tragic cry, 'I am a miserable forlorn woman. There is none about me
whom I can trust.' She was a woman, always longing for some one to
love; and her heart broke under it all. But do you not see that
where the ruler is not an affectionate woman, but a strong proud man,
the effect may be very different, and very terrible?--how, roused to
indignation, scorn, suspicion, rage, he may turn to bay against his
own subjects, with 'Scoundrels! you have seen the fair side of my
character, and in vain. Now you shall see the foul, and beware for
yourselves.'

Even so, I fancy, did old Dietrich turn to bay, and did deeds which
have blackened his name for ever. Heaven forgive him! for surely he
had provocation enough and to spare.

I have told you of the simple, half-superstitious respect which the
Teuton had for the prestige of Rome. Dietrich seems to have partaken
of it, like the rest. Else why did he not set himself up as Caesar
of Rome? Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and
quasi-vassal, of the Caesar of Constantinople? He had been in youth
overawed by the cunning civilization which he had seen in the great
city. He felt, with a noble modesty, that he could not emulate it.
He must copy it afar off. He must take to his counsels men like
Cassiodorus, Symmachus, Boethius, born and bred in it; trained from
childhood in the craft by which, as a patent fact, the Kaisers of
Rome had been for centuries, even in their decay and degradation, the
rulers of the nations. Yet beneath that there must have been a
perpetual under-current of contempt for it and for Rome--the
'colluvies gentium'--the sink of the nations, with its conceit, its
pomposity, its beggary, its profligacy, its superstition, its
pretence of preserving the Roman law and rights, while practically it