In the meantime those in charge of the cars had been giving their final directions and seeing that everything was in order, and the personaggi, who had been being dressed ever since early in the afternoon, were ready to receive visitors. About 10 p.m. each of them began to hold an At Home. They sat there silent and motionless in their houses among trays full of superfluous jewellery and surrounded by lighted candles, gazing imperturbably in front of them while people streamed through the room admiring them, fingering their dresses and jewels, and asking questions of their relations and friends. About 11.30 I was conducted along the illuminated streets through the crowd to a house where I stood on a balcony looking up a street down which the procession was to come.
We had to wait till long after midnight, but at last the moving lights began to shine on the high houses in the distance, the band
was heard approaching, and at 1.45 the first car staggered into sight. It represented The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men; there were three of each, reclining in the front part of the car and offering flowers to one another, instigated so to do by the Monster of Iniquity, a loathsome dragon, who was insinuating himself among them from rocks behind, while the Angel of the Lord, a singularly beautiful child, stood on a high cloud in the background, in an attitude of horror, about to take wing from such a world of wickedness. Cupid was there also, sitting at the feet of the daughters of men and taking aim generally.
The second car brought Sin, a bearded man in an imperial attitude with a golden sceptre resting on his hip. He dominated a globe round which the old Serpent had coiled himself. He was dressed in dark-blue velvet, and wore a voluminous red cloak. On his breast was a bunch of grapes, made entirely of diamond rings; each grape was a separate ring isolated from the others and so sewn on that the hoop, being passed through a hole in the material, was not visible, and only the rose of diamonds was displayed. There were fifty-five grapes, and they sparkled and
glittered in the flickering lights as the car lurched down the street and passed the balcony.
The third car represented The Voice of God, a beautiful figure of an Angel blowing a trumpet, and the words written on the cloud behind were “Delebo hominem.” In the front of the car sat a youth and a girl holding hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction.
Then The Universal Deluge came pitching and tossing round the corner—rather an ambitious car. The foreground was occupied by the water, with the head of a drowning man throwing up his arms, and the indication of another entirely submerged. The waves were beating against a steep bank up which a tigress was climbing, carrying her cub in her mouth. On the top of the bank stood a lovely woman endeavouring to save her terrified child. She was the only living figure on the car, everything else, even the terrified child, being of papier maché.
The Ark came on the fifth car and had no living figure at all, being merely Noah’s Ark resting on Mount Ararat with a dove in front. This may sound rather uninteresting
and as though designed to support home industries, but, to the initiated, it palpitated with significance, for it symbolized the Madonna herself, the only means of salvation from the waters of punishment; and as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat while the flood subsided, so does the Madonna di Custonaci rest upon Mount Eryx while the calamity is stayed.
No. 6 was The Sacrifice and represented Noah, an imposing old man with long white hair and beard, standing at an altar where a real sheep lay dead under a net and his three sons were in front praying.