roughly
paved streets from the Trapani gate to the balio, till by nightfall the
Piazza was as crowded as Piccadilly on Mafeking night. Every one who has
been present at an Italian festa knows what it is like--men shouting and
elbowing their way through the people with flaming lamps fitted to their
baskets, selling water and syrups, cakes and confectionery, melon seeds
and peanuts--others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina,
each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in--three
independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance--an
enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the _Odyssey_, with
a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners
spellbound in the foreground with their favourite ballad, illustrated by
a large sheet of oil paintings in eight tableaux, about the man who
murdered his wife and mother with one bloody knife--there it is lying on
the supper-table--and was ultimately taken by the carabinieri and
executed.

This blind singer with no bridge to his nose is a humorist; on one
occasion when he was fibbing in a particularly flagrant manner, he
enforced his remarks by calling upon heaven to strike him blind and smash
his nose if he was not speaking the truth.

While you are thinking that the tumult must be at its height, peaceful
nuns are creeping up the convent stair, silently, one by one, they reach
the roof, every one can see them collecting together in the moonlight and
taking hold of the dangling bell-ropes. All of a sudden you realize what
a mistake you had been making about the tumult as the riotous bells fling
their additional accompaniments out into the night, all over the town,
over the whole comune, down to Trapani, to Cofano and out to the islands.

In the meantime those in charge of the cars had been giving their final
directions and seeing that everything was in order, and the personaggi,
who had been being dressed ever since early in the afternoon, were ready
to receive visitors. About 10 p.m. each of them began to hold an At
Home. They sat there silent and motionless in their houses among trays
full of superfluous jewellery and surrounded by lighted candles, gazing
imperturbably in front of them while people streamed through the room
admiring them, fingering their dresses and jewels, and asking questions
of their relations and friends. About 11.30 I was conducted along the
illuminated streets through the crowd