The guard who had heard the bells ring now began to remonstrate gently and begged there might be no confusing of faith with superstition.
The sceptical guard replied that it was difficult to keep them apart, or, indeed, to look upon them as two different things. The only confusion there was arose because of the imperfections of language—a clumsy instrument, though the best we have for its purpose. We call a kiss a kiss whether it be given by an old woman to her grandchild or by a young man to his bride; but the having one word for two things does not make them the same in intention, and so the having two words for faith and superstition does not make them fundamentally different. The guard who had heard the bells was beginning to look uncomfortable, if not actually offended, the tendency of all this being to depreciate his faith in the Madonna and treat it as superstition. The brigadier and the guard who believed in the moth, on the other hand, were rather pleased, their superstition about the lottery numbers was
being elevated into faith. The brigadier was an unselfish man and anxious to spare from further annoyance the guard who had heard the bells. He was also a sensible man and knew that discussions of this kind, endless if left to develop, will generally yield to surgical treatment. He rose, saying it was time for him to begin protecting the coast. I took the hint, thanked them all for a very pleasant evening and wished them “Buon riposo.” The brigadier shut me in for the night, promising to call me in the morning, and the legend above my bedroom door was—
“Comandante della Brigata.”
In the morning he knocked while it was still dark. I got up, dressed, and as the sun began to stir behind Custonaci, came through the general room and the porch of the bungalow into the translucent freshness where the sceptical guard was already smoking an early cigarette. To the right of us rose Cofano and to our left, on the top of Mount Eryx, where formerly stood the temple of Venus, were the towers of Conte Pepoli’s castle, touched by the rising sun and so distinct that we could almost count the stones. In front of us, between
these two enormous headlands, lay the sea as calm as when the Madonna stayed the tempest, and all along the great curve of the shore little waves were lazily playing in the morning stillness. I asked the sceptical guard what part of Sicily he came from.
“I am not a Sicilian,” he replied, “I come from another mountain near Rome where there was once another temple dedicated to Fortune.”
“Are you from Palestrina?”
“Yes,” he replied. “You cannot see much here of what the temple of Venus was, but on my mountain you can see what the temple of Fortune must have been. In the days when she flourished, kings and princes travelled from distant lands to consult her oracle; now no one ever comes near the place except a tourist or two, passing to some more prosperous town, who may stay an hour to gaze upon the remains of her fallen greatness.”
“Perhaps her temple was too prosperous and too near the shrine of St. Peter.”