The night slowly advanced, and in the highest chamber of that dark and
rugged tower which fronted the windows of the Cesarini’s palace sate a
solitary prisoner. A single lamp burned before him on a table of stone,
and threw its rays over an open Bible; and those stern but fantastic
legends of the prowess of ancient Rome, which the genius of Livy has
dignified into history. (“Avea libri assai, suo Tito Livio, sue storie
di Roma, la Bibbia et altri libri assai, non finava di studiare.”--“Vita
di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. cap. 13. See translation to motto to Book
VII. page 202.) A chain hung pendent from the vault of the tower, and
confined the captive; but so as to leave his limbs at sufficient liberty
to measure at will the greater part of the cell. Green and damp were the
mighty stones of the walls, and through a narrow aperture, high out of
reach, came the moonlight, and slept in long shadow over the rude floor.
A bed at one corner completed the furniture of the room. Such for months
had been the abode of the conqueror of the haughtiest Barons, and the
luxurious dictator of the stateliest city of the world!
Care, and travel, and time, and adversity, had wrought their change in
the person of Rienzi. The proportions of his frame had enlarged from the
compact strength of earlier manhood, the clear paleness of his cheek was
bespread with a hectic and deceitful glow. Even in his present
studies, intent as they seemed, and genial though the lecture to a mind
enthusiastic even to fanaticism, his eyes could not rivet themselves as
of yore steadily to the page. The charm was gone from the letters.
Every now and then he moved restlessly, started, re-settled himself, and
muttered broken exclamations like a man in an anxious dream. Anon, his
gaze impatiently turned upward, about, around, and there was a strange
and wandering fire in those large deep eyes, which might have thrilled
the beholder with a vague and unaccountable awe.
Angelo had in the main correctly narrated the more recent adventures of
Rienzi after his fall. He had first with Nina and Angelo betaken himself
to Naples, and found a fallacious and brief favour with Louis, king
of Hungary; that harsh but honourable monarch had refused to yield his
illustrious guest to the demands of Clement, but had plainly declared
his inability to shelter him in safety. Maintaining secret intercourse
with his partisans at Rome, the fugitive then sought a refuge with the
Eremites, sequestered in the lone recesses of the Monte Maiella, where
in solitude and thought he had passed a whole year, save the time
consumed in his visit to and return from Florence. Taking advantage of
the Jubilee in Rome, he had then, disguised as a pilgrim, traversed the
vales and mountains still rich in the melancholy ruins of ancient Rome,
and entering the city, his restless and ambitious spirit indulged in new
but vain conspiracies! (Rainald, Ann. 1350, N. 4, E. 5.) Excommunicated
a second time by the Cardinal di Ceccano, and again a fugitive, he
shook the dust from his feet as he left the city, and raising his
hands towards those walls, in which are yet traced the witness of
the Tarquins, cried aloud--“Honoured as thy prince--persecuted as thy
victim--Rome, Rome, thou shalt yet receive me as thy conqueror!”
Still disguised as a pilgrim, he passed unmolested through Italy into
the Court of the Emperor Charles of Bohemia, where the page, who had
probably witnessed, had rightly narrated, his reception. It is doubtful,
however, whether the conduct of the Emperor had been as chivalrous as
appears by Angelo’s relation, or whether he had not delivered Rienzi to
the Pontiff’s emissaries. At all events it is certain, that from Prague
to Avignon, the path of the fallen Tribune had been as one triumph. His
strange adventures--his unbroken spirit--the new power that
Intellect daily and wonderfully excited over the minds of the rising
generation--the eloquence of Petrarch, and the common sympathy of the
vulgar for fallen greatness,--all conspired to make Rienzi the hero of
the age. Not a town through which he passed which would not have risked
a siege for his protection--not a house that would not have sheltered
him--not a hand that would not have struck in his defence. Refusing
all offers of aid, disdaining all occasion of escape, inspired by his
indomitable hope, and his unalloyed belief in the brightness of his own
destinies, the Tribune sought Avignon--and found a dungeon!
These, his external adventures, are briefly and easily told; but who
shall tell what passed within?--who narrate the fearful history of
the heart?--who paint the rapid changes of emotion and of thought--the
indignant grief--the stern dejection--the haughty disappointment that
saddened while it never destroyed the resolve of that great soul? Who
can say what must have been endured, what meditated, in the hermitage
of Maiella;--on the lonely hills of the perished empire it had been his
dream to restore;--in the Courts of Barbarian Kings;--and above all,
on returning obscure and disguised, amidst the crowds of the Christian
world, to the seat of his former power? What elements of memory, and
in what a wild and fiery brain! What reflections to be conned in the
dungeons of Avignon, by a man who had pushed into all the fervour
of fanaticism--four passions, a single one of which has, in excess,
sufficed to wreck the strongest reason--passions, which in themselves
it is most difficult to combine,--the dreamer--the aspirant--the very
nympholept of Freedom, yet of Power--of Knowledge, yet of Religion!
“Ay,” muttered the prisoner, “ay, these texts are
comforting--comforting. The righteous are not alway oppressed.” With
a long sigh he deliberately put aside the Bible, kissed it with great
reverence, remained silent, and musing for some minutes; and then as a
slight noise was heard at one corner of the cell, said softly, “Ah, my
friends, my comrades, the rats! it is their hour--I am glad I put aside
the bread for them!” His eye brightened as it now detected those strange
and unsocial animals venturing forth through a hole in the wall, and,
darkening the moonshine on the floor, steal fearlessly towards him.
He flung some fragments of bread to them, and for some moments watched
their gambols with a smile. “Manchino, the white-faced rascal! he beats
all the rest--ha, ha! he is a superior wretch--he commands the tribe,
and will venture the first into the trap. How will he bite against the
steel, the fine fellow! while all the ignobler herd will gaze at him
afar off, and quake and fear, and never help. Yet if united, they might
gnaw the trap and release their leader! Ah, ye are base vermin, ye eat
my bread, yet if death came upon me, ye would riot on my carcass. Away!”
and clapping his hands, the chain round him clanked harshly, and the
noisome co-mates of his dungeon vanished in an instant.
That singular and eccentric humour which marked Rienzi, and which had
seemed a buffoonery to the stolid sullenness of the Roman nobles, still
retained its old expression in his countenance, and he laughed loud as
he saw the vermin hurry back to their hiding-place.
“A little noise and the clank of a chain--fie, how ye imitate mankind!”
Again he sank into silence, and then heavily and listlessly
drawing towards him the animated tales of Livy, said, “An hour to
midnight!--waking dreams are better than sleep. Well, history tells us
how men have risen--ay, and nations too--after sadder falls than that of
Rienzi or of Rome!”
In a few minutes, he was apparently absorbed in the lecture; so intent
indeed, was he in the task, that he did not hear the steps which wound
the spiral stairs that conducted to his cell, and it was not till the
wards harshly grated beneath the huge key, and the door creaked on
its hinges, that Rienzi, in amaze at intrusion at so unwonted an hour,
lifted his eyes. The door had reclosed on the dungeon, and by the lonely
and pale lamp he beheld a figure leaning, as for support, against the
wall. The figure was wrapped from head to foot in the long cloak of the
day, which, aided by a broad hat, shaded by plumes, concealed even the
features of the visitor.
Rienzi gazed long and wistfully.
“Speak,” he said at length, putting his hand to his brow. “Methinks
either long solitude has bewildered me, or, sweet sir, your apparition
dazzles. I know you not--am I sure?--” and Rienzi’s hair bristled while
he slowly rose--“Am I sure that it is living man who stands before
me? Angels have entered the prison-house before now. Alas! an angel’s
comfort never was more needed.”
The stranger answered not, but the captive saw that his heart heaved
even beneath his cloak; loud sobs choked his voice; at length, as by a
violent effort, he sprung forward, and sunk at the Tribune’s feet. The
disguising hat, the long mantle fell to the ground--it was the face of a
woman that looked upward through passionate and glazing tears--the arms
of a woman that clasped the prisoner’s knees! Rienzi gazed mute and
motionless as stone. “Powers and Saints of Heaven!” he murmured at last,
“do ye tempt me further!--is it?--no, no--yet speak!”
“Beloved--adored!--do you not know me?”
“It is--it is!” shrieked Rienzi wildly, “it is my Nina--my wife--my--”
His voice forsook him. Clasped in each other’s arms, the unfortunates
for some moments seemed to have lost even the sense of delight at
their reunion. It was as an unconscious and deep trance, through which
something like a dream only faintly and indistinctively stirs.
At length recovered--at length restored, the first broken exclamations,
the first wild caresses of joy over--Nina lifted her head from her
husband’s bosom, and gazed sadly on his countenance--“Oh, what thou hast
known since we parted!--what, since that hour when, borne on by thy bold
heart and wild destiny, thou didst leave me in the Imperial Court,
to seek again the diadem and find the chain! Ah! why did I heed thy
commands?--why suffer thee to depart alone? How often in thy progress
hitherward, in doubt, in danger, might this bosom have been thy
resting-place, and this voice have whispered comfort to thy soul? Thou
art well, my Lord--my Cola! Thy pulse beats quicker than of old--thy
brow is furrowed. Ah! tell me thou art well!”
“Well,” said Rienzi, mechanically. “Methinks so!--the mind diseased
blunts all sense of bodily decay. Well--yes! And thou--thou, at least,
art not changed, save to maturer beauty. The glory of the laurel-wreath
has not faded from thy brow. Thou shalt yet--” then breaking off
abruptly--“Rome--tell me of Rome! And thou--how camest thou hither? Ah!
perhaps my doom is sealed, and in their mercy they have vouchsafed that
I should see thee once more before the deathsman blinds me. I remember,
it is the grace vouchsafed to malefactors. When I was a lord of life and
death, I too permitted the meanest criminal to say farewell to those he
loved.”
“No--not so, Cola!” exclaimed Nina, putting her hand before his mouth.
“I bring thee more auspicious tidings. Tomorrow thou art to be heard.
The favour of the Court is propitiated. Thou wilt be acquitted.”
“Ha! speak again.”
“Thou wilt be heard, my Cola--thou must be acquitted!”
“And Rome be free!--Great God, I thank Thee!”
The Tribune sank on his knees, and never had his heart, in his youngest
and purest hour, poured forth thanksgiving more fervent, yet less
selfish. When he rose again, the whole man seemed changed. His eye had
resumed its earlier expressions of deep and serene command. Majesty sate
upon his brow. The sorrows of the exile were forgotten. In his sanguine
and rapid thoughts, he stood once more the guardian of his country,--and
its sovereign!
Nina gazed upon him with that intense and devoted worship, which steeped
her vainer and her harder qualities in all the fondness of the softest
woman. “Such,” thought she, “was his look eight years ago, when he left
my maiden chamber, full of the mighty schemes which liberated Rome--such
his look, when at the dawning sun he towered amidst the crouching
Barons, and the kneeling population of the city he had made his throne!”
“Yes, Nina!” said Rienzi, as he turned and caught her eye. “My soul
tells me that my hour is at hand. If they try me openly, they dare not
convict--if they acquit me, they dare not but restore. Tomorrow, saidst
thou, tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, Rienzi; be prepared!”
“I am--for triumph! But tell me what happy chance brought thee to
Avignon?”
“Chance, Cola!” said Nina, with reproachful tenderness. “Could I know
that thou wert in the dungeons of the Pontiff, and linger in idle
security at Prague? Even at the Emperor’s Court thou hadst thy
partisans and favourers. Gold was easily procured. I repaired to
Florence--disguised my name--and came hither to plot, to scheme, to win
thy liberty, or to die with thee. Ah! did not thy heart tell thee that
morning and night the eyes of thy faithful Nina gazed upon this gloomy
tower; and that one friend, humble though she be, never could forsake
thee!”
“Sweet Nina! Yet--yet--at Avignon power yields not to beauty without
reward. Remember, there is a worse death than the pause of life.”
Nina turned pale. “Fear not,” she said, with a low but determined voice;
“fear not, that men’s lips should say Rienzi’s wife delivered him. None
in this corrupted Court know that I am thy wife.”
“Woman,” said the Tribune, sternly; “thy lips elude the answer I would
seek. In our degenerate time and land, thy sex and ours forget too
basely what foulness writes a leprosy in the smallest stain upon a
matron’s honour. That thy heart would never wrong me, I believe; but if
thy weakness, thy fear of my death should wrong me, thou art a bitterer
foe to Rienzi than the swords of the Colonna. Nina, speak!”
“Oh, that my soul could speak,” answered Nina. “Thy words are music to
me, and not a thought of mine but echoes them. Could I touch this hand,
could I meet that eye, and not know that death were dearer to thee than
shame? Rienzi, when last we parted, in sadness, yet in hope, what were
thy words to me?”
“I remember them well,” returned the Tribune: “‘I leave thee,’ I said,
‘to keep alive at the Emperor’s Court, by thy genius, the Great Cause.
Thou hast youth and beauty--and courts have lawless and ruffian suitors.
I give thee no caution; it were beneath thee and me. But I leave thee
the power of death.’ And with that, Nina--”
“Thy hands tremblingly placed in mine this dagger. I live--need I say
more?”
“My noble and beloved Nina, it is enough. Keep the dagger yet.”
“Yes; till we meet in the Capitol of Rome!”
A slight tap was heard at the door; Nina regained, in an instant, her
disguise.
“It is on the stroke of midnight,” said the gaoler, appearing at the
threshold.
“I come,” said Nina.
“And thou hast to prepare thy thoughts,” she whispered to Rienzi: “arm
all thy glorious intellect. Alas! is it again we part? How my heart
sinks!”
The presence of the gaoler at the threshold broke the bitterness
of parting by abridging it. The false page pressed her lips on the
prisoner’s hand, and left the cell.
The gaoler, lingering behind for a moment, placed a parchment on the
table. It was the summons from the court appointed for the trial of the
Tribune.