“The Signor Colonna has taken up my old calling, and turned a wit,” returned Rienzi, with an indifferent and easy tone.

Then following Raimond and Stephen with his eyes, till the door closed upon them, he muttered, “Insolent! were it not for Adrian, thy grey beard should not bear thee harmless.  Birth! what Colonna would not boast himself, if he could, the grandson of an emperor?—­Old man, there is danger in thee which must be watched.”  With that he turned musingly towards the casement, and again that griesly spectacle of death met his eye.  The people below, assembled in large concourse, rejoiced at the execution of one whose whole life had been infamy and rapine—­but who had seemed beyond justice—­with all the fierce clamour that marks the exultation of the rabble over a crushed foe.  And where Rienzi stood, he heard heir shouts of “Long live the Tribune, the just judge, Rome’s liberator!” But at that time other thoughts deafened his senses to the popular enthusiasm.

“My poor brother!” he said, with tears in his eyes, “it was owing to this man’s crimes—­and to a crime almost similar to that for which he has now suffered—­that thou wert entrained to the slaughter; and they who had no pity for the lamb, clamour for compassion to the wolf!  Ah, wert thou living now, how these proud heads would bend to thee; though dead, thou wert not worthy of a thought.  God rest thy gentle soul, and keep my ambition pure as it was when we walked at twilight, side by side together!”

The Tribune shut the casement, and turning away, sought the chamber of Nina.  On hearing his step without, she had already risen from the couch, her eyes sparkling, her bosom heaving; and as he entered, she threw herself on his neck, and murmured as she nestled to his breast,—­“Ah, the hours since we parted!”

It was a singular thing to see that proud lady, proud of her beauty, her station, her new honours;—­whose gorgeous vanity was already the talk of Rome, and the reproach to Rienzi,—­how suddenly and miraculously she seemed changed in his presence!  Blushing and timid, all pride in herself seemed merged in her proud love for him.  No woman ever loved to the full extent of the passion, who did not venerate where she loved, and who did not feel humbled (delighted in that humility) by her exaggerated and overweening estimate of the superiority of the object of her worship.

And it might be the consciousness of this distinction between himself and all other created things, which continued to increase the love of the Tribune to his bride, to blind him to her failings towards others, and to indulge her in a magnificence of parade, which, though to a certain point politic to assume, was carried to an extent which if it did not conspire to produce his downfall, has served the Romans with an excuse for their own cowardice and desertion, and historians with a plausible explanation of causes they had not the industry to fathom.  Rienzi returned his wife’s caresses with an equal affection, and bending down to her beautiful face, the sight was sufficient to chase from his brow the emotions, whether severe or sad, which had lately darkened its broad expanse.