To him it was all that was beautiful and regal, framed in its soft, golden hair, with its tender blue eyes, its smiling lips. A slender youth, barely eighteen years of age, with the eyes of a dreamer, Conradino was possessed of an exaltation which blinded him to the perils of the situation, intoxicating his ambition,--a quaint combination of the mystic lore of his tunes, of which Francesco felt himself to be his other Ego. The crowds had dispersed by degrees, sweeping in the wake of the Swabian host towards the Capitol. And Francesco stared motionless into space. Was he indeed cast out from the communion of the world, from the contact of the living? Had a mocking fate but cast him on the shores of life, that he might stand idly by, watching the waves bounding, leaping over each other? He felt as one enslaved, his will-power paralyzed. Yonder, where the setting sun spun golden vapors round the summits of the Capitoline Hill, there was the trend of a high, self-conscious purpose, as revealed in the impending death-struggle for the highest ideals of mankind. What had he to oppose it? What great aim atoned for the agony of his transformation? The restitution of papacy? The glory of the Church? The vindication of a crime? The toleration of a despot? Francesco's passionate nature might have been guided aright by a controlling affection, such as he could nevermore find in his present estate. Slowly, as one wrapped in a dream, gazing neither right nor left, he permitted himself to be swept along with the crowds, past monuments, tombs and the desolate grandeur of the Forum, and as one enthralled, began the ascent of the Capitoline Hill. CHAPTER II THE FEAST AT THE CAPITOL When darkness had fallen on the Capitoline Hill, the old palace of the Caesars seemed to waken to a semblance of new life. In the gorgeous reception hall a splendid spectacle awaited the guests. The richly dressed crowds buzzed like swarms of bees. Their attires were iridescent, gorgeous in the fashions borrowed from many lands. The enslavement of Italy and the invasion of foreigners could be read in the garbs of the Romans. The robes of the women, a slavish imitation of the Byzantine fashion, hung straight as tapestries, stiff with gold brocades. Prince Enrico of Castile, the Senator of Rome, had arranged a festival in honor of Conradino, such as the deserted halls of the imperial palace on the Capitoline had not witnessed in centuries. It was a festival hitherto unequalled in Rome. The walls of the great reception hall were decorated with garlands and festoons of flowers; the soft lustre of the candelabra was reflected in tall Venetian mirrors, brought from Murano for this occasion. Niches filled with orange-trees, artificial grottoes adorned with shells, in the midst of which fountains sent their iridescent spray into the branches of tall cypress-trees and oleanders, met the gaze on every turn.