There was a pause of a few seconds. But it was soon evident that the noble spirit--of patriotism and of self-sacrifice--of their admired friend, had found a genuine response in all his hearers. He had touched the true chord. Carried forward by his disinterested enthusiasm, and pledged by the promise he, had somewhat artfully extorted from them, they rose, and with one voice repeated the oath proposed to, them. Pepoli, pale and aghast, and utterly confounded, and catching here and there the flashing of the half-drawn steel, made a precipitate retreat. Of all the assembly, Petrarch alone remained silent--he alone failed, or forgot, to take the oath;--full of concern for the safety of his noble friend, full of admiration for his greatness, he fell weeping upon his neck. CONCLUSION. After this, there was no more hope for the prisoner. If to the anger of the Bolognese was added the determined enmity of Romeo de' Pepoli, now resolved on his destruction, from what quarter could a ray of hope proceed? He was even now removed--such was the influence which the new enemy he had provoked possessed over the Podestà--to the common prison, and treated in all respects like a condemned malefactor. The university pleaded its privilege to judge a member of their own body, but the angry feeling of the citizens would not permit them for a moment to listen to this plea. There, was no power on earth to save him--and his fault was so light! A man more honourable did not exist. The purity of Constantia was more safe in his hands than in any others--he loved her so well. We are not sufficiently in the "tragic vein" to follow the prisoner through the last hours of his confinement, and of his existence. To be struck dead in the flush of life, with all his passions in full bloom upon him, was a hard decree. Sometimes he protested vehemently against the palpable injustice and cruelty of his sentence; but, in general, he found his consolation in the mournful sentiment, that had he lived, he should have been miserable--for the great desire of his life was doomed to be thwarted. "I told you," he said one day to his friend Petrarch, "that this love would work my destruction. It has so; but its great misery has made destruction itself indifferent." We willingly draw a veil over the last fatal scene, and all the horrors that precede a public death. Throughout this scene his courage never forsook him; but flashes of uncontrollable indignation would occasionally break from him, and occasionally a sigh of more tender despondency would escape. The last tear he shed, the last complaint he murmured, was still to the coldness of Constantia: "We should have been so happy, had she loved--and now!--"