Though he pushed onward with restless determination, Francesco was compelled to devote the hours of high-noon to rest and refreshments in this cloister or that, which he came upon during his journey. For the glare of the August sun was intense, and though the nights were cool, the roads were infested by all manner of outlaws, making progress slow and hazardous. While at a Cistercian monastery during the siesta hours on the third day of his journey, the first tidings of a battle between the hosts of Anjou and Conradino reached Francesco's ear. The armies had met at Tagliacozzo in Apulia--so a peasant had informed the monks--but the outcome of the conflict was shrouded in mystery. The monks, chiefly old men, who had long cast the vanities of the world behind them, met Francesco's eager questionings with mute shrugs. The quarrels between pope and emperor meant nothing to them. Ever southward he rode, until, breasting the moors, he saw the strange, tumultuous magic of the Maremmas drifting into the vague distance of night. The summer woods in the valleys were as a rolling sea, carved out of ebony. Hill rose beyond hill, each more dim and misty and alluring. A great silence held. Enchantment brooded over Terra di Lavoro. The last day of his journey had come. The torrid plains of Torre del Greco dreamed deserted in the glow of the noonday sun. The leaves of the palms and the branches of the mimosa hung limp and motionless. The sky was as a burning sapphire. The glare of the sun was almost insufferable, as it fell over the arid expanse of the Neapolitan Campagna to the pencilled line of the southern horizon, where a long circle divided the misty shimmering dove-color of the Tyrrhene Sea from the pale, sun-fraught sky. The region, as far as the eye could reach, was deserted. Almost it seemed as if the spell of a magician had banished at once all life and sound. Mala Terra the inhabitants called the stretches beyond the Cape of Circé, where, grim and impregnable upon its chalk cliffs, rose Astura, the sinister stronghold of the Frangipani, silent, bleached against the background of the restless waves, which laved its base. With a shudder Francesco skirted the dreary castello, and the name of Ilaria flew to his lips. Was it upon yonder lonely castle height she was waiting Raniero's return; was it up yonder the thread of her destiny was interminably spinning itself out in self-consuming, wasting monotony? Was she, who had been created for happiness, slowly pining away, remote from all she loved and held dear on earth? Or had the lure of the Siren land drawn her into the vortex of life and the passions of the sun-kissed shores? Francesco shivered despite the noonday heat, and, fondling the ears of his steed, urged it onward over the rocky expanse.