the
poet's mirror reflects it: in its varied masquerade, in its mingled good
and evil, in its steady advance; in the rainbow brightness of its
obstructed lights; the deceptive gloom of its merely repeated shadows.
He enforces in every tone that continuity of the plan of creation to
which the poet alone holds the clue. Finally, in the name of the
unlimited truth, the limited opportunity, the one duty which confronts
him now, the People whose support, in his performance of it, he may
claim for the first time, he forbids the Emperor's coming, and invokes
Salinguerra's protection for the Guelph cause.

Salinguerra is moved at last, though not in the intended way. He does
not yield to Sordello's enthusiasm, but he sees that it is worth
employing. There is no question of his becoming a Guelph, but why should
not Sordello turn Ghibelline? The cause requires a youth to "stalk, and
bustle, and attitudinize;" and he clearly thinks this is all the youth
before him wants to do, whether conscious of the fact or not. He thinks
the thought aloud. "Palma loves her minstrel; it is written in her eyes;
let her marry him. Were she Romano's son instead of his daughter, she
could wear the Emperor's badge. Himself fate has doomed to a secondary
position. To contend against it is useless." Before he knows what he has
done, without really meaning to do it, he has thrown the badge across
Sordello's neck, and thus created him Eccelino's successor.

It was a prophetic act. At the moment of its performance

"... each looked on each:
Up in the midst a truth grew, without speech." (vol. i. p. 243.)

Palma's moment is come, and she relates the story, as she received it
from Adelaide, of Sordello's birth. With blanched lips, and sweat-drops
on his face, the old soldier takes the hand of his poet-son, and lays
its consecrating touch on his own face and brow. Then, recovering
himself, with his mailed arms on Sordello's shoulders, he launches forth
in an eager survey of the situation as it may shape itself for both.
Palma at last draws him away, and Sordello, exhausted and speechless, is
left alone. The two are in a small stone chamber, below the one they
have left. Half-drunk with his new emotions, Salinguerra paces the
narrow floor. His eyes burn; his tread strikes sparks from the stone.
The future glows before him. He and Sordello combined will break up
Hildebrand. They will rebuild Charlemagne; not in the brut