VI.
FREDERICK OF HOHENSTAUFEN: THE BOY EMPEROR.
(Afterward Frederick the Second, Emperor of Germany.)
[a.d. 1207.]
Gleaming with light and beauty, from the wavy sea-line where the blue Mediterranean rippled against the grim fortress of Castellamare to the dark background of olive groves and rising mountain walls, Palermo, "city of the golden shell," lay bathed in all the glory of an Italian afternoon one bright spring day in the year 1207.
Up the Cassaro, or street of the palace, and out through the massive gate-way of that curious old Sicilian city,—half Saracen, half Norman in its looks and life,—a small company of horsemen rode rapidly westward to where the square yellow towers of La Zisa rose above its orange groves. Now La Zisa was one of the royal pleasure-houses, a relic of the days when the swarthy Saracens were lords of Sicily.
In the sun-lit gardens of La Zisa, a small but manly-looking lad of thirteen, with curly, golden hair and clear blue eyes, stood beneath the citron trees that bordered a beautiful little lake. A hooded falcon perched upon his wrist, and by his side stood his brown-skinned attendant, Abderachman the Saracen.
"But will it stay hooded, say'st thou?" the boy inquired, as he listened with satisfaction to the tinkling bells of the nodding bird which Abderachman had just taught him to hood. "Can he not shake it off?"