plant and make it thrive, but all in vain. It would pine away, and now it is gone; while these green things would not be destroyed and are always in the way. The headship would be a foreign soil for me. Twenty years longer I will be the big soldier to frighten children with though there again the House of Romano threatens to thwart me, for young Ecelin promises to turn out a proper tiger, as they are finding to their cost at Vicenza. Well, it's your fate, my fine Taurello! You just publish the Emperor's decree, and let the badge go to the youngster-though certainly it's much too good a prize for him. "How now? has ever Ecelin. What's this I have been dreaming 840-848. about? Was I actually thinking of competing with Besides, he my old comrade Ecelin, or of shuffling his children propped up from their seat? Paltry dealing that would be! Why, I think I know Ecelin now-yes, and have known him for years. He was always a weakling: did I not take that into account and make it my business to prop him up? Here's Taurello hankering after a boy's plaything of a badge! Bacchus !" And he laughed. 702. 'egging.' "Adam and Eue he egged to ille." 703. 'their Marquis.' Azzo. 737. 'the vow.' To turn monk. -Piers Plowman, Passus I. 746. More than one corpse.' The 'one' is his child's; there must be his wife's there too. 749. this Azzo.' The Sixth. 753. 'Heinrich died.' Henry VI., Frederick's II.'s father. He died in 1197. 'Otho . . . doffed.' Driven from Cologne in 1206 by his rival Philip, Otho IV. went to England to gain support. 760. 'must interfere.' By sending orders to give up the strife. 772. 'to share myself.' Like Ariel. "I flamed amazement: sometime I'd divide, And burn in many places; on the top-mast, The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, -The Tempest, Act I. sc. ii. 787. 'miniver.' Variegated fur. 793. 'I mount To Friedrich.' This may mean simply that he begins to think about the Emperor, not about his subordinate, Tito. 809. 'my pines.' Cp. 1. 211. 813. though.' Misprint for through.' 825. 'lentisk.' The tree which exudes the resin called mastic. It grows chiefly in the coast regions of the Mediterranean. 848-863. Taurello re turns from Ll. 848-885. From his fancies of himself as head of the Ghibellin cause, Taurello Salinguerra returns to the immediate practical question of Count Richard Boniface's release. Schemes in which cold-blooded men, like Taurello, engage, prosper when those of your enthusiastic sort, fancies to the like Sordello, fail; the reason being that, while the latter, with great ideals and small opportunity, are always hesitating, the former, seeing nothing else to do if they stop, apply themselves heartily to the business that offers. practical question of his prisoner, Count Richard; With Taurello, imagining things was only a caprice in the ordinary course of his life, which was one of deeds; so, having had enough of these fancies of seeing Lombardy, with Este and Boniface, completely under him as the Emperor's representative, he turned to the immediate practical question whether he could pacify the League without releasing Count Richard. To this came the interval of meditation in the presence-chamber of San Pietro! So, I might say by way of illustration, some Ethiopian, escaping from enemies who had enslaved him, dips a foot torn and bleeding from the torture of its shackle into the black, sluggish watercourse which venge, plans guides him back to his own tribe's ground, where he is king. He laughs, because he has reached its boundary, as he guesses (while stripping off its skin to lay on injured nostril, lip, and eyeball) from the deeper yellow of the poison-wattles on the pouch of the first lizard he 864-885. As an Ethiop, soon leaving dreams of perfect re a raid upon his enemies. wrests from its couch beneath the slime. Free at last to breathe, he meditates on enchantments of the South, which are of sovereign power to plague his enemies in mouth, eyes, hair, and nails; but, these enchantments being practised for a little within his imagination, he puts them soberly aside for something feasible, plans a raid with friends to give his foes as good as he got, is comforted by the thought of it, and strides off, hugging revenge in his heart, to the Mountains of the Moon. 857. 'fairly earned.' A little holiday of self-reflection amid his hard toil. 870. 'wattles.' 'Fleshy excrescences.' Ll. 886-1031. Once more we are translated from San Pietro palace at Sordello, taught by Palma from midnight to the break of day about Guelfs and Ghibellins, denounces both parties as him. In the feeble moonlight the 886-926. dying carroch-fire at Ferrara, Sordello asks the Ghibellins try to It was midnight. watcher, growing less alert, nodded on his spear, and Beside a the harassed city, its lanes looking narrower and its temples less exalted, seemed as though it were drawing itself together to keep in what little life was left. The Palma how rows of carroch-fires were smouldering away, and beside the blackest Sordello and Palma conversed in secret. "The help the Ghibellin," said he, "is your cause. What makes a people, Ghibellin? There must be certain laws at work (forgive my asking such a question so late in the day: you know how my youth was spent in idle ignorance, and I trust to you to tell me what my own life should have taught) which will explain what scared me in Taurello Salinguerra's conversation at the palace. Only 926-932. And discovers that their aims are utterly selfish. assure me that, underneath all that is being done in the Ghibellin name, there is a real concern for the final good of the people, who are mine. Show me how the horrid deeds he spoke of are done in their interest, and so remove the terrible impression made upon me by what he said. Why did he adopt such a heartless tone in giving his news to Tito? This morning I counted myself a recreant to the human race, because it has never received from me the slightest help. Why, I was asking then, should I boast of the force of my soul when it has expended itself on no object? Why should I divorce mankind from my interest, then admire the flights of my genius as though they were raising up into living space some half-quenched orb, which, unaided by me, would go out in darkness? If men are cast away into misery and disgrace, why should I boast of the brilliant performances of my soul, which I vaunt as all the more wonderful that they are not encumbered by the conditions of real life? But I, with my fruitless idealism, confront Taurello, who, happier in using his powers in the world, is doing for the people all that I should have done. And here comes my difficulty. The fact that their good is paramount with him accounts perhaps for his never having risen to the position for which he seemed fashioned-he has sacrificed his prospects to their cause, yet he burns five hostages, and talks of that to Tito as if it were a matter of no consequence. He made an excuse, to be sure, when he saw us approach, but that, I believe, was to blind us to his indifference." Palma replied; whereupon Sordello, answering, continued: "More plainly than I expressed it, you have stated what I feared. Everything you do is for your own gain. There is not a word about the people— of making conquests for them, or even of relieving them and benefiting yourselves at the same time. Azzo and the other Guelfs have a cause also: do they prosecute it by the same heartless methods or by better?" 932-952. The Guelfs being proved wonders if The Sordello either he may learn for the secret of the people's As Palma finished her account of the Guelfs, from which it appeared they were as heartless and selfish as the Ghibellins, morn broke. "Once more," said Sordello no better, then to himself, "meet proudly the light of day. people's charge of taking no share in the work of of these parties fails, since both stand condemned utter selfishness. These self-seekers are the busy ones: good. it is kinder to be silent, as thou art. Two parties take the world up, and allow no room for other workers, but, opposed though they be, they are at one in their injustice to the common crowd, and whoever joins the one or the other enlists in the ranks of man's inveterate foes. There is no need that I should decide between the two; for they are wholly bad and may be cursed. I have done nothing; they have done worse than nothing. Nay, I am better than I call myself; for to me, left out of account by the world, bereft of all knowledge of the movements of the times, and living out a dream amid trees and flowers, was left at least the notion of a service. Ha! May I not go farther? What but that notion brought me to inquire of Taurello - though I find it has never crossed his mind? What if there be what I have thought of-a real service of man a cause distinct from the Guelf or the Ghibellin,—and what if it be reserved for me to discover it?" 952-1000. the tale of Soon thereafter a watcher pressed before Palma and Sordello to suggest a subject for their minstrelsy. They He hears must know, he said, the tale of the worthy who long Crescentius, ago was Consul of Rome "long ago with respect to ourselves, who are doing our fighting here now, but too late to bring about the good time he aimed at." Did they really not know about that Crescentius Nomentanus ? And, in answer to Sordello's 'No,' the man told how, when their Superior introduced a novice to the brotherhood (" for I was just a brown-sleeve brother, appointed, too, in an off-hand, merry way, till Innocent bade me, much against my will, renounce my wife or K |