“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 it--as 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
people--it 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 order--I 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 blood--by 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 attempt--but we attempt it amongst the monuments of the
Forum: and if we fall--we 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 sold--not given away:
but stolen from us, now by fraud, now by force--filched 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 us--nay, to you it is the same; your liberty, alike, is gone. Can
you dwell in your father’s 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 power--but the
safety of equal laws were a better gift. Oh, were I you--were 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 Heaven--safe, 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
you--the brave, the generous, the enlightened--you, almost alone amidst
your order, in the knowledge that we had a country--oh, 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 he--the cautious, the
wily, the profound--does 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;
he--all, 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 it--at his palace in my younger days,
and pleased him with witty tales and light apophthegms. Nay--ha! ha!--he
would call me, I think, sometimes, in gay compliment, his jester--his
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 was--the 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.”
“Ha--ha!” 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 solemnity--“Waking 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
Rienzi’s 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 schemer’s 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 ambition--such 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.