Alas for the beautiful city! Alas for the wit and the learning, the genius and the love!
[Footnote 2: "Enjoying the utmost peace and tranquillity, cultivated as well in the most mountainous and barren places as in the plains and most fertile regions, and not subject to any other dominion than that of its own people, it not only overflowed with inhabitants and with riches, but was highly adorned by the magnificence of many princes, by the splendor of many renowned and beautiful cities, by the abode and majesty of religion, and abounded in men who excelled in the administration of public affairs and in minds most eminent in all the sciences and in every noble and useful art." - Guicciardini, "History of Italy," Book I., trans. Montague.]
"Le donne, e i cavalieri, gli affanni e gli agi, Che ne'nvogliava amore e cortesia La dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi."3
[Footnote 3: "The ladies and the knights, the toils and sports to which love and courtesy stirred our desire there where all hearts have grown so evil." Dante, "Purgatorio,"
Canto 14, ll. 109-111.]
A time was at hand when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to be poured forth and shaken out over those pleasant countries - a time of slaughter, famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, despair.