n the fool's motley lay on his face on the grass and made
no sign of life.

VII

DISCROWNED, DISHONORED

The red shield of the sun had slipped into the sea, the warm twilight
had glided into warm night, and the yellow circle of the perfect moon
glowed in a sea-blue sky. To your Sicilian the moon is ever a marvel, a
mystical influence, now generous, now maleficent, always portentous. One
salutes in her the spirit of Diana; another sees on that yellow disk
only the awful face of Cain; to yet a third the moon is nothing more nor
less than a baker's daughter; while a fourth will swear that she is the
sister of the sun, who loved her brother too well and is condemned, in
punishment for her sin, to drift forever in solitude through the skies.
But whatever the moon meant to each, all paid the moon homage. Lovers in
Syracuse, wandering in grove or garden, looked up at it, thinking sweet
thoughts, uttering sweet words, and then, looking into each other's
eyes, forgot the world as their lips met. Poets in Syracuse, catching
sight of the moon through their open casemates, abandoned lamp and
parchment, and, propping their chins on their hands, stared at that
enigmatic field of silver and believed themselves to be inspired.
Philosophers in Syracuse, pacing quiet streets, smiled at the ancient of
days and sighed over their flying shadows, symbolical of much. Needy
folk, greedy folk, showed pieces of silver to it, singing:

"O Holy Moon,
I beg a boon:
Keep me healthy,
Make me wealthy
Very soon."

Children not yet abed played quaint blindfold games in which they made
the moon their playmate, shrilling the distich:

"Tell us, Mistress Moon, who ask it,
What you carry in your basket."

Fishermen in Syracuse, hanging out their little lanterns at the prows of
their boats, compared on the dancing waters the lustre of the moonlight
with the reflection of their little wicks, and were proud of the power
of their fish-oil. Dogs in Syracuse bayed.

In the hills above Syracuse all was silent. The moonlight, flooding
slope and valley, wood and ruin and church, shone on the figure of a man
in motley lying motionless upon the grass. It shone, too, on the sad
face of a girl wandering, wandering through the pine woods. The
moonlight shone caressingly upon her crown of flame-colored hair, upon
his deep, tearless eyes.

Since she had fled from the false hunter into the thickets of the wood
Perpet