aking preparations. Berto recommended me
to visit the barber on Saturday afternoon and, as a good Sicilian, I
followed his advice and went to the salone of Peppino. When Samuel
Butler first came to Mount Eryx in 1892 to see whether he could identify
the localities with those described as Scheria and Ithaca in the
_Odyssey_, he slipped in the street and put his ankle out of joint. The
doctor was away, and his foot was set by Peppino, who is a barber-surgeon
with a salone close to the spot where the accident happened. Accordingly
Peppino is the barber I employ when I am on the Mountain. While he was
attending to me I observed a change in the salone, and, on asking where
the looking-glasses were, was told they had been lent to Berto to
ornament the buffet of his wedding festa.

After the barber, I had my dinner, as I found there would be no
opportunity to do so when once the wedding ceremonies had begun, and then
I dressed. In the meantime a cloud began to collect on the Mountain and
the wind began to blow.

CHAPTER XI
BERTO'S WEDDING

A Sicilian wedding is conducted either on system _a_, when the happy
couple go away for their honeymoon and the ceremony is performed in the
morning, or on system _b_, when they do not go away but have a ball at
home, and then the ceremony is performed in the evening. The wedding of
Ignazio proceeded on system _a_, that of Berto and Giuseppina on system
_b_. As for Alberto Bosco, his wedding was either a combination of _a_
and _b_ or an exceptional case.

Berto's brother Nicolao came to fetch me at 5.30 p.m. and took me to the
house of the bride's brother in the piazza, where the bride was waiting.
Her dress was of pale grey crepe trimmed with dull silver embroidery and
she wore zagara in her bonnet. Exceptional cases being excepted, it may
be said that brides only wear white silk and a veil and wreath of orange
blossom, as Ignazio's bride did at the religious ceremony, when the
wedding is conducted on system _a_. I failed to discover any rule about
a cortege of bridesmaids, if there is such a rule it is probably elastic.
The other ladies wore dresses as for a dance in England in the country in
the winter. The gentlemen, like the guests at the Nascita, wore evening
dress. And of course we all had cloaks or over-coats.

When we were about to leave the house, Peppi Bosco, with his trombone and
the rest of the municipal band, began to play, and to the strains of
their mu