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Updated: May 1, 2025
Afterwards, when it was over, and everybody had seen her, some people said that she was perfectly beautiful, others declared that she was a freak of nature and would soon be hideous, but, meanwhile, was an interesting study; one young gentleman, addicted to art, said that her face belonged to the type seen in the Elgin marbles; a Sicilian lady said that her head was even more archaic than that, and resembled a fragment from the temples of Selinunte, preserved in the museum at Palermo; and the Russian ambassador, who was of unknown age, said that she was the perfect Psyche of Naples, brought to life, and that he wished he were Eros.
This explained why at Selinunte the brigadier had discarded the price of my clothes, which was not his concern but mine and belonged to the week in which I had bought them, and preferred to play the number that fell from the cigarettes, of which he was at the moment actually smoking one.
He drove us along between flowery fields of cistus until the temples of Selinunte came in sight, then down to the Marinella, a handful of houses on the shore under the low cliff.
One wet Saturday evening in May I found myself at Castelvetrano consulting Angelo, the guide, about the weather. His opinion was that it would clear up during the night; I said that if it did we would go to Selinunte, and this confirmed his view; so, on the understanding that there was to be no rain, I appointed him padrone of the expedition and promised to acquiesce in all his arrangements.
The brigadier and the corporal both sent illustrated postcards to me from Selinunte and I sent them postcards in return, but the corporal unaccountably desisted after being transferred to another station; for instead of returning home in about a month, as he had intended, he signed on for a further term of service.
There were only a few things in it, merely his table with his books and official papers and three or four chairs; but everything, as at Selinunte, was clean and tidy. On the wall was an extensive eruption of postcards and among them those that had come from me.
There must be something in the air of Selinunte that encourages bathing, for they told me that in a few days an annual festa was to take place there, the pilgrims arriving the evening before and spending the whole night bathing in the sea, the men in one part and the women in another; at dawn they would come out of the water, dress and attend to their religious duties.
Selinunte depends for news upon chance visitors and Angelo had brought the winning numbers which he had got from a cousin of his in one of the lottery offices at Castelvetrano. The brigadier had lost and in giving his instructions for the next week's drawing seemed to experience great difficulty in making up his mind.
He asked whether anything unusual had happened to me lately, either in real life or in a dream. I told him that I seldom remembered a dream, but that I had had an unusually delightful day in real life at Selinunte. In his capacity of padrone he acknowledged the compliment, but feared there would be no number for that in the book.
On the way we talked of our day at Selinunte and I asked after his companions there, but he had heard nothing further of any of them. Soon we met one of the guards who had come from the caserma to look for us. He crossed himself as he told us that, coming along, he had heard the bells ring and knew that the picture of the Madonna was being unveiled.
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