Schooled by the hardships and troubles of his unhappy childhood, the poor little "Child of Apulia" developed into a courageous and energetic youth, and into a man of power and action and imperial renown. Years passed away, and, on the thirteenth of December, 1250, he died at his hunting-lodge of Firenzuola, in his loved Apulian kingdom. A gray old man stood beside the dying monarch's bed--Berard, Archbishop of Palermo and Bari, the only survivor of that dauntless band which, nearly forty years before, had crossed the trackless Alps determined to win Germany or die. The "Boy from Sicily," who had started upon the "quest for his heritage" unheralded and almost unknown, died the most powerful monarch of his day in all the Christian world, unsurpassed in outward splendor, the possessor of six royal crowns--Germany, Burgundy, Lombardy, Sicily, Jerusalem, and the Holy Roman Empire. A man of magnificent gifts--a great scholar, a far-seeing statesman and law-maker, a valiant and victorious Crusader, a mighty Emperor, but with all the weaknesses and cruel ways that marked the monarchs of those hard old days--this story of his remarkable and romantic boyhood comes down to us as a lesson of triumph over obstacles, showing us, as do so many nobler lives than his, how out of distress and trouble and actual hardships, any boy of energy and spirit may rise to eminence and lofty achievement. The age is passed when kings and princes rise so far above their fellow-men. All may be kings and princes in their special callings if they but have persistent and unflinching determination, and the boy of to-day has it in his power to become, even as did young Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the Boy Emperor, something great in his day and generation--perhaps even be acknowledged, as was he, though from far higher motives, _Stupor Mundi Fredericus_--"Frederick the Wonder of the World!" FOOTNOTES: [O] _El Aaziz_, an Arabic phrase for "the excellent" or "most noble one." [P] Apulia--Southern Italy. [Q] The _Sirocco_ is a fierce south-easterly wind of Sicily and the Mediterranean. [Illustration] VII. HARRY OF MONMOUTH: THE BOY GENERAL. (_Afterward King Henry the Fifth of England._) [A.D. 1402.]