The court of the Podestà of Casale was commonly well attended, and often some of the attendance would be distinguished. The Princess Valeria, for instance, would sometimes sit with the ladies in the little minstrels' gallery of what had once been the banqueting-hall of the Communal Palace, and by her presence attest her interest in all that concerned the welfare of the people of Montferrat. Occasionally, too, as became a prince who desired to be regarded as a father of his people, the Marquis Theodore would come to observe for himself how justice was administered in his name, or in the name of the boy whose deputy he was. On the morning after that affray at Messer Barbaresco's house, both the Regent and his niece were to be seen in that hall of justice, the latter aloft in the gallery, the former in a chair placed on the dais alongside of the Podestà's seat of state. The Regent's countenance was grave, his brow thoughtful. This was proper to the occasion, but hardly due to the causes supposed by the spectators. Disclosures now inevitable might win him an increase of the public sympathy he enjoyed. But because premature they temporarily wrecked his real aims, wrecked in any case by the death of his agent Spigno. There were other notabilities present. Messer Aliprandi--who had expressly postponed his departure for Milan--was seated beside the Regent. Behind them against the grey stone wall lounged a glittering group of courtiers, in which Castruccio da Fenestrella was conspicuous. In the body of the court seethed a crowd composed of citizens of almost every degree, rigidly kept clear of the wide space before the dais by a dozen men-at-arms forming a square with partisans held horizontally. On the left of the Podestà, who was clothed in a scarlet robe and wore a flat round scarlet cap that was edged with miniver, sat his two assessors in black, and below these two scriveners. The Podestà himself, Angelo de' Ferraris, a handsome, bearded man of fifty, was a Genoese, to comply with the universal rule throughout Italy that the high office of justiciary should ever be held by one who was a foreigner to the State, so as to ensure the disinterestedness and purity of the justice he dispensed. Some minor cases had briefly been heard and judged, and the court now awaited the introduction of that prisoner who was responsible for this concourse above the average in numbers and quality.