271

ILLUSTRATIONS

"'I LOVE THE MAN'" _Frontispiece_

PERPETUA AND DIOGENES THE FOOL _Facing p._ 14

PERPETUA " 36

KING ROBERT OF SICILY " 50

"ROBERT CAUGHT HER OUTSTRETCHED HANDS" " 78

"'I AM ROBERT OF SICILY'" " 86

"PERPETUA MOVED SLOWLY TOWARDS HIM" " 180

"ROBERT, SWINGING THE CROSS, WITH ONE BLOW
BEAT HIM TO THE GROUND" " 244

THE PROUD PRINCE

I

FAIR MAID AND FOUL FOOL

The girl stood on the summit of the hill looking down the white highway
that stretched to Syracuse. The morning sun shone hotly; sky and sea and
earth seemed to kindle and quicken in the ecstasy of heat, setting free
spirits of air and earth and water, towards whom the girl's spirit
stirred in sympathy. All about her beauty flamed luxuriant. At her feet
the secrets of the world were written in wild flowers, the wild flowers
of Sicily, which redeem the honor of the wellnigh flowerless land of
Greece. All about her the ground flushed with such color as never yet
was woven on a Persian loom or blended in a wizard's diadem. The gold
and silver of great daisies gleamed in the grass; pimpernel blue and
red, mallow red and white, yellow spurge and green mignonette, blue
borage and pink asphodel and parti-colored convolvulus, snap-dragon and
marigold, violet and dandelion, and that crimson flower which shepherds
call Pig's Face and poets call Beard of Jove for its golden change in
autumn--all these and a thousand other children of the spring lay at the
girl's feet and carpeted her kingdom. But the girl was more beautiful
than all the flowers.

The spot where the girl stood was as fair a spot as any in Sicily.
Behind her on the fringe of the thick mountain pine-wood the blue tiled
dome of a Saracenic mosque glowed like a great turquoise in the midst of
the amber-tinted pillars of a ruined Grecian temple. In front of her, on
a little hill, stood the beautiful Norman church that Robert the King
had erected there on the highest point of his kingdom in gratitude for
his son's recovery from sickness, a miracle of austere strength and
comeliness, with its great bronze image in a niche by the door of the
Archangel Michael, all armored,