The dream of his early youth was about to be realized: face to face he would behold the golden-haired Hohenstauffen,--yet at the thought his heart sank with a sense of dread. Dull misery had him in its grip. The keen pain of a false life, resentment of a fate imposed upon him by another's will, permeated every fibre of his being. In his dreams he would see the friends of his youth, pointing to him, the renegade; he would see Ilaria, standing off motionless, spiritless, regarding him from afar. If she at least had kept her faith! He felt himself encompassed by the folding wings of a great demon of despair. This feeling pervaded him with a sickening gloom, in which he walked with drooping head and uncertain footsteps,--yet with the resolve to conquer in the end! Life was no mere existence with Francesco. He loved light and air and freedom. To be in the great, real world, to feel its joys, its sunshine, to chafe under no conventional, no restraint, to know the fascination of recklessness,--that to him was life! And about him it surged in blinding iridescence. Notwithstanding the months of monastic life which lay behind him, he had not in any formal sense severed himself from the world. His renunciation of the joys of the senses had been not primary, as with the Franciscans, but, as always with those under Dominican influence, incidental on a choice of higher interests. But the conscious choice of a beautiful existence was ever with him, and here, among the thousands giving vent to their joy, restrained by no dogma from voicing their gladness, loneliness crept cold among his heart-strings. The scenes in which he, half absently, half resentfully, mingled, afforded a fine opportunity to study sacerdotal types. Now and then a scholarly countenance detached itself with startling effect from the coarser elements; now and then among the keen lines of such a countenance played the hovering, unmistakable light of a personal sanctity. There were men of the noblest, gentlest blood, from whom came the example of courtly manners, of polished speech and refined taste. Through the years of desolation and ruin, which war brought in its wake, they preserved art, literature and religion and infused into civilization the principles of self-sacrifice, charity and chastity. They declared a message that protested against violence and injustice. Francesco saw men among the priests, whose broad shoulders, singularly brilliant dark faces and magnificent poise formed a striking contrast to those upon whose features had settled the beautiful, soft calm of spotless seclusion. Yet Francesco felt no need of such a refuge.