The discomfited councillor shrank back.

“Tear off yon insolent placard.  Nay, hold! fix over it our proclamation of ten thousand florins for the heretic’s head!  Ten thousand? methinks that is too much now—­we will alter the cipher.  Meanwhile Rinaldo Orsini, Lord Senator, march thy soldiers to St. Angelo; let us see if the heretic can stand a siege.”

“It needs not, your Eminence,” said the councillor, again officiously bustling up; “St. Angelo is surrendered.  The Tribune, his wife, and one page, escaped last night, it is said, in disguise.”

“Ha!” said the old Colonna, whose dulled sense had at length arrived at the conclusion that something extraordinary arrested the progress of his friends.  “What is the matter?  What is that placard?  Will no one tell me the words?  My old eyes are dim.”

As he uttered the questions, in the shrill and piercing treble of age, a voice replied in a loud and deep tone—­none knew whence it came; the crowd was reduced to a few stragglers, chiefly friars in cowl and serge, whose curiosity nought could daunt, and whose garb ensured them safety—­the soldiers closed the rear:  a voice, I say, came, startling the colour from many a cheek—­in answer to the Colonna, saying: 

“Tremble!  Rienzi shall return!”

BOOK VI.  THE PLAGUE.

“Erano gli anni della fruttifera Incarnazione del Figliuolo di Dio al numero pervenuti di mille trecento quarant’otto, quando nell’ egregia citta di Fiorenza oltre ad ogni altra Italica bellissima, pervenna la mortifera pestilenza.”—­ Boccaccio, “Introduzione al Decamerone”.

“The years of the fructiferous incarnation of the Son of God had reached the number of one thousand three hundred and forty-eight, when into the illustrious city of Florence, beautiful beyond every other in Italy, entered the death- fraught pestilence.”—­“Introduction to the Decameron”.

Chapter 6.1.  The Retreat of the Lover.

By the borders of one of the fairest lakes of Northern Italy stood the favourite mansion of Adrian di Castello, to which in his softer and less patriotic moments his imagination had often and fondly turned; and thither the young nobleman, dismissing his more courtly and distinguished companions in the Neapolitan embassy, retired after his ill-starred return to Rome.  Most of those thus dismissed joined the Barons; the young Annibaldi, whose daring and ambitious nature had attached him strongly to the Tribune, maintained a neutral ground; he betook himself to his castle in the Campagna, and did not return to Rome till the expulsion of Rienzi.