[Footnote 1: "His mouth spake no word but only Jesus and Caterina, and
with these words I received his head in my two hands, as he closed his
eyes in the Divine Goodness, and said: I will...." (_Letters of St.
Catherine of Sienna_--xcvii, ed. Gigli e Burlamacchi.)]


The good town of Sienna was like a sick man that seeks vainly for a
restful place in his bed, and thinks, by turning about and about, to
cheat his pain. Again and again had she changed the government of the
Republic, which passed from the Consuls to the Assemblies of the
Burghers, and, originally entrusted to the Nobles, was subsequently
exercised by the money-changers, drapers, apothecaries, furriers,
silk-mercers and all such citizens as were concerned with the superior
arts and crafts. But these worthies having shown themselves weak and
self-seeking, the People expelled them in their turn and entrusted the
sovereign power to the petty artisans. In the year 1368 of the glorious
Incarnation of the Son of God, the Signory was composed of fourteen
Magistrates chosen from among the hosiers, butchers, locksmiths,
shoemakers, and stonemasons, who together formed a Great Council known
as the _Mount of the Reformers_. They were a plebeian band, rough and
hard as the bronze She-Wolf, emblem of their city, which they loved with
an affection at once filial and formidable. But the People, which had
set them up over the Commonwealth, had suffered another body to continue
in existence, though subordinate to them, the Twelve to wit, who came
from the class of Bankers and wealthy Merchants. These men were in
conspiracy with the Nobles, at the Emperor's instigation, to sell the
City to the Pope of Rome.

The German Kaiser was the life and soul of the plot, promising the aid
of his landsknechts to guarantee success. He was in the utmost haste to