Below (the picture immediately beneath is entirely obliterated) is a very beautiful composition, recalling the same artist's treatment of St. Clare and her nuns in the Upper Church. In front of a Gothic chapel of white and black marble stands St. Nicholas, between two placid and portly friars, listening to the petition of a despairing father who implores his protection for his three sons, unjustly condemned to death by a wicked consul. The figures of the prisoners, with halters round their necks, followed by sympathising friends, are full of movement and life; St. Nicholas is particularly charming, dressed in his episcopal robes, slightly bending forward and listening attentively to the doleful tale.[79] The legend is continued upon the opposite side, where he arrives just in time to save the youths. The figure of the kneeling victim expecting the blow every moment to fall upon his neck and the majestic attitude of the saint in the act of seizing the sword, are finely rendered, but Giotto would hardly have approved of the complicated building decked with much superfluous decoration which is supposed to represent the city gate. The fresco below relates a vision of the Emperor Constantine who had ordered his three generals, unjustly accused of treason, to be put to death. St. Nicholas appears and commands him to release the prisoners, who are in a wooden cage by the bed. High up in the lunette of this wall is an interesting fresco referring to a humorous incident of one of the saint's miracles. It appears that a Jew, hearing that St. Nicholas gave special protection to property, placed a statue of him in his house; but it must be remembered that St. Nicholas was also the patron of thieves, and one day all the Jew's possessions disappeared. Enraged by the failure of his plan he administered a sound thrashing to the statue, which stands in a beautiful niche with spiral columns, behaving much in the same way as the childish sons of faith in Southern Italy who turn the Madonna's picture to the wall when their prayers have not been effectual. In this case St. Nicholas was so deeply offended that he appeared in a vision to the thieves, who kindly restored the goods of the irate Jew. There are dim remains of frescoes on this wall, but it is impossible to make out what they represent. Other wonderful miracles are related upon the opposite side, beginning high up in the lunette, where, with some difficulty, we distinguished St. Nicholas restoring a child to life who has been taken from his parents and killed by evil spirits. Below is a scene in a banqueting hall, where a king, seated at table, takes a goblet of wine from the hand of a slave boy. St. Nicholas, in full episcopals, performs one of his many ærial flights, lays his hand upon the boy's head and carries him back to his parents. In the scene beneath St. Nicholas is restoring to his people another youth, who, it seems, was nearly drowned while filling a goblet with water for the altar of St.