“I would he had not sought to tax us,” said Cecco del Vecchio, who was the very personification of the vulgar feeling:  “and that he had beheaded the Barons!”

“Ay!” cried the ex-gravedigger; “but that blessed porphyry vase!”

“And why should we get our throats cut,” said Luigi, the butcher, “like my two brothers?—­Heaven rest them!”

On the face of the general multitude there was a common expression of irresolution and shame, many wept and groaned, none (save the aforesaid grumblers) accused; none upbraided, but none seemed disposed to arm.  It was one of those listless panics, those strange fits of indifference and lethargy which often seize upon a people who make liberty a matter of impulse and caprice, to whom it has become a catchword, who have not long enjoyed all its rational, and sound, and practical, and blessed results; who have been affrayed by the storms that herald its dawn;—­a people such as is common to the south:  such as even the north has known; such as, had Cromwell lived a year longer, even England might have seen; and, indeed, in some measure, such a reaction from popular enthusiasm to popular indifference England did see, when her children madly surrendered the fruits of a bloody war, without reserve, without foresight, to the lewd pensioner of Louis, and the royal murderer of Sydney.  To such prostration of soul, such blindness of intellect, even the noblest people will be subjected, when liberty, which should be the growth of ages, spreading its roots through the strata of a thousand customs, is raised, the exotic of an hour, and (like the Tree and Dryad of ancient fable) flourishes and withers with the single spirit that protects it.

“Oh, Heaven, that I were a man!” exclaimed Angelo, who stood behind Rienzi.

“Hear him, hear the boy,” cried the Tribune; “out of the mouths of babes speaketh wisdom!  He wishes that he were a man, as ye are men, that he might do as ye should do.  Mark me,—­I ride with these faithful few through the quarter of the Colonna, before the fortress of your foe.  Three times before that fortress shall my trumpets sound; if at the third blast ye come not, armed as befits ye—­I say not all, but three, but two, but one hundred of ye—­I break up my wand of office, and the world shall say one hundred and fifty robbers quelled the soul of Rome, and crushed her magistrate and her laws!”

With those words he descended the stairs, and mounted his charger; the populace gave way in silence, and their Tribune and his slender train passed slowly on, and gradually vanished from the view of the increasing crowd.

The Romans remained on the place, and after a pause, the demagogue Baroncelli, who saw an opening to his ambition, addressed them.  Though not an eloquent nor gifted man, he had the art of uttering the most popular commonplaces.  And he knew the weak side of his audience, in their vanity, indolence, and arrogant pride.