He made Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor of Milan, "lie chained under his table, like a dog, for three days." For the man was in earnest, in that earnest time:--and let us say, they are but paltry sham-men who are not so, in any time; paltry, and far worse than paltry, however high their plumes may be.

Of whom the sick world (Anarchy, both vocal and silent, having now swoln rather high) is everywhere getting weary .-- Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor, lay three days under the Kaiser's table; as it would be well if every anarchic Governor, of the soft type and of the hard, were made to do on occasion; asking himself, in terrible earnest, "Am I a dog, then; alas, am not I a dog ?" Those were serious old times.
On the other hand, Kaiser Friedrich had his Tourneys, his gleams of bright joyances now and then; one great gathering of all the chivalries at Mainz, which lasted for three weeks long, the grandest Tourney ever seen in this world.

Gelnhausen, in the Wetterau (ruin still worth seeing, on its Island in the Kinzig river), is understood to have been one of his Houses; Kaiserslautern (Kaiser's LIMPID, from its clear spring-water) in the Pfalz (what we call PALATINATE), another.

He went on the Crusade in his seventieth year; [1189, A.D.; Saladin having, to the universal sorrow, taken Jerusalem.] thinking to himself, "Let us end with one clear act of piety:"-- he cut his way through the dangerous Greek attorneyisms, through the hungry mountain passes, furious Turk fanaticisms, like a gray old hero: "Woe is me, my son has perished, then ?" said he once, tears wetting the beard now white enough; "My son is slain!--But Christ still lives; let us on, my men!" And gained great victories, and even found his son; but never returned home;--died, some unknown sudden death, "in the river Cydnus," say the most.

[Kohler (p.
188), and the Authorities cited by him.