"'He in his height of glory,' said the other, 'Casting aside all shame, spontaneously, Stood in the market of Siena, begging; He, to redeem his friend from infamy And death, in Charles's dungeons, did what made him Tremble through every vein.--No more; my speech Is dark; thy countrymen, ere long, will do That which will help thee to interpret it."[11] In despair of being able to force his way, sword in hand, back to Florence, Dante next endeavoured, by supplicating the good offices of individuals connected with the government, by expostulatory addresses to the people, and even by appeals to foreign princes, to obtain a reversal of his unrighteous sentence. Disappointment, however, followed upon disappointment, till, hope deferred having made the heart sick, he grew so impatient under the sense of wrong and ignominy, that he again had recourse to the summary but perilous redress of violence;--not indeed by force which _he_ could command, though one in a million for energy, courage, and perseverance; but a powerful auxiliary having appeared in 1308, he gave up his whole soul to the main object of his desire at this time,--the chastisement of his inexorable fellow-citizens. Henry of Luxembourg, having been raised to the throne of Germany, eagerly engaged, like his predecessors, in the delusive contest for the "Iron crown" of Italy, though "Luke's iron crown"[12] (placed red hot on the brow of an unsuccessful aspirant to that of Hungary) was hardly more painful or more certainly fatal than this, except that it was far more expeditious in putting the wearer out of torture. Dante now rose from the dust of self-abasement, openly professed himself a Ghibelline, and changed his tones of supplication into those of menace against his refractory countrymen. Henry himself denounced terrible retribution upon the Guelfs, and at the head of an army invaded the Florentine territory; from which, however, he was compelled to make an early retreat; and the magnificent flourish of drums and trumpets, with which the imperial actor entered, was followed by a dead march, that closed the scene before he had turned round upon the stage--except to hurry away. He died in 1313, poisoned, it was reported, by a consecrated wafer. To this prince Dante dedicated his political treatise, in Latin, "De Monarchia," in which he eloquently asserts the rights of the emperor in Italy against the usurpations of the pope. He has been accused of exciting Henry to abandon the siege of Brescia, and undertake that of Florence; though, from regard to his native land, he himself forebore to accompany the expedition. He had affected no such scruple when the Bianchi, like trodden worms, turned upon the parent foot which spurned them from the soil where they were bred. There must, therefore, have been some other motive than patriotism,--nobody will suspect that it was cowardice,--which restrained him from witnessing the expected humiliation of his persecutors.