S. Cirino, was a chemist. They performed miracles, endured
persecution, and were finally martyred for the faith in this way: First
they had their three tongues cut out, then they were put into a saucepan
such as the maccaroni is boiled in, only larger--large enough to hold
three saints--and full of boiling oil: the saucepan was placed on a fire
and they were cooked in it. Their bodies were afterwards burnt on a
gridiron. This took place out of doors opposite a tavern, and three men,
who had come to the tavern to drink, saw it all done. Having seen it,
they went to sleep for three hundred years; then they woke up and wanted
to pay for their drinks with the money they had in their pockets, which
was money made of leather.

"What is this?" asked the landlord.

"It is money," they replied.

"It is no use," said the landlord. While they had been asleep that kind
of money had gone out of circulation.

"It is good money," they insisted.

"It is not money at all, it is only a piece of leather."

"It was money yesterday evening," said the spokesman, "when I saw Alfio,
Cirino, and Liberto being martyred." This is how the martyrdom of the
three saints is represented on carts belonging to those
spiritually-minded owners who prefer the Story of S. Alfio to the Story
of the Paladins. It seemed to me that the painter had been suspiciously
obsessed by the number Three; it was in the third century, there were
three saints, they were each martyred three times over, though they
cannot have known much about the boiling or the grilling, and there were
three drunkards who went to sleep for three centuries. But I said
nothing. I thought I would wait till I could see a cart.

By this time we had reached Nicolosi, that is we had nearly traversed the
first of the three zones into which the Slopes of Etna are divided. This
lowest one is the Regione Piemontese and Nicolosi is about 2250 feet
above the sea--the place from which tourists often start to make the
ascent of the volcano. Here we spent a declamatory half-hour discussing
where we should eat the provisions we had brought from Catania and drink
the wine we had bought at Mascalucia on the way. The discussion ended by
our being received in a peasant's hut, where we spread a table for
ourselves and the woman stood a low paraffin lamp in the middle of the
cloth. This is a bad plan, the light dazzles one for seeing those
sitting opposite and their shadows are thrown big and