“Ah! they blame not my splendour, then!”

“Blame it; no!  Without it they would be ashamed of you, and think the Buono Stato but a shabby concern.”

“You speak bluntly, Cecco, but perhaps wisely.  The saints keep you!  Fail not to remember what I told you!”

“No, no.  It is a shame to have an Emperor thrust upon us;—­so it is.  Good evening, Tribune.”

Left alone, the Tribune remained for some time plunged in gloomy and foreboding thoughts.

“I am in the midst of a magician’s spell,” said he; “if I desist, the fiends tear me to pieces.  What I have begun, that must I conclude.  But this rude man shews me too well with what tools I work.  For me failure is nothing, I have already climbed to a greatness which might render giddy many a born prince’s brain.  But with my fall—­Rome, Italy, Peace, Justice, Civilization—­all fall back into the abyss of ages!”

He rose; and after once or twice pacing his apartment, in which from many a column gleamed upon him the marble effigies of the great of old, he opened the casement to inhale the air of the now declining day.

The Place of the Capitol was deserted save by the tread of the single sentinel.  But still, dark and fearful, hung from the tall gibbet the clay of the robber noble; and the colossal shape of the Egyptian lion rose hard by, sharp and dark in the breathless atmosphere.

“Dread statue!” thought Rienzi, “how many unwhispered and solemn rites hast thou witnessed by thy native Nile, ere the Roman’s hand transferred thee hither—­the antique witness of Roman crimes!  Strange! but when I look upon thee I feel as if thou hadst some mystic influence over my own fortunes.  Beside thee was I hailed the republican Lord of Rome; beside thee are my palace, my tribunal, the place of my justice, my triumphs, and my pomp:—­to thee my eyes turn from my bed of state:  and if fated to die in power and peace, thou mayst be the last object my eyes will mark!  Or if myself a victim—.”  He paused—­shrank from the thought presented to him—­turned to a recess of the chamber—­drew aside a curtain, that veiled a crucifix and a small table, on which lay a Bible and the monastic emblems of the skull and crossbones—­emblems, indeed, grave and irresistible, of the nothingness of power, and the uncertainty of life.  Before these sacred monitors, whether to humble or to elevate, knelt that proud and aspiring man; and when he rose, it was with a lighter step and more cheerful mien than he had worn that day.

Chapter 4.III.  The Actor Unmasked.

“In intoxication,” says the proverb, “men betray their real characters.”  There is a no less honest and truth-revealing intoxication in prosperity, than in wine.  The varnish of power brings forth at once the defects and the beauties of the human portrait.