Sat she still scheming. Ecelin would come Gaunt, scared, 'Cesano baffles me,' he 'd say: 'Better I fought it out, my father's way! Strangle Ferrara in its drowning flats, And you and your Taurello yonder!--what 's Romano's business there?' An hour's concern To cure the froward Chief!--induce return As heartened from those overmeaning eyes, Wound up to persevere,--his enterprise Marked out anew, its exigent of wit Apportioned,--she at liberty to sit And scheme against the next emergence, I-- To covet her Taurello-sprite, made fly Or fold the wing--to con your horoscope For leave command those steely shafts shoot ope, Or straight assuage their blinding eagerness In blank smooth snow. What semblance of success To any of my plans for making you [Sidenote: How she ever aspired for his sake,] Mine and Romano's? Break the first wall through, Tread o'er the ruins of the Chief, supplant His sons beside, still, vainest were the vaunt: There, Salinguerra would obstruct me sheer, And the insuperable Tuscan, here, Stay me! But one wild eve that Lady died In her lone chamber: only I beside: Taurello far at Naples, and my sire At Padua, Ecelin away in ire With Alberic. She held me thus--a clutch [Sidenote: Circumstances helping or hindering.] To make our spirits as our bodies touch-- And so began flinging the past up, heaps Of uncouth treasure from their sunless sleeps Within her soul; deeds rose along with dreams, Fragments of many miserable schemes, Secrets, more secrets, then--no, not the last-- 'Mongst others, like a casual trick o' the past, How ... ay, she told me, gathering up her face, All left of it, into one arch-grimace To die with ... "Friend, 't is gone! but not the fear Of that fell laughing, heard as now I hear. Nor faltered voice, nor seemed her heart grow weak When i' the midst abrupt she ceased to speak --Dead, as to serve a purpose, mark!--for in Rushed o' the very instant Ecelin (How summoned, who divines?)--looking as if He understood why Adelaide lay stiff Already in my arms; for, 'Girl, how must I manage Este in the matter thrust Upon me, how unravel your bad coil?-- Since' (he declared) ''t is on your brow--a soil Like hers there!' then in the same breath, 'he lacked No counsel after all, had signed no pact With devils, nor was treason here or there, Goito or Vicenza, his affair: He buried it in Adelaide's deep grave, Would begin life afresh, now,--would not slave For any Friedrich's nor Taurello's sake! What booted him to meddle or to make In Lombardy?' And afterward I knew The meaning of his promise to undo All she had done--why marriages were made, New friendships entered on, old followers paid With curses for their pains,--new friends' amaze