ent to the Teatro Sicilia to learn what I had
missed by not seeing the Cena. Carmelo told me that when Christ has
spoken the words "This is my body" he breaks the bread and gives each of
the apostles a piece. Judas does not eat his piece, he steals it and
leaves the room. In his absence Christ blesses the wine and gives the
others to drink, he washes their feet and they go out to the Mount of
Olives. This is followed by a scene of Judas coming to Annas and
Caiaphas, showing his piece of bread and telling them that he had heard
Christ speak blasphemy. Carmelo explained that the priests were
Hebrews--there were Hebrews, he said, in those days, living in that
country--and Hebrews believe that bread is the Body of God; therefore for
a man--and they thought Christ was merely a man--to declare that the
bread was his body amounted to blasphemy. This was evidence against the
Nazarene; it carried the story on a step and the plotting priests
prepared everything for the betrayal and capture of Christ--the final
scene which we saw.

I did not know, or had forgotten, that Hebrews were so particular about
bread, but Carmelo assured me that they never throw bread away, and if
they find a piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in
the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise
destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers in _The Elements of
Drawing_ that stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out
their mistakes, but "it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and
besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will
not for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very
lightly."

"Are you a Christian?" asked Carmelo suddenly.

I was not embarrassed. A few days before, when one of the priests at
Tindaro asked me the same question, I replied that I had been baptised
into the Christian faith soon after birth. The priest said that between
the two Churches of Rome and England there were unfortunate differences
as to the mysteries but I need not concern myself with them. "Nature
does not believe in the mysteries," said my priest, who was a most
friendly person, and as I had been baptised, if I lived a good life, and
he was politely certain I did, then I was a Christian. So I considered
myself justified in answering Carmelo's question in the affirmative.

In the evening I returned to the Teatro Sicilia; Carmelo put me into a
good place