Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/192

176 and these lanes were alive with a fresh, free life, power and pride, joy and sorrow, much love and much hate. For Bacharach of old belonged to those municipalities which were founded by the Romans during their rule on the Rhine; and its inhabitants, though the times which came after were sadly stormy, and though they had to submit first to the Hohenstaufen, and then to the Wittelsbach authority, managed, after the example of the other cities on the Rhine, to maintain a tolerably free commonwealth. This consisted of an alliance of different social elements, in which the patrician elder citizens and those of the guilds which were subdivided according to their different trades, mutually strove for power, so that while they were bound in union to keep ward and guard against the robber-nobles, they nevertheless were obstinate in domestic dissensions waged for warring interests, the results of which were constant feuds, little social intercourse, much mistrust, and not seldom actual outbursts of passion. The lord warden sat on the high tower of Sareck, and darted downwards like his falcon, whenever called for, swooping