In the cloister of Monreale we were again possessed by haunting memories of Spain. The place is like some supremely beautiful Andalusian patio. It is surrounded by slender Arabic paired columns, some with twisted shafts, some inlaid, some of plain alabaster with amazing fretted capitals, the heads of men and animals carved in the midst of the foliage of acanthus and palm. The center is cunningly laid out by some wise gardener, monk or layman. At each corner is a mass of yellow wall-flowers with alternate clumps of white stocks, purple flags, and lavender hyacinths. Among the ornamental trees we found one new to us--the flowering peach. The blossoms are shaped like a red camellia, with softer, more gracious petals. “The peaches?” Patsy asked the _guardiano_. “Small and not at all good to eat,” he made a face; “sour in fact as unripe grapes. You see that other tree, with the insignificant blossoms? That bears peaches fit for the King!” “Look at these violets!” Patsy brought me the largest Parma violets I ever saw. “This fellow says they begin to bloom in November. Here they are still going it for all they’re worth in April. One of those chaps in Taormina gave [Illustration: MONREALE. INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL. _Page 400._] [Illustration: MONREALE. THE CLOISTERS. _Page 404._] [Illustration: MONREALE. BRONZE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL. _Page 399_] [Illustration: MONREALE. THE ARAB FOUNTAIN. _Page 405._] as the reason he had chosen Sicily as a home, that the violets bloom longer here than any place he had ever known.” Overhead the sky was a flawless sapphire vault, broken only in one corner by a mountain that looked like transparent amethyst. The perfume of the orange and the lemon blossoms was intoxicating as sweet wine; the comfortable hum of bees made a low undersong to the music of the magic fountain in the corner of the cloister. It is not Italian, it is not Sicilian. What manner of fountain can it be? Listen! Its language is softer than any now spoken in Trinacria! “_Allah il Allah!_” The fountain still murmurs the old cry of the muezzin. From a large basin rises a high carved shaft of rich topaz colored marble, supporting a curiously wrought ball with sculptured figures, foliage, and the alternate heads of men and lions. From their mouths drips and drips, but never spurts, a slow soft shower of diamond drops. It is as different from the noisy splurging fountains of Naples, as the slow soft-spoken tongue of the Arabian sage is different from the strident scolding of those men on the train, the father of Teodoro and the little _avvocato_. “A place of mystery and beauty beyond belief.” So the record of Monreale ends as it began--“past belief!” * * * * * “It’s good enough just to be alive today,” Patsy declared one ecstatic morning; “I’m off for the market and the Marina!”