rit of the _Scenes de la Vie de Boheme_ paints the guests in
modern evening dress at a _Marriage in Cana of Galilee_ we are offended.
The Nascita is not done by such an artist; it is peculiarly a woman's
subject, being a picture of home life with a birth for its occasion, and
is usually made by a girl who has never heard of Bohemia. She has seen
trains in the railway station and ships in the port, but probably has
never herself travelled in either. Her father or her brother has perhaps
been fishing for sponges off Sfax and may have returned with stories of
the wonders of Tunis, and so she may have heard of a boulevard, but she
is not affected by it. She makes her Nascita as the medieval painters
made their pictures, and is not seeking to attract attention or to
astonish or to advertise herself or to make money. Sicilians are all
artists, and the Nascita is the girl's pretext for making as close a
representation as she can of the life to which she and her friends are
accustomed. It is for her what the Shield of Achilles was for Homer,
what the Falstaff scenes in _King Henry IV_ were for Shakespeare, or what
the Escape from Paris was for my buffo in Palermo.

MOUNT ERYX

CHAPTER IX
THE COMPARE

Michele Lombardo, a goldsmith of Trapani, came to me one day and said he
wished me to be his compare. I at once had a vision of myself as a black
man riding round a circus on a bare-backed horse and jumping through
hoops. That was because, at the time, all my knowledge about a compare
was derived from a conversation I had had in the house of the Greco
family at Palermo. Among the photographs grouped on the wall was one of
a pleasant-looking nigger in European costume. I asked who he was, and
Carolina said he was an African, a compare. I asked what she meant and
she said that her father had held the African's niece at its cresima.
The African's name was Emanuele, but she had never known his family name.
I asked whether he had a profession and she replied:

"Faceva cavallerizza."

I knew no more about cavallerizza than about a compare or a cresima. She
explained the first by saying that the horse goes round and Emanuele on
the horse's back performs gymnastics. That is, he used to do so, but he
went to Paris, where a duchess saw him performing and, on account of his
agility and his attractive physiognomy, fell in love with him. She was
an Egyptian duchess and wore diamonds because she was rich. She was so