"The Palace of the Favara," said Donna Rusidda, "has a great many doors and windows, but only one chamber that you can call a room. Ruggiero has his little sleeping closet, and I mine, and our faithful servants have a roof over their heads--some of them; but the palace consists not of rooms, but of rats and passages. There is a place in which we have our frugal meals, but the plaster has worn off the walls until you lose the decorations; and there is the chapel. Yes, there is the chapel, with relics of I know not what value--the palate of one of the Apostles, and even a little piece of St. Veronica's handkerchief, as thick and strong as the sacks with which our good farmer loads his ass. But these one could never sell, and indeed, though they are of the highest value, no one would give anything for them. And so they remain in the chapel, and serve no purpose but to frighten thieves from the gold in which they are enclosed. Are we to chase the rats until it is time for the _colazione_?" This meant, of course, my following with the Prince, while she tripped lightly about the enormous old palace, calling to Will to see that and the other feature, which had played its part in her childhood, such as the carved figures on each side of the great fireplace in the banqueting hall, which had been real giants in her fairy tales, but now had the daylight from the hole in the roof exposing them. There were, I suppose, a hundred or two rooms in the palace, connected by stairways innumerable, and galleries hung with portraits of no great value, representing the Admirals and Condottieri, and Statesmen of the house, but no Cardinals with diplomatic faces and purple mantles--no Cardinals. I daresay Will found the _colazione_ unmercifully long, though it was none too long for me, for I could appreciate all the good things--the best to be had in Palermo--which the pride of the Prince had compelled him to provide for us, with incomparable wines which had been maturing in his cellars for half a century. The price of that "collation" would I daresay have kept their larder going on its ordinary terms for more than a month. To be at once a boy and a sailor gives one a proper appetite for such things. And I ever had as keen an appreciation of a beautiful woman as most men; and these Italian and Sicilian women, when they choose, can be so infinitely alluring, with their little laughter and their merry wit, and their open pleasure in their beauty. Donna Rusidda was in the highest spirits, and since all talked English, as being my only language, her broken English made her flashes of wit irresistible.