al with them, and then,
balancing them on the end of two canes, they brought them to where I was
resting near a doomed hut.

After spending an hour, fascinated by the spectacle, we returned by the
sandy, rocky road to Nicolosi. While the carriage was being got ready, I
said to Joe:

"You know, if I lived on the Slopes of Etna, close to such a sight as we
have been contemplating, I think I should believe in the evil eye and S.
Alfio and everything else."

He assured me that it would not have any such effect unless, perhaps,
during the periods of actual eruption--as soon as the eruption was over I
should forget all about it.

"Do we not all live on the slopes of volcanoes?" asked Joe. "An eruption
cannot do more than ruin you or kill you. And without coming to live on
the Slopes of Etna you might be ruined or die at any moment. How do you
know that you have not now in you the seeds of some fatal disease that
will declare itself before you return home? Or you may be run over in
the street or killed in a railway accident any day. And as for ruin,
next time you look into an English newspaper you may see that all your
investments have left off paying dividends and have gone down to an
unsaleable price. Perhaps at this moment, in some Foreign Office, a
despatch is being drafted that will lead to a declaration of war and the
ruin of England and you with it. And yet you never worry about all
this."

"Then perhaps I had better begin to believe in S. Alfio at once?"

"Especially if you are threatened with hernia."

"You said something about hernia before. What has hernia to do with it?"
I inquired.

"S. Alfio's first miracle was to cure one of his brothers of that
complaint, which he had contracted while carrying a beam."

"But was not S. Alfio a medical man? Why do you call it a miracle when a
medical man cures his patient? Have you been reading the plays of
Moliere?"

"Who is Moliere?" asked one of them. "Did he write his plays in the
Catanian dialect?"

It does not do to make these allusions when talking with Sicilians who
are employed in the municipio. One might as well quote _Candide_ to some
young schoolmaster who thinks the only thing worth knowing is the date of
the Battle of Salamis. So I returned to S. Alfio and asked whether he
always answers all prayers; they said the people believe he does or they
hope he will. One of them, thinking I was inclined to scoff, rebuked me,
saying:

"If you