guards to his wife, the beautiful Isabella Plantagenet, a daughter of the English King; often clothed in oriental robes; in war-time mounted on an elephant; in his palace surrounded by tame lions; always accompanied by a troop of Mussulmans, to whom he showed great indulgence, permitting them the violation of churches and women, debauch and sacrilege,—Frederick II., in the opinion of his subjects, was no longer a Christian prince. During the last ten years of his reign this state of things reached its height. The number of barbarian troops daily increased. Seventeen new companies, summoned from Africa, were dispersed, like an invading army, over the Basilicata and Calabria. Finally, the Emperor went so far as to instal them in the places of masters of ports, and in other offices that gave these Mussulmans jurisdiction over Christian populations.” And when a Saracen captain, named Phocax, in garrison at Trani, ill-treated a citizen of noble birth, Messer Simone Rocca, and grossly outraged his wife, the aggrieved man could obtain no satisfaction. “The Emperor only laughed. ‘_Messer Simone_,’ he said, to the complainant, ‘_dov’è forza non è vergogna_. Go, Phocax will not do it again; had he been a native of the country, I would have had his head cut off.’” On the death of this indulgent patron, the Saracen colony in the kingdom of Naples saw its existence menaced. The infidels were lost if Rome became mistress of the country. The triumph of the Pope would be the tocsin of their extermination. They resolved to defend themselves to the last. They held Lucera, Accerenza, and Girafalco, three impregnable fortresses; they also commanded at other points, less strong but still important. They felt themselves numerous, courageous, and determined. Mainfroy could not doubt that they would gladly rally round the banner of their benefactor’s son; and in this hope he set out for Lucera, where John the Moor then commanded. This man, a slave whom the Emperor’s caprice had raised to the highest dignities, promised Mainfroy the best of receptions. But when the Prince of Tarento reached Lucera, the traitor had gone over to the Pope, taking with him a thousand Saracens and three hundred Germans, and leaving the town in the keeping of a man of his tribe, Makrizi by name. On learning this treachery, Mainfroy still did not renounce his project of confiding himself to the Arabs—so cherished by his father, so favoured by himself. Only, instead of approaching the fortress with his little army, as regent of the kingdom, he preferred to go as a knight-errant, attended only by three esquires, like a paladin of the Round Table. This portion of Mainfroy’s life, as well as many other passages in M. de St Priest’s book, reads like an extract from some old romance of chivalry. After wandering about, in the gloom and rain of a November night, and losing his way repeatedly, Adenulfo, one of Mainfroy’s three men-at-arms, and