Meanwhile, after the first flush of victory, lamentation succeeded to joy in Rome; so great had been the slaughter that the private grief was large enough to swallow up all public triumph; and many of the mourners blamed even their defender for the swords of the assailant, “Roma fu terribilmente vedovata.” ("Rome was terribly widowed.”) The numerous funerals deeply affected the Tribune; and, in proportion to his sympathy with his people, grew his stern indignation against the Barons.  Like all men whose religion is intense, passionate, and zealous, the Tribune had little toleration for those crimes which went to the root of religion.  Perjury was to him the most base and inexpiable of offences, and the slain Barons had been twice perjured:  in the bitterness of his wrath he forbade their families for some days to lament over their remains; and it was only in private and in secret that he permitted them to be interred in their ancestral vaults:  an excess of vengeance which sullied his laurels, but which was scarcely inconsistent with the stern patriotism of his character.  Impatient to finish what he had begun, anxious to march at once to Marino, where the insurgents collected their shattered force, he summoned his Council, and represented the certainty of victory, and its result in the complete restoration of peace.  But pay was due to the soldiery; they already murmured; the treasury was emptied, it was necessary to fill it by raising a new tax.

Among the councillors were some whose families had suffered grievously in the battle—­they lent a lukewarm attention to propositions of continued strife.  Others, among whom was Pandulfo, timid but well-meaning, aware that grief and terror even of their own triumph had produced reaction amongst the people, declared that they would not venture to propose a new tax.  A third party, headed by Baroncelli—­a demagogue whose ambition was without principle—­but who, by pandering to the worst passions of the populace, by a sturdy coarseness of nature with which they sympathised—­and by that affectation of advancing what we now term the “movement,” which often gives to the fiercest fool an advantage over the most prudent statesman, had quietly acquired a great influence with the lower ranks—­offered a more bold opposition.  They dared even to blame the proud Tribune for the gorgeous extravagance they had themselves been the first to recommend—­and half insinuated sinister and treacherous motives in his acquittal of the Barons from the accusation of Rodolf.  In the very Parliament which the Tribune had revived and remodelled for the support of freedom—­freedom was abandoned.  His fiery eloquence met with a gloomy silence, and finally, the votes were against his propositions for the new tax and the march to Marino.  Rienzi broke up the Council in haste and disorder.  As he left the hall, a letter was put into his hands; he read it, and remained for some moments as one thunderstruck.  He then summoned the Captain of his Guards, and ordered a band of fifty horsemen to be prepared for his commands; he repaired to Nina’s apartment, he found her alone, and stood for some moments gazing upon her so intently that she was awed and chilled from all attempt at speech.  At length he said, abruptly—­