wed by the immense
armaments of Charles destined against Constantinople; and forty-two
royal castles, either in the principal cities or in situations of
great natural strength, served to keep the island in check. A still
greater number were held by French feudatories; the standing troops
were collected and in arms; and the feudal militia, composed in great
part of foreign subfeudatories, waited only the signal to assemble. In
such a posture of affairs, which the foresight of the prudent would
never have selected for an outbreak, the officers of Charles continued
to grind down the Sicilian people, satisfied that their patience would
endure forever.

New outrages shed a gloom over the festival of Easter at Palermo, the
ancient capital of the kingdom, detested by the strangers more than
any other city as being the strongest and the most deeply injured.
Messina was the seat of the King's viceroy in Sicily, Herbert of
Orleans; Palermo was governed by the Justiciary of Val di Mazzara,
John of St. Remigio, a minister worthy of Charles. His subalterns,
worthy both of the Justiciary and of the King, had recently launched
out into fresh acts of rapine and violence. But the people submitted.
It even went so far that the citizens of Palermo, seeking comfort from
God amid their worldly tribulations, and having entered a church to
pray, in that very church, on the days sacred to the memory of the
Saviour's passion, and amid the penitential rites, were exposed to the
most cruel outrages. The ban-dogs of the exchequer searched out among
them those who had failed in the payment of the taxes, dragged them
forth from the sacred edifice, manacled, and bore them to prison,
crying out, insultingly, before the multitude attracted to the spot,
"Pay, _faterini_, pay!" And the people still submitted.

The Monday after Easter, which fell on the 30th of March, there was a
festival at the Church of Santo Spirito. On that occasion a heinous
outrage against the liberties of the Sicilians afforded the impulse,
and the patience of the people gave way.

Half a mile from the southern wall of the city, on the brink of the
ravine of Oreto, stands a church dedicated to the Holy Ghost,
concerning which the Latin fathers have not failed to record that on
the day on which the first stone of it was laid, in the twelfth
century, the sun was darkened by an eclipse. On one side of it were
the precipice and the river; on the other, the plain extending to the
ci