“Dame,” said the boy, who was busily employed in hewing out a sword of wood, “I would you had seen the show today.  Why, every day is a show at Rome now!  It is show enough to see the Tribune himself on his white steed—­(oh, it is so beautiful!)—­with his white robes all studded with jewels.  But today, as I have just been telling you, the Lady Nina took notice of me, as I stood on the stairs of the Capitol:  you know, dame, I had donned my best blue velvet doublet.”

“And she called you a fair boy, and asked if you would be her little page; and this has turned thy brain, silly urchin that thou art—­”

“But the words are the least:  if you saw the Lady Nina, you would own that a smile from her might turn the wisest head in Italy.  Oh, how I should like to serve the Tribune!  All the lads of my age are mad for him.  How they will stare, and envy me at school tomorrow!  You know too, dame, that though I was not always brought up at Rome, I am Roman.  Every Roman loves Rienzi.”

“Ay, for the hour:  the cry will soon change.  This vanity of thine, Angelo, vexes my old heart.  I would thou wert humbler.”

“Bastards have their own name to win,” said the boy, colouring deeply.  “They twit me in the teeth, because I cannot say who my father and mother were.”

“They need not,” returned the dame, hastily.  “Thou comest of noble blood and long descent, though, as I have told thee often, I know not the exact names of thy parents.  But what art thou shaping that tough sapling of oak into?”

“A sword, dame, to assist the Tribune against the robbers.”

“Alas!  I fear me, like all those who seek power in Italy, he is more likely to enlist robbers than to assail them.”

“Why, la you there, you live so shut up, that you know and hear nothing, or you would have learned that even that fiercest of all the robbers, Fra Moreale, has at length yielded to the Tribune, and fled from his castle, like a rat from a falling house.”

“How, how!” cried the dame; “what say you?  Has this plebeian, whom you call the Tribune—­has he boldly thrown the gage to that dread warrior? and has Montreal left the Roman territory?”

“Ay, it is the talk of the town.  But Fra Moreale seems as much a bugbear to you as to e’er a mother in Rome.  Did he ever wrong you, dame?”

“Yes!” exclaimed the old woman, with so abrupt a fierceness, that even that hardy boy was startled.

“I wish I could meet him, then,” said he, after a pause, as he flourished his mimic weapon.

“Now Heaven forbid!  He is a man ever to be shunned by thee, whether for peace or war.  Say again this good Tribune holds no terms with the Free Lances.”

“Say it again—­why all Rome knows it.”

“He is pious, too, I have heard; and they do bruit it that he sees visions, and is comforted from above,” said the woman, speaking to herself.  Then turning to Angelo, she continued,—­“Thou wouldst like greatly to accept the Lady Nina’s proffer?”