Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/334

344 reading, and seldom go to rest before midnight. The new moon is now in the sky, and we often listen from our piazzo to the singing of the country-people, always melancholy tunes, with long, drawn-out, dying cadences. The people of the island are of a handsome Italian type, and are in part good-tempered and pleasant; in part brutish, especially the younger generation, who not unfrequently salute us on our rambles by volleys of stones, if their insatiable desire after bajocci and grani is not satisfied, which is impossible.

The music in the little church, which is near, is abominable, a mosaic of marches and dance-music, besides being very badly played. The church abounds with representations of the Virgin in oil-painting, carved in wood, or moulded in wax; some old and ugly, others dressed out like dolls, and a couple in long perukes. Both the church and the service, which is performed within it, show the decay of religion.

There is one scene however of actual religious life which one frequently sees, at the so-called Calvario, a semi-circular open chapel between two roads, in which one sees five black crosses, and a figure of the Virgin on her knees at the foot of the largest cross, without any image of Christ, but adorned with implements of martyrdom. Lamps burn in the evening at the foot of the cross, and bouquets of roses bloom ever fresh beside the knees of the Madonna. Upon the steps of this chapel, one sees sometimes, during the day, and always in the evenings, men and women on their knees with the expression of the deepest devotion.

June 16th.—San Antonio is the patron saint of the