Manzoni has made use of the kiss of peace in the pathetic scene in _I promessi Sposi_ (The Betrothed), when Fra Cristoforo obtains forgiveness from the nobleman whose son he has slain. The nobleman receives the monk in his palace. Surrounded by all his relations, he stands in the middle of his great hall, with left hand on his sword-hilt, whilst with his right he holds a flap of his cloak pressed against his chest. Cold and stern, he gazes contemptuously and with suppressed wrath at the novice as he enters, but the latter exhibits such touching remorse and noble humility that the nobleman, there and then, abandons his stiffness. He raises up the kneeling brother himself, grants him his forgiveness, and, finally, “carried away by the emotion that prevailed, he threw his arms round the latter’s neck, and gave and received the kiss of peace.” After the Middle Ages the kiss of peace disappears altogether as the official token of reconciliation; solitary instances, indeed, can certainly be quoted from Catherine of Medici’s Court, but they are rather to be regarded as studied efforts to re-introduce an old and abandoned usage. After the murder of Francis de Guise in 1563, his widow and brother meet Admiral de Coligny; the latter swore that he had not the least suspicion of the assassin’s plot, whereupon they kiss each other, and mutually promise to forget all enmities, and henceforward to live in peace and harmony. This kiss of peace was as powerless to revive the old custom as Lamourette’s memorable attempt at the time of the Revolution. On the 7th July 1792, when the quarrel amongst the members of the Legislative Assembly had reached a terrible height, at the time when the Austrian and Prussian armies were marching on Paris, Lamourette got up and made a fervent patriotic speech, in which, in the most moving terms, he exhorted all the members of the Assembly to sink their differences. He finished by saying: “Let us forget all dissension and swear everlasting fraternity”--_et jurons-nous fraternité éternelle_, and the deputies at once fell into each others arms, and in a universal kiss of reconciliation every one forgave each other’s wrongs. But this unity did not last long. The quarrels began again the following day, and two years afterwards Lamourette himself died by the guillotine; but the expression, a kiss of Lamourette--_un baiser de Lamourette_--still survives in the French language as a half ironical term for a short-lived reconciliation. V THE KISS OF RESPECT Les rois des nations, devant toi prosternés, De tes pieds baisent la poussière. RACINE--_Athalie._ The kings of the Gentiles, prostrate before thee, kiss the dust of thy feet. CHAPTER V THE KISS OF RESPECT