Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/235

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IX.—THE TYRRHENE SEA.
203

—traitor to his creed, usurper among his race,—dares it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or he puts me in paradise."

They are not passionate words neither; any more than hypocritical ones. They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant it should be known.

243. The messenger returned, thus answered; and the French king rode on with his host. Manfred met him in the plain of Grandella, before Benevento. I have translated the name of the fortress 'Welcome.' It was altered, as you may remember, from Maleventum, for better omen; perhaps, originally, only μαλοεις;—a rock full of wild goats?—associating it thus with the meaning of Tagliacozzo.

244. Charles divided his army into four companies. The captain of his own was our English Guy de Montfort, on whom rested the power and the fate of his grandfather, the pursuer of the Waldensian shepherds among the rocks of the wild goats. The last, and it is said the goodliest, troop was of the exiled Guelphs of Florence,