untilled land and an empty sepulcher was really not worth the trouble
of decapitating mankind through the centuries. The Saracen monarch,
therefore, graciously delivered Jerusalem over to him, and the Pope
again excommunicated Frederick for having conquered the Holy Land
without bloodshed.

"He was a great man," Don Esteban used to murmur. "It must be admitted
that he was a great man...."

He would say this timidly, regretting that his enthusiasm for that
remote epoch should oblige him to make this concession to an enemy of
the Church. He shuddered to think of those sacrilegious books that
nobody had seen, but whose paternity Rome was accustomed to attribute
to this Sicilian Emperor--especially _Los Tres Impostores_ (The Three
Imposters), in which Frederick measured Moses, Jesus and Mahomet, by
the same standard. This royal author was, moreover, the most ancient
journalist of history, the first that in the full thirteenth century
had dared to appeal to the judgment of public opinion in his
manifestoes against Rome.

His daughter had married an Emperor of Byzantium, Juan Dukas Vatatzés,
the famous "Vatacio," when he was fifty and she fourteen. She was a
natural daughter soon legitimized like almost all his progeny,--a
product of his free harem, in which were mingled Saracen beauties and
Italian marchionesses. And the poor young girl married to "Vatacio the
heretic," by a father in need of political alliances had lived long
years in the Orient as a _basilisa_ or empress, arrayed in garments of
stiff embroidery representing scenes from the holy books, shod with
buskins laced with purple which bore on their soles eagles of
gold,--the highest symbol of the majesty of Rome.