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"Poor Macarroni!" said Caesar, "his high tenor heart must be broken to bits." "He is going," put in Mlle. Cadet. "What a shame!" Sileno vanished and the pianist began to play waltzes. Carminatti was the first on the floor with his partner, who was the Marchesa Sciacca. The Maltese lady danced with an abandon and a feline languor that imposed respect.
This volcanic island rose out of the Mediterranean, about midway between the Island of Pantellaria and the village of Sciacca on the southern coast of Sicily. From about the 28th of June to the 2nd of July 1831, the inhabitants of Sciacca felt several slight shocks, which they imagined to have proceeded from Etna.
Difficult as it was for the government during the serious war with the Cimbri to place a second army in the field, it could not avoid sending in 651 an army of 14,000 Romans and Italians, not including the transmarine militia, under the praetor Lucius Lucullus to the island. The united slave-army was stationed in the mountains above Sciacca, and accepted the battle which Lucullus offered.
"Very appropriate! Very witty!" he exclaimed, laughing, and gave Caesar a friendly slap on the shoulder. The Marchesa Sciacca looked at Laura several times with reflective glances and a rancorous smile. "The truth is that these Southern people are just children," thought Caesar, mockingly. "What an inveterate preoccupation they have in the beautiful."
One Sunday evening, when it was raining, Caesar stayed in the hotel. In the salon Carminatti was doing sleight-of-hand to entertain the ladies. Afterwards the Neapolitan was seen pursuing the Marchesa Sciacca and the two San Martino girls in the corridors. They shrieked shrilly when he grabbed them around the waist. The devil of a Neapolitan was an expert at sleight-of-hand.
In the dining-room the Maltese sat with her two children, a boy and a girl, at the other end from where Caesar and Laura were accustomed to sit. At her side, at a table close by, chattered and jested the diplomatic Carminatti. The Marquis of Sciacca was ill with diabetes; he had come to Rome to take a treatment, and during these days he did not come to the dining-room.
Names in abundance were given it by successive observers, Nerita, Sciacca, Fernandina, Julia, Hotham, Corrao, and Graham. The last holds good in English speech, and as Graham's Island it is known in books to-day, though the sea took back what it had given, leaving but a shoal of cinders and sand.
The Sicilian people's poetry, for example, preserves a memory of the famous Vespers; and one or two terrible stories of domestic tragedy, like the tale of Rosmunda in 'La Donna Lombarda, the romance of the Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called Caso di Sciacca, may still be heard upon the lips of the people.
On the 8th of July the crew of a Sicilian ship, which was sailing at a distance of about six miles from Sciacca, suddenly observed in the sea a jet of water about 100 feet high. It rose into the air with a thundering noise, sustained itself for about ten minutes, and then fell down.
The first to appear, dressed for the ball, were the Marchesa Sciacca and her husband, accompanied by the inevitable Carminatti. The Marchesa, with her habitual brutality toward everybody that lived in the house, bowed with formal coolness to Mme. Dawson, and sat down by the piano, as far away as possible from the French ladies. She wore a gown of green silk, with lace and gold ornaments.
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