On the other hand, all the girls go with the fisher-folk in their love of the Madonna. "Ah yes, signore," laughs a maiden whose Greek face might have served Pheidias for a model, "San Costanzo is our protector, but he is old and the Madonna is young, so young and so pretty, signore, and she is _my_ protectress." A fisherman backs up the feminine logic by a gird at the silver image which is evidently the strong point of the opposite party. The little commune is said to have borrowed a sum of money on the security of this work of art, and the fisherman is correspondingly scornful. "San Costanzo owes much, many danari, signore; and it is said," he whispers roguishly, "that if they don't pay pretty soon his creditors at Naples will send him to prison for the debt of the Municipio." But the Madonna has her troubles as well as the Saint. Her hair which has been dyed for the occasion has unhappily turned salmon colour by mistake; but the blunder has no sort of effect on the enthusiasm of her worshippers; on the canons who follow her in stiff copes, shouting lustily, or on the maidens and matrons who bring up the rear. Slowly the procession winds its way through the little town, now lengthening into a line of twinkling tapers as it passes through the narrow alleys which serve for streets, now widening out again on the hill-sides where the orange kerchiefs and silver ornaments of the Caprese women glow and flash into a grand background of colour in the sun. And then comes evening and benediction, and the fireworks, without which the procession would go for nothing, catherine-wheels spinning in the Piazza, and big crackers bursting amidst a chorus of pretty outcries of terror and delight.