On our way to Camp we met Timothy, the carpenter. I stopped to ask how things were going on.
“Badly!” said Timothy. “Ain’t it a pity? Such a fine day at last after all this rain! It’s a holiday; the men don’t want to work. We’re short of hands all round. I have only fifteen out of my gang of twenty-seven, and they are working under protest.”
“This is a festa?” I asked Gasperone.
“No, not a feast; rather a great fast,” said Gasperone.
“First thing I knew of it’s being Good Friday,” said Timothy, “was the hot cross buns for breakfast—the best bread I have eaten since I left home. You ought to look into the church they rigged up; it’s like a tempor’y railroad station. It certainly is cheerful to see them poor devils hanging round the statuary—touching, too.”
It was well for all concerned that the men refused to work, that the great “drive” was relaxed for a breathing space. They had all been working over time, “on a spurt” to get things as far advanced as possible for the visitors.
Saturday morning I went with Signor Donati and J. to call on the Archbishop at his palace, one of the few habitable buildings in Messina; it had been only slightly damaged by the earthquake. The handsome courtyard was filled with wooden shanties, the lower halls, the very stairs were crowded with families camping out. The palace had become an asylum for the homeless, a storehouse for the treasures saved from cathedral, church and monastery. While waiting for the Archbishop, we were entertained by a Jesuit priest who spoke good English.
“You shall see all our precious things,” he said, “if you will send some more blankets for our poor people and some vulgar shoes.”
The Jesuit, a lean virile man in a shabby cassock, took a big bunch of keys from his belt and led the way to a distant wing of the palace. He unlocked a heavy iron-barred door, motioned us to pass through, and locked the door behind us. We were in a vast room, smelling faintly of stale incense and wax candles, filled with the spoil of churches. There were statues of saints, plaster angels, paintings of the Madonna, crucifixes, fragments of rich altar cloths, embroidered vestments, priceless old laces, gold and silver vessels for the mass, painted missals, candlesticks, lamps, all carefully sorted and laid in piles. We passed through room after room,
