Little that was new, it appeared, though the old gentleman repeated the conversation, as well as those of Plato and Socrates, with whom he often talked. While he rambled on, the attendant, a fat perspiring man, was visibly embarrassed--he too wished to talk about America. As we took our leave he found his chance. “Behold, this came from San Francisco,” he pointed to a hideous porcelain medallion, with a photograph of a man and a woman, hanging from his buttonhole, “a portrait of my son and his wife, _non c’è male_?” “The Signori will return?” said the old man, hovering between us and his big book. “They will let me be of some service to them?” We would gladly have returned, our new friend is one of the most learned archeologists in Sicily; but, alas, he would only speak of materializations and controls--his book was full of the gross impostures we used to hear about years ago, before the high-grade mediums of these later days and their dupes came to the fore. “Think of the things he could have told us!” groaned Patsy. “What a wasted opportunity!” Not far from the Museum we passed a flaring placard with the words: “At the Theatre of Empedocles will be presented the Cinematograph of Edison.” Here in ancient Syracuse, the ends of the earth are brought together--Empedocles and Edison; what a combination! My last impression of Girgenti is of our visit to a little church--the name is forgotten--and of Patsy’s chatter about what we saw there. “This,” he said, as we walked along a dusty road of “splendor-loving Acragas,” “is the Temple to Demeter and Persephone, though you wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you.” The little church shows few traces of the ancient temple. Its chief treasure is a famous crucifix, that hangs against the wall, surrounded by votive offerings, wax models of hands, feet, breasts and stomachs (very like those of terra-cotta I saw at the Temple of Juno in Veii), the most gross things of the kind I have seen in a Christian church. “A lady who had paralysis of the hands,” said the cripple who served as cicerone, “promised the Lord, if he would cure her, to pay him this compliment. Eccelenza, she had faith--_aimé_ if we all had her faith--she was cured. My grandmother herself saw this thing. Those two wax arms she hung up in gratitude, they cost a horror; she gave the _prete_ ten francs as well for the poor. It is a miraculous crucifix, _davvero_, but to deserve the miracle one must have faith!” From an olive grove came the sound of a shepherd’s flute; the thin sweet music of the _pastorale_ was the only sound that broke the noontide quiet as we sat outside the old temple of Demeter and Persephone, dreaming!