At last only the Arch-priest and myself remained standing in the central space of the platform, when the former, after an obeisance of a cringing humility of which I had hitherto deemed him incapable, conducted me to a throne beneath a canopy of blue and gold. From this point, during the performance of some singing, I was enabled surreptitiously to examine the component parts of the huge crowd beneath. Immediately under the dais were numbers of persons who were all characterised by wearing green in some form or other, either green tunics or mantles or scarves. As these seemed to occupy the better and reserved space in the courtyard I concluded (and rightly so) that they were members of the middle or mercantile class, who were given precedence over the general populace. The latter were farther away, and were consequently more difficult for me to distinguish. But it was a picturesque throng in any case, and brilliantly coloured, for the robes were mostly in tints of yellow, orange, violet, pink, cinnamon and other shades, though the four colours of blue, white, red and green were conspicuously absent. Men, women and children were visible in the crowd, all of them being small dark people of the type already exemplified in the few persons I had hitherto seen. Part of the court was enclosed by double colonnades that supported upper chambers screened by lattice-work from inquisitive eyes, like the discreet convent windows I used to observe in the highest storeys above the streets of Naples and Palermo. Behind these screens were evidently many spectators, and from the shrillness of the voices issuing hence and from other indications I gathered that the occupants of these galleries were mostly women. As a matter of fact, one side was reserved for the ladies and children of the nobility, and the other for the female inmates of the college of nuns or recluses attached to the Temple of the Sun, of whose duties I mean to speak later.