ADVENT OF SPRING IN THE SOUTH
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come streaming, strengthened, and equipped, to our South; that they may despoil our dreams and hinder the accomplishment of our hopes. Do you not feel, Sire, that you are enkindling your mother's blood against your father's. That you are rending your realm in twain. That you are making ready a descent on Italy by the barbarians?
CHARLES IV.: I confess to you, over-zealous poet, that in the stern nights of my solitude I have pondered on this outcome. But if I have nurtured Christian warriors for new contests, I have achieved right in that I have, at the same time, suppressed all pride, all self-love, all the stubbornness of humanity.
PETRARCH: Say rather all the heroic instincts of your being, mighty Sire. But yet did you never reflect that you,—Augustus and Trajan in one person,—that you are preparing war and rebellion, you who love and honour us? Do you not regret this strange and yet inevitable sacrifice of war to be?
CHARLES IV.: I pray God that the war may not become too great a sacrifice.
PETRARCH: There will be nothing left for me but to crave Providence that your barbarians may not be the victors. That I may not cease to cherish the faith of not having lived in vain, of not having been deceived by my Virgil. But
