The inn was as old as the times of
Charlemagne, when it had been named in honour of Pope Leo, who had
crowned him emperor. But the quarter was at that time in the hands of
the great Jewish race of Pierleoni, whose first antipope, Anacletus,
had not been dead many years, and who, though they still held the
castle and many towers and fortresses in Rome, had not succeeded in
imposing the antipope Victor upon the Roman people, against the will of
Bernard of Clairvaux.
Rome lay along the river, in those days, like wreckage and scum thrown
up on the shore of a wintry sea. Some twenty thousand human beings were
huddled together in smoky huts, most of which were built against the
outer walls and towers of the nobles' strongholds--a miserable
population, living squalidly in terrible times, starving while the
nobles fought with one another, rising now and then like a vision of
famine and sword to take back by force the right of life which force
had almost taken from them. Gilbert wandered through the crooked,
unpaved streets, in and out of gloomy courts and over desolate wastes
and open places, the haunts of ravenous dogs and homeless cats that
kept themselves alive on the choice pickings of the city's garbage. He
went armed and followed by his men, as he saw that other gentlemen of
his condition did, and when he knelt in a church to hear mass or to say
a prayer, he was careful to kneel with his back to the wall or to a
pillar, lest some light-handed worshipper should set a razor to his
wallet strings or his sword-belt.
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