was true of Nogaret, who was
no gentleman. A legend says that Colonna struck the Pope in the face,
and that he afterwards made him ride on an ass, sitting backwards, after
the manner of the times. But no trustworthy chronicle tells of this. On
the contrary, no one laid hands upon him while he was kept a prisoner
under strict watch for three days, refusing to touch food; for even if
he could have eaten he feared poison. And Colonna tried to force him to
abdicate, as Pope Celestin had done before him, but he refused stoutly;
and when the three days were over, Colonna went away, driven out, some
say, by the people of Anagni who turned against him. But that is
absurd, for Anagni is a little place and Colonna had a strong force of
good soldiers with him. Possibly, seeing that the old man refused to
eat, Sciarra feared lest he should be said to have starved the Pope to
death. They went away and left him, carrying off his treasures with
them, and he returned to Rome, half mad with anger, and fell into the
hands of the Orsini cardinals, who judged him not sane and kept him a
prisoner at the Vatican, where he died soon afterwards, consumed by his
wrath. And before long the Colonna had their own again and rebuilt
Palestrina and their palace in Rome.

Twenty-five years later they were divided against each other, in the
wild days when Lewis the Bavarian, excommunicated and at war with the
Pope, was crowned and consecrated Emperor, by the efforts of an
extraordinary man of genius, Castruccio degli Interminelli, known better
as Castruccio Castracane, the Ghibelline lord of Lucca who made Italy
ring with his deeds for twenty years, and died of a fever, in the height
of his success and glory, at the age of forty-seven years. Sciarra
Colonna was for him and for Lewis. Stephen, head of the house, was
against them, and in those days when Rome was frantic for an Emperor,
Stephen's son Jacopo had the quiet courage to bring out the Bull of
Excommunication against the chosen Emperor and nail it to the door of
San Marcello, in the Corso, in the heart of Rome and in the sight of a
thousand angry men, in protest against what they meant to do--against
what was doing even at that moment. And he reached Palestrina in safety,
shaking the dust of Rome from his feet.

But on that bright winter's day, Lewis of Bavaria and his queen rode
down from Santa Maria Maggiore by the long and winding ways towards
Saint Peter's. The streets were all swept and st