By the borders of one of the fairest lakes of Northern Italy stood the
favourite mansion of Adrian di Castello, to which in his softer and
less patriotic moments his imagination had often and fondly turned;
and thither the young nobleman, dismissing his more courtly and
distinguished companions in the Neapolitan embassy, retired after his
ill-starred return to Rome. Most of those thus dismissed joined the
Barons; the young Annibaldi, whose daring and ambitious nature had
attached him strongly to the Tribune, maintained a neutral ground; he
betook himself to his castle in the Campagna, and did not return to Rome
till the expulsion of Rienzi.
The retreat of Irene’s lover was one well fitted to feed his melancholy
reveries. Without being absolutely a fortress, it was sufficiently
strong to resist any assault of the mountain robbers or petty tyrants in
the vicinity; while, built by some former lord from the materials of
the half-ruined villas of the ancient Romans, its marbled columns and
tesselated pavements relieved with a wild grace the grey stone walls and
massive towers of feudal masonry. Rising from a green eminence gently
sloping to the lake, the stately pile cast its shadow far and dark over
the beautiful waters; by its side, from the high and wooded mountains on
the background, broke a waterfall, in irregular and sinuous course--now
hid by the foliage, now gleaming in the light, and collecting itself at
last in a broad basin--beside which a little fountain, inscribed with
half-obliterated letters, attested the departed elegance of the classic
age--some memento of lord and poet whose very names were lost; thence
descending through mosses and lichen, and odorous herbs, a brief,
sheeted stream bore its surplus into the lake. And there, amidst the
sturdier and bolder foliage of the North, grew, wild and picturesque,
many a tree transplanted, in ages back, from the sunnier East; not
blighted nor stunted in that golden clime, which fosters almost every
produce of nature as with a mother’s care. The place was remote and
solitary. The roads that conducted to it from the distant towns were
tangled, intricate, mountainous, and beset by robbers. A few cottages,
and a small convent, a quarter of a league up the verdant margin, were
the nearest habitations; and, save by some occasional pilgrim or some
bewildered traveller, the loneliness of the mansion was rarely invaded.
It was precisely the spot which proffered rest to a man weary of the
world, and indulged the memories which grow in rank luxuriance over the
wrecks of passion. And he whose mind, at once gentle and self-dependent,
can endure solitude, might have ransacked all earth for a more fair and
undisturbed retreat.
But not to such a solitude had the earlier dreams of Adrian dedicated
the place. Here had he thought--should one bright being have
presided--here should love have found its haven: and hither, when love
at length admitted of intrusion, hither might wealth and congenial
culture have invited all the gentler and better spirits which had begun
to move over the troubled face of Italy, promising a second and younger
empire of poesy, and lore, and art. To the graceful and romantic but
somewhat pensive and inert, temperament of the young noble, more
adapted to calm and civilized than stormy and barbarous times, ambition
proffered no reward so grateful as lettered leisure and intellectual
repose. His youth coloured by the influence of Petrarch, his manhood
had dreamed of a happier Vaucluse not untenanted by a Laura. The visions
which had connected the scene with the image of Irene made the place
still haunted by her shade; and time and absence only ministering to his
impassioned meditations, deepened his melancholy and increased his love.
In this lone retreat--which even in describing from memory, for these
eyes have seen, these feet have trodden, this heart yet yearneth for,
the spot--which even, I say, in thus describing, seems to me (and haply
also to the gentle reader) a grateful and welcome transit from the
storms of action and the vicissitudes of ambition, so long engrossing
the narrative;--in this lone retreat Adrian passed the winter, which
visits with so mild a change that intoxicating clime. The roar of the
world without was borne but in faint and indistinct murmurings to his
ear. He learned only imperfectly, and with many contradictions, the
news which broke like a thunderbolt over Italy, that the singular and
aspiring man--himself a revolution--who had excited the interest of all
Europe, the brightest hopes of the enthusiastic, the profusest adulation
of the great, the deepest terror of the despot, the wildest aspirations
of all free spirits, had been suddenly stricken from his state, his name
branded and his head proscribed. This event, which happened at the
end of December, reached Adrian, through a wandering pilgrim, at the
commencement of March, somewhat more than two months after the date; the
March of that awful year 1348, which saw Europe, and Italy especially,
desolated by the direst pestilence which history has recorded, accursed
alike by the numbers and the celebrity of its victims, and yet strangely
connected with some not unpleasing images by the grace of Boccaccio and
the eloquence of Petrarch.
The pilgrim who informed Adrian of the revolution at Rome was unable to
give him any clue to the present fate of Rienzi or his family. It was
only known that the Tribune and his wife had escaped, none knew whither;
many guessed that they were already dead, victims to the numerous
robbers who immediately on the fall of the Tribune settled back to their
former habits, sparing neither age nor sex, wealth nor poverty. As all
relating to the ex-Tribune was matter of eager interest, the pilgrim had
also learned that, previous to the fall of Rienzi, his sister had left
Rome, but it was not known to what place she had been conveyed.
The news utterly roused Adrian from his dreaming life. Irene was then
in the condition his letter dared to picture--severed from her brother,
fallen from her rank, desolate and friendless. “Now,” said the generous
and high-hearted lover, “she may be mine without a disgrace to my name.
Whatever Rienzi’s faults, she is not implicated in them. Her hands are
not red with my kinsman’s blood; nor can men say that Adrian di Castello
allies himself with a House whose power is built upon the ruins of
the Colonnas. The Colonna are restored--again triumphant--Rienzi is
nothing--distress and misfortune unite me at once to her on whom they
fall!”
But how were these romantic resolutions to be executed--Irene’s
dwelling-place unknown? He resolved himself to repair to Rome and make
the necessary inquiries: accordingly he summoned his retainers:--blithe
tidings to them, those of travel! The mail left the armoury--the banner
the hall--and after two days of animated bustle, the fountain by which
Adrian had passed so many hours of revery was haunted only by the
birds of the returning spring; and the nightly lamp no longer cast its
solitary ray from his turret chamber over the bosom of the deserted
lake.