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"Touch me not, sir!" said Nina, waving her arm with angry majesty, while her eyes sparkled as a lioness, whom the huntsmen would sever from her young. "I am the wife of Cola di Rienzi, the Great Senator of Rome, and by his side will I live and die!" "Take her hence: quick! quick! I hear the crowd advancing." Irene tore herself from Adrian, and fell at the feet of Rienzi she clasped his knees.
As soon as Rienzi had ascended the platform, and was thus made visible to the whole concourse, no words can suffice to paint the enthusiasm of the scene the shouts, the gestures, the tears, the sobs, the wild laughter, in which the sympathy of those lively and susceptible children of the South broke forth.
During the last wretched days I had spent with Minna at Blasewitz, I had read Bulwer Lytton's novel, Rienzi; during my convalescence in the bosom of my sympathetic family, I now worked out the scheme for a grand opera under the inspiration of this book.
The spectacle of Rienzi was on far too large a scale for the work to be possible at the Renaissance, so, much against the grain, he offered Anténor Joly Das Liebesverbot. He waited two months for a decided refusal or a qualified acceptance, but heard nothing. At last a word from Meyerbeer seemed to have settled the matter.
In vain he appealed to adventurers, to enthusiasts, and to fanatics to help in regaining what he had lost. None would listen to him, no man would draw the sword. He came to Prague at last, obtained an audience of the Emperor Charles the Fourth, appealed to the whole court, with impassioned eloquence, and declared himself to be Rienzi.
Besides, the erection of an operatic theatre in Paris is imminent where only foreign works are to be produced; that would be the place for Rienzi, especially if some one else would occupy himself with it. I want you to decide about this as soon as you have heard our reasons. I have settled everything with Gustave Vaez as regards the external part of our common enterprise.
As Rienzi rose to depart, which he did early, for the banquet took place while yet morning, Raimond, eager to escape and confer with some of his spiritual friends, as to the report he should make to the Pontiff, was beginning his expressions of farewell, when the merciless Tribune said to him gravely "My Lord, we want you on urgent business at the Capitol. Come."
"Take my new page with you," said she; "he is yet, perhaps, too fresh from home to enjoy the company of his giddy brethren." When they were alone, Nina proceeded to narrate to Rienzi the adventure of the morning; but though he seemed outwardly to listen, his gaze was on vacancy, and he was evidently abstracted and self-absorbed.
As I did not hear from M. Pillet for quite a long time, I now began to work diligently at my composition of Rienzi, though, to my great distress, I had often to interrupt this task in order to undertake certain pot-boiling hack-work for Schlesinger. As my contributions to the Gazette Musicale proved so unremunerative, Schlesinger one day ordered me to work out a method for the Cornet a pistons.
The first act offered the audience nothing but a dull conversation between Herr Wachter and that Herr Risse who had invited me to an excellent glass of wine on the first night of Rienzi, and in the third the loudest raging of the orchestra did not rouse the sea from its dead calm nor the phantom ship in its cautious rocking.
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