more than likely,
just as it is more than likely that the Bacchic festival was a
continuation of some earlier one. He wants S. Alfio to be a
transformation of Bacchus, just as Bacchus was a transformation of
Dionysus and Dionysus of some earlier divinity, and so on back to him who
first discovered wine, ages and ages before the vates sacer who
immortalised Noah.

"And how much do the people believe?" I asked.

"Ah!" replied Joe; "who knows? And what is faith?"

"I'm sure I don't know," I said; "sometimes one thing and sometimes
another. It is a difficult question."

Then I remembered that he had asked me the same question, and I had made
the same reply at Nicolosi six weeks before, and I also remembered
something that had happened in between. "The other day," I continued, "I
had to wait in the station at Messina, and I asked the porter who was
helping me with my baggage whether he had seen the comet. He replied,
'No, I have not seen the comet, and I shall not even look for it; I do
not believe in the comet.'"

"Oh, well, you know what he meant by that? He had heard that it was
going to destroy the world, so he did not want to believe in it; he did
not want it to exist; he was not going to encourage such a dangerous
phenomenon by having anything to do with it. 'I'll leave you alone and I
expect you to leave me alone.'"

"Yes; I suppose he thought that if he removed his custom the comet would
fail."

"Precisely. But it is not quite that with S. Alfio; they want him to
exist; they are afraid that if they don't believe in him, he will leave
off performing miracles and will no longer cure them."

"It seems to me," I said, "that they are dominated by the prepotenza of
S. Alfio very much as the sulphur-miners are dominated by the prepotenza
of their capo-mafioso."

"With this distinction," he replied, "that the capo-mafioso has the
power, and sometimes the will, to hurt them; it would require a struggle
to destroy his prepotenza and there is the risk of failure. With S.
Alfio, if they cared to be master in their own house, they have only got
to leave off believing in him, there need be no struggle and there could
be no risk."

"You speak as though they could believe or leave off believing at will."

"So they can, in the loose sense in which they use the word. They only
go on believing because their vanity is involved--it flatters them to
attribute the gift of miracles to a creature of their own imagina