"I should rejoice at your success, but I do not believe in it. The plant takes the nature of the soil and climate upon and under which it lives. And, for my part, I should not at all like it, even if I and mine could succeed. Our faults are dearer to me than the virtues of the Italians--if they have any."
Totila remembered the words with which he himself had answered Julius.
"From the north comes all strength--the world belongs to the Northmen," concluded Harald.
"Tell it to them in the words of thy favourite song," said his sister.
And she handed him her harp; and Harald played and sang an alliterative measure, or stabreim, which Adalgoth, translating it into rhymed verse, thus repeated to Valeria:
"Thor stood at the midnight end of the world,
And the battle-axe flew from his hand.
'As far as the battle-axe flies when hurled,
Is mine the sea and the land!'
And the hammer flew from his powerful hand