The peninsula on which the town stands divides the harbour into two compartments.
The grand harbour to the south and west is one of the most beautiful in the world. The other is of little importance except in a military point of view.
The fortifications, houses, and churches of Syracuse are all formed of the beautiful stone[5] of which its great northern screen consists, and in consequence of these vast quarries and excavations, ancient and modern, nothing can be more abruptly broken and scarped than the environs of this fortress.
The land front is finely and elaborately executed with magnificent gateways; the town is dense and unequal; the cathedral an ancient temple (I believe of Minerva), whose Christian front acts as a garish mask to its ancient heathen sides.
I presently found my friend Lefebure, who received me with joy, and after giving me some account of his proceedings, took me to the good old Governor. “I know not whom this Governor takes me for,” said Lefebure, “but he really overwhelms me with honours; his coach is always dodging me wherever I go, and when I consent to take a little tour into the country, he mounts upon the box, with all the decorations of his rank and symbols of his power, and drives me himself. I am half dead with the variety and quantity he makes me eat, and bewildered with the daily company of barons and princes, baronesses and princesses, with their dark eyes and soft accents, so articulate and intelligible, and yet to which I dare hardly attempt to reply.”
“Well,” I replied, “this does not sound to me so distressing as you represent. I am glad I am come to your relief. This noble governor shall stuff me now with good things and drive me in his coach, and I will now listen to the soft accents of the dark-eyed Principessas, and expose myself to their smiles at my blundering answers. So have with you, Lefebure; take me to the Governor; we shall be in time for his dinner.”
“Oh,” he rejoined, “don’t distress yourself. We are both engaged already to dine with him to meet a hundred people. But it will be taken well if I present you to him first.” So away we went. The Governor, a good, solicitous old soul, was of course charmed with the Bravo Giovinetto, and offered everything within and without his power both to me and to Lefebure.
The number of the people at dinner could only, I think, be exceeded by the number of the dishes, and when I found the order of proceeding, I no longer wondered at the surfeit complained of by the temperate Lefebure, for the Governor, having relaxed his girdle and tied a napkin under his chin, surrounded by laughing beauties ready to applaud every word he spoke and every morsel he distributed, sent in succession for every dish, and having divided it absolutely and unsparingly into portions, it was carried round, and if any one failed to taste, the wail and lament of apprehended sickness was raised around him, and some sweet princess with bewitching eyes loaded his plate with her own fair hands.
I am not aware that English people can quite realise the ease and good-humour and incessant but not unpolished mirth with which this great dinner from beginning to end was accomplished. And but for that, I hardly believe the economy of man would be able to dispose of such sudden and copious supplies as were then thrown into his system.
Well it was the Governor, after dinner, took us in his carriage to show us his points of vantage without the town, for to walk would have been very inconvenient!