Was It Some Afterglow Of The Luminous World That Had Sunk Below
The Horizon, Or A Pale Streak Of The Coming Dawn?
And if you now glance
down into this enclosure that once echoed with the song of minstrels
and the
Soft laughter of women, with the discourse of wits, artists and
philosophers, and the clang of arms - if you look, you will behold
nothing but a green lake, a waving field of grass. No matter. The
ambitions of these men are fairly realized, and every one of us may keep
a body-guard of pagans, an't please him; and a harem likewise - to judge
by the newspapers.
For he took his Orientalism seriously; he had a harem, with eunuchs,
etc., all proper, and was pleased to give an Eastern colour to his
entertainments. Matthew Paris relates how Frederick's brother-in-law,
returning from the Holy Land, rested awhile at his Italian court, and
saw, among other diversions, "duas puellas Saracenicas formosas, quae in
pavimenti planitie binis globis insisterent, volutisque globis huo
illucque ferrentur canentes, cymbala manibus collidentes, corporaque
secundum modules motantes atque flectentes." I wish I had been there. . . .
I walked to the castle yesterday evening on the chance of seeing an
eclipse of the moon which never came, having taken place at quite
another hour. A cloudless night, dripping with moisture, the electric
lights of distant Foggia gleaming in the plain. There are brick-kilns at
the foot of the incline, and from some pools in the neighbourhood issued
a loud croaking of frogs, while the pallid smoke of the furnaces,
pressed down by the evening dew, trailed earthward in a long twisted
wreath, like a dragon crawling sulkily to his den. But on the north side
one could hear the nightingales singing in the gardens below. The dark
mass of Mount Gargano rose up clearly in the moonlight, and I began to
sketch out some itinerary of my wanderings on that soil. There was Sant'
Angelo, the archangel's abode; and the forest region; and Lesina with
its lake; and Vieste the remote, the end of all things. . . .
Then my thoughts wandered to the Hohenstaufen and the conspiracy whereby
their fate was avenged. The romantic figures of Manfred and Conradin;
their relentless enemy Charles; Costanza, her brow crowned with a poetic
nimbus (that melted, towards the end, into an aureole of bigotry);
Frangipani, huge in villainy; the princess Beatrix, tottering from the
dungeon where she had been confined for nearly twenty years; her
deliverer Roger de Lauria, without whose resourcefulness and audacity it
might have gone ill with Aragon; Popes and Palaso-logus - brilliant
colour effects; the king of England and Saint Louis of France; in the
background, dimly discernible, the colossal shades of Frederick and
Innocent, looked in deadly embrace; and the whole congress of figures
enlivened and interpenetrated as by some electric fluid - the personality
of John of Procida. That the element of farce might not be lacking, Fate
contrived that exquisite royal duel at Bordeaux where the two mighty
potentates, calling each other by a variety of unkingly epithets,
enacted a prodigiously fine piece of foolery for the delectation of
Europe.
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