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In this retreat, encouraged by the applause of his first confidants, he labored with joyous energy, recasting his Schroffenstein Family, working out the Broken Jug, meditating historical dramas on Leopold of Austria and Peter the Hermit, and expending the best of his untrained genius on the plan of a tragedy, Robert Guiscard, in which he strove to create a drama of a new type, combining the beauties of Greek classical art and of Shakespeare; with his Guiscard the young poet even dared hope to "snatch the laurel wreath from Goethe's brow."
Before night they were ordered to take their stand on the old Ancre defences. This movement exposed the left flank of Gough's forces on the Somme; his front had also been driven in by German attacks across the river, while his right had been forced back beyond Guiscard, Noyon, and Nesle.
The most immediate agents of this gigantic scheme were the Normans, who had conquered Naples by the arm of the adventurer Robert Guiscard, and under the gonfanon of St. Peter.
The matter ended at Canossa, as you know, when the Emperor had to kiss the Pope's foot. And that was right at that time, for the spiritual head is higher than the worldly one. But Canossa was not the end. Gregory, the mighty champion of the Lord, fell into the same sin as David. In the first place, he summoned the Norman Guiscard from Sicily to his aid.
She took up a book on the powers of the human mind; but, her attention strayed from cold arguments on the nature of what she felt, while she was feeling, and she snapt the chain of the theory to read Dryden's Guiscard and Sigismunda. Maria, in the course of the ensuing day, returned some of the books, with the hope of getting others and more marginal notes.
Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers by land and sea, these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus, Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville, Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes, were brigands and robbers.
One of those papers contained a detail of several projects by the leading members of the Assembly for the government of France. Guiscard, after bending his wise head over them, pronounced them all equally futile, and equally tending to democracy.
His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace: from these base practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy war; and the invasion of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and policy of his brother Guiscard.
He feared, declared Guiscard, "he might run short of enemies," and as he could not advance on Russia and leave the Saxons and Poles in his rear, he desired and here doubtless he was right first of all to insure his line of communication, and of possible retreat. Thus, by his own deed, he strengthened and cemented an alliance which had already been shaken by common defeat.
The motto on the sword of Roger Guiscard was a proud one: Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer.
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