e Emperor to remain too long in his
humiliating posture.

Frederic colored up with anger and mortification, while his Chancellor
smiled with inward satisfaction. Rinaldo had long advised the
discontinuance of this idle and useless ceremony, but the Emperor, with
more foresight than his minister, judged that the moment was not yet
ripe for the abolition of a custom which seemed to establish the
supremacy of the chief of Christendom.

At last Octavian dismounted; he took the monarch in his arms and gave
him the kiss of peace, and then, turning towards the assembled
multitude, he gave them his benediction, and entered the Imperial tent.

_CHAPTER XVI_.

_THE EMPEROR'S SLAVE_.

The first service which Barbarossa exacted of Victor, was the solemn
excommunication of Alexander III., and his partisans, in presence of
the army, and in front of the walls of Milan. A few days after his
arrival at the Camp, an immense tribune, draped with black cloth, and
provided with numerous seats, was erected at a safe distance from the
city. In the centre was an elevated platform, and behind this a throne
for the Emperor, whence he could communicate his desires to the various
speakers. Thousands of soldiers from all parts of the Camp surrounded
the tribune, and a crowd of curious spectators lined the towers and
walls of the city.

At the appointed hour, the Emperor, the nobles, the false Pope, and the
prelates, ascended the platform and took seats according to their
respective rank. Alberic, the Pope's chaplain, first, in a noisy
harangue, explained the object of the assembly. He denounced Alexander
and his adherents as heretics, and extolled Victor as the legitimate
Pope.

Lighted tapers were then handed to the nobles and the clergy; and
Octavian, mounting the pulpit, began to recite, in a voice trembling
with passion, the usual lengthy formula of excommunication, at the
close of which, as the sentence of malediction was thundered out, the
Emperor, nobles, and clergy extinguished their candles.

This solemn farce, enacted by Frederic's orders, in the immediate
vicinity of a city whose inhabitants were enthusiastic partisans
of the cause of Alexander, was received by the Milanese with shouts
of derision; and scarcely had the anathema been uttered when a
speaking-trumpet was heard upon the walls.

"Octavian," it cried, "wrongfully surnamed Victor, slave of the
Emperor, we