107. "And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves, they ordered, for greater strength of the people, that all the towers of Florence--and there were many 180 feet high [1]--should be cut down to 75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of them they walled the city on the other side Arno." [Footnote: 120 braccia.] 108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,--resolute maintenance of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern republicanism throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins. 109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for full two months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor Frederick II.; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Rinieri of Montemerlo, was killed by a piece of the vaulting [1] of his room falling on him as he slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor's death, "which was most useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune," they took the fall of the roof on his lieutenant as an omen of the extinction of Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic exiles, and that the Ghibellines should be forced to make peace with them. Which was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months; when, a quarrel chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Florentines, under a Milanese podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial battle, with great slaughter of Pistojese. Naturally enough, but very unwisely, the Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this battle; whereupon the people, returning flushed with victory, drove them all out, and established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at the same time the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent, a lily gules; but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted per pale, argent and gules, remained always on their carroccio of battle,--"Non si muto mai." [Footnote 1: "Una volta ch' era sopra la camera."] 110. "Non si muto mai." Villani did not know how true his words were. That old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or our own Saxon Oswald's, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry changeless in sign; declaring the necessary balance, in ruling men, of the Rational and Imaginative powers; pure Alp, and glowing cloud. Church and State--Pope and Emperor--Clergy and Laity,--all these are partial, accidental--too often, criminal--oppositions; but the bodily and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in everlasting harmony,