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When her slave-women saw this, they shrieked aloud and told her father and mother, who in hot haste ran to the palace-roof and looking up, saw the magical horse flying away with the Prince and Princess. At this the King was troubled with ever-increasing trouble and cried out, saying, "O King's son, I conjure thee, by Allah, have ruth on me and my wife and bereave us not of our daughter!"
In the background rise domes, and towers, and mediaeval church-fronts, galleried and fretted with arches, pillars, and statues. Here a golden mosaic blazes in the sun, yonder a brazen San Michele with outstretched arms rises against the sky; and, scattered up and down, many a grand old palace-roof uprears its venerable front, with open pillared belvedere, adorned with ancient frescoes.
In order to explain the continual prosperity of the princes amid the clash of forces brought to bear against them from so many sides, we must remember that they were the partisans of social order in distracted burghs, the heroes of the middle classes and the multitude, the quellers of faction, the administrators of impartial laws, and the aggrandizers of the city at the expense of its neighbors. Ser Gorello, singing the praises of the Bishop Guido dei Tarlati di Pietra Mala, who ruled Arezzo in the first half of the fourteenth century, makes the Commune say: 'He was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of grace and daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and Ghibellines. He, for his virtue, was chosen by common consent to be the master of my people. Peace and justice were the beginning, middle, and end of his lordship, which removed all discord from the State. By the greatness of his valor I grew in territory round about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through love and some through dread; for it was dear to them to rest beneath his mantle. These verses set forth the qualities which united the mass of the populations to their new lords. The Despot delivered the industrial classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, substituting a reign of personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the nobles than upon the artisans or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and fraud than by the sword, he turned the leaders of parties into courtiers, brought proscribed exiles back into the city as officials, flattered local vanity by continuing the municipal machinery in its functions of parade, and stopped the mouths of unruly demagogues by making it their pecuniary interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on his personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. He held it by intelligence, being as it were an artificial product of political necessities, an equilibrium of forces, substituted without legal title for the Church and Empire, and accumulating in his despotic individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of consuls, Podest
"The room is passing close, the air is heavy," were the Protector's first words: "follow me to the palace-roof, where there can be no listeners, save the pale stars, and they prate not of man's doings." Robin followed Cromwell up a narrow flight of steps, so narrow that the Protector could hardly climb them.
Now, she seized from the corner of the palace-roof a bow and an arrow, and her brothers lifted her to a level with the hilt of the Sword, leaning on the eye of glass. Then she planted one foot on the shoulder of Shibli Bagarag as he bent peering through the eye, and fitted the arrow to a level of the Sword, slanting its slant, and let it fly, doubling the bow.
The gods had indeed abandoned them, and the spirit of the king's daughter took its flight in company with thousands of souls in whose behalf she had suffered uselessly. The king was crushed beneath his palace-roof and the sacerdotal executioner perished in a fall of rock.
Overpowered and heart-stricken, for he hoped to have been granted speech of the Cavalier, Robin obeyed the mandate, and the Protector of England passed alone along his palace-roof. "Ever in the ascendant!" he said, casting his eyes on the star of his nativity, that shone brightest among the countless multitudes of night.
Darting up a staircase, he gained the palace-roof, from which he sprang to a neighbouring roof and descended hastily to the street, throwing off some of his brilliant apparel as he ran, and snatching up a common burnous in which he enveloped himself.
The gods had indeed abandoned them, and the spirit of the king's daughter took its flight in company with thousands of souls in whose behalf she had suffered uselessly. The king was crushed beneath his palace-roof and the sacerdotal executioner perished in a fall of rock.
I who am now regularly on the palace-roof at dawn, sometimes from between the pavilion-curtains of the galleries, or from the steps of the telescope-kiosk, may spy her far down below, a dainty microscopic figure, generally running about the sward, or gazing up in wonder at the palace from the lake-edge. It is now three months since she came with me to Imbros.
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