I am truth, And thou art force, and if thou part'st from me, Blind thou becomest, helpless I remain. We are but one at last.... Caesar and Peter, They are the heights of God; man from the earth Contemplates them with awe, and never questions Which thrusts its peak the higher into heaven. Therefore be wise, and learn from the example Of impious Arnaldo. He's the foe Of thrones who wars upon the altar. But he strives in vain to persuade Frederick to the despised act of homage, and it is only at the intercession of the Emperor's kinsmen and the German princes that he consents to it. When it is done in the presence of all the army and the clerical retinue, Adrian mounts, and says to Frederick, with scarcely hidden irony: In truth thou art An apt and ready squire, and thou hast held My stirrup firmly. Take, then, O my son, The kiss of peace, for thou hast well fulfilled All of thy duties. But Frederick, crying aloud, and fixing the sense of the multitude upon him, answers: Nay, not all, O Father!-- Princes and soldiers, hear! I have done homage To Peter, not to him. The Church and the Empire being now reconciled, Frederick receives the ambassadors of the Roman republic with scorn; he outrages all their pretensions to restore Rome to her old freedom and renown; insults their prayer that he will make her his capital, and heaps contempt upon the weakness and vileness of the people they represent. Giordano replies for them: When will you dream, You Germans, in your thousand stolid dreams,-- The fume of drunkenness,--a future greater Than our Rome's memories? Never be her banner Usurped by you! In prison and in darkness Was born your eagle, that did but descend Upon the helpless prey of Roman dead, But never dared to try the ways of heaven, With its weak vision wounded by the sun. Ye prate of Germany. The whole world conspired, And even more in vain, to work us harm, Before that day when, the world being conquered, Rome slew herself. ... Of man's great brotherhood Unworthy still, ye change not with the skies. In Italy the German's fate was ever To grow luxurious and continue cruel. The soldiers of Barbarossa press upon Giordano to kill him, and Frederick saves the ambassadors with difficulty, and hurries them away.