The German Emperor is rather a hero of hers, and when we left the car in the street and visited the Palazzo Reale she was charmed to learn that he had pronounced a view from a certain balcony the finest he had ever seen, resting his elbows on the iron railing and gazing out over the city for half an hour. It really was inspiring-the blue harbour and the ring of sparkling white mountains, but I'm not prepared to agree with the superlative. I put the view of Naples from St. Elmo ahead. When the Goddess came to see the Capella Palatina with its gem-like Arabo-Norman mosaics, she was moved almost to tears. "It is matchless; the most beautiful thing on earth!" she said. But afterwards I drove her (Aunt Mary you may take for granted) out four steep miles to Monreale, and it was well that she had saved a few adjectives. Not that she is a girl who scatters much small coin of this kind, but she has usually the right word when a thing does not go beyond words. When it does she says nothing, except with her eloquent eyes. But in the ancient cloisters of that old monastery I watched her face, and it was a study. I believe, though each carved capital on each column is different from the others, she could enumerate in order the quaint and intricate biblical designs. In one secluded and dusky corner there was the faint tinkle of a fountain-a wonderful fountain, very old, and copied from a still older Moorish memory, by some Arab who served his Norman conquerors. My beautiful girl was a picture as she stood gazing at it, leaning against a pillar, her white dress half in sunshine, half in shadow, her brown hair burnished to living gold.
For the modern part of Palermo she didn't much care; the crowded Corso Vittorio Emanuele; the Quattro Canti, which is the Piccadilly Circus of the Sicilian capital, or even the cathedral. But she loved the Villa Giulia, which she was greatly surprised to find a garden, not knowing that all gardens are "villas" in Sicily; she and Aunt Mary went in alone, while I waited outside the gates in the car; but her beauty and pretty frock excited so much attention that she was quite embarrassed, and I reaped advantage from her discomfiture, being invited to act as guard in the Botanical Gardens. I begged for her Kodak there, to take a photo (ostensibly) of the big building devoted to lectures, but quietly waited until she had inadvertently "crossed my path." Then I snapped her.
We stayed in Palermo for three days, and even so had the barest glimpse of the place. If I have luck, and win Her forgiveness first, and then at last Herself, maybe we shall come again to Sicily together, lingering at all the places we are slighting now. But dare I dream of it?
On the fourth day we set out for a visit to one of the show places of the island Girgenti of the Temples. And now we began to understand why the millionaire Florio, with his four noble motor-cars panting in their stalls, has not been able to induce his friends to stock their Sicilian stables in the same way. We knew already that Italian roads were generally inferior to French ones; that it was comparatively difficult to buy petrol, especially good petrol, or essence, in Italy, and I loaded up the willing car with several reserve tins on leaving the Igiea; but of course I had had to take the state of the roads on hearsay. The surprise and interest of the crowd, even in Palermo, where Signor Florio often drives, warned us that not many ventured with "mechanically propelled vehicles" where we were about to venture, and I was a little dubious, though the Goddess was in the highest spirits and yearning for brigands. She had heard at the hotel of a very picturesque one who owned a lair in the mountains, and urged me to pay the chivalrous gentleman a morning call, but I was both obdurate and unbelieving.
We started; occasionally, as we progressed, it was necessary to ask the way. The peasants we passed on foot, on donkey back, or crowded into their painted carts, were so wrapped in wonder at sight of us that it was useless to shout at them without warning; they couldn't recover themselves in time to answer before we had sped by. So I adopted a method I have often found useful. I selected my man at a distance, singling him out from his companions, and pointing my finger straight at him as I approached. This excited his curiosity and riveted his attention; he was then able to reply when I demanded a direction.
From Palermo on the north to Girgenti on the south of the island is something over sixty miles the way we went-sixty miles of bad and up-and-down road. Sicily is poor, and it could not but be to its advantage if visitors came to it in larger numbers. I should say one of the first things they ought to do is to improve the roads, and make them decently passable for carriages, motor-cars, and bicycles. At present the plan of mending the roads is to dump down so much "metal," and leave the local traffic to grind it in. As everybody avoids it and there is little rain, there it stays, and in consequence patches of sharp, loose stones lie over the roads the year round. Steer with all the skill one can, it's impossible always to dodge the stones, and our tyres got a good punishment.
The interior of the island, though grandly impressive, is unusually bare, save for its wild flowers, the ancient forests having long since disappeared. Our road lay for a time along the sea, and then inland, always mounting up into the heart of the mountains, by long, green valleys and over desolate plateaux where flocks of sheep and goats grazed under the guardianship of wild-looking shepherds and fierce dogs, the latter violently resenting the intrusion of the car into their fastnesses. We saw few people on the road, and passed only the poorest villages; but we had brought an excellent luncheon which we ate by the roadside, we three (would it had been two!), alone in a wide and solitary landscape. A very few years ago such a journey as this across the interior of Sicily would have been highly dangerous on account of brigands. As it was we had scowls from dark-browed men whose horses took fright at us, but no such encounter as we had with the peasants in France. An Englishman at Palermo who has lived long in Sicily warned me that every Sicilian carries a gun, and said that in the wild interior they would very likely shoot at the automobile for the mere fun of the thing as they would at any other strange beast that was new to them. This wasn't encouraging to hear. But though we met some truculent-looking fellows on the road, their sentiments towards us seemed to be those of wonder rather than animosity.
The sun was sinking in a haze of rose and gold as we came to the crest of the long hill on which stands the town of Girgenti, passed through it, and coasted down to the Hotel des Temples. Beyond the hotel, which stands isolated between the town and the sea, we saw suddenly the great Temple of Concord, a lonely and magnificent monument. It affects the imagination as Stonehenge does when you see it for the first time. The red rays of the sun shone aslant upon its splendid amber-coloured pillars and colossal pediments, revealing every detail of the pure Doric architecture. When the smiling Signor Gagliardi had received us and allotted rooms to the party (the best in the house for the American ladies on their automobile, and a little one for the chauffeur), I strolled in the fragrant old garden, and leaning on the balustrade by the ancient well of carved stone, looked long over this wonderful plateau above the sea, where once stood perhaps the finest assemblage of Greek temples the world has ever seen. Next morning we went down to see the temples at close quarters. I had been warned that the road would be too rough for an automobile; but a gallant Napier which had passed through the forest of the Landes and braved the dragon's teeth sown on the roads of Sicily's fastnesses was not to be dismayed by a few jolting miles. Everyone in the hotel-English, American, German-came out to see us start, predicting that if we came back the car wouldn't, or if it came back, it would be-so to speak-over our dead bodies. Aunt Mary was so much impressed by these dark prophecies that she refused to accompany us, and engaged one of the odd little carriages from the ancient town of Girgenti bristling on the height above our hotel. Thus it came about that I had my Goddess to myself, and in her congenial company I hardly knew whether the road was rough or no. Certainly the good Napier did not complain, and as for the tyres, the roads of Central Sicily had made them callous.
I thought then that never was such a day in the memory of man; but several days have come and gone since-also with her, and a man's opinion changes. I knew that in the society of no one else would there have hovered such a glamour over the ruins of Greek glory. Five noble temples they are, my Montie, of which two are almost perfect; the others pathetic relics of past grandeur, with their heaped, fallen columns. There they stand-or lie prone with here and there a majestic pillar pointing skyward-in a stately row between the brilliant blue sea and the billowing flower-starred plain on the one side, the hills and the grim city, like a crow's nest, on the other. Their sandstone columns hold oyster and scallop shells from prehistoric ages, while here and there a broken vein of coralline stains the dun surface as if with blood. Below the towering temples are shimmering olive trees, silver-green as they quiver in the warm breeze, and on this day of ours a myriad budding almond-blossoms were breaking at their massive feet in rosy foam. All the ground was carpeted with yellow daisies, pimpernel, and iris, blue-grey as my lady's eyes. Together we pictured processions of men and maidens, white-robed, bearing urns and waving garlands of roses, chanting pæans in a slow ascent of the amber-hued temple steps. We also were in a mood to sing praises as we drove back to the friendly hotel in its high eyrie of garden.
In the afternoon, I am sorry to say, we went up into the town-it is a bleak and gruesome memory; and next day we had a hundred and twenty miles' drive to Catania, our faces turned towards Etna, the Queen of Sicily, which we had not yet seen, but longed to see. In view of the awful roads we were likely to encounter, I had asked the ladies if they would mind starting at seven. They were ready on the minute, and I think they were repaid by the beauty of the newly waked morning, bathed in diamond-dew, and pearly with sunrise.