“Dear brother,” said the elder, “I cannot express to thee how I enjoy these evening hours.  To you alone I feel as if I were not a mere visionary and idler when I talk of the uncertain future, and build up my palaces of the air.  Our parents listen to me as if I were uttering fine things out of a book; and my dear mother, Heaven bless her! wipes her eyes, and says, ‘Hark, what a scholar he is!’ As for the monks, if I ever dare look from my Livy, and cry ‘Thus should Rome be again!’ they stare, and gape, and frown, as though I had broached an heresy.  But you, sweet brother, though you share not my studies, sympathize so kindly with all their results—­you seem so to approve my wild schemes, and to encourage my ambitious hopes—­that sometimes I forget our birth, our fortunes, and think and dare as if no blood save that of the Teuton Emperor flowed through our veins.”

“Methinks, dear Cola,” said the younger brother, “that Nature played us an unfair trick—­to you she transmitted the royal soul, derived from our father’s parentage; and to me only the quiet and lowly spirit of my mother’s humble lineage.”

“Nay,” answered Cola, quickly, “you would then have the brighter share,—­for I should have but the Barbarian origin, and you the Roman.  Time was, when to be a simple Roman was to be nobler than a northern king.—­Well, well, we may live to see great changes!”

“I shall live to see thee a great man, and that will content me,” said the younger, smiling affectionately; “a great scholar all confess you to be already:  our mother predicts your fortunes every time she hears of your welcome visits to the Colonna.”

“The Colonna!” said Cola, with a bitter smile; “the Colonna—­the pedants!—­They affect, dull souls, the knowledge of the past, play the patron, and misquote Latin over their cups!  They are pleased to welcome me at their board, because the Roman doctors call me learned, and because Nature gave me a wild wit, which to them is pleasanter than the stale jests of a hired buffoon.  Yes, they would advance my fortunes—­but how? by some place in the public offices, which would fill a dishonoured coffer, by wringing, yet more sternly, the hard-earned coins from our famishing citizens!  If there be a vile thing in the world, it is a plebeian, advanced by patricians, not for the purpose of righting his own order, but for playing the pander to the worst interests of theirs.  He who is of the people but makes himself a traitor to his birth, if he furnishes the excuse for these tyrant hypocrites to lift up their hands and cry—­’See what liberty exists in Rome, when we, the patricians, thus elevate a plebeian!’ Did they ever elevate a plebeian if he sympathized with plebeians?  No, brother; should I be lifted above our condition, I will be raised by the arms of my countrymen, and not upon their necks.”

“All I hope, is, Cola, that you will not, in your zeal for your fellow-citizens, forget how dear you are to us.  No greatness could ever reconcile me to the thought that it brought you danger.”