ssage over the precipices. They rushed out on him, and, as
he was unarmed and alone, would have killed him, had not their cries
attracted one Evandro, a Breton, who, coming, and seeing his chief's
peril, threw himself between, and died in his place. Count Roger was not
forgetful of this noble action. He recovered the body, held great
funeral services, and gave gifts to the soldiers and the church. The
story appealed so to the old chronicler Malaterra, that he told it in
both prose and verse. After seven months the city surrendered, and the
iron cross was again set up on the rocky eminence by the gate. It is a
sign of the ruin which had befallen that the city now lost its bishopric
and was ecclesiastically annexed to another see.

Taormina, compared with what it had been, was now a place of the desert;
but not the less for that did the tide of war rage round it for five
hundred years to come. It was like a rock of the sea over which
conflicting billows break eternally. I will not narrate the feudal story
of internecine violence, nor how amidst it all every religious order set
up monasteries upon the beautiful hillsides, of whose life little is now
left but the piles of books in old bindings over which my friend the
librarian keeps guard, mourning the neglect in which they are left.
Among both the nobles and the fathers were some examples of heroism,
sacrifice, and learning, but their deeds and virtues may sleep unwaked
by me. The kings and queens who took refuge here, and fled again,
Messenian foray and Chiaramontane faction, shall go unrecorded. I must
not, however, in the long roll of the famous figures of our beach forget
that our English Richard the Lion-hearted was entertained here by
Tancred in crusading days; and of notable sieges let me name at least
that which the city suffered for its loyalty to the brave and generous
Manfred when the Messenians surprised and wasted it, and that which with
less destruction the enemies of the second Frederick inflicted on it,
and that of the French under Charles II, who, contrary to his word, gave
up the surrendered city to the soldiery for eight whole days--a terrible
sack, of which Monsignore has heard old men tell. What part the citizens
took in the Sicilian Vespers, and how the Parliament that vainly sought
a king for all Sicily was held here, and in later times the marches of
the Germans, Spaniards, and English--these were too long a tale. With
one more signal memory I close