[65] Alluding to the Swiss air and its effects.--[The _Ranz des Vaches_, played upon the bag-pipe by the young cowkeepers on the mountains:--"An air," says Rousseau, "so dear to the Swiss, that it was forbidden, under the pain of death, to play it to the troops, as it immediately drew tears from them, and made those who heard it desert, or die of what is called _la maladie du païs_, so ardent a desire did it excite to return to their country. It is in vain to seek in this air for energetic accents capable of producing such astonishing effects, for which strangers are unable to account from the music, which is in itself uncouth and wild. But it is from habit, recollections, and a thousand circumstances, retraced in this tune by those natives who hear it, and reminding them of their country, former pleasures of their youth, and all their ways of living, which occasion a bitter reflection at having lost them." Compare Byron's Swiss "Journal" for September 19, 1816, _Letters_, 1899, ii. 355.] [bn] _That malady, which_----.--[MS. M.] [66] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XVI. stanza xlvi. lines 6, 7-- "The calentures of music which o'ercome The mountaineers with dreams that they are highlands."] [bo] {160} ----_upon your native towers_.--[MS. M.] [bp] {162} _Come you here to insult us_----.--[MS. M.] [67] {163}[For "steeds of brass," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiii. line I, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 338, and 336, note 1.] [68] [The first and all subsequent editions read "skimmed the coasts." Byron wrote "skirred," a word borrowed from Shakespeare. Compare _Siege of Corinth_, line 692, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 480, note 4.] [bq] {165} ----_which this noble lady worst_,--[MS. M.] [69] {169}[According to the law, it rested with the six councillors of the Doge and a majority of the Grand Council to insist upon the abdication of a Doge. The action of the Ten was an usurpation of powers to which they were not entitled by the terms of the Constitution.] [70] {170}[A touching incident is told concerning an interview between the Doge and Jacopo Memmo, head of the Forty. The Doge had just learnt (October 21, 1457) the decision of the Ten with regard to his abdication, and noticed that Memmo watched him attentively. "Foscari called to him, and, touching his hand, asked him whose son he was. He answered, 'I am the son of Messer Marin Memmo.'--' He is my dear friend,' said the Doge; 'tell him from me that it would be pleasing to me if he would come and see me, so that we might go at our leisure in our boats to visit the monasteries'" (_The Two Doges_, by A. Weil, 1891, p. 124; see, too, Romanin, _Storia, etc._, 1855, iv. 291).] [71] {171}[_Vide ante_, p. 139, note 1.] [br] _Decemvirs, it is surely_----.--[MS. M.] [72] {172}[Romanin (_Storia, etc._, 1855, iv. 285, 286) quotes the following anecdote from the _Cronaca Dolfin_:--