love for show, and it may be whose admiration for triumphant fame, (which to women sanctions many offences,) made them forget the humbled greatness of their lords:  amidst them Nina and Irene, outshining all the rest; then came the Tribune and the Pontiff’s Vicar, surrounded by all the great Signors of the city, smothering alike resentment, revenge, and scorn, and struggling who should approach nearest to the monarch of the day.  The high-hearted old Colonna alone remained aloof, following at a little distance, and in a garb studiously plain.  But his age, his rank, his former renown in war and state, did not suffice to draw to his grey locks and highborn mien a single one of the shouts that attended the meanest lord on whom the great Tribune smiled.  Savelli followed nearest to Rienzi, the most obsequious of the courtly band; immediately before the Tribune came two men; the one bore a drawn sword, the other the pendone, or standard usually assigned to royalty.  The tribune himself was clothed in a long robe of white satin, whose snowy dazzle (miri candoris) is peculiarly dwelt on by the historian, richly decorated with gold; while on his breast were many of those mystic symbols I have before alluded to, the exact meaning of which was perhaps known only to the wearer.  In his dark eye, and on that large tranquil brow, in which thought seemed to sleep, as sleeps a storm, there might be detected a mind abstracted from the pomp around; but ever and anon he roused himself, and conversed partially with Raimond or Savelli.

“This is a quaint game,” said the Orsini, falling back to the old Colonna:  “but it may end tragically.”

“Methinks it may,” said the old man, “if the Tribune overhear thee.”

Orsini grew pale.  “How—­nay—­nay, even if he did, he never resents words, but professes to laugh at our spoken rage.  It was but the other day that some knave told him what one of the Annibaldi said of him—­words for which a true cavalier would have drawn the speaker’s life’s blood; and he sent for the Annibaldi, and said, ’My friend, receive this purse of gold,—­court wits should be paid.’”

“Did Annibaldi take the gold?”

“Why, no; the Tribune was pleased with his spirit, and made him sup with him; and Annibaldi says he never spent a merrier evening, and no longer wonders that his kinsman, Riccardo, loves the buffoon so.”

Arrived now at the Lateran, Luca di Savelli fell also back, and whispered to Orsini; the Frangipani, and some other of the nobles, exchanged meaning looks; Rienzi, entering the sacred edifice in which, according to custom, he was to pass the night watching his armour, bade the crowd farewell, and summoned them the next morning, “To hear things that might, he trusted, be acceptable to heaven and earth.”