Gleaming with light and beauty, from the wavy sea-line where the blue Mediterranean rippled against the grim fortress of Castellamare to the dark background of olive groves and rising mountain walls, Palermo, "city of the golden shell," lay bathed in all the glory of an Italian afternoon one bright spring day in the year 1207. Up the Cassaro, or street of the palace, and out through the massive gate-way of that curious old Sicilian city,--half Saracen, half Norman in its looks and life,--a small company of horsemen rode rapidly westward to where the square yellow towers of La Zisa rose above its orange groves. Now La Zisa was one of the royal pleasure-houses, a relic of the days when the swarthy Saracens were lords of Sicily. In the sun-lit gardens of La Zisa, a small but manly-looking lad of thirteen, with curly, golden hair and clear blue eyes, stood beneath the citron trees that bordered a beautiful little lake. A hooded falcon perched upon his wrist, and by his side stood his brown-skinned attendant, Abderachman the Saracen. "But will it stay hooded, say'st thou?" the boy inquired, as he listened with satisfaction to the tinkling bells of the nodding bird which Abderachman had just taught him to hood. "Can he not shake it off?" "Never fear for that, little Mightiness," the Saracen replied. "He is as safely blinded as was ever the eagle of Kairewan, whose eyes the Emir took for his crescent-tips, or even as thou art, O _el Aaziz_,[O] by thy barons of Apulia."[P] The look of pleasure faded from the boy's face. "Thou say'st truly, O Abderachman," he said. "What am I but a hooded falcon? I, a king who am no king! Would that thou and I could fly far from this striving world, and in those great forests over sea of which thou hast told me, could chase the lion like bold, free hunters of the Berber hills." "Wait in patience, O _el Aaziz_; to each man comes his day," said the philosophic Saracen. "What says the blessed Koran: 'Allah is all-sufficient and propitious to such as put their trust in him.'" But now there was heard a rustle of the citron hedge, a clatter of hoofs rang on the shell-paved roadway, and the armed band that we saw spurring through Palermo's gates drew rein at the lake-side. The leader, a burly German knight, who bore upon his crest a great boar's head with jewelled eyes and gleaming silver tusks, leaped from his horse and strode up to the boy. His bow of obeisance was scarcely more than a nod. "Your Highness must come with me," he said, "and that at once." The boy looked at him in protest. "Nay, Baron Kapparon,--am I never to be at my ease?" he asked. "Let me, I pray thee, play out my day here at La Zisa, even as thou didst promise me."