“Taormina in Sicily was one of the places we stopped at: the loveliest spot that you could dream of, if you dreamed your hardest. You’ve never been there, have you? Well: the town itself is a fair day’s walk up hill from the sea, and Mola’s another day’s walk above that; by which time you’ve nearly reached the clouds—only, as it happens, Sicily doesn’t boast of any. But you needn’t go higher than Taormina for the loveliest view on earth. They may talk of seeing Madrid, Seville, Naples, and a hundred other places, and then dying contented—why, there’s none of them that’s a patch on Taormina. Sit down in the proscenium of the old theatre, facing Etna, with the Straits of Messina and the foot of Italy laid out like a map on your left: and you can do without another view for the rest of your natural life. The only objection we found to it was that in September of last year it was most awfully hot, and Taormina is pestiferous enough to be a Turkish settlement. It is worse, I think, than the old town of Granada, which is perhaps the filthiest place that I know in Europe. The cholera, too, was about last year, especially in Italy; and, if it _did_ cross the Straits, Taormina was ripe and handy for it. “After we’d been there for a week or so it _did_ come with a vengeance. First a suspicious case or two, then a case that was not suspicious at all, and then it fell like a thunderbolt on the town. Richards was off directly, and with him everyone in the place who could afford to go; so the poorer people, with their old priest, who stuck to his work like a man, had it all to themselves. “Now it looks like boasting, but I didn’t like to run. Besides, I had come there for a fortnight, and I was fond of the place and the view and the old theatre—so why go? Anyhow I didn’t budge, and did what I could to help the old man in his difficulty—it was little enough. However, I had heaps of money, and they wanted that more than anything. And he taught me something about medicine—what little he knew of it; though, after all, nothing but stimulants at one stage and opium at another seemed to do them the slightest good. “What a time it was! I pray that I may never stand face to face with cholera again. Overhead, a sky like brass, and, veiling the town, a dusky, steel-blue haze, almost as palpable as gauze: the distinctive colour (I’ve been told) of a cholera atmosphere. They died like flies, crowded in their close, evil-smelling dwellings, though we lighted fires in the streets to clear the air; an idea I borrowed, I believe, from ‘Old St. Paul’s.’ “Late one evening I hurried from a sick room to get a breath of air in the theatre below. My friend, the old priest, was there before me. This was an unusual coincidence, as he scarcely ever gave himself a moment’s rest. Yet he might have done so now, for in ten days’ time the disease abated as rapidly as it had begun. And besides, he had organised a band of fairly efficient helpers.