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But the nobles "adopted" by the city, and now residing within its walls, simply carried on the old war within the very precincts of the city. They disliked to submit to a tribunal of simple artisans and merchants, and fought their old feuds in the streets. Each city had now its Colonnas and Orsinis, its Overstolzes and Wises.
Long live Duke Bartolommeo!" with his dying breath, although it is said that the Duchess had treated him with ignominy. The little Bartolommeo was sent to Rome to the Orsinis; the Duchess, respectfully confined in the left wing of the palace.
The town of Ceres, made famous by Renzo da Ceri, who defended by turns Marseilles against Charles V. and Geneva against the Duke of Savoy, is nothing but a solitude. In all the fiefs of the Orsinis and the Colonnes not a soul.
The daughter of Prince Gustav Adolf of Stolberg and the Countess of Horn, Princess Louise was kin to many of the greatest houses in Europe, from the Colonnas and Orsinis to the Hohenzollerns and Bruces. In blood she was thus at least a match for her Stuart bridegroom.
She saw the grassy slopes, the stone pines, the white walls, the classic stadium of the Villa Borghese, with the hot June sun stabbing the open spaces, and the deep shadows under the ilexes; and in front of the picture, the crowd of jostling horses, with their riders, bearing the historic names of Rome Colonnas, Orsinis, Gaetanis, Odescalchis, and the rest.
They take the oath only to violate it. The people rise and demand their extermination. Rienzi once more draws the sword, and Adriano in vain appeals to him to avert the slaughter. He is again successful, and on his return announces to Adriano that the Colonnas and Orsinis are no more. The latter warns him of coming revenge, and the act closes with the coronation of Rienzi.
In the proud palaces of the Borgias, of the Orsinis, the Scaligers, the Borromeos, the art of poisoning was preserved among the last resorts of Machiavellian statecraft; and not only in palaces, but in streets of Italian cities, in solitary towers and dark recesses of the Apennines, were still to be found the lost children of science, skilful compounders of poisons, at once fatal and subtle in their operation, poisons which left not the least trace of their presence in the bodies of their victims, but put on the appearance of other and more natural causes of death.
Some days later the young countess left her cards and letters of introduction, and as they were from Orsinis, Colonnas, and other grandees of Rome, her hotel was crowded with elegant equipages, and she was admitted into the charmed circles of the first society in Vienna. As for the furniture of her hotel, it surpassed anything in the city. Her orders of every kind had been princely.
Will not all the other Roman princes who have no blots upon their escutcheons, the Orsinis, the Colonnas, the Odeschalchis, the Borgheses, the Rospigliosis, not combine to prevent this monstrosity? Nobility is like love, those who buy those sacred things degrade them in paying for them, and those to whom they are given are no better than mire.... Princess d'Ardea! That creature!
All its houses, which date from the fifteenth century, are ruinous, and are among the worst in Italy; and the baronial castle which crowns the highest point, built nearly a thousand years ago, the scene of many a conflict between the Colonnas and the Orsinis, and captured on one occasion after a twelve days' siege by Cæsar Borgia, has been converted into a barn.
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