The Third false Kaiser--futile call him rather, wanting clear majority--was the English Richard of Cornwall; younger Son of John Lackland; and little wiser than his Father, to judge by those symptoms. He had plenty of money, and was liberal with it;--no other call to Germany, you would say, except to get rid of his money;--in which he succeeded. He lived actually in Germany, twice over for a year or two:--Alphonse and he were alike shy of the Pope, as Umpire; and Richard, so far as his money went, found some gleams of authority and comfortable flattery in the Rhenish provinces: at length, in 1263, money and patience being both probably out, he quitted Germany for the second and last time; came home to Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire here, [Gough's _Camden,_ i.339.] more fool than he went. Till his death (A.D. 1271), he continued to call himself, and was by many persons called, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire;--needed a German clerk or two at Berkhamstead, we can suppose: but never went back; preferring pleasant Berkhamstead, with troubles of Simon de Montfort or whatever troubles there might be, to anything Germany had to offer him. These were the Three futile Kaisers: and the LATE Kaiser Conrad's young Boy, who one day might have swept the ground clear of them, perished,--bright young Conradin, bright and brave, but only sixteen, and Pope's captive by ill luck,--perished on the scaffold; "throwing out his glove" (in symbolical protest) amid the dark mute Neapolitan multitudes, that wintry morning. It was October 25th, 1268,--Dante Alighieri then a little boy at Florence, not three years old; gazing with strange eyes as the elders talked of such a performance by Christ's Vicar on Earth. A very tragic performance indeed, which brought on the Sicilian Vespers by and by; for the Heavens never fail to pay debts, your Holiness!-- Germany was rocking down towards one saw not what,--an Anarchic Republic of Princes, perhaps, and of Free Barons fast verging towards robbery? Sovereignty of multiplex Princes, with a Peerage of intermediate Robber Barons? Things are verging that way. Such Princes, big and little, each wrenching off for himself what lay loosest and handiest to him, found it a stirring game, and not so much amiss. On the other hand, some voice of the People, in feeble whimperings of a strange intensity, to the opposite effect, are audible to this day. Here are Three old Minstrels (MINNESANGER) picked from Manesse's Collection by an obliging hand, who are of this date, and shall speak each a word:-- No. 1 LOQUITOR (in cramp doggerel, done into speech): "To thee, O Lord, we poor folk make moan; the Devil has sown his seeds in this land! Law thy hand created for protection of thy children: but where now is Law? Widows and orphans weep that the Princes do not unite to have a Kaiser."