_Castruccio exiles three hundred Families from
Lucca--Visits at Valperga--His Character
further developed._
During his absence Castruccio had reduced in his own mind his various
political plans to a system. He no longer varied either in the end which
he desired to attain, or the means by which he resolved to accomplish
it. He thought coolly on the obstacles in his way; and he resolved to
remove them. His end was the conquest of Tuscany; his means, the
enslaving of his native town; and, with the true disposition of a
conqueror and an usurper, he began to count heads to be removed, and
hands to be used, in the furtherance of his designs. He had no sooner
returned to Florence, than messengers brought him intelligence of a
plot, which would speedily break out in Lucca to deprive him of his
government; and this information, joined to the departure of Euthanasia,
determined him instantly to return to the Lucchese territory.
He was no longer the same as when he had quitted it; he returned full of
thought,--with a bent brow, a cruel eye, and a heart not to be moved
from its purpose by weakness or humanity. The change might appear
sudden, yet it had been slow;--it is the last drop that overflows the
brimming cup,--and so with him the ambition, light-heartedness, and
pride which he had long been nourishing, now having made for itself a
form, "a habitation and a name," first manifested itself in its true
colours to the eyes of man. Ambition, and the fixed desire to rule,
smothered in his mind the voice of his better reason; and the path of
tyranny was smoothed, by his steady resolve to obtain the power, which
under one form or other it had been the object of his life to seek.
The morning after his return to Lucca he reviewed his troops: they were
devoted to him, and by their means he intended to secure his power. He
assembled the senate, and surrounded the palace of government with his
soldiers; he took his seat at its head, with the countenance of one who
knows, and can punish his enemies. He addressed the assembly in few
words, saying, that it was by their power he had been raised to the
government, and that it now behoved them to support him in its exercise.
"I know," he cried, "I have many enemies here,--but let any one of them
step forth, and say the ill that I have done to the republic;--I who
have fought its battles, secured its prosperity, and raised it from the
being the servant of proud Florence to be its rival. What, will none of
you come forward to denounce me, now that I appear, face to face, to
answer your accusations? Randolfo Obizzi, I call upon you, who would
despoil me of the power this senate conferred upon me;--and you, Aldino,
who have plotted even my death;--can ye whisper as traitors, and cannot
ye speak as men? Away!--the moment of mercy is short:--three hours hence
the gates of Lucca will be shut, and whoever among you or your partizans
are found within its walls, will pay the forfeit of his life for his
temerity."
The senate would now have broken up; but, when Castruccio saw that his
enemies had all departed, he called on the rest to stay, and aid him on
this momentous occasion. The decree for banishing the conspirators was
then formally passed, and another for demolishing three hundred towers
of so many palaces, which were as strong holds and fortressess within
the town. The senate was then dismissed,--the troops paraded the
streets, and before night-fall three hundred families, despoiled of
their possessions, and banished their native town, passed through its
gates in mournful procession. The soldiers were employed in demolishing
the towers; and the ruins were carried to the eastern quarter of the
city, to be used in the erection of a new wall. Castruccio, now master
of Lucca, and triumphant over his enemies, felt that he had taken the
first step in the accomplishment of his plans.
Euthanasia had remained in her castle in anxious expectation of a visit
or a message from Castruccio;--neither came: but late in the afternoon
Teresa Obizzi, one of her dearest friends, was announced to her.
"Why so mournful, dear Teresa?" asked her friend. "What has happened?
Are you also unfortunate?"
"I hardly know what has happened, or where I am," replied Teresa.
"Methinks the thunder of heaven has fallen among us; all the Obizzi
family is banished Lucca, and not these alone, but the Bernardi, the
Filippini, the Alviani, and many more, are exiled, and their possessions
confiscated."
"Why, how is this? What new change has occurred in Lucca?"
"Nothing new, dear countess. In truth I believe there was a plot against
Antelminelli, and that some of the Obizzi were concerned in it. But
Castruccio examines nothing; and, including us all in one general
sentence, has wrapt us like a whirlwind, and carries us, God alone knows
whither. And my poor father! I threw myself at the consul's feet; yes,
I, the wife of the proud Galeotto Obizzi, and prayed that my poor father
might be allowed to remain."
"And he refused?"
"He said, 'You have heard the sentence; he best knows whether he be
implicated in it; I have sworn by God and St. Martin that this nest of
Guelphs and _Neri_ shall be rooted out of Lucca, and that the will of
the senate shall be obeyed. Let him look to it; for after three hours
the life of a partizan of the Obizzi will be held no dearer than the
earth on which I tread.'"
"Castruccio said this? Did he answer you thus, Teresa?"
"He did, dear Euthanasia; but I must away; I came to bid you farewel,--a
long farewel; my father and my husband wait for me; pray God to pity
us;--farewel!"
"Not so, Teresa. This castle is not his, and may afford an asylum to his
victims. Come here; repose here awhile at least. Bring your father, your
babes; come and teach me what sorrow is, and learn from me to bear it
with fortitude."
As the evening advanced, others of her friends arrived, and confirmed
all that Euthanasia had before heard. She was confounded, and unable to
believe that it was indeed Castruccio who had caused these evils. Whence
arose this sudden change in his character? Yet, was it sudden? or, was
there indeed any change? She remembered words and looks, before
forgotten, which told her that what now took place was the offspring of
deep thought and a prepared scheme. Yet again, unable to believe the
full extent of the evil that she heard, she sent to Lucca to intreat
Arrigo Guinigi to hasten to her. Arrigo was with Castruccio when the
message came.
"Go, my dear boy," said the latter; "her woman's heart trembles perhaps
at this day's work. Shew her the necessity of it; and make her think as
little unkindly of me as you can. Notwithstanding her coldness and
perplexing ideas about duty, I love her, and must not have her be my
enemy. If she would be content with any thing except the peace with
Florence for her _morgincap_, all my power and possessions were at her
feet[7]."
Arrigo went to Valperga: Euthanasia saw him alone; and, pale and almost
breathless, she asked what had caused this change, and whether he knew
what the schemes of Castruccio were?
"Indeed, Madonna," replied Arrigo, "I do not; I believe that he aims
only at the security of his own state; and many of those he has exiled
had plotted against his government."
"It is possible; tyrants ever have enemies; but it were as well to raze
the city, as to banish all her citizens. There cannot be less than a
thousand souls included in his edict; women and infants, torn from all
the comforts, all the necessaries of daily life, cast upon the world to
weep and call down curses on him. What does he mean?"
"He suspects all whom he has banished, and has strong secret reasons for
his conduct; of that, Euthanasia, you may be sure. When I asked him why
he banished so many of his fellow-citizens, he replied laughing,
'Because this city is not big enough for them and me.' And then he told
me seriously, that his life was alone preserved by the vigorous measures
of this morning."
"Be it so; I wish I could believe him; I do indeed trust that there is
nothing wanton in his severity; yet methinks he had better have banished
himself, than so many families, who now go as beggars through the world.
He also was banished once; they say that princes learn from adversity; I
believe it; they learn a cunning in cruelty the prosperous can never
know."
"Nay, dear countess, speak not so hardly of him. Castruccio was born to
rule; he is noble-minded, but firm of resolution; and can you blame him
for securing a life on which the welfare of Lucca, perhaps of Italy,
depends?"
Euthanasia did not reply; she knew, although from the gentleness of her
nature she had never participated in it, that there was then in Italy a
spirit of cruelty, a carelessness for the life and pain of others, which
rendered it less wonderful that Castruccio should have adopted a mode of
conduct similar to that of most of his contemporaries. It is strange,
that man, born to suffering, and often writhing beneath it, should
wantonly inflict pain on his fellows; but however cruel an individual
may be, no one is so remorseless as a ruler; for he loses even within
himself the idea of his own individuality, and fancies that, in
pampering his inclinations, and revenging his injuries, he is supporting
the state; the state, a fiction, which sacrifices that which constitutes
it, to the support of its mere name. Euthanasia knew that she ought not
to apply the same rule of conduct to a prince, as to a private
individual; yet that Castruccio should have tainted himself with the
common vices of his tribe, was a shock, that unsettled the whole frame
of her mind; it unveiled at once the idol that had dwelt in the shrine
of her heart, shewed the falseness of his apotheosis, and forced her to
use her faculties to dislodge him from the seat he had usurped.
A few days after, Castruccio came himself to the castle of Valperga. He
came at a time when many other visitors were there, and among them
several whom he knew to be his secret enemies. He took no notice of
this; but, with the frankness of manner for which he was remarkable, he
entered into conversation with them, and treating them as on a perfect
equality with himself, he soon softened the angry mood with which they
had at first regarded him. All political discussion was avoided; and the
conversation turned on one of those domestic tragedies which were then
too common among the petty courts of Italy, where each little lord
possessing supreme power, and unrestrained by principle, was ever ready
to wash supposed dishonour from his name in the blood of those who had
caused the stigma. The one at present under discussion was of peculiar
horror, and was the more singular, since nature had vindicated her
violated laws on their infringer, and he who boasted of his morality in
indulging his passionate revenge, was now pursued by remorse and
madness, and the ghosts of his victims hunting him through the world,
gave him no rest or hope. One of the company, a Milanese, said, that it
was impossible that remorse could have caused the madness of Messer
Francesco; since in revenging the injury his wife had done him, he only
followed the example set him by hundreds of his countrymen; and if he
had gone beyond them in cruelty, it merely proved that his love, and his
sense of honour transcended theirs.
Castruccio replied; "Far be it from me to plead for those childish
notions, which would take the sword out of the hand of princes, and make
them bind men of iron with chains of straw. But it does surprize me,
that any man should dare so to idolize himself, as to sacrifice human
victims at the shrine of his pride, jealousy or revenge. Francesco was a
monster, when he tortured and murdered his wife; he is now a man, and
feels the fitting remorse for so foul a deed. Man may force his nature,
and commit deeds of horror; but we are all human beings, all the
children of one common mother, who will not suffer that one should
agonize the other, without suffering in his turn a part of the anguish
he has inflicted[8]."
After a time the other visitors departed; and Euthanasia was left alone
with Castruccio. For a while they were silent; the changeful colours of
her cheek might shew, that love had not forgotten its accustomed course,
but rushed in a warm flood to her heart, and then ebbed, commanded by a
power hardly less strong than that which bids the ocean pause; the power
of virtue in a well formed human heart. Castruccio watched her; but, in
the returning calmness of her eye, and in her unhesitating voice when
she did speak, he read all of female softness, but none of female
weakness.
"Will you pardon me," she said, at length, "if I speak frankly to you;
and not take in ill part the expression of those reflections to which
your late words have given rise?"
Castruccio smiled, and replied, "Madonna, I know already what you are
about to say; but you are mistaken in your conclusions. I said that no
man could with impunity sacrifice the lives of his fellow-creatures to
his own private passions; but you must not torture my meaning; the head
of a state is no longer a private man, and he would act with shameful
imbecility, if he submitted to his enemies because he dared not punish
them."
Euthanasia replied to this, and drew a lively picture of the sufferings
of the exiles; but Castruccio answered laughing, "You speak to one wiser
on that subject than yourself. Have not I been an exile? and do you
think that I forget our mournful procession, when we poor Ghibelines
left Lucca nearly twenty years ago? And do you think that the _Neri_
would have reigned, if they had not turned us out; and how should I
reign, if I permitted this horde of Guelphs to sit here, and plot in my
citadel? Their very number is an argument against them instead of being
one in their favour. But let us leave this discussion, my too
compassionate Euthanasia, and for a moment cast our thoughts on our own
situation. There must be some end put to the riddle, some crown to a
work, which seems as if it were to have no conclusion. I will be frank
with you; I am neither going to turn hermit, and, laying down my
sceptre, to take up with a crucifix: nor like your friends, the holy
fathers of the church, am I going to war with money and falsehood,
instead of with my sword. I am lord of Lucca, and shall continue so as
long as God permits me. I am at the head of the Ghibelines in Tuscany,
and my design is that the Ghibelines should put down their old enemies;
and, seeing a fair prospect of success, I shall neither spare words nor
blows against those who would oppose me in this undertaking. You are a
Guelph; but surely, my dear girl, you will not sacrifice your happiness
to a name, or allow party-spirit to get the better of all the more noble
feelings of your nature."
Euthanasia listened with attention, and answered in mild sadness; "It
does not appear to me, Castruccio, that I sacrifice any thing noble in
my nature, when I refuse to unite myself to the enemy of my country. As
a Ghibeline you know that I loved you; and it is not words alone that
cause my change; fight the Florentines with words only, and I am still
yours. But more than I love Florence, or myself, or you, Castruccio, do
I love peace; and my heart bleeds to think that the cessation of
bloodshed and devastation which our poor distracted country now enjoys,
is to be of short duration. Have you not lived in a country suffering
from war? Have you not seen the peasants driven from their happy
cottages, their vines torn up, their crops destroyed, often a poor child
lost, or haplessly wounded, whose every drop of blood is of more worth
than the power of the Cæsars? And then to behold the tears and despair
of these poor creatures, and to find men who would still inflict
them,--and for what? The bubble is yours, Castruccio.--What would you
have? Honour, fame, dominion? What are these if peace do not purchase
them, but contempt, infamy and despotism! Oh! rule your own heart;
enthrone reason there, make virtue the high priest of your divinity; let
the love of your fellow-creatures be your palace to dwell in, and their
praises your delicate food and costly raiment; and, as all sovereigns
have dungeons, so do you have them, in which your pride, ambition, and,
forgive the word, your cruelty, may be enchained; and then the
purple-clad emperors of Constantinople may envy your state and power.
"Why do you cause this cruel combat? or, why would you increase the
struggle in my heart? As the enemy of Florence I will never be yours; as
the deliberate murderer of the playmates of my infancy, of the friends
of my youth, of those to whom I am allied by every tie of relationship
and hospitality that binds mankind, as such, I will never be yours. Here
then is the crown of the work; the sea in which the deep and constant
stream of my affections loses itself,--your ambition. Let these be the
last words of contest between us: but if, instead of all that I honour
and love in the world, you choose a mean desire of power and selfish
aggrandizement, still listen to me. You are about to enter on a new
track, yet one on which the course of thousands of those that have gone
before you is to be seen: do not follow these; do not be sanguinary like
them;--the Italians of the present day have all a remorseless cruelty in
them, which will stain the pages of their history with the foulest
blots; let yours be free from these!
"Pardon me that I speak to you in this strain. From this moment we are
disjoined; whatever our portions may be, we take them separately. Such
is the sentence you pronounce upon us."
Castruccio was moved by the fervour of Euthanasia; he tried to alter her
determination, to argue her from the point of difference between them,
but in vain; he moved her to tears. She wept, but did not reply: her
purpose was fixed, but her heart was weak; she loved for the first and
only time; and she knew that she sacrificed every hope and joy in life,
if she sacrificed Castruccio. But she was firm, and they parted; a
parting that caused every nerve in Euthanasia's frame to thrill with
agony.
She tried to still these feelings, to forget that she loved; but tears,
abundant tears, alone eased the agony of her heart, when she thought,
that the soft dreams she had nourished for two years were vain, gossamer
that the sun of reality dissipated. Sometimes she schooled herself as
being too precise and over-wise, to sacrifice all her hopes to the
principles she had set up. But then the remembrance of the grief she had
endured during the last war with Florence, and the worse struggles she
would feel, if she dared unite herself to an enemy, if, by binding her
fate to his, she might neither pray for the cause of her husband, nor
for that of her beloved country; when to wish well to Castruccio would
be to desire the success of tyranny and usurpation; and to have given
her vows to the Florentines in their necessary defence, was to wish the
overthrow of the companion of her life--the idea of these struggles gave
her courage to persevere; and she hoped, that the approbation of her own
heart, and that of her dearest and most valued friends, would in some
degree repay her for her sufferings. She thought of her father and his
lessons; and her heart again swelled with the desire of the approbation
of the good, with the warm and ardent love of right which ever burned
within her soul. Hers had been a natural and a lawful passion; she could
not live, believing that she did wrong; and the high independence and
graceful pride of her nature would never permit her, to stoop beneath
the mark she had assigned as the object of her emulation.
Yet when, in the silence of night and of solitude, she consulted her own
heart, she found that love had quenched there every other feeling, and
not to love was to her to die. She looked on the quiet earth, where the
trees slept in the windless air, and the only sound was the voice of an
owl, whose shriek now and then with monotonous and unpleasing sound
awoke the silence, and gave a melancholy life to what else were dead;
she looked up to the sky where the eternal lamps of heaven were burning;
all was unchanged there; but for her all was different. It was on a
night, in an Italian autumn, that she sat under her acacia tree by the
basin of the fountain of the rock. To look on the hues of sunset, to see
the softened tints of the olive woods, the purple tinge of the distant
mountains, whose outline was softly, yet distinctly marked in the orange
sky; to feel the western breeze steal across her cheek, like words of
love from one most dear; to see the first star of evening penetrate from
out the glowing western firmament, and whisper the secret of distant
worlds to us in our narrow prison; to behold the heaven-pointing cypress
with unbent spire sleep in the stirless air; these were sights and
feelings which softened and exalted her thoughts; she felt as if she
were a part of the great whole; she felt bound in amity to all; doubly,
immeasurably loving those dear to her, feeling an humanizing charity
even to the evil. A sweet scent coming from the lemon-flowers, which
mingled with the gummy odour of the cypress trees, added to the
enchantment. Suddenly,--list! what is that? Music was heard, and sweeter
than all other instruments, the human voice in chorus singing a national
song, half hymn, half warlike; Euthanasia wept; like a child she
wept,--but there was none near to whom she could tell the complicated
sensations that overpowered her: to speak to those we love in such
moments, exhilarates the spirits; else the deep feeling preys on the
heart itself. She became sad, and looked up to the many-starred sky; her
soul uttered silently the bitter complaint of its own misery.
"Must I then forget to love? Oh! sooner shall that restless lamp, which
walketh up the heavens, and then descendeth, and abideth no where, Oh!
sooner shall that forget its path which it hath ever traced, since God
first marked it out, than I forget to love! The air still surrounds the
earth, filling the recesses of the mountains, and even penetrating into
their caverns; the sun shines through the day, and the cloudless heavens
of night are starred with the air's fire-bearing children; and am not I
as unchanged and unchangeable as nature's own, everlasting works? What
is it then that startles every nerve, not as the sound of thunder or of
whirlwind, but as the still, small voice, that clings to me, and will
not be made silent, telling me that all is changed from that which it
once was?
"I loved! God and my own heart know how truly, how tenderly! How I dwelt
on his idea, his image, his virtues, with unblamed affection: how it was
my glory, my silent boast, when in solitude my eyes swam in tears, and
my cheek glowed, to reflect that I loved him, who transcended his kind
in wisdom and excellence! Is this a dream? Oh! then all is a dream; and
the earth, and the fabric of the adamantine sky are as the gossamer that
may not endure! Yet, oh, ye stars, ye shine! And I live. Pulse, and
breath, and thought, and all is changed; I must no longer love,--so let
me suffer the living death of forgetfulness.
"Surely my heart is not cold, for I feel deep agony; and yet I live. I
have read of those who have pined and died, when the sweet food of love
was denied to them; were their sensations quicker, deeper, more
all-penetrating than mine? Their anguish greater? I know not; nor do I
know, if God hath given this frame a greater capacity for endurance than
I could desire. Yet, methinks, I still love, and that is why I live. A
dark, blank, rayless, motionless night is before me, a heavy,
overwhelming annihilation is above me, when for a moment I imagine that
hope is not for me. But for an instant does that idea live within me,
yet does it come oftener and stay longer that it was wont. The knowledge
that I have nought to expect but death, must become a part of my mind.
When a dear friend dies, what painful throes does one undergo, before we
are persuaded to know that he is no more! So now that hope dies; it is a
lesson hard for my heart to learn; but it will learn it; and that which
is now reality, will be as a dream; what is now a part of me will be but
a recollection, a shadow thrown upon life, from which I at length shall
emerge. And what is the state of being that shall follow?
"Yet will I arouse all the pride and all the nobility of my nature; I
will not sink beneath this trial; the great and good of past ages have
left their lessons for me to meditate, and I will be no indocile pupil;
the honey of the cup is exhausted, but all is not gall that remains."
The winter passed on thus: Euthanasia feared Castruccio as the enemy of
_Florence_; but she avoided Florence as _his_ enemy. Disappointed in her
dearest hopes, her very heart destroyed, she hated society, and felt
solace in the contemplation of nature alone; that solace which the mind
gathers, in communing with its sorrows, and, having lost every other
resource, clings as to a friend, to the feelings of woe with which it is
penetrated.
The winter was chill; the mountains were covered with snow; yet, when
the sun gleamed on them, the Serchio, taking life from his smiles, sped
down in his course, roaring and howling, as if, pursued by innumerable
and overflowing streams, he hurried to find repose in his home among the
waters of the boundless ocean. The air was filled with his turmoil; and
winter, asleep among the icy crags of the mountains, feared a sound,
which he had not power to silence, and which was the dirge that tolled
out his passing hour: the cold northern wind swept along the plain of
Lucca, and moaned as a repulsed beggar about the walls of Euthanasia's
castle. Within those walls, late the scene of content and joy, sat the
disconsolate mistress, a prey to all those sad, and sometimes wild
reveries, which utter hopelessness had made her companions. Duty, and
the associations of her early youth, had breathed in her ear the
terrible command to love no more; but her soul rebelled, and often she
thought that, in so mad a world, duty was but a watch-word for fools,
and that she might unblamed taste of the only happiness she should ever
enjoy.
But, in one who had so long submitted her very thoughts to the control
of conscience, such ideas found brief habitation; and her accustomed
feelings returned to press her into the narrow circle, whence for her
all peace was excluded. Duty, patriotism, and high religious morality,
were the watch-dogs which drove her scattered thoughts, like wandering
sheep, into their fold: alas! the wolf nestled in the pen itself. If for
a moment her will paused, and love, breaking every bank she had
carefully built up to regulate her mind's course, burst in at once, and
carried away in its untameable course reason, conscience, and even
memory, Castruccio himself came to repair the breach, and to restrain
the current; some castle burnt, some town taken by assault, some friend
or enemy remorselessly banished, filled her with shame and anger, that
she should love a tyrant; a slave to his own passions, the avenger of
those of others. Castruccio was ever at war; peace subsisted between him
and Florence; but the siege of Genoa by the Ghibelines of Lombardy, gave
him occasion to turn his arms on that side; and, his march extending
from Lucca to beyond the Magra, he deluged the country in blood, and
obtained that which he desired, dominion and fame.
It were curious to mark the changes that now operated in his character.
Every success made him extend his views to something beyond; and every
obstacle surmounted, made him still more impatient of those that
presented themselves in succession. He became all in all to himself; his
creed seemed to contain no article but the end and aim of his ambition;
and that he swore before heaven to attain. Accustomed to see men die in
battle for his cause, he became callous to blood, and felt no more
whether it flowed for his security on a scaffold, or in the field of
honour; and every new act of cruelty hardened his heart for those to
come.
And yet all good feelings were not dead within him. An increased ardour
in friendship seemed to have taken the place of innocence and general
benevolence: virtue, as it were seeking to build her nest in his heart,
and thrust out of her ancient one, taking up with the resting-place
whose entrance still was free. Bravery and fortitude were to him
habitual feelings: but, although he were kind and bounteous to his
friends, so that he was loved with ardour, and served with fidelity,
there was no magnanimity, and little generosity in his character. His
moderate habits, abstemiousness, and contempt of luxury, often gave him
the appearance of self-sacrifice; for he bestowed on others what they
greatly valued, but what he himself contemned. But, when it came to the
sacrifice of his own inclinations, his boundless ambition, and love of
sway, then no obstacle either of nature or art could stop him; neither
compassion which makes angels of men, nor love which softens the hearts
of the gods themselves, had over him the slightest power,--he fixed his
whole soul on the point he would attain, and he never either lost sight
of it, or paused in his efforts to arrive there.
It were difficult to tell what his sensations were with regard to
Euthanasia; he had loved her, tenderly, passionately; and he considered
her refusal of his offers as a caprice to be surmounted. Sometimes he
was deeply grieved, sometimes angry; yet he ever loved her, and believed
that she would relent. Sometimes he thought of poor Beatrice, her form,
beaming with beauty, and alive with the spirit of the sybil; or again,
pale, struck to the heart as a poor deer in the forest, and sinking
beneath the wound:--he then felt that he would give the world to assuage
her sorrows. On returning through Bologna, he had sent to Ferrara, and
heard that she was alive, that no change in her situation had taken
place; and, satisfied with this, he sought no further. Ambition had
become the ruling passion of his soul, and all bent beneath its sway, as
a field of reeds before the wind: love himself had brief power in his
mind; and, although this passion sometimes caused him pain, and the
sickness of disappointed hope, yet this was short, and yielded to the
first impulse that occurred, which hurried him along to new designs and
new conquests.
Once indeed he had loved, and he had drank life and joy from the eyes of
Euthanasia. His journey to Lombardy, his connexion with Beatrice,
although indeed he loved her little, yet was sufficient to weaken the
bonds that confined him; and love was with him, ever after, the second
feeling in his heart, the servant and thrall of his ambition.
His military exploits were now bounded to the entire reduction of the
territory around Lucca; Sarzana, Pontremoli, Fucecchio,
Fosedenovo,--castles even beyond the Magra, Valdinera, Aquabuona, La
Valle, fortified villages among the Apennines, which had hitherto been
under the jurisdiction of the lords of Lombardy, now submitted to the
Lucchese consul. During the winter he was for some time confined by the
floods to the town of Lucca itself, where he employed himself in
establishing a vigorous system of police, in discovering and punishing
his enemies, and in the design and foundation of public edifices. He was
beloved by the nobles of his own party, and by the common people, whose
taxes he lightened, and whom he relieved in a great measure from the
tyranny of their superiors; he was beloved even by the clergy, for,
although an enemy to the temporal usurpations of the Popes, he valued
the learning, and respected the persons of the priests. He was hated by
all the rich not immediately connected with his person and faction, for
they were deprived of power; despised by his followers, and watched by
himself, they could find no asylum from the suspicion and severity of a
tyrant who felt himself insecure on his seat of power.
[Footnote 7: The _morgincap_ was a boon granted by the husband to the
wife the morning after the nuptials. It consisted generally of a gift of
part of his possessions, sometimes of the half, often of a quarter of
his property. Laws were made in some states to restrain this excessive
generosity, but the custom of the _morgincap_ continued a long time in
Florence.]
[Footnote 8: The story here alluded to, is told by Bandello, and is
related with that air of truth which this writer delights to give to his
narrations.]