Caesar von Heisterbach has the same tale in his collection, but repeats it with some variations. In his pages the pleasant land of Avalon, with its peaceful palace, becomes a dark abode of fire, answering more nearly to the actual phenomena of the mountain. Arthur hence issues a dread summons to the owner of the palfrey, who in this tale is a Canon of Palermo, bidding him appear in that infernal region within a fortnight. The churchman obeys by dying at the time appointed.[282] The terror which enters into this form of the story is even heightened by Stephen of Bourbon when he comes to repeat it.[283] On the other hand the easy, pleasant, semi-pagan tone observed in Gervase of Tilbury lives again in the French romance of _Florian and Florete_.[284] Here we see the kingdom within Etna before Arthur came thither, and find it a land of faery, where the King’s sister Morgana holds her flowery court. The _Fata Morgana_, as she is called, is still remembered on these southern coasts. When the mirage appears in the Straits of Messina, and houses and castles are seen hanging in thin air, the people call them by the name of that mysterious princess. They think that the sides of Etna have become transparent, and that what they behold is the realm of faery with the Fata Morgana’s palace in the midst. These legends show that Avalon, first dreamed of in the far North, had by this time been carried southward to find a new locality under Etna, and that already the mystic king, who dwelt with his court in the land of shadows till he should again return to earth, had taken a firm hold of the southern fancy. It was but a step more then, and one very easily taken, when men began to see in the Princes of the Hohenstaufen, and the chief figures of their court, the heirs of this legend in some of its most important features. Frederick Barbarossa, for example, was commonly said to pass the ages between death and life in a hollow hill. The Germans identified this abode with the Kyffhauser, and expected the Emperor’s return in the spirit of the tales told of Wodan, Frau Holda, and Frau Venus, in their national mythology.[285] It was even reported that a bold shepherd armed with the mysterious _key-flower_ had forced the secret, entering these recesses of the hill and beholding Barbarossa as in life, with his red beard growing through the marble table at which he sat asleep. The romantic heritage next fell upon Barbarossa’s grandson Frederick II. It was long before the adherents of the Empire who had staked so much upon their great champion’s bold defiance of the Papacy could bring themselves to believe that he was really dead. In 1250 his corpse was carried in solemn procession from Fiorentino, where he died, to Palermo, the place appointed for his burial. There he soon lay in the ancient sarcophagus brought from Cefalù; his robe embroidered about the hem with Cufic characters, and the sceptre and apple of empire in his