looking at angels singing: and _looking_ at angels, or indeed at people,
singing, is much nicer than listening to them, for this reason: the great
artists always give to their angels lutes without strings, pipes without
vent-holes, and reeds through which no wind can wander or make
whistlings.

Monreale you have heard of--with its cloisters and cathedral: we often
drove there.

I also made great friends with a young seminarist, who lived in the
cathedral of Palermo--he and eleven others, in little rooms beneath the
roof, like birds.

Every day he showed me all over the cathedral, I knelt before the huge
porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick the Second lies: it is a sublime
bare monstrous thing--blood-coloured, and held up by lions who have
caught some of the rage of the great Emperor's restless soul. At first
my young friend, Giuseppe Loverdi, gave me information; but on the third
day I gave information to him, and re-wrote history as usual, and told
him all about the supreme King and his Court of Poets, and the terrible
book that he never wrote. His reason for entering the church was
singularly mediaeval. I asked him why he thought of becoming a
_clerico_, and how. He answered: "My father is a cook and most poor; and
we are many at home, so it seemed to me a good thing that there should be
in so small a house as ours, one mouth less to feed; for though I am
slim, I eat much, too much, alas! I fear."

I told him to be comforted, because God used poverty often as a means of
bringing people to Him, and used riches never, or rarely; so Giuseppe was
comforted, and I gave him a little book of devotion, very pretty, and