palace, in the upper part of the city. Many people looked at him, as he
went by, and some knew him for a Sicilian, by his face, while some took
him for a foreigner, and pressed upon him to beg, or made faces and vile
gestures at him, as soon as he could not see, after the manner of the
lower Neapolitans. But he passed calmly on, supremely indifferent, his
handsome, manly face turning neither to the right nor the left.

He might have stood for the portrait of a Saracen warrior of the
eleventh century, with his high, dark features and keen eyes, his even
lips, square jaw, and smooth, tough throat. He had, too, something of
the Arabian dignity in his bearing, and he walked with long,
well-balanced steps, swiftly, but without haste, as the Arab walks
barefooted in the sand, not even suspecting that weariness can ever come
upon him; erect, proud, without self-consciousness, elastic; collected
and ever ready, in his easy and effortless movement, for sudden and
violent action. He was not pale, as dark Italians are, but his skin had
the colour and look of fresh light bronze, just chiselled, and able to
reflect the sun, while having a light of its own from the strong blood
beneath. That was the reason why the Neapolitans who did not chance to
have seen Sicilians often, took him for a foreigner and got into his
way, holding out their hands to beg, and making ape-like grimaces at him
behind his back. But those who knew the type of his race and recognized
it, did nothing of that sort. On the contrary, they were careful not to
molest him.

The friend whom he sought, high up in the city, in a luxurious, sunlit
room overlooking the harbour and the wide bay, was as unlike him as one
man could be unlike another--white, fair-haired, delicate, with soft
blue eyes and silken lashes, and a passive hand that accepted the
pressure of Taquisara's rather than returned it--the pale survival of