All that quiet falling day Jane and Peripatetica wandered in the transformed monastery, staring at the great metopes; lingering among the Saracenic carvings and jewelled windows, poring over Phœnician seals; over the amazing ecclesiastic needlework, the gold monstrances, the carved gems, and last and best of all some delicious reliefs at sight of which they forgave at once and forever their old enemy, the Eighteenth Century, for all its disgusting crimes against beauty. They sought madly through the books for some mention of these tall, adorable nymphs in adorably impossible attitudes, these curled and winged and dimpled babies, fluttering like fat little wrens sweetly ignorant of the laws of gravitation; but as always on any subject of interest Baedeker and the rest frigidly refused to tell the name of the man out of whose head and hands had grown these enchanting figures.
“Oh, dear Unknown!” cries Jane regretfully, “why is your noble name buried in silence! I wish to make a pilgrimage to your tomb, to cover it with Sicilian roses, and breathe a prayer for the repose of your sweet and gracious soul.”
“Me too!” echoes Peripatetica, in tender scorn of the stodgy rules of English grammar.
The Paschal season is near.
Always, in all lands of all faiths, the coming of Spring, the yearly resurrection of life and nature, has been welcomed with gladness. The occultation of Osiris, of Baldur, of Persephone, of the Christ, is mourned; their coming again hailed with flowers and feasting.
Palermo is filling with visitors; with a glory of flowers and verdure in which the loveliest city in the world grows daily lovelier. The Conca d’Oro—the Shell of Gold—swims in a golden sea of sunshine.
On the Wednesday before Easter the whole population exchanges cakes. Cakes apotheosized by surprising splendours of icing; icing, gilded, silvered, snowily sculptured into Loves and angels and figures of national heroes. Icing wrought into elaborate garlands tinted rose, purple, and green; built into towers and ornate architectural devices. Structures of confectionery three feet high are borne on big platters between two men. Every child carries gay little cakes to be presented to grandparents and godparents, to cousins and playmates.
All Maundy Thursday the population moves from church to church. Masses moan incessant in every chapel. Before the Virgins on every street-shrine, draped in black, candles blaze and drip. Priests and monks hurry to and fro, bent upon preparations for the great spectacle of the morrow.
Friday morning early all Palermo is in the streets in its best attire. Small children dressed as little cardinals, as nuns, as priests, bishops, angels with gilded wings, as Virgins, as John the Baptist, are on their way to the churches from which the processions are to flow. Monks and friars gather from outlying country convents.