Policastro was all in a bustle: the people were holding a festival in honour of St. Eufemio, their patron saint. It was with the utmost difficulty I found quarters in a miserable inn, where I fed and dressed Cartouche with my own hands, while such humble fare as the place afforded was in course of preparation. The signoressa was very sorry—but the town was in such a bustle, she hoped "Excellenza" would condescend to take what her house afforded—maccheroni, lardo, bread and fruit, with Gioja wine. "Maladetto!" said I with no very contented air, "let me have the best, signora." This indifferent repast was soon dismissed, the table cleared, and fruit and wine brought in. Lighting a cigar I drew a sofa close to the open window, and lounged there, observing the fair, or merrymaking, held in honour of the sainted Eufemio. Laces, silver buttons, ribbons, chaplets of beads, knives and bodkins, gaudy pictures of miracles and the madonna, skins of bucks and wolves, real or imaginary relics of holy personages who died in the odour of sanctity, rags, rotten bones, teeth, and innumerable pieces of the true cross, were offered for sale by various ecclesiastics and pious rogues who kept stalls; the first for the benefit of the saint, and the last for their own. Warm choke-priest, pastry, and sour wine (the refuse of the convent cellars) were retailed for the same purposes. Flags waved, and garlands and ribands fluttered on every side; bells were tolling, and men carolling; and women and children were dancing and singing round a richly-attired image of Saint Eufemio, as large as life, erected on the identical spot from which that blessed personage ascended to heaven. Dominicans, Minorites, Servites, Trinitarians, Clerks of Madonna, and I know not how many more of the Padri, with shaven scalps, dark cowls, or shovel hats, clad in sombre tunics girt with cords of discipline, swarmed in the streets. All this festivity displayed the harmless devotion of the Italian character, and its peculiar superstitions; but among the mountains eastward of the town, I became acquainted with deeds of atrocity which revealed all its blacker traits—its proneness to revenge and bloodshed. "Love," says a popular writer, "is a fiery and a fierce passion everywhere; but we who live in a more favoured land know very little of the terrible effects it sometimes causes, and the bloody tragedies which it has a thousand times produced, where the heart of man is uncontrolled by reason or religion, and his blood is heated into a fever by the burning sun that glows in the heaven above his head." Of this I had many instances during our short campaign among the wild Calabrians.