command was being executed, Procopio reproved the king and comforted his companions. "The tyrant, swollen with rage, and grinding his teeth," says the narrative, "barbarously offered him the torn-out heart that he might eat it." Then he bade them strike off the bishop's head (who, we are told, was already half dead), and also the heads of his companions, and to burn the bodies all together. And as St. Pancrazio of old had thrown the holy dragon into the sea, so now were his own ashes scattered to the winds of heaven; and Ibrahim, having accomplished his work, departed.

Some of the citizens, however, had survived, and among them Crisione, the host of St. Elia. He went to bear the tidings to the saint; and being now assured of the gift of prophecy possessed by the holy man, asked him to foretell his future. He met the customary fate of the curious in such things. "I foresee," said the discomfortable saint, "that within a few days you will die." And to make an end of St. Elia with Crisione, let me record here the simple Daniele's last act of piety to his master. It is little that in such company he fought with devils, or that after he had written with much labour a beautiful Psalter, the old monk bade him fling it and worldly pride together over the cliff into a lake. Such episodes belonged to the times; and, after all, by making a circuit of six miles he found the Psalter miraculously unwet, and only his worldly pride remained at the lake's bottom. But it was a mind singularly inventive of penance that led the dying saint to charge poor Daniele to bear the corpse on his back a long way over the mountains, merely because, he said, it would be a difficult thing to do. Other survivors of the sack of Taormina, more fortunate than Crisione, watched their opportunity, and, at a moment when the garrison was weak, entered, seized the place, fortified it anew, and offered it to the Greek emperor once more. He could not maintain war with the Saracens, but by a treaty made with them he secured his faithful Taorminians in the possession of the city. After forty years of peace under this treaty it was again besieged for several months, and fell on Christmas night. Seventeen hundred and fifty of its citizens were sent by the victors into slavery in Africa. Greek troops, however, soon retook the city in a campaign that opened brilliantly in Sicily only to close in swift disaster; but for five years longer Taormina sustained continual siege, and when it fell at last, with the usual carnage of its citizens and the now thrice-repeated fire and ruin of Saracenic victory, we may well believe that, though it remained the seat of a governor, little of the city was left except its memory. Its name even was changed to 

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