The roving tendencies of Adrian were at once fixed and centered; the dreams of his tender mistress had awakened to a life dreaming still, but rounded with a truth. All that earnestness, and energy, and fervour of emotion, which, in her brother, broke forth in the schemes of patriotism and the aspirations of power, were, in Irene, softened down into one object of existence, one concentration of soul,and that was love. Yet, in this range of thought and action, so apparently limited, there was, in reality, no less boundless a sphere than in the wide space of her brothers many-pathed ambition. Not the less had she the power and scope for all the loftiest capacities granted to our clay. Equal was her enthusiasm for her idol; equal, had she been equally tried, would have been her generosity, her devotion:greater, be sure, her courage; more inalienable her worship; more unsullied by selfish purposes and sordid views. Time, change, misfortune, ingratitude, would have left her the same! What state could fall, what liberty decay, if the zeal of mans noisy patriotism were as pure as the silent loyalty of a womans love?
In them everything was young!the heart unchilled, unblighted,that fulness and luxuriance of lifes life which has in it something of divine. At that age, when it seems as if we could never die, how deathless, how flushed and mighty as with the youngness of a god, is all that our hearts create! Our own youth is like that of the earth itself, when it peopled the woods and waters with divinities; when life ran riot, and yet only gave birth to beauty;all its shapes, of poetry,all its airs, the melodies of Arcady and Olympus! The Golden Age never leaves the world: it exists still, and shall exist, till love, health, poetry, are no more; but only for the young!
If I now dwell, though but for a moment, on this interlude in a drama calling forth more masculine passions than that of love, it is because I foresee that the occasion will but rarely recur. If I linger on the description of Irene and her hidden affection, rather than wait for circumstances to portray them better than the authors words can, it is because I foresee that that loving and lovely image must continue to the last rather a shadow than a portrait,thrown in the background, as is the real destiny of such natures, by bolder figures and more gorgeous colours; a something whose presence is rather felt than seen, and whose very harmony with the whole consists in its retiring and subdued repose.
Chapter 1.VIII. The Enthusiastic Man Judged by the Discreet Man
Thou wrongest me, said Rienzi, warmly, to Adrian, as they sat alone, towards the close of a long conference; I do not play the part of a mere demagogue; I wish not to stir the great deeps in order that my lees of fortune may rise to the surface. So long have I brooded over the past, that it seems to me as if I had become a part of itas if I had no separate existence. I have coined my whole soul into one master passion,and its end is the restoration of Rome.
But by what means?
My Lord! my Lord! there is but one way to restore the greatness of a peopleit is an appeal to the people themselves. It is not in the power of princes and barons to make a state permanently glorious; they raise themselves, but they raise not the people with them. All great regenerations are the universal movement of the mass.
Nay, answered Adrian, then have we read history differently. To me, all great regenerations seem to have been the work of the few, and tacitly accepted by the multitude. But let us not dispute after the manner of the schools. Thou sayest loudly that a vast crisis is at hand; that the Good Estate (buono stato) shall be established. How? where are your arms?your soldiers? Are the nobles less strong than heretofore? Is the mob more bold, more constant? Heaven knows that I speak not with the prejudices of my orderI weep for the debasement of my country! I am a Roman, and in that name I forget that I am a noble. But I tremble at the storm you would raise so hazardously. If your insurrection succeed, it will be violent: it will be purchased by bloodby the blood of all the loftiest names of Rome. You will aim at a second expulsion of the Tarquins; but it will be more like a second proscription of Sylla. Massacres and disorders never pave the way to peace. If, on the other hand, you fail, the chains of Rome are riveted for ever: an ineffectual struggle to escape is but an excuse for additional tortures to the slave.
And what, then, would the Lord Adrian have us do? said Rienzi, with that peculiar and sarcastic smile which has before been noted. Shall we wait till the Colonna and Orsini quarrel no more? shall we ask the Colonna for liberty, and the Orsini for justice? My Lord, we cannot appeal to the nobles against the nobles. We must not ask them to moderate their power; we must restore to ourselves that power. There may be danger in the attemptbut we attempt it amongst the monuments of the Forum: and if we fallwe shall perish worthy of our sires! Ye have high descent, and sounding titles, and wide lands, and you talk of your ancestral honours! We, too,we plebeians of Rome,we have ours! Our fathers were freemen! where is our heritage? not soldnot given away: but stolen from us, now by fraud, now by forcefilched from us in our sleep; or wrung from us with fierce hands, amidst our cries and struggles. My Lord, we but ask that lawful heritage to be restored to us: to usnay, to you it is the same; your liberty, alike, is gone. Can you dwell in your fathers house, without towers, and fortresses, and the bought swords of bravos? can you walk in the streets at dark without arms and followers? True, you, a noble, may retaliate; though we dare not. You, in your turn, may terrify and outrage others; but does licence compensate for liberty? They have given you pomp and powerbut the safety of equal laws were a better gift. Oh, were I youwere I Stephen Colonna himself, I should pant, ay, thirstily as I do now, for that free air which comes not through bars and bulwarks against my fellow-citizens, but in the open space of Heavensafe, because protected by the silent Providence of Law, and not by the lean fears and hollow-eyed suspicions which are the comrades of a hated power. The tyrant thinks he is free, because he commands slaves: the meanest peasant in a free state is more free than he is. Oh, my Lord, that youthe brave, the generous, the enlightenedyou, almost alone amidst your order, in the knowledge that we had a countryoh, would that you who can sympathise with our sufferings, would strike with us for their redress!
Thou wilt war against Stephen Colonna, my kinsman; and though I have seen him but little, nor, truth to say, esteem him much, yet he is the boast of our house,how can I join thee?
His life will be safe, his possessions safe, his rank safe. What do we war against? His power to do wrong to others.
Should he discover that thou hast force beyond words, he would be less merciful to thee.
And has he not discovered that? Do not the shouts of the people tell him that I am a man whom he should fear? Does hethe cautious, the wily, the profounddoes he build fortresses, and erect towers, and not see from his battlements the mighty fabric that I, too, have erected?
You! where, Rienzi?
In the hearts of Rome! Does he not see? continued Rienzi. No, no; heall, all his tribe, are blind. Is it not so?
Of a certainty, my kinsman has no belief in your power, else he would have crushed you long ere this. Nay, it was but three days ago that he said, gravely, he would rather you addressed the populace than the best priest in Christendom; for that other orators inflamed the crowd, and no man so stilled and dispersed them as you did.
And I called him profound! Does not Heaven hush the air most when most it prepares the storm? Ay, my Lord, I understand. Stephen Colonna despises me. I have been(here, as he continued, a deep blush mantled over his cheek)you remember itat his palace in my younger days, and pleased him with witty tales and light apophthegms. Nayha! ha!he would call me, I think, sometimes, in gay compliment, his jesterhis buffoon! I have brooked his insult; I have even bowed to his applause. I would undergo the same penance, stoop to the same shame, for the same motive, and in the same cause. What did I desire to effect? Can you tell me? No! I will whisper it, then, to you: it wasthe contempt of Stephen Colonna. Under that contempt I was protected, till protection became no longer necessary. I desired not to be thought formidable by the patricians, in order that, quietly and unsuspected, I might make my way amongst the people. I have done so; I now throw aside the mask. Face to face with Stephen Colonna, I could tell him, this very hour, that I brave his anger; that I laugh at his dungeons and armed men. But if he think me the same Rienzi as of old, let him; I can wait my hour.
Yet, said Adrian, waiving an answer to the haughty language of his companion, tell me, what dost thou ask for the people, in order to avoid an appeal to their passions?ignorant and capricious as they are, thou canst not appeal to their reason.
I ask full justice and safety for all men. I will be contented with no less a compromise. I ask the nobles to dismantle their fortresses; to disband their armed retainers; to acknowledge no impunity for crime in high lineage; to claim no protection save in the courts of the common law.
Vain desire! said Adrian. Ask what may yet be granted.
Haha! replied Rienzi, laughing bitterly, did I not tell you it was a vain dream to ask for law and justice at the hands of the great? Can you blame me, then, that I ask it elsewhere? Then, suddenly changing his tone and manner, he added with great solemnityWaking life hath false and vain dreams; but sleep is sometimes a mighty prophet. By sleep it is that Heaven mysteriously communes with its creatures, and guides and sustains its earthly agents in the path to which its providence leads them on.
Adrian made no reply. This was not the first time he had noted that Rienzis strong intellect was strangely conjoined with a deep and mystical superstition. And this yet more inclined the young noble, who, though sufficiently devout, yielded but little to the wilder credulities of the time, to doubt the success of the schemers projects. In this he erred greatly, though his error was that of the worldly wise. For nothing ever so inspires human daring, as the fond belief that it is the agent of a Diviner Wisdom. Revenge and patriotism, united in one man of genius and ambitionsuch are the Archimedian levers that find, in FANATICISM, the spot out of the world by which to move the world. The prudent man may direct a state; but it is the enthusiast who regenerates it,or ruins.
Chapter 1.IX. When the People Saw this Picture, Every One Marvelled.
Before the market-place, and at the foot of the Capitol, an immense crowd was assembled. Each man sought to push before his neighbour; each struggled to gain access to one particular spot, round which the crowd was wedged think and dense.
Corpo di Dio! said a man of huge stature, pressing onward, like some bulky ship, casting the noisy waves right and left from its prow, this is hot work; but for what, in the holy Mothers name, do ye crowd so? See you not, Sir Ribald, that my right arm is disabled, swathed, and bandaged, so that I cannot help myself better than a baby? And yet you push against me as if I were an old wall!
Ah, Cecco del Vecchio!what, man! we must make way for youyou are too small and tender to bustle through a crowd! Come, I will protect you! said a dwarf of some four feet high, glancing up at the giant.
Faith, said the grim smith, looking round on the mob, who laughed loud at the dwarfs proffer, we all do want protection, big and small. What do you laugh for, ye apes?ay, you dont understand parables.
And yet it is a parable we are come to gaze upon, said one of the mob, with a slight sneer.
Pleasant day to you, Signor Baroncelli, answered Cecco del Vecchio; you are a good man, and love the people; it makes ones heart smile to see you. Whats all this pother for?
Why the Popes Notary hath set up a great picture in the marketplace, and the gapers say it relates to Rome; so they are melting their brains out, this hot day, to guess at the riddle.
Ho! ho! said the smith, pushing on so vigorously that he left the speaker suddenly in the rear; if Cola di Rienzi hath aught in the matter, I would break through stone rocks to get to it.
Much good will a dead daub do us, said Baroncelli, sourly, and turning to his neighbours; but no man listened to him, and he, a would-be demagogue, gnawed his lip in envy.
Amidst half-awed groans and curses from the men whom he jostled aside, and open objurgations and shrill cries from the women, to whose robes and headgear he showed as little respect, the sturdy smith won his way to a space fenced round by chains, in the centre of which was placed a huge picture.
How came it hither? cried one; I was first at the market.
We found it here at daybreak, said a vender of fruit: no one was by.
But why do you fancy Rienzi had a hand in it?
Why, who else could? answered twenty voices.
True! Who else? echoed the gaunt smith. I dare be sworn the good man spent the whole night in painting it himself. Blood of St. Peter! but it is mighty fine! What is it about?
Thats the riddle, said a meditative fish-woman; if I could make it out, I should die happy.
It is something about liberty and taxes, no doubt, said Luigi, the butcher, leaning over the chains. Ah, if Rienzi were minded, every poor man would have his bit of meat in his pot.
And as much bread as he could eat, added a pale baker.
Chut! bread and meateverybody has that now!but what wine the poor folks drink! One has no encouragement to take pains with ones vineyard, said a vine-dresser.
Ho, hollo!long life to Pandulfo di Guido! Make way for master Pandulfo; he is a learned man; he is a friend of the great Notarys; he will tell us all about the picture; make way, theremake way!
Slowly and modestly, Pandulfo di Guido, a quiet, wealthy, and honest man of letters, whom nought save the violence of the times could have roused from his tranquil home, or his studious closet, passed to the chains. He looked long and hard at the picture, which was bright with new, and yet moist colours, and exhibited somewhat of the reviving art, which, though hard and harsh in its features, was about that time visible, and, carried to a far higher degree, we yet gaze upon in the paintings of Perugino, who flourished during the succeeding generation. The people pressed round the learned man, with open mouths; now turning their eyes to the picture, now to Pandulfo.
Know you not, at length said Pandulfo, the easy and palpable meaning of this design? Behold how the painter has presented to you a vast and stormy seamark how its waves
Speak louderlouder! shouted the impatient crowd.
Hush! cried those in the immediate vicinity of Pandulfo, the worthy Signor is perfectly audible!
Meanwhile, some of the more witty, pushing towards a stall in the marketplace, bore from it a rough table, from which they besought Pandulfo to address the people. The pale citizen, with some pain and shame, for he was no practised spokesman, was obliged to assent; but when he cast his eyes over the vast and breathless crowd, his own deep sympathy with their cause inspired and emboldened him. A light broke from his eyes; his voice swelled into power; and his head, usually buried in his breast, became erect and commanding in its air.