The average width of the bottom of the valley, including river and road, might be a hundred yards; but there was one place, nearly at the middle of the gorge--probably where, in ages far remote, before history or even tradition began, the stream, rushing new-born from the mountains, had paused in its course to gather strength ere it forced its way through the rocky barrier opposed to it--in which a little amphitheatre appeared, the mountains receding on either hand to let the river make a circuit round a low knoll and its adjacent meadow, some three hundred yards across. A clump of trees had gathered together on the top of the little hillock, the turf was short and smooth; the stream, though still rapid, and fretting at the fallen stones in its way, had less of the torrent-like turbulence which it displayed where the pass was narrower; now and then, too, it would lapse into a quiet, deep, unruffled pool, where the many-coloured rocks and pebbles at the bottom could be seen, glazed and brightened by its crystal waters; and the white clouds, floating over the deep blue Italian sky, would seem to pause, with curious pleasure, in their flight, to look down for a moment on that fair spot, amid so much stony ruggedness. Through this wild gorge, toward noon of a soft but breezy spring day in the year of grace 1494, coming from the northwest, rode a gay, a numerous, and a brilliant party; too few, indeed, to constitute an army, but too many and too well armed to fear the attack of any party of banditti less in number than those great mercenary bands whose leisure in those days was seldom long enough to rob on their own account, so great was the demand for their services, in the same way, among the princes of the land. And yet the cavalcade of which I speak did not altogether assume a military aspect. It is true that the rear was brought up by a body of a couple of hundred lances, and that between these and those who rode foremost were a number of gentlemen, old and young, from beneath whose surcoats glanced corslet and cuissard, and who, though they rode with velvet cap on head and sometimes a hawk upon the wrist, had helmet, and lance, and shield near at hand, borne by gay and splendidly-dressed pages. But the most remarkable group had no warlike signs about it. All men but ecclesiastics and serfs, in those days, bore some kind of arms during their most peaceful avocations; and thus there were swords and daggers enough among the little party; but there were men in the robes of the Church--bishops, and archdeacons, and even a monk or two, while those of secular habit looked more like the carpet-treading, soft-lying children of a court than warriors born for strife and conquest.