I must say that we were received with very great ceremony, for though they were of an old-fashioned style and sadly needed freshening up, a plentiful supply of private coaches met us at the landing steps, and drove us along the Marina, and up through the sea-gate to the Governor’s palace, which was situated in the main street near the centre of the town. It was quite light when we drove in through the lofty gateway, under the great Spanish balcony of heavy ironwork bulging out like the bows of a first-rate, and ornamented at the ends with splendid hammered-iron roses. Once through the gateway we found ourselves in a courtyard, round which the palace was built. At the far end was a wide sweeping stone outside-stairway, with a heavy stone parapet, which went almost round two sides of the court. On the post at the bottom end of the parapet was seated a queer lion, carved out of the post itself at some time during the Middle Ages. This stairway, and the terrace which led from it into the principal apartments, were strewn with rich carpets of very ancient date, but more out of repair than any gentleman would use in England. The rooms inside, too, reminded me more of an English nobleman’s seat which was never used by its owner, but maintained in its ancient condition as a show place; for the silk hangings of the walls were broken or threadbare in places, and the carpets, likewise ancient, were in the like state. And though chandeliers of rock-crystal hung in all the state rooms, and we saw fine old cabinets here and there, there did not seem to be a good new piece in the whole establishment, and the servants, whose name was legion, were as dilapidated as the hangings.
The dresses of the ladies, too, were not such as we saw at Palermo, when the King and Queen were holding their Court there after the flight from Naples; but, while made of most valuable brocades, they had the appearance of being used for a lifetime on the rare occasions on which they were required. The ball consisted largely of eating the fine fruits and drinking the good Sicilian wines, both of which were very welcome in a Sicilian July, after a long spell at sea. For but few of the English officers and the Sicilian ladies were able to dance sufficiently well together, and it seemed not to be etiquette for the Sicilian gentlemen to be dancing while any English officers were without partners.
The few officers who spoke the language of the country conversed with the younger ladies, who never moved from the sides of their mothers, except to dance; and as the music was of the poorest order, the proceedings were sufficiently doleful. But I must say that Will, as I afterwards found was his invariable fortune, fell upon his feet.
He was attending the Admiral, who was, of course, conversing with the Governor, who even in the midst of the festivities would from time to time try and extract a promise from the Admiral to withdraw his ships. The conversation was through the interpretations of Will and the chaplain; and by the Governor was standing a young girl attended by a brother in place of a mother. I may say at once that she was of extraordinary beauty: somewhat tall and slender, distinguished to an unusual degree by the singular grace of figure and carriage characteristic of young Sicilian women. Her hair, which waved beautifully, was dusky rather than dark; and a dusky complexion, almost transparent in its purity, was thrown up by the wonderful Sicilian eyes, which are not brown, but of a very dark grey, looking blue in some lights and black in others; while the note of delicate refinement suggested by the slight, beautifully carried figure, was maintained by the delicacy of the thin nose of classical straightness, and the thin mouth.
Thin mouths are ordinarily taken to be typical of cruelty, but this by no means exhausts the category. There is another kind of thin lips typical of sensibility, and yet another typical of passion, to some degree of animal passion, but more of an intense ardour of devotion. Donna Rusidda’s lips had both these last two elements in them. Devotion and extreme sensibility mingled curiously with the archness of her face.
Donna Rosalia[1] (or Rusidda) di Mardolce and her brother Don Ruggiero, who was the Prince of Favara, were Palermitans. They lived in the old half-Arabic palace of the Favara, which was the great Emperor Frederick II.’s favourite summer residence, and which had come down to them through many generations. But they were connected with Syracuse through their mother, who belonged to the ancient family of the Mont’ alti. The palace of the Mont’ alti, which we saw the next day, must, when it was built, four hundred years ago, have been one of the most beautiful in Syracuse. The Gothic windows, rather in the Venetian style, of its upper storey have an Arabic delicacy and airiness. But in our day quite a mean street had grown up about it, and the last of the Mont’ alti, the widower uncle with whom the young Prince and his sister were staying, lived in a mere corner of his palace, only able to maintain his rusty equipages by practising the strictest economy in every other way. People prophesied that these, too, would go soon, and the last of the Mont’ alti of Milocca, the proudest barons of Syracuse in the Middle Ages, seek death by his own hand, when he could no longer afford the last poor appurtenances of his rank.
[1] Rosalia is pronounced Rōsă-lēă. Rusidda is a pet abbreviation of it.
However, I shall have little more to say of him: he only comes into my chronicle because “Rusidda Favara,” as she was generally called, was staying under his roof when she and Will met.
How far Will admired her I could not tell. There were only certain moods which were easily reflected in his face, such as anger and scorn. He had more than the ordinary English resolution to conceal his gentler moods. Except when he was annoyed, his hard, handsome face was almost inscrutable. He certainly talked to her and her brother a good deal; they had been at the Neapolitan Court much in their richer days, and spoke Italian fluently. During the conversation she seems to have told Will about the windows of her room, the beautiful Arab-Gothic windows which I was mentioning—a conversation which was shortly to show my young sir in a new light. The function did not last late; indeed, it dragged along somewhat too mournfully for that, and we rowed back to our respective ships.
I had not been asleep a great while—I cannot say for certain how long—when I heard my door open, and some one came in with a subdued “H’sh!”