This “simple but first-class conversation” took place in the eating-station at Catania which the two had all to themselves, most of the Tedeschi tourists frugally remaining in the train and staying their pangs from bottles, and with odds and ends out of paper parcels, from which feasts they emerged later replete but crumby.
Poor Catania! sunk to a mere feeding-trough for passing tourists. She, the great city sitting blandly among her temples and towers, wooed for her money bags by all the warlike neighbours. For whenever her neighbours squabbled with one another, which was pretty nearly all the time—or whenever an outsider intervened—each strove to engage the aid of this rich landholder, sending embassies and emissaries to bully or cajole Catania. As rich folk will, she always tried to protect herself by taking neither side completely, speaking fair to each, and, like all Laodiceans, she made thereby two enemies instead of one, and was considered fair prey by both.
That splendid, dangerous dandy, Alcibiades, was one of these ambassadors. Almost under the feet of Jane and Peripatetica, as they sat with their mouths full of crisp delectable little tarts, had the wily Athenian spoken in the Catanian theatre. The older men enjoyed his eloquent, graceful Greek, but they were quite determined not to be persuaded by it to let his fleet enter their harbour, his army enter their city, or to be used as a base from which to strike the Syracusians. The Catanians didn’t like Syracuse, but they didn’t mean to embroil themselves with her. They secretly hoped the Athenians would reduce that dangerous neighbour to despair, but if either destroyed the other—why, then it would be well to be able to show the victor their clean hands.
Alcibiades was quite aware he was not convincing them, but he enjoyed turning brilliant periods in public, and was meanwhile pleasantly conscious of the young men in the audience admiring the chasing of his buckles, the artful folds of his gold-embroidered chalmyde, the exquisite angle at which he knotted his fillet, privately resolving to readjust their own provincial toilets by the model of this famous glass of fashion. And when they all poured out of the theatre after his brilliantly preferred request had been politely refused, he could afford to smile calmly, for, behold! there was the Athenian fleet in the harbour, the Athenian army in the city. He had not been using those well-turned phrases for mere idleness. They had availed to keep the authorities occupied while his subordinates had executed his commands.
And their caution was of no avail whatever, for in due time, when Alcibiades was in exile and the Athenians rotting in the Latomiæ, Syracuse duly turned and “took it out of” Catania. Took it out good and hard too.
There was no use stopping over a train to see the old theatre and realize for themselves this curious bit of history; it only meant crawling through black passages by the light of a smoky candle, for Ætna in 1669—in a fit of ennui with poor Catania—had pitched down thousands of tons of lava upon her and hid all the rich city’s ancient glories from the sun.
It was from Catania that another interesting Greek had set out upon his last journey. A journey to the crest of that volcano which has been constantly taking a hand in the destinies of Sicily, with what—in its careless malice, its malignant furies—seems almost like the personal wickedness of some demon; that incalculable mountain whose soaring outlines had been coming out at Jane and Peripatetica all day whenever the train turned a corner, as if to reassure them that they couldn’t lose her if they tried. Ætna was from the very beginning the pre-eminent fact in this part of Sicily.
First Zeus—who always had a cheerful disregard of any rules of chivalry in dealing with his enemies—tied down the unlucky Titan Enceladus upon this very spot, and, gathering up enough of Sicily to make a mountain the size of Ætna, heaped it on top of him, probably congratulating himself the while that he had put a complete end to that particular annoyance. But quite a number of rulers since Zeus have discovered that in a rebellious temperament there reside resources of annoyingness which even a god cannot entirely foresee or provide against, and the Titan still heaves restlessly at his load from time to time, rocking the whole island with his struggles, toppling towers, engulfing cities, tearing the earth apart in his furies.
Some of the myths accuse Demeter herself of having set Ætna alight in her frenzy, that all Sicily might thus be illumined to aid her in the search for Persephone, and that never since that reckless day has she been able to extinguish it, but must fight, with rain and dews and snows to save her people’s bread from the flames forever threatening to destroy it. The fire pours forth from time to time, spreading cruel ruin, but ever, aided by her, man creeps up and up once more. Up to Randazzo; up to Brontë, the “thunder town,” given to Lord Nelson by Marie Antoinette’s sister, then Queen of the Two Sicilies, where the Dukes of Brontë, Nelson’s descendants, still live part of each year in their wild eyrie.
The vine and the olive climb and climb after each catastrophe. They cover the old scars of the eruptions, perch in crevices where a goat can scarce stand, and wring from the rich crumbs of soil “wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil that causeth his countenance to shine.”