And those who have sat and hung over a café table till now start up when they hear steps echo on the stone pavements. They shake the drowsiness from their bodies and hurry out. They mingle in the swiftly increasing stream of people, and the heavy feet of Time begin to move a little faster. Mere acquaintances press each other’s hands with heartfelt warmth. It is plain that the same enthusiasm fills all souls. And the most absurd people are out; old university professors, distinguished noblemen and fine ladies, who otherwise never set their foot in the street. They are all equally joyous. “God! God! that he is coming, that Palermo is to have him back again!” they say. The Palermo students, who have not moved from their usual headquarters in Quattro Canti all night, have provided torches and colored lanterns. They were not to be lighted till four o’clock, when the man they expected was to come; but about two o’clock one or two of them begin to try whether their torches burn well. Then they light everything and greet the flames with cheers. It is impossible to stand in darkness when so much joy is burning within them. In the hotels the travellers are waked and urged to get up. “There is a festival in Palermo to-night, O signori!” The travellers ask for whom. “For one of the socialists whom the government has pardoned out of prison. He is coming now in the steamer from Naples.”--“What kind of a man is he?”--“His name is Bosco, and the people love him.” There are preparations everywhere in the night for his sake. One of the goatherds on Monte Pellegrino is busy tying little bunches of blue-bells for his goats to wear in their collars. And as he has a hundred goats, and they all wear collars--But it must be done. His goats could not wander into Palermo the next morning without being adorned in honor of the day. The dressmakers have had to sit at their work till midnight to finish all the new dresses that are to be worn that morning. And when such a little dressmaker has finished her work for others, she has to think of herself. She puts a couple of plumes in her hat and piles up bunches of ribbon a yard high. To-day she must be beautiful. The long rows of houses begin to be illuminated. Here and there a rocket whizzes up. Fire-crackers hiss and snap at every street corner. The flower shops along Via Vittorio Emanuele are emptied again and again. Always more, more of the white orange-blossoms! All Palermo is filled with the sweet fragrance of the orange-blossoms. The gate-keeper in Bosco’s house has no peace for a moment. Magnificent cakes and towerlike bouquets are incessantly passing up the stairway, and poems of welcome and telegrams of congratulation are constantly coming. There is no end to them.