Diversions in Sicily

This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
by HENRY FESTING JONES
LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD 1920
First Published . . . 1909 Re-issued . . . 1920
My dear Enrico,
Your father and I, sitting one summer night on the terrace at Castellinaria watching the moon on the water, agreed that this book might be dedicated to you, although you have not yet put it into my power to ask your permission.
“After all,” exclaimed your father, “what is existence?” And I was unable to give him a satisfactory reply.
When Orlando and his Paladins were overcome at Roncisvalle through the treachery of Gano di Magonza, were they all slain? When “the Crusaders’ streams of shadowy
midnight troops sped with the sunrise,” did none linger? When the angel carried up to heaven the soul of Guido Santo, did he never fight another battle? The young men of your island hardly think so; their thoughts and actions are still coloured by the magnificent language and the chivalrous exploits of Christian and Turk. As long as there is an imaginative shoeblack in the Quattro Canti working for pennies by day, so long will those pennies be paid for the story to be told by night in the marionette theatre. Often will Angelica recover her ring, and as often be robbed of it again; often will the ghostly voice of Astolfo, imprisoned in a myrtle upon Alcina’s magic isle, reveal the secret of his woe; often will Rinaldo drink of the Fountains of Hatred and of Love, and, forgetful of the properties of those waters, return and drink once more.
And what of those other and less heroic figures—the brigadier and his guards
gambling among the ruins of Selinunte, the ingenious French gentleman classifying the procession at Calatafimi, Micio buying his story-books and chocolate at Castellinaria, and many another whom I should like to think you will some day meet, palely wandering up and down these pages?