As the sun sank, even the cold silver of the olive trees, standing tier above tier on their shallow terraces, took on the flush, as if bathed in wine, and the darker foliage of oak and chestnut burned with sombre yet vivid intensity. Then the sun touched the sea—lingered, a ball of living crimson, for an instant, and plunged out of sight. One star hung its new-born silver against the paling west; another and another answered it, till all the dying blue overhead was pierced and patterned with the faint sparklets in their eternal dance. Then from behind the wall of peaks a broad fan of misty silver was thrown up against the sky, growing, spreading, washing purple and crimson to one untinted sheen; another moment, and the harvest moon heaved a golden shoulder over the crags, rolled up, rounded itself, and hung, a great honey-coloured globe, flooding the hills and the Campagna and the distant sea with calm all-embracing effulgence. At the time of my first visit to Palestrina I was still sufficiently attracted by the Middle Ages to find much romance in the struggles of the Colonnas and their contemporaries, struggles which dragged the harrow over the vast Temple of Fortune, reputed the biggest in the world, threw its stones one upon another, and left the place merely a beautiful tomb. Since then, I confess, my interest has died away. I can feel no sympathy with the noble cut-throats—Sciarras, Colonnas, Orsinis, whose deeds are written in blood over every page of the time. I used to weep over the sufferings they inflicted on Boniface VIII, but, apart from the outrage on his sacred office, which can never be condoned, one cannot help feeling that he deserved something of what he got, and that in spite of his high courage and notable intellect, he had treated those his enemies very basely and cruelly. His election in 1217 had been bitterly opposed by two Colonna Cardinals, Giacomo and Pietro, who were furious at the thought that the Papal chair should be filled by one of the Gaetanis of Anagni, the hereditary rivals and enemies of their own family. The election went through, in spite of them, and they, fearing the new Pope’s wrath, fled to Palestrina, taking every member of the family with them. This was an open declaration of war, and the Pope realized that there would be no peace for his realm till they were subdued. With truly mediæval promptitude he at once confiscated all their estates and called on all good Christians to take up arms against them. Their other strongholds fell one by one into his hands, but Palestrina, with its tremendous defences and commanding position, resisted every attack of the besiegers. It seemed impregnable.