“It all happened here,” said Patsy. “It was through these very fields Persephone wandered picking violets when Pluton, king of Hades, sprang from a dark cave and carried her off to his kingdom underground. Then came the mother Demeter, in her hands the sceptre, corn, and the mystic basket, searching for her lost daughter; she lighted Etna for a torch to show the way; she looked high and low, she asked all she met for news of her child. Kyane, Persephone’s playmate, alone had met Pluton carrying off the maid, and because she begged him to set free her friend, Kyane was turned into a beautiful spring (that very spring where the _custode’s_ son went for papyrus). The voice of Demeter was heard calling Persephone, Persephone, through these very fields and meadows. In vain! Persephone, even if she heard her mother’s voice in the dark kingdom of the dead, could not return; she had eaten the seed of the pomegranate, she was the wife of Pluton. There was a great to-do; Olympus was shaken to its foundations. Demeter refused to attend the counsel of the gods, she laid a spell upon the land so that it bore no fruit, no wheat, and was threatened by famine. In the end however the matter was arranged, the family became reconciled. Zeus gave Sicily to Persephone, as a wedding gift; the daughter now spends half the year in her mother’s house, and half in her husband’s.” So he repeated the lovely old fable-allegory of the seed hidden in the earth half the year, and half the year alive again. How it echoes in the thunder of the burial service! “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” Paul had been at Eleusis; he knew the mysteries, had perhaps seen the ancient marble bas-relief in the temple there of Demeter laying in the hand of Triptolemus the precious grains of corn! [Illustration: PALERMO. VILLA TASCA.] [Illustration: PALERMO. VILLA D’ORLEANS.] [Illustration: PALERMO. FOUNTAIN OF THE PRETORIA.] [Illustration: PALERMO. CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI. _Page 393._] XIII PALERMO “Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput.” As we approached Palermo the pulse of life quickened; at every station carloads of merchandise awaited transportation, golden oranges, paler gold citrons, sacks of almonds, casks of wine, vast quantities of sumach. At Castel Termini, near the great sulphur mines, stood long freight trains laden with huge fragments of beautiful yellow sulphur. “Remember that day the smoke lifted and we got a good look into the crater of Vesuvius?” said Patsy. “You were very much taken up with the pale yellow velvet lining of the crater, and wanted to rip it out for an opera cloak. That brimstone is exactly the same color; I suppose it’s the same stuff.” At Acquaviva there were more freight trains loaded with blocks of sparkling rock salt. “Salt must be cheaper here than in Rome,” said Patsy. “When I asked your Agnese for a handful to put in the electric battery, she was horrified at my extravagance.”