... It is Palm Sunday, and Jane and Peripatetica are at a reception—otherwise a Sicilian high mass. They have come, still on the trail of their beloved Normans, who have almost ousted the Greeks in their affections, to the Cappella Palatina in the Royal Palace. The chapel is less than a third as large as Monreale but is even more golden, more dimly splendid, more richly beautiful than the Abbey Church. It is crowded 246to the doors. Everywhere candles wink and drip in the blue clouds of incense. The voices of boys soar in a poignant treble, and the organ tones of men answer antiphonally. The priests mutter and drone, and occasionally take snuff. Mass goes on at a dozen side altars, oblivious of the more stately ceremonies conducted in the chancel. The congregation comes and goes. A family with all the children, including baby and nounou, enter and pray and later go out. Aristocrats and their servants kneel side by side. The crowd thickens and melts again, and companions separate to choose different altars and different masses, according to taste. All are familiar, friendly, at ease. The divine powers are holding a reception, and worshippers, having paid their respects, feel free to leave when they like. Long palm branches are carried to the altar from time to time by arriving visitors, each branch more splendid than the last. Palms braided and knotted, fluttering with ribbons, tied with rosettes of scarlet and blue, wrought with elaborate intricacies—hundreds of branches, which are solemnly sanctified, asperged, censed, with many genuflections. Priests in gold, in white, in scarlet, accompanied by candles, swinging censors and chanting, take up the palms and make a circuit of all the altars among the kneeling worshippers, and finally distribute the branches to their owners who bear their treasures away proudly.