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When needed, it is suddenly produced without confusion, marked and numbered, ready to be put together and regilt or repainted, or hung with the acres of draperies which Latins know so well how to display in everything approaching to public pageantry. At dark, on the Eve of the Epiphany, the Befana begins.
The flitting of these ill-omened night-birds, like nearly all the general superstitions relating to witchcraft, mingles itself and is lost in a throng of figures more august. Diana, Bertha, Holda, Abundia, Befana, once beautiful and divine, the bringers of blessing while men slept, became demons haunting the drear of darkness with terror and ominous suggestion.
The winter morning was sunny and brilliant with a clear blue sky, and as I drove through the streets, past the marble-built Duomo with its wonderful campanile, the city was agog, for it happened to be the Festa of the Befana. I had left my bag at the station, and the taxi took me to Fiesole, the high-up little town outside which lived the "rich Inglese" Oswald De Gex.
The Befana, which is a corruption of Epifania, the Feast of the Epiphany, is and always has been the season of giving presents in Rome, corresponding with our Christmas; and the Befana is personated as a gruff old woman who brings gifts to little children after the manner of our Saint Nicholas.
But Italians are all more or less children of a larger growth, and at Rome especially the populace of all ages, ever ready for circenses in any form, make a point of "keeping" the festival of the Befana, who holds her high court on her own night in the Piazza Navona. We will betake ourselves thither about midnight, as I have said.
Thus, for instance, in Latin countries, Christmas is personified by an ugly woman, the Befana, who comes through the walls and down the chimneys, bringing toys for the good children, and leaving only lumps of coal for the naughty ones.
Come, tell me, all of you, what everybody has told you. There must be something new. Of course that poor Carantoni is going to be married again, and the Princess Befana is dying, as usual, and the same dear old people have run away with each other, and all that. Of course. I wish things were not always just going to happen.
The bell of the Duomo was ringing, the shops were mostly closed, and all Florence was out in the streets, it being the Festa of the Befana, one of the greatest of all the ever-recurring festas of Florence. Street urchins were parading the thoroughfares with horns and wildly shouting, and there was an exchange of presents on every hand.
He looked at her with the same expression he wore in Venice, when she spoke slightingly of the superstitions of his country, and as she knew him better now, she laughed and agreed with him. "I did not really mean to do it," she said, and added, "Tell me more about Befana." "How I used to shake in my bed when I heard her bell ring!" he said with a laugh. "Did you really hear it ring?" asked Edith.
And when hundreds of blowers of these are wandering about the streets in all parts of the town, but especially in the neighborhood of the Piazza Navona, making night hideous with their braying, it may be imagined that those who go to their beds instead of doing homage to the Befana have not a very good time of it there.
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