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Updated: May 15, 2025
"Arimbaldo," replied Rienzi, in a voice of deep, but half-suppressed emotion; "you are a lettered man, and you have seemed to share my projects for the regeneration of our common kind. You ought not to betray me. There is something in unison between us. But, chide me not, I am surrounded by treason, and the very air I breathe seems poison to my lips."
Meanwhile, uniting to all his rasher and all his nobler qualities, a profound dissimulation, he appeared to trust implicitly to his Provencal companions; and his first act on entering the Capitol, after the triumphal procession, was to reward with the highest dignities in his gift, Messere Arimbaldo and Messere Brettone de Montreal!
"Brettone," said Arimbaldo at length, in a whispered voice, "my heart misgives me. I like not Walter's ambitious schemes. With our own countrymen we are frank and loyal, why play the traitor with this high-souled Roman?" "Tush!" said Brettone. "Our brother's hand of iron alone can sway this turbulent people; and if Rienzi be betrayed, so also are his enemies, the Barons. No more of this!
"My friends," said Rienzi, "Messere Brettone and Messere Arimbaldo have my directions to divide amongst your force a thousand florins. This evening we encamp beneath Palestrina." The constables withdrew in visible surprise. Rienzi gazed a moment on the brothers, chuckling within himself for his sarcastic humour enjoyed his triumph. "You lament not your devotion, my friends!"
Palestrina will yield now eh! ha, ha, ha! Palestrina will yield now!" "By my right hand, I think so, Senator," replied Annibaldi. "These foreigners have hitherto only stirred up quarrels amongst ourselves, and if not cowards are certainly traitors!" "Hush, hush, hush! Traitors! The learned Arimbaldo, the brave Brettone, traitors! Fie on it!
So writes my good brother Arimbaldo, a man of letters, whom the Tribune thinks rightly he has decoyed with old tales of Roman greatness, and mighty promises of grateful advancement. You find me hastily expressing my content at the arrangement. My brothers themselves will accompany the Senator-Tribune to the walls of the Capitol." "Still, I see not how this places Rienzi in your power." "No!
"But let Walter de Montreal once appear in Rome, and the proud jester shall pay us dearly for this." "Hush!" said Arimbaldo, "walls have ears, and that imp of Satan, young Villani, seems to me ever at our heels!" "A thousand florins! I trust his heart hath as many drops," growled the chafed Brettone, unheeding his brother.
The troopers of the Barons had, however, made incursions as far as Tivoli with the supposed connivance of the inhabitants, and Rienzi halted at that beautiful spot to raise recruits, and receive the allegiance of the suspected, while his soldiers, with Arimbaldo and Brettone at their head, went in search of the marauders.
"For an open foe, I have my sword for a traitor, mark me, Rome has the axe; of the first I have no fear; for the last, no mercy." "These are not words that should pass between friends," said Brettone, turning pale with suppressed emotion. "Friends! ye are my friends, then! your hands! Friends, so ye are! and shall prove it! Dear Arimbaldo, thou, like myself, art book-learned, a clerkly soldier.
I have tidings from Montreal; he will be in Rome in a few days." "And then?" Montreal must be first Podesta, then King, of Rome." Arimbaldo moved restlessly in his seat, and the brethren conferred no more on their projects. The situation of Rienzi was precisely that which tends the most to sour and to harden the fairest nature.
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