Adrian has little trouble to draw from the distracted woman the fact that her husband is a heretic—that heretic, indeed, in whose castle Arnaldo is concealed. On his promise that he will save her husband, she tells him the name of the castle. He summons Frederick, who claims Ostasio as his vassal, and declares that he shall die, and his children shall be carried to Germany. Adrian, after coldly asking the Emperor to spare him, feigns himself helpless, and Adelasia too late awakens to a knowledge of his perfidy. She falls at his feet:
I clasp thy knees once more, and I do hope
Thou hast not cheated me!... Ah, now I see
Thy wicked arts! Because thou knewest well
My husband was a vassal of the empire,
That pardon which it was not thine to give
Thou didst pretend to promise me. O priest,
Is this thy pity? Sorrow gives me back
My wandering reason, and I waken on
The brink of an abyss; and from this wretch
The mask that did so hide his face drops down
And shows it in its naked hideousness
Unto the light of truth.
Frederick sends his soldiers to secure Arnaldo, but as to Ostasio and his children he relents somewhat, being touched by the anguish of Adelasia. Adrian rebukes his weakness, saying that he learned in the cloister to subdue these compassionate impulses. In the next scene, which is on the Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate resolves to defend the city against the Germans to the last, and then we have Arnaldo a prisoner in a cell of the Castle of St. Angelo. The Prefect of Rome vainly entreats him to recant his heresy, and then leaves him with the announcement that he is to die before the following day. As to the soliloquy which follows, Niccolini says: “I have feigned in Arnaldo in the solemn hour of death these doubts, and I believe them exceedingly probable in a disciple of Abelard. This struggle between reason and faith is found more or less in the intellect of every one, and constitutes a sublime torment in the life of those who, like the Brescian monk, have devoted themselves from an early age to the study of philosophy and religion. None of the ideas which I attribute to Arnaldo were unknown to him, and, according to Müller, he believed that God was all, and that the whole creation was but one of his thoughts. His other conceptions in regard to divinity are found in one of his contemporaries.” The soliloquy is as follows:
Aforetime thou hast said, O King of heaven,
That in the world thou wilt not power or riches.
And can he be divided from the Church
Who keeps his faith in thine immortal word,
The light of souls? To remain in the truth
It only needs that I confess to thee
All sins of mine. O thou eternal priest,
Thou read'st my heart, and that which I can scarce
Express thou seest. A great mystery
Is man unto himself, conscience a deep
Which only thou canst sound. What storm is there
Of guilty thoughts! Oh, pardon my rebellion!
Evil springs up within the mind of man,
As in its native soil, since that day Adam
Abused thy great gift, and created guilt.
And if each thought of ours became a deed,
Who would be innocent? I did once defend
The cause of Abelard, and at the decree
Imposing silence on him I, too, ceased.
What fault in me? Bernard in vain inspired
The potentates of Europe to defend
The sepulcher of God. Mankind, his temple,
I sought to liberate, and upon the earth
Desired the triumph of the love divine,
And life, and liberty, and progress. This,
This was my doctrine, and God only knows
How reason struggles with the faith in me
For the supremacy of my spirit. Oh,
Forgive me, Lord. These in their war are like
The rivers twain of heaven, till they return
To their eternal origin, and the truth
Is seen in thee, and God denies not God.
I ought to pray. Thinking on thee, I pray.
Yet how thy substance by three persons shared,
Each equal with the other, one remains,
I cannot comprehend, nor give in thee
Bounds to the infinite and human names.
Father of the world, that which thou here revealest
Perchance is but a thought of thine; or this
Movable veil that covers here below
All thy creation is eternal illusion
That hides God from us. Where to rest itself
The mind hath not. It palpitates uncertain
In infinite darkness, and denies more wisely
Than it affirms. O God omnipotent!
I know not what thou art, or, if I know,
How can I utter thee? The tongue has not
Words for thee, and it falters with my thought
That wrongs thee by its effort. Soon I go
Out of the last doubt unto the first truth.
What did I say? The intellect is soothed
To faith in Christ, and therein it reposes
As in the bosom of a tender mother
Her son. Arnaldo, that which thou art seeking
With sterile torment, thy great teacher sought
Long time in vain, and at the cross's foot
His weary reason cast itself at last.
Follow his great example, and with tears
Wash out thy sins.
We leave Arnaldo in his prison, and it is supposed that he is put to death during the combat that follows between the Germans and Romans immediately after the coronation of Frederick. As the forces stand opposed to each other, two beautiful choruses are introduced—one of Romans and one of Germans. And, just before the onset, Adelasia appears and confesses that she has betrayed Arnaldo, and that he is now in the power of the papacy. At the same time the clergy are heard chanting Frederick's coronation hymn, and then the battle begins. The Romans are beaten by the number and discipline of their enemies, and their leaders are driven out. The Germans appear before Frederic and Adrian with two hundred prisoners, and ask mercy for them. Adrian delivers them to his prefect, and it is implied that they are put to death. Then turning to Frederick, Adrian says:
Art thou content? for I have given to thee
More than the crown. My words have consecrated
Thy power. So let the Church and Empire be
Now at last reconciled. The mystery
That holds three persons in one substance, nor
Confounds them, may it make us here on earth
To reign forever, image of itself,
In unity which is like to that of God.
V
So ends the tragedy, and so was accomplished the union which rested so heavily ever after upon the hearts and hopes, not only of Italians, but of all Christian men. So was confirmed that temporal power of the popes, whose destruction will be known in history as infinitely the greatest event of our greatly eventful time, and will free from the doubt and dread of many one of the most powerful agencies for good in the world; namely, the Catholic Church.
I have tried to give an idea of the magnificence and scope of this mighty tragedy of Niccolini's, and I do not know that I can now add anything which will make this clearer. If we think of the grandeur of its plan, and how it employs for its effect the evil and the perverted good of the time in which the scene was laid, how it accords perfect sincerity to all the great actors,—to the Pope as well as to Arnaldo, to the Emperor as well as to the leaders of the people,—we must perceive that its conception is that of a very great artist. It seems to me that the execution is no less admirable. We cannot judge it by the narrow rule which the tragedies of the stage must obey; we must look at it with the generosity and the liberal imagination with which we can alone enjoy a great fiction. Then the patience, the subtlety, the strength, with which each character, individual and typical, is evolved; the picturesqueness with which every event is presented; the lyrical sweetness and beauty with which so many passages are enriched, will all be apparent to us, and we shall feel the esthetic sublimity of the work as well as its moral force and its political significance.