oils on wood prepared with gesso, and represents a smiling Madonna with the Child at her breast. She is seated on a throne in a landscape; two angels hold over her head a massive golden crown; the Child is crowned also and in His hand are three ears of corn, to signify fruitfulness; He also holds the keys. The crowns are really only half-crowns, but they are gold or silver-gilt, and are fastened into the wood of the picture. All round the Madonna's nimbus is a raised band of gold set with twelve diamond stars, valued at 14,000 lire. A large diamond earring hangs in her right ear, the only one that is visible; three large diamond rings are on the fingers of her right hand and one on the finger of her left which supports the Child, and suspended all over her skirts is an immense quantity of jewellery. The frame is of wood entirely coated with silver, in the form of a Renaissance doorway with a fluted column on each side and a broken pediment over the top. It is almost concealed by the jewellery hung about it, earrings, chains, necklaces, rings, watches etc. These are offerings from the faithful, but what is shown is nothing like all. There is a large chest containing much more and what has been given this year is exposed in a separate case. These valuables constitute the Madonna's dowry and she carries it with her on her journeys; but some of the more important articles never leave the mountain; her diamond stars, for instance, are removed from the picture when it goes down, and their place is taken by less valuable stars of gold.

In the afternoon there were horse-races outside the Trapani gate on a fairly level piece of road, and a concert and illumination in the balio in the evening.

In the course of the day I bought a copy of the explanatory pamphlet. Its title was L'Arca Noetica. Simbolo Mariano. Processione notturna figurativa (I Personaggi) in omaggio alla Diva di Custonaci Celeste Patrone degli Erecini. Ultimo Lunedi d'Agosto, 1901. It was to be a procession of cars, there were to be no figures on horseback. Having introduced cars, as in Jael, to give special importance to the three points of the story, viz. the opening, the climax, and the conclusion (or, as the pamphlet expressed it, Causa, Consequenza e Termine), it was, no doubt, felt that more could be done with them than with single figures on horseback in presenting the somewhat intractable subject of Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge.

The preparations had taken a month or six weeks. The course is for the arciprete of the Matrice, who is the head of the clergy of the district, to determine what the story shall be and how it is to be told. The designing of each personaggio, or of each group of personaggi, is then confided to one of the inhabitants, who, provided he bears in mind the general scheme, is free to follow his natural artistic instincts. The dresses are hired from Palermo, and an astonishing quantity of jewellery is lent by the families of the comune; in 1897 the personaggi carried 85 lbs. weight of it, and far more is always lent than can possibly be used. It is all gold and precious stones, no silver is to be seen, and nothing is ever lost, stolen, or mislaid; even the thieves become honest on these occasions. It is sewn on to the dresses in various designs and makes them look very rich, so that what is hired from Palermo is only the costumes in the rough, so to speak.

In wandering about the town next day, I came upon four or five of the cars lurking in obscure churches where they had been prepared. It was not easy to make much of them; there were a few rocks, banks and clouds, also the waters of the deluge, all made of papier mache painted to appear real, and in among the rocks and banks were real plants, mostly the dwarf palm which grows plentifully on the mountain. There were wooden supports for the figures, to help them to stand in their places. Each car carried under it an apparatus to supply it with acetylene gas, used in 1901 for the first time.

All day long people kept on coming up the mountain and pouring into the town. Those who did not come on foot left their carts and horses outside, and they all swarmed up through the narrow, irregular, roughly paved streets from the Trapani gate to the balio, till by nightfall the Piazza was as crowded as Piccadilly on Mafeking night. Every one who has been present at an Italian festa knows what it is like—men shouting and elbowing their way through the people with flaming lamps fitted to their baskets, selling water and syrups, cakes and confectionery, melon seeds and peanuts—others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina, each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in—three independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance—an enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the Odyssey, with a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners spellbound in the foreground with their favourite ballad, illustrated by a large sheet of oil paintings in eight tableaux, about the man who murdered his wife and mother with one bloody knife—there it is lying on the supper-table—and was ultimately taken by the carabinieri and executed.

This blind singer with no bridge to his nose is a humorist; on one occasion when he was fibbing in a particularly flagrant manner, he enforced his remarks by calling upon heaven to strike him blind and smash his nose if he was not speaking the truth.

While you are thinking that the tumult must be at its height, peaceful nuns are creeping up the convent stair, silently, one by one, they reach the roof, every one can see them collecting together in the moonlight and taking hold of the dangling bell-ropes. All of a sudden you realize what a mistake you had been making about the tumult as the riotous bells fling their additional accompaniments out into the night, all over the town, over the whole comune, down to Trapani, to Cofano and out to the islands.

In the meantime those in charge of the cars had been giving their final directions and seeing that everything was in order, and the personaggi, who had been being dressed ever since early in the afternoon, were ready to receive visitors. About 10 p.m. each of them began to hold an At Home. They sat there silent and motionless in their houses among trays full of superfluous jewellery and surrounded by lighted candles, gazing imperturbably in front of them while people streamed through the room admiring them, fingering their dresses and jewels, and asking questions of their relations and friends. About 11.30 I was conducted along the illuminated streets through the crowd to a house where I stood on a balcony looking up a street down which the procession was to come.