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It was while the feast was loudest that Rienzi's page was seen gliding through the banquet, and whispering several of the nobles; each bowed low, but changed colour as he received the message. "My Lord Savelli," said Orsini, himself trembling, "bear yourself more bravely. This must be meant in honour, not revenge. I suppose your summons corresponds with mine."
Rienzi's original nature its enthusiasm its veneration for the past its love of the beautiful and the great that very attachment to the graces and pomp which give so florid a character to the harsh realities of life, and which power afterwards too luxuriantly developed; the exuberance of thoughts and fancies, which poured itself from his lips in so brilliant and inexhaustible a flood all bespoke those intellectual and imaginative biasses, which, in calmer times, might have raised him in literature to a more indisputable eminence than that to which action can ever lead; and something of such consciousness crossed his spirit at that moment.
But not a word is said about Rienzi's cowardice in the action itself; it is not stated when the accident happened nothing bears out the implication that the Tribune was remote from the contest, and knew little of what passed.
Irene was then in the condition his letter dared to picture severed from her brother, fallen from her rank, desolate and friendless. "Now," said the generous and high-hearted lover, "she may be mine without a disgrace to my name. Whatever Rienzi's faults, she is not implicated in them.
On the other hand, the Cardinal was shrewd enough to perceive that no possible good could arise from Rienzi's present confinement. With every month it excited deeper and more universal sympathy. To his lonely dungeon turned half the hearts of republican Italy.
The ruffian nodded; with his left hand took up the lamp as he was ordered; and with Rienzi's grasp on his shoulder, while the wound from his right arm dropped gore as he passed, he moved noiselessly along the church gained the altar to the left of which was a small room for the use or retirement of the priest. To this he made his way. Rienzi's heart misgave him a moment.
"Make way! make way! knaves!" cried the guards, trampling on either side the crowd, who, accustomed to the sedate and courteous order of Rienzi's guard, fell back too slowly for many of them to escape severe injury from the pikes of the soldiers and the hoofs of the horses.
The people cared nothing for Petrarch's verses nor Rienzi's memory, and Nicholas was kind to them, so that Stephen Porcari failed again, and his failure was high treason, for which he would have lost his head in any other state of Europe.
Virgins violated and matrons dishonoured, somewhat contrasted the solemn and majestic decorum of Rienzi's rule; in fine, Baroncelli fell massacred by the people. And now, if you ask what rules Rome, I answer, 'It is the hope of Rienzi." "A strange man, and various fortunes. What will be the end of both!" "Swift murder to the first, and eternal fame to the last," answered Montreal, calmly.
Come, I, the cruel and the harsh Tribune, I will be thy nurse: he who might have been my brother, shall yet claim from me a brother's care." With these words he wound his arm tenderly round Adrian; and the young noble, touched by his compassion, and agitated by the surprise, leaned upon Rienzi's breast in silence. What fatality brought thee hither?" "Irene!" replied Adrian, falteringly.
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