CHAPTER IV

THE PAWN OF THE CHURCH When Francesco arrived on the height it was the hour of the closing of the city-gates and he took lodging at an inn situated near the city walls. He caught his breath the next morning at the imposing aspect of the place. In the young sunshine its many towers were no longer phantom intruders on the sky, but a dominant fact. The machicolated heights, the encircling ramparts, the stern outlines of the fortress-palace of the pope, rose proudly impregnable in the air. On the broad highways from Um…