The first thing that his eyes used to see in the chapel of Santa Barbara was a chest nailed to the wall high above him, a sepulcher of painted wood with no other adornment than the inscription: "_Aqui yace Dona Constansa Augusta, Emperatriz de Grecia_,"-- Here lies Constance Augusta, Empress of Greece.
The name of Greece always had the power of exciting the little fellow's imagination.

His godfather, the lawyer Labarta, poet-laureate, could not repeat this name without a lively thrill passing across his grizzled beard and a new light in his eyes.

Sometimes the mysterious power of such a name evoked a new mystery and a more intense interest,--Byzantium.

How could that august lady, sovereign of remote countries of magnificence and vision, have come to leave her remains in a murky chapel of Valencia within a great chest like those that treasured the remnants of old trumpery in the garrets of the notary ?...
One day after mass Don Esteban had rapidly recounted her history to his little son.

She was the daughter of Frederick the Second of Suabia, a Hohenstaufen, an emperor of Germany who esteemed still more his crown of Sicily.