He implores Arnaldo to accompany the
embassy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with
a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who
accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss
captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to
return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo
to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him
under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with
much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist,
who has hitherto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been
converted.
As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their
leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the
Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them.
Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it,
drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there.
"What have you known here!" he asks, and his soldiers reply in chorus:
The pride of old names, the caprices of fate,
In vast desert spaces the silence of death,
Or in mist-hidden lowlands, his wandering fires;
No sweet song of birds, no heart-cheering sound,
But eternal memorials of ancient despair,
And ruins and tombs that waken dismay
At the moan of the pines that are stirred by the wind.
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