From this at length we emerged in front of an enormous palace, built of a yellowy brown stone, with a turret in the centre, and very fine Arab or Norman windows: I am not architect enough to say to which these splendid mouldings belonged. But the palace, which seemed as great or greater than the King’s, was sadly decaying, some parts being no longer inhabitable, and the windows of such rooms as were used being filled in till they held modern panes.
A more picturesque object it is not easy to imagine, than this huge mellow pile, with its weather-softened turret in the centre, standing under the shadow of the grim brown rock of Monte Griffone, and almost buried in a prodigal wealth of lemon trees.
Our coach lumbered in through an old gate into a huge sort of castleyard, from whence we were taken by a dark and very narrow stair into the part inhabited by the family. Between our leaving the miserable old coach, which had brought us, and reaching the salon, where the Prince and his sister were awaiting us, we were handed on by a dozen broken-down servitors, who looked as if they had been taken out of the fields, and thrust into the liveries of other days. But we were mistaken perhaps about the fields, because Donna Rusidda, with a mixture of frankness and pride and shame characteristic of her, soon informed us that the ground up to their very doors was let to a farmer, who also occupied the parts of the palace which had the barred windows, he being more fearful for thieves of his lemons, than they for thieves of the heirlooms which had come down in the family, some of them from the days of the Hohenstaufen Emperor—and the precious tapestries woven on Sicilian silk looms in the fifteenth century which were hanging round the chamber where we were received.
This at any rate was princely, for it was of great size and had a vaulted ceiling, with moulded ornaments in the peculiar inverted Arabic style, which looks not so much the design itself as the mould in which the design was executed; while at intervals round the chamber were pairs of columns with marvellously carved capitals, supporting large vaults filled with wonderful mosaics representing hunting scenes. The walls in between these columns consisted of large slabs of porphyry divided by slenderer columns; or the rich mosaic borders known as the Cosmato work. This we saw when Donna Rusidda drew aside the famous silk tapestries. The chairs, too, and the couches, which ran all round the walls, were ancient and magnificent; though the brocade, with which they were covered, was in many places threadbare or even split. The floor was covered in the Sicilian fashion with tiles, a hundred or more of which went to form each of the great arabesque patterns, which looked like vast love-knots tied with orange and blue ribbons. There were no carpets, and there was a general appearance of decay, even of mould, in the room, in spite of its princely proportions and priceless tapestries. But the youthful pair who were there to receive us, for all the decay of their house and the rustiness of the faithful servants who surrounded them, looked princes every inch, worthy descendants of the mighty Frederick.
For one thing they were but recently back from long attendance at the Court, and were dressed accordingly. For another it was at the Court that Will and I, though we were but junior lieutenants in His Britannic Majesty’s ship the Vanguard, and not long since midshipmen, had met them. The flavour of royalty therefore was strong, and there was in them both an innate princeliness. I am sure that Donna Rusidda, as she came forward to welcome us to the poor house, in which she had been born, and her ancestors before her, for five hundred years, looked as fit to be a queen as any woman in Europe: she was so beautiful, her nostrils, her mouth and chin were so delicately cut. I have seen no cameo of antiquity equal in beauty of outline to that which she had executed and presented to Will the time we sailed away to the reconquest of Naples—the cameo which every day is pinned on black velvet upon Katherine’s wrist, for she is a gentler memory to Katherine than even to Will. And her slight figure had the self-reliant elegance of the women of her country.
“Welcome to the Favara, W-Will!” she cried gaily, “and you, Signor—Tubbie”; and then she broke off into a little peal of laughter, while the Prince frowned at the liberty she was taking with His Britannic Majesty’s Lieutenant Trinder of the Vanguard. But seeing that I took it as a good jest, he laughed too, a charming Italian laugh.
“The Palace of the Favara,” said Donna Rusidda, “has a great many doors and windows, but only one chamber that you can call a room. Ruggiero has his little sleeping closet, and I mine, and our faithful servants have a roof over their heads—some of them; but the palace consists not of rooms, but of rats and passages. There is a place in which we have our frugal meals, but the plaster has worn off the walls until you lose the decorations; and there is the chapel. Yes, there is the chapel, with relics of I know not what value—the palate of one of the Apostles, and even a little piece of St. Veronica’s handkerchief, as thick and strong as the sacks with which our good farmer loads his ass. But these one could never sell, and indeed, though they are of the highest value, no one would give anything for them. And so they remain in the chapel, and serve no purpose but to frighten thieves from the gold in which they are enclosed. Are we to chase the rats until it is time for the colazione?”
This meant, of course, my following with the Prince, while she tripped lightly about the enormous old palace, calling to Will to see that and the other feature, which had played its part in her childhood, such as the carved figures on each side of the great fireplace in the banqueting hall, which had been real giants in her fairy tales, but now had the daylight from the hole in the roof exposing them. There were, I suppose, a hundred or two rooms in the palace, connected by stairways innumerable, and galleries hung with portraits of no great value, representing the Admirals and Condottieri, and Statesmen of the house, but no Cardinals with diplomatic faces and purple mantles—no Cardinals.
I daresay Will found the colazione unmercifully long, though it was none too long for me, for I could appreciate all the good things—the best to be had in Palermo—which the pride of the Prince had compelled him to provide for us, with incomparable wines which had been maturing in his cellars for half a century. The price of that “collation” would I daresay have kept their larder going on its ordinary terms for more than a month. To be at once a boy and a sailor gives one a proper appetite for such things. And I ever had as keen an appreciation of a beautiful woman as most men; and these Italian and Sicilian women, when they choose, can be so infinitely alluring, with their little laughter and their merry wit, and their open pleasure in their beauty. Donna Rusidda was in the highest spirits, and since all talked English, as being my only language, her broken English made her flashes of wit irresistible.
When at last the colazione was over, and I had refused to take another drop of the mellow generous wine, grown on the neighbouring slope of Misilmeri, we wandered out into the pleasure garden which was the saddest-looking thing, for I believe that every joint in the masonry of the terraces and fountains and colonnades, and marble couches overlooking the city and the bay, was gaping and ready at a touch to pour out its mortar in powder. We sat down on the terrace which had the marble couches I have mentioned, commanding the view as far as the great dark mass of Monte Pellegrino, where the Carthaginian General maintained his army for three whole years against the Romans in Palermo, supporting life on the wheat grown on the broad top of the mountain, and the wild fennel and wild onions. At one end was a little mound, such as I think they would call a calvary, save that at the top of the path which wound round it there was no crucifix, but a little shrine to Santa Rosalia, the patroness of the city and of Donna Rusidda herself, Rusidda being one of the abbreviations, in which Sicilians delight, of this name.