Signory is now carrying on your trial. You wonder? Here is Braccio's last letter, sealed as it was when it left your camp an hour ago. The duplicate is on its way. Read it, and then I shall have more to tell you.' 'Florence!' groans the Moor.

But

'I admit, Luria, that if you were a Florentine, this letter would not justify your falling away, let it hold the worst it can. Our mother city is still the mother. She may take our services as she pleases, and we have no right to think about reward. you are not bound by such a tie. You are a foreigner, and at first there was no reason why you should give yourself to Florence rather than to Pisa. The city you war against is as fair and famous as that you fight for as full of noble heads and patriotic hearts. To a stranger neither cause can seem the only just one. Florence has withdrawn the love and trust which made you hers. You are as free now as in the beginning. Let Pisa make you an offer. Break the seal and read.'

'Tiburzio, if this were your case, if you were to find out-No-this is madness.'

'That Pisa would crush me when I had crushed her enemies? Well?'

'What should you do then?'

'Why, Luria, I expect that Pisa will pay me much as Florence does you. All cities are alike. But I am a Pisan, and you are not a Florentine. Read the letter.'

'But what can I do if I lose my faith in Florence? She stands to me for mankind. My friend, you may be very sagacious, but here you must be mistaken.'

'Give me your hand, Luria! I lead the vanguard. I shall speak for you if you fall. It was my duty to tell you this, but I rejoice to see that it has no effect. You will look gallantly, if you are found dead with that letter in your breast!'

'Tiburzio, I must see these people before I decide. Go back and sound your trumpet. If mine does not answer, you will know that I believe you and am Pisa's.'

Luria says to himself, as Tiburzio leaves him, 'My heart will have it that he speaks the truth. If he had come to my lonely tent at night, when the wild desert was full of foes, I should have given him bread and salt, and slept securely between his knees, while he took his turn to watch. But can I trust my heart?

'Oh world, where all things pass and nought abides ! Oh life, the long mutation-is it so ?

Is it with life as with the body's change?

-Where, e'en tho' better follow, good must pass,

Nor manhood's strength can mate with boyhood's grace, Nor age's wisdom, in its turn, find strength,

But silently the first gift dies away,

And though the new stays, never both at once.' *

* Works, 1868, vol. V. p. 70, ll. 13, &c.

'The time for following savage instinct is passed. That cold, certain, European way is better. Yes, I am sure of their calm sagacity and deliberate choice of the good. I am sure they understand me and are just to me. The wild beast of the desert wanders into the drifts in the tempest and is lost, but the calm, instructed eye of man holds the bearings fast, and is sure that, when the storm subsides, the guiding stars will shine forth once more, and the palm-trees and pyramids be found. So I will trust in my Florentines. That Pisan is deceived.'

When Braccio comes with Domizia to tell Luria that it is time to join battle, he cannot, however, help showing the letter, and asking if he should fight better or worse for knowing what is to be his reward.

Then the Commissioner answers, 'If you serve Florence merely for pay, like any vulgar swordsman, break the seal and read. You will find all that you deserve.'

'But tell me, friends,' asks the Moor, 'what would one of you Florentines do if he were to suspect that such a letter would show that he was about to be flung aside ungratefully?'

'Thank God and take vengeance,' cries Domizia, as she hears the Pisan trumpets. Turn the city's own army against her, and at the very moment when her foes are sounding defiance.'

" But my simple Moorish instinct bids me deepen my obligations to you,' breaks in Luria, as he tears up the letter, and commands that his own trumpets be sounded in reply. The battle! That shall solve every doubt.'

He leads the onset himself with more than usual impetuosity, cuts the Pisan vanguard and centre to pieces, and takes Tiburzio prisoner; but, in his haste, he permits the soldiers on the wings to retire with little loss and rally round the Lucchese, who come up at the end of the battle. Thus there is but half a victory, though Braccio declares that afternoon, in the presence of Puccio and Domizia, to Luria, that this battle with his previous services saves Florence. As the Moor now claims his right to be told what he had refused to know before he fought, the Commissioner answers, 'It is no novelty for innocence to be suspected, but simply its privilege. Charges were presented against you some time ago.

I do not say

whether they were true or false. I say only that Florence was plainly bound to examine them. She has done so. This evening the trial ends; and I am innocence will be as plain to all men as

sure that

your it is to me.'

'Florence, Florence, to the end! My whole heart. thanks thee!' exclaims Domizia.

Puccio is indignant at finding what use Braccio has made of his complaints against his general, and

declares, 'I do hold myself aggrieved, and have spoken mere truth; but I did not mean to help on a trial. You should have told me.'

Domizia asks whether Luria is to be sentenced to the block or to the wheel, and Braccio replies :—

'There is no sentence yet, and I shall give no opinion of my own as to what it ought to be, or is likely to be. There is nothing at present for any one to praise or blame.'

And to Luria's question whether it is right to try him, he answers :-'I assert the absolute right of Florence to do all she can have done in this business, to stand on her guard, and take even such services as yours with the most suspicious wariness. Friend may trust friend, and love expect its like, without paying any heed to all the world's experience, gained from martyred brains and broken hearts. When a new brain bursts, or a fresh heart breaks, it is merely another moth singed in the candle. But Florence is no more John or James, who may expect to succeed where all others have failed, and who, when he meets his fate, leaves Paul and George to try their chances. Florence exists because individuals pass away. She has been built to supply such a type of man as is refused by men's deficiencies. She binds so many together that she stands steadily above them, though they change and pass away. As the sun forms that city of clouds, hanging yonder, out of