While Rienzi was preparing, in concert, perhaps, with the ambassadors of
the brave Tuscan States, whose pride of country and love of liberty
were well fitted to comprehend, and even share them, his schemes for
the emancipation from all foreign yoke of the Ancient Queen, and the
Everlasting Garden, of the World; the Barons, in restless secrecy, were
revolving projects for the restoration of their own power.
One morning, the heads of the Savelli, the Orsini, and the Frangipani,
met at the disfortified palace of Stephen Colonna. Their conference
was warm and earnest--now resolute, now wavering, in its object--as
indignation or fear prevailed.
“You have heard,” said Luca di Savelli, in his usual soft and womanly
voice, “that the Tribune has proclaimed, that, the day after tomorrow,
he will take the order of knighthood, and watch the night before in the
church of the Lateran: He has honoured me with a request to attend his
vigil.”
“Yes, yes, the knave. What means this new fantasy?” said the brutal
Prince of the Orsini.
“Unless it be to have the cavalier’s right to challenge a noble,” said
old Colonna, “I cannot conjecture. Will Rome never grow weary of this
madman?”
“Rome is the more mad of the two,” said Luca di Savelli; “but methinks,
in his wildness, the Tribune hath committed one error of which we may
well avail ourselves at Avignon.”
“Ah,” cried the old Colonna, “that must be our game; passive here, let
us fight at Avignon.”
“In a word then, he hath ordered that his bath shall be prepared in the
holy porphyry vase in which once bathed the Emperor Constantine.”
“Profanation! profanation!” cried Stephen. “This is enough to excuse a
bull of excommunication. The Pope shall hear of it. I will despatch a
courier forthwith.”
“Better wait and see the ceremony,” said the Savelli; “some greater
folly will close the pomp, be assured.”
“Hark ye, my masters,” said the grim Lord of the Orsini; “ye are for
delay and caution; I for promptness and daring; my kinsman’s blood calls
aloud, and brooks no parley.”
“And what do?” said the soft-voiced Savelli; “fight without soldiers,
against twenty thousand infuriated Romans? not I.”
Orsini sunk his voice into a meaning whisper. “In Venice,” said he,
“this upstart might be mastered without an army. Think you in Rome no
man wears a stiletto?”
“Hush,” said Stephen, who was of far nobler and better nature than his
compeers, and who, justifying to himself all other resistance to the
Tribune, felt his conscience rise against assassination; “this must not
be--your zeal transports you.”
“Besides, whom can we employ? scarce a German left in the city; and
to whisper this to a Roman were to exchange places with poor
Martino--Heaven take him, for he’s nearer heaven than ever he was
before,” said the Savelli.
“Jest me no jests,” cried the Orsini, fiercely. “Jests on such a
subject! By St. Francis I would, since thou lovest such wit, thou hadst
it all to thyself; and, methinks, at the Tribune’s board I have seen
thee laugh at his rude humour, as if thou didst not require a cord to
choke thee.”
“Better to laugh than to tremble,” returned the Savelli.
“How! darest thou say I tremble?” cried the Baron.
“Hush, hush,” said the veteran Colonna, with impatient dignity. “We are
not now in such holiday times as to quarrel amongst ourselves. Forbear,
my lords.”
“Your greater prudence, Signor,” said the sarcastic Savelli, “arises
from your greater safety. Your house is about to shelter itself under
the Tribune’s; and when the Lord Adrian returns from Naples, the
innkeeper’s son will be brother to your kinsman.”
“You might spare me that taunt,” said the old noble, with some emotion.
“Heaven knows how bitterly I have chafed at the thought; yet I would
Adrian were with us. His word goes far to moderate the Tribune, and to
guide my own course, for my passion beguiles my reason; and since his
departure methinks we have been the more sullen without being the more
strong. Let this pass. If my own son had wed the Tribune’s sister, I
would yet strike a blow for the old constitution as becomes a noble, if
I but saw that the blow would not cut off my own head.”
Savelli, who had been whispering apart with Rinaldo Frangipani, now
said--
“Noble Prince, listen to me. You are bound by your kinsman’s approaching
connection, your venerable age, and your intimacy with the Pontiff, to
a greater caution than we are. Leave to us the management of the
enterprise, and be assured of our discretion.”
A young boy, Stefanello, who afterwards succeeded to the representation
of the direct line of the Colonna, and whom the reader will once again
encounter ere our tale be closed, was playing by his grandsire’s knees.
He looked sharply up at Savelli, and said, “My grandfather is too wise,
and you are too timid. Frangipani is too yielding, and Orsini is too
like a vexed bull. I wish I were a year or two older.”
“And what would you do, my pretty censurer?” said the smooth Savelli,
biting his smiling lip.
“Stab the Tribune with my own stiletto, and then hey for Palestrina!”
“The egg will hatch a brave serpent,” quoth the Savelli. “Yet why so
bitter against the Tribune, my cockatrice?”
“Because he allowed an insolent mercer to arrest my uncle Agapet for
debt. The debt had been owed these ten years; and though it is said that
no house in Rome has owed more money than the Colonna, this is the first
time I ever heard of a rascally creditor being allowed to claim his debt
unless with doffed cap and bended knee. And I say that I would not live
to be a Baron, if such upstart insolence is to be put upon me.”
“My child,” said old Stephen, laughing heartily, “I see our noble order
will be safe enough in your hands.”
“And,” continued the child, emboldened by the applause he received, “if
I had time after pricking the Tribune, I would fain have a second stroke
at--”
“Whom?” said the Savelli, observing the boy pause.
“My cousin Adrian. Shame on him, for dreaming to make one a wife whose
birth would scarce fit her for a Colonna’s leman!”
“Go play, my child--go play,” said the old Colonna, as he pushed the boy
from him.
“Enough of this babble,” cried the Orsini, rudely. “Tell me, old lord;
just as I entered, I saw an old friend (one of your former mercenaries)
quit the palace--may I crave his errand?”
“Ah, yes; a messenger from Fra Moreale. I wrote to the Knight, reproving
him for his desertion on our ill-starred return from Corneto, and
intimating that five hundred lances would be highly paid for just now.”
“Ah,” said Savelli; “and what is his answer!”
“Oh, wily and evasive: He is profuse in compliments and good wishes;
but says he is under fealty to the Hungarian king, whose cause is before
Rienzi’s tribunal; that he cannot desert his present standard; that he
fears Rome is so evenly balanced between patricians and the people, that
whatever party would permanently be uppermost must call in a Podesta;
and this character alone the Provencal insinuates would suit him.”
“Montreal our Podesta?” cried the Orsini.
“And why not?” said Savelli; “as good a well-born Podesta as a low-born
Tribune? But I trust we may do without either. Colonna, has this
messenger from Fra Moreale left the city?”
“I suppose so.”
“No,” said Orsini; “I met him at the gate, and knew him of old: it is
Rodolf, the Saxon (once a hireling of the Colonna), who has made some
widows among my clients in the good old day. He is a little disguised
now; however, I recognised and accosted him, for I thought he was one
who might yet become a friend, and I bade him await me at my palace.”
“You did well,” said the Savelli, musing, and his eyes met those of
Orsini. Shortly afterwards a conference, in which much was said and
nothing settled, was broken up; but Luca di Savelli, loitering at the
porch, prayed the Frangipani, and the other Barons, to adjourn to the
Orsini’s palace.
“The old Colonna,” said he, “is well-nigh in his dotage. We shall come
to a quick determination without him, and we can secure his proxy in his
son.”
And this was a true prophecy, for half-an-hour’s consultation with
Rodolf of Saxony sufficed to ripen thought into enterprise.