Here and there a monk, crowded for lack of space from the shelves, hangs from a hook in limp, dishevelled leanness, his head drooped mockingly sidewise, his shrunken lips twisted in a dusty fatuous leer, a lid drooped over a withered eye in a hideous wink. Others huddle in fantastic postures within their contracted receptacles, as if convulsed by some obscenely wicked jest which forces them to throw back their heads, to fling out their hands, to writhe their limbs into unseemly attitudes of amusement. One lies flat, with rigid patience in every line of the meagre body, a rictus of speechless agony pinching back the mouldy cheeks. Coffins are heaped about the floor everywhere. 259Through the glass tops the occupants grin in weary scorn from amid the brown and crumbling flowers that have dried around their faces. The ghastliest section of this ghastly place is that where the women crouch in their cases, clad in the fripperies of old fashions. Earrings swing from dusty ears; necklaces clasp lean grey throats; faded hair is tortured into elaborate coiffures; laces, silks, and ribbons swathe the tragic ruins of beauty. And these women, too, all simper horribly, voicelessly, remembering perhaps how dear these faded gauds once were before they passed beyond thought of “tires and crisping pins.” “Why do they do it?” demanded Peripatetica in whispered disgust. “What strange passion for publicity prompts them thus to flout and outrage the decent privacies of death”—for they noted that each case bore a name and the date of decease, and that some of these dates were but of a few years back. “Didn’t they know, from having seen others, how they themselves would look in their turn? Why would any woman be willing to come here in laces and jewels to be a disgusting nightmare of femininity for other women to stare at?” “Vanity of vanities—all is vanity!” murmured Jane. “Now they all lie here laughing at the strange vanity that brought them to this place—at the vanity that will bring others in their turn to this incredible hypogeum.” Then they turned a corner and came suddenly upon the little horribly smiling babies, and instantly fled in simultaneous nausea and disgust—flinging themselves at Gaspero, who with a tenderly sympathetic manner 260suggested an expedition to La Favorita as a corrective of gruesome impressions. Carrying them swiftly to it by way of the long double boulevards of the newer Palermo, between the smiling villas of creamy stone that were wreathed with yellow banksias and purple wisteria, their feet set among gay beds of blossoms and facing the cheerful street life of the town.