We walked in the Corso every afternoon at the fashionable driving hour. Though the weather was mild the smart people all drove in closed carriages, sometimes with one window partly open as they do in Madrid. The carriages were mostly of an antiquated shape much to our liking; a sort of cross between a landau and a barouche; the coachmen all wore caps. The finest turnout we saw had blue and red wheels; the lining and liveries were brown, and coachman and footman wore caps to match with a gold crown embroidered over the visors. We were standing at the Quattro Canti, the bull’s-eye of Palermo, where the Corso and the Via Macqueda cross, when this carriage passed. “Some one’s bowing to you!” Patsy exclaimed. I caught a flash of spectacles from the dark interior, the flourish of a hat, nothing more. “That,” cried Patsy, “was the father of Teodoro. I told you they were great chiefs!” * * * * * We went to Monreale by an electric tram; it cost ten cents to go (the distance is only five miles) and eight to return. On account, Patsy “supposed,” of Monreale standing on a high hill, and the fact that it takes more electricity to pull the car up than to let it down. The country people in the car were coldly polite to us but they argued sharply among themselves. As we passed the old city wall we noticed the washing hung out to dry. All the way to Monreale there was the same frank display of linen and underclothes. The sheets and table linen, even outside the poorer houses, were extremely handsome, often trimmed with beautiful lace. Before going into the cathedral we loitered about the little town of Monreale. “May the lady sit here and rest a moment?” Patsy asked a tailor sewing in the doorway of his shop. The man gravely motioned me to a chair, then asked a question. “The Signorino is Americano? Has he ever seen Kicago?” Patsy said he knew Chicago well. “I am thinking of going there,” said the tailor. “I have a good little business, nothing to complain of, all the best people in Monreale wear my clothes, but there is no great future, no prospect of laying anything by. My neighbor, Ludovico, has been in Kicago twenty years; he has done very well. He has merely come back here to wait till his poor father dies--the old man’s past praying for--then he [Illustration: MONREALE. _Page 395._] [Illustration: PALERMO. THE ROYAL PALACE. _Page 392._] [Illustration: PALERMO. THE CATHEDRAL. _Page 391._] returns to Kicago. He asks me to go with him. What does the Signorino advise?” Over a barber’s shop hung a sign with the words “Tonsorial Artist;” this evidently was the establishment of Ludovico.