"We require a special envoy to Naples, to calm the minds of the disaffected. Our choice has fallen upon you. On the result of your mission depends the granting of the boon." Francesco made no reply. What could he urge in his own behalf that was not defeated in the utterance? He was no match for Clement in subtlety and, though he could not fathom the reasons governing Clement's choice of himself to treat, as he surmised, with the Neapolitans, he recognized therein the desire on the part of the Pontiff to strike his enemies through one of their own. "What are the commands of your Holiness?" he said at last. "You will receive your instructions from the Cardinal of Cosenza," the Pontiff replied calmly. "Your audience is concluded," the latter whispered into Francesco's ear. He approached the pontifical dais as one in a dream; and, after the customary genuflection and the ceremony of kissing the Pontiff's feet, he passed out of the audience-chamber into the sun-fraught air of noon, the Pontiff's "Go in peace!" still ringing in his ears. The personality of Clement had not passed from him without a deep impress. Here was a man created in the type of his predecessors, Alexander IV and Urban IV, a man who shrank from nothing that would advance the cause of the Church. Thinking of the audience which had just come to a close, a heavy sense of defeat weighed Francesco down. His resistance had been utterly swept away; in vain had he waited for a power that did not come to uplift him and release. The chasm between the life of the present and the life of the past gaped ever wider. By some invincible force he was being hurried onward to a dark and uncertain goal. In the language of the East, he had his fate bound about his neck. There was no escape for him. Vainly as he might cast about him for an anchor, he saw nothing encompassing him but a great void. From the old life he was barred forevermore. The future appeared as a country bleak and unredeemed. Towards evening he rode out of the gates of Viterbo. From its mountain height the pontifical palace frowned upon the world below with stern defiance, its architecture expressive of the asceticism, defensive of the soldier, rather, than the asceticism, contemplative of the saint. Thus he rode out into the deepening dusk. CHAPTER V THE RED TOWER With the first pulse of dawn in the East, Francesco was up and astir with the zest of the hour. The woods were full of golden vapor, of dew and the chanting of birds. A stream sang under the boughs, purling and foaming over a broad ledge of stone into a misty pool. A blue sky glimmered above the glistening tree-tops; the dwindling wood-ways quivered with the multitudinous madrigals of the dawn.