nothing but register the decrees of the military commandant. He proved
so little useful in this government that he was expelled from it, and,
giving his salary to his native parish, he fell into something like
his old poverty. He who had laughed to scorn the insolence and
folly of the nobles could not enjoy the insolence and folly of the
plebeians, and he was unhappy in that wild ferment of ideas, hopes,
principles, sentiments, which Milan became in the time of the
Cisalpine Republic. He led a retired life, and at last, in 1799,
having risen one day to studies which he had never remitted, he died
suddenly in his arm-chair.

Many stories are told of his sayings and doings in those troubled days
when he tried to serve the public. At the theater once some one cried
out, "Long live the republic, death to the aristocrats!" "No,"
shouted Parini, who abhorred the abominable bloodthirstiness of the
liberators, "long live the republic, death to nobody!" They were
going to take away a crucifix from a room where he appeared on public
business. "Very well," he observed; "where Citizen Christ cannot stay,
I have nothing to do," and went out. "Equality doesn't consist in
dragging me down to your level," he said to one who had impudently
given him the _thou_, "but in raising you to mine, if possible. You
will always be a pitiful creature, even though you call yourself
Citizen; and though you call me Citizen, you can't help my being the
Abbate Parini." To another, who reproached him for kindness to an
Austrian prisoner, he answered, "I would do as much for a Turk, a
Jew, an Arab; I would do it even for you if you were in need." In his
closing years many sought him for literary counsel; those for whom
there was hope he encouraged; those for whom there was none, he made
it a matter of conscience not to praise. A poor fellow came to repeat
him two sonnets, in order to be advised which to print; Parini heard