Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/58



are not to suppose that the spectacle of Verona garbed in a gown of innocence, singing hymns and weaving chaplets of lilies, was to go unnoticed by the ruling power. Can Grande II. was lord of Verona, a most atrocious rascal, and one of many; but, like his famous ancestor and namesake, he had a gibing tongue, which was evidence of a scrutiny tolerably cool of the shifts of human nature. Human nature, he had observed, must needs account to itself for itself. If it met with what it did not understand, it was prompt to state the problem in a phrase which it could not explain. The simplicity of the plan was as little to be denied as its convenience was obvious. It was thus that Can Grande II. understood the emotions of Verona; it was thus, indeed, that he himself, confronted with statements and an explanation which did not satisfy him, accounted to himself, like any mother's son of his lieges. He explained their explanation, but only by another inexplicable formula. The energy with which he expounded his own view to those about him betrayed, perhaps, a lurking uneasiness in the burly tyrant.

"Pooh, my good lord," said he to the bishop, who had come full of the day's doings and night's 46