The second day after our arrival, as we were returning home up the hill in the still warm evening light, we turned aside to the old deserted convent of S. Niccola. A merry crowd of gentlemen and ladies and little boys and girls were shouting and singing on the terrace, and dancing the tarantella to the music of three peasants on a bagpipe, tambourine, and triangle. Like a Bacchanalian rout of old times they came rushing down to meet us, twenty-six in number, chained together with garlands, and the girls all wreathed with wild scarlet geranium. They escorted us all over the garden, gathering flowers and fruits for us, the crowd of little children gambolling and dancing in front. Then they begged us to go back with them to the terrace, and began dancing again, and were delighted when Miss Howard and Miss G. Holland danced with them. Afterwards, standing on the terrace, our three ladies sang one of their beautiful part songs, tumultuously applauded with prosit and evviva. The result was showers of visiting-cards from all the notables in Girgenti, especially from a family who rejoice in the singular name of the Indelicati. Then came invitations to a party and ball at Casa Gibilaro, the sons of the house, Cesare and Salvatore, coming to escort us up the steep street. Italian ladies sang, and so did our party, and all danced, and we taught the Girgentines Sir Roger de Coverley, which greatly enchanted them. The family of twenty-six—grandmother, uncles, aunts, cousins, were all there, living in the happiest union and affection, no daughter of the house ever marrying out of the place, and all meeting constantly. Carmela and Pasqualina Gibilaro were so enchanted with our two younger ladies, that they scarcely ever let go of their hands, and expressed their delight over them in the most naïve manner, and I became great friends with Salvatore and Antonio. One day, Salvatore and Pasqualina dined with us, and we afterwards went again to their house, where there was another dance, at which all the professors of the university (on delightful terms of merriment with their pupils) assisted, the Professor of Theology frisking about in the tarantella, and the Professor of Philosophy leading the cotillon. We wished this time to leave early, but our hosts insisted on our waiting till the arrival of ices, an unwonted luxury with them, but ordered in our honour. We had dined before, and since coming to the dance had been obliged to eat quantities of pasticcie, so were aghast when we found that we were each expected to eat an ice larger than an ordinary tea-cake. We managed as well as we could, but it was dreadful. I deposited more than half mine under a table. Miss Holland thought she was getting on pretty well with hers, when a Contessa Indelicato, on the opposite side of the room, seeing her flagging, filled a large spoon with her own ice, and rushing across, popped it into her mouth. With great promptitude Miss Howard instantly popped a spoonful of her ice into the mouth of a Contessina Indelicato! Great were the lamentations and embraces from this amiable family when we left Girgenti, dear little Antonio Gibilaro going with us to the station.
I spent the last morning at Girgenti in drawing the sea glistening through the pink almond-trees, and the rocky road with its troops of goats and donkeys, and in the afternoon of January 11 we went on to Palermo.
Under the later Bourbon kings Sicily was perfectly safe and brigandage utterly unknown, for the principal officials in each village and parish were made responsible for its security; but the annihilation of the rural police under the Sardinian Government taking place at the same time with the abolition of capital punishment, had introduced brigandage; and though it had become rare since the formation of railroads, it was not considered safe for us to go far from Palermo without an escort, and we were obliged to give up Segeste. When we were at Palermo, murders for vendetta were of constant occurrence, and only cost three hundred francs, as the punishment was so slight,—generally two years’ imprisonment without labour, and with a life of much greater comfort than the culprit could have enjoyed at home. Besides, the murderers are scarcely ever given up, as the vendetta would then fall upon those who betrayed them. Some of our party went to visit Calatafimi, the brigand who carried off a gentleman from Cefalu, and, when he got only half the ransom required, laboriously snipped with scissors till his head came off, in a cave on Monte Pellegrino. He was found very merry, in most comfortable quarters, with quantities of fruit, newspapers, &c. When he was tired of being there, his family would bribe the gaoler, and he would get out.
The glorious weather we enjoyed in the south of the island turned to torrents of rain at Palermo, but it is said that there are only forty-two days in the year without rain there. On the rare occasions when it clears, Palermo is most lovely, backed by such grand mountains, the nearer ones rugged purple rocks, over which the snow-peaks peep out. The cathedral also is very beautiful, with a great courtyard in front of it planted with palm-trees and geraniums; but there are none of the glorious flowers of Girgenti; the climate is a constant damp chill, like that of Pau and Pisa, and I shall always associate the place with the ceaseless melancholy roar of the sea, the drip and splash of the rain, which fell day and night, and the monotony of the mouldy deserted walks. In the Lazaretto cemetery—a lovely little spot hedged with Barbary aloes—it was touching to see the tomb of my almost unknown father. He also hated the place and was deeply depressed there.
Our one really fine day was delightful. We drove along the shore to Bagaria, where all the old nobility have their country palaces, enormous and stately in form, with huge courts and immense armorial shields over their gates, but the windows generally half choked up or glassless, the courts overgrown with weeds, and the roofs tumbling in. Sad indeed would be the shock to an English girl who married a Sicilian prince for his title and his “palace,” upon her arrival at one of these old barracks, where she would be lucky if she could find one weathertight chamber.