The Admiral was to have a villa here of his own, that belonging to the Marquess de Gregorio, at the Pellegrino end; whilst Sir William and My Lady were to have theirs by the Flora, at the other end of the sea front. This was the word, though every one surmised that if the Hamiltons were not found with Her Majesty, the Admiral would be with them. At 9 a.m. the King, who was not so affected by the death of the Prince Albert that he could not bear to go on shore in a public manner,--after a hearty breakfast, amid the thunder of artillery, which broke most of the windows of such of his faithful subjects as lived in the neighbourhood of the port,--stepped on board the Admiral's barge, which instantly flew the Sicilian standard, and was rowed to the steps, where he was received with the loudest acclamation and apparent joy. And in the life that they led during those months at Palermo, I often thought that the King's manner of landing was more seemly than the Queen's. CHAPTER XXI.--How Will was entertained by the Princess at her Palace of the Favara.[7] [7] Pronounced Făváhră. One of the earliest and most impressive things which happened to us in Palermo, was our visit to the Favara, the ancient Arabo-Norman palace of Donna Rusidda's brother. She invited me to go with Will, and sent her rumbling old coach to fetch us, for it was a little way out of Palermo. The horses were sorry nags, and the coach had been painted so often (by the coachman) that it had almost lost its shape; but the men had on gorgeous liveries, much decayed, and apparently handed down from former servants, whom they had fitted better. We two boys, almost lost in this huge conveyance, abandoned ourselves to the novelty of the situation, until we came to a great saddle-back bridge, with nothing but dry land underneath it, and apparently crossing nothing. This the coachman, who could speak a little Italian, informed Will was the bridge of the Admiral: he did not know who the Admiral was, though he was sometimes spoken of as the Greek Admiral, and the bridge was built long, long ago, even before the time of the great Emperor Frederick, who had built the Favara, and was the ancestor of the present Prince--"in a particular way, of course," added Will to me as he translated his words. The river Oreta had in those days run under it, and was so fierce a torrent, and had drowned so many people when the storms came, that the Admiral had been canonised by the villagers of S. Giovanni of the Lepers, to which we presently came, and peered with curiosity at its ancient church, the most ancient above ground in all Sicily. The road now became very bad, lying for the most part between high walls of rough plaster, enclosing orange groves or lemon gardens. We passed, too, many clumps of the Indian fig, an extraordinary thorny cactus which bears a delicious crimson fruit; and the lean Sicilian bamboos, more like whipping-canes than the solid jointed trunks brought from the East.