The brigadier and the guard who
believed in the moth, on the other hand, were rather pleased, their
superstition about the lottery numbers was being elevated into faith.
The brigadier was an unselfish man and anxious to spare from further
annoyance the guard who had heard the bells. He was also a sensible man
and knew that discussions of this kind, endless if left to develop, will
generally yield to surgical treatment. He rose, saying it was time for
him to begin protecting the coast. I took the hint, thanked them all for
a very pleasant evening and wished them "Buon riposo." The brigadier
shut me in for the night, promising to call me in the morning, and the
legend above my bedroom door was--

"Comandante della Brigata."

In the morning he knocked while it was still dark. I got up, dressed,
and as the sun began to stir behind Custonaci, came through the general
room and the porch of the bungalow into the translucent freshness where
the sceptical guard was already smoking an early cigarette. To the right
of us rose Cofano and to our left, on the top of Mount Eryx, where
formerly stood the temple of Venus, were the towers of Conte Pepoli's
castle, touched by the rising sun and so distinct that we could almost
count the stones. In front of us, between these two enormous headlands,
lay the sea as calm as when the Madonna stayed the tempest, and all along
the great curve of the shore little waves were lazily playing in the
morning stillness. I asked the sceptical guard what part of Sicily he
came from.

"I am not a Sicilian," he replied, "I come from another mountain near
Rome where there was once another temple dedicated to Fortune."

"Are you from Palestrina?"

"Yes," he replied. "You cannot see much here of what the temple of Venus
was, but on my mountain you can see what the temple of Fortune must have
been. In the days when she flourished, kings and princes travelled from
distant lands to consult her oracle; now no one ever comes near the place
except a tourist or two, passing to some more prosperous town, who may
stay an hour to gaze upon the remains of her fallen greatness."

"Perhaps her temple was too prosperous and too near the shrine of St.
Peter."

"St. Peter should have seized her temple and preserved her popularity for
his own profit instead of condemning the faith in her as superstition and
allowing the control of it to pass into the hands of the state. For if
Fortune ever died she rose a