nt Ararat with a dove in front. This may
sound rather uninteresting and as though designed to support home
industries, but, to the initiated, it palpitated with significance, for
it symbolized the Madonna herself, the only means of salvation from the
waters of punishment; and as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat while the
flood subsided, so does the Madonna di Custonaci rest upon Mount Eryx
while the calamity is stayed.

No. 6 was _The Sacrifice_ and represented Noah, an imposing old man with
long white hair and beard, standing at an altar where a real sheep lay
dead under a net and his three sons were in front praying.

No. 7 was _The Rainbow_, another lovely girl as an angel standing between
a bank of clouds and a rainbow. On the breast of this figure was worked
in jewels Noah's dove with an olive-branch; this was particularly
appropriate, as it happens also to be the badge of the town.

The procession was closed by a long car carrying first a band of
musicians, then a chorus of youths attired as angels and crowned with
roses, the whole backed by a sort of temple front framing a copy of the
sacred picture. This car had to stand still from time to time while its
occupants performed music composed specially for the occasion, and the
continual stopping dictated the movements of the other cars and was
signalled to them by bells, so that there might always be about the same
space between them.

The cars were drawn by men and the figures made no attempt to stand
rigidly still--anything of the kind would have been out of the question,
for they must have been on the move between five and six hours. The last
car passed my balcony at 3.30, an hour and three-quarters after the first
had come into sight, and one could tell the next day that they had been
through nearly the whole town, for hardly a street was safe to walk
in--they were all so slippery with the wax that had dropped from the
candles. The constant moving of their limbs by the figures, though they
never lost the general idea of the attitude, together with the tottering
motion caused by the roughness of the paving, prevented any sense of the
pose plastique or living picture.

Every one of the female figures, except _The Voice of God_, had her
breast encrusted with jewels, usually in a floral design, and the borders
of their dresses were heavy with jewellery; the male figures also wore as
much as could be suitably sewn on their costumes.

Omitting consideration