O' the stars among the breaking clouds appears. Praise to the Lord! The eternal harmony Of all his work I feel. Though these vague beams Reveal to me here only fens and tombs, My soul is not so heavily weighed down By burdens that oppressed it.... I rise to grander purposes: man's tents Are here below, his city is in heaven. I doubt no more; the terror of the cloister No longer assails me. Presently Giordano comes to join Arnaldo in this desolate place, and, in the sad colloquy which follows, tells him of the events of Rome, and the hopelessness of their cause, unless they have the aid and countenance of the Emperor. He implores Arnaldo to accompany the embassy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist, who has hitherto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been converted. As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them. Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it, drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there. “What have you known here!” he asks, and his soldiers reply in chorus: The pride of old names, the caprices of fate, In vast desert spaces the silence of death, Or in mist-hidden lowlands, his wandering fires; No sweet song of birds, no heart-cheering sound, But eternal memorials of ancient despair, And ruins and tombs that waken dismay At the moan of the pines that are stirred by the wind. Full of dark and mysterious peril the woods; No life-giving fountains, but only bare sands, Or some deep-bedded river that silently moves, With a wave that is livid and stagnant, between Its margins ungladdened by grass or by flowers, And in sterile sands vanishes wholly away. Out of huts that by turns have been shambles and tombs, All pallid and naked, and burned by their fevers, The peasant folk suddenly stare as you pass, With visages ghastly, and eyes full of hate, Aroused by the accent that's strange to their ears. Oh, heavily hang the clouds here on the head! Wan and sick is the earth, and the sun is a tyrant. Then one of the Swiss soldiers speaks alone: