Whether it were a dream or reality, she was convinced it was a sign from heaven. However, she took care to say nothing about it, lest she be accused of pride.

The guests left at daybreak. Julian's father was standing outside the postern-gate, where he had come to bid farewell to the last of them, when a beggar suddenly appeared out of the morning mist and stood in front of him. He was a gypsy with a plaited beard, silver bangles on his arms and blazing eyes. As if inspired from above, he stammered these incoherent words:

‘Ah! Ah! Your son!… Much bloodshed!… Much glory!… Always blessed by fortune! The family of an emperor.’

As he stooped to pick up his alms, he melted into the grass and vanished from sight. The noble lord looked to his right and to his left and called out as loudly as he could. But there was nobody there. All that could be heard was the sighing of the wind as it blew away the morning mists.

He put this vision down to mental fatigue, having had precious little sleep. ‘If I tell anyone about it, they will just laugh at me,’ he thought. And yet the idea that his son was destined for a life of splendour captivated him, even though the gypsy's prophecy was not clear and he even doubted having heard it.

Both he and his wife kept their secrets from each other. But they continued to dote on their son and, as they now thought of him as someone specially chosen by God, they looked after him with all the care that was possible. His cradle was lined with the finest down; above it was a lamp shaped like a dove, which was kept alight at all times; three nurses rocked him to sleep. To see him snugly wrapped in his swaddling clothes, with his little pink face and blue eyes, his mantle of brocade and his bonnet covered in pearls, he looked like an Infant Jesus. He cut all his teeth without crying once.

When he was seven, his mother taught him to sing. His father sat him on the back of one of his biggest horses to teach him to be brave. The child beamed with delight and wasted no time in finding out everything he possibly could about warhorses.

A learned old monk taught him Holy Scripture, the Arabic numerals, the Latin alphabet and how to paint miniatures on vellum. They would work together at the top of a tower, well away from the noise.

When the lesson was over, they would come back down into the garden and slowly walk round it, studying the flowers as they went.

Sometimes, they would notice a line of packhorses, led by a foot traveller in Eastern dress, wending its way across the valley below. The lord of the castle, recognizing that this was a merchant, would dispatch one of his servants to speak with him. Once persuaded of the lord's good intentions, the traveller would interrupt his journey and come up to the castle. He would be shown into the parlour, and from his chests he would take pieces of velvet and silk, fine jewellery, aromatic spices and other strange objects whose use no one could imagine. Eventually, the fellow would continue on his way, having made a huge profit and having come to no harm. At other times a group of pilgrims would come knocking on the castle door. Their wet clothes would steam in front of the fire. Having eaten their fill, they would tell tales about their travels: voyages on the storm-tossed sea, long treks across burning deserts, fierce encounters with heathens, the deep caves of Syria, the Manger and the Holy Sepulchre. And then they would present the young lord with some of the scallop-shells3 that they wore on their cloaks.

Often the lord of the castle would entertain his old companions in arms. As they caroused, they would recall the wars they had fought, the attacks on fortresses, the thunder of the siege engines and the terrible wounds of the soldiers. Julian would give cries of delight as he sat listening to these tales, which convinced his father that he was destined to be a great conqueror. But in the evening, as he came out from the angelus and walked between the lines of paupers bowing their heads before him, he would dip into his purse4 with such modesty and nobility of spirit that his mother felt sure that he would one day become an archbishop.

In chapel, he always sat beside his parents, and, no matter how long the service, he would remain kneeling at his stool with his cap on the floor and his hands joined in prayer.

One day, during mass, as he raised his head, he saw a little white mouse emerge from a hole in the wall. It scampered up on to the first of the altar-steps, ran backwards and forwards a few times and then scurried back into its hole. On the following Sunday, he was disturbed by the thought that he might see the mouse again.