Before that accursed Bishop Tafuri turned it into a white-washed cavern the old chroniclers exhausted their adjectives in describing the glories of Saint Pantaleone’s Cathedral. The richness of its sixteen enormous columns of verd antique; its raised choir with fifty-two stalls of walnut-wood, carved with incredible richness; its high altar of alabaster under a marble baldachino glowing with mosaics and supported upon huge red Egyptian Syenite columns—its purple and gold Episcopal throne; its frescoed walls, its silver 34lamps and rich tombs, its pictures and shrines and hangings—all pitched into the scrap heap by that abominable prelate, save only this fine pulpit, and the Ambo. The Ambo gives itself wholly to the chronicles of the prophet Jonah. On one stairside he leaps nimbly and eagerly down the wide throat which looks so reluctant to receive him, as if suspecting already the discomfort to be caused by the uneasy guest. But Jonah’s aspect is all of a careless gaiety; he is not taking this lodging for more than a day or two, and is aware that after his brief occultation his reappearance will be dramatic and a portent. On the opposite stair it happens as he had prophetically foreseen, the mosaic monster disgorging him with an air of mingled violence and exhausted relief. No one can tell us why Jonah is so favourite a topic in Ravello. “Chi lo sara” everyone says, with that air of weary patience Italy so persistently assumes before the eccentric curiosity of Forestieri. Rosina Vokes once travelled about with a funny little playlet called “The Pantomime Rehearsal,” which concerned itself with the sufferings of the author and stage manager of an English house-party’s efforts at amateur theatricals. The enthusiastic conductor used to say dramatically: “Now, Lord Arthur, you enter as the Chief of the fairies!” To which the blond guardsman replies with puzzled heaviness: “Yes; but why fairies?” Producing in the wretched author a sort of paralysis of bafflement. The same look comes so often into these big Italian eyes. The thing just is. Why clamour for reasons? It is as if these curious wandering folk, 35always staring and chattering and rushing about, and paying good money that would buy bread and wine, merely to look at old stones, should ask why the sun, or why the moon, or why anything at all?...