In this lone retreat—­which even in describing from memory, for these eyes have seen, these feet have trodden, this heart yet yearneth for, the spot—­which even, I say, in thus describing, seems to me (and haply also to the gentle reader) a grateful and welcome transit from the storms of action and the vicissitudes of ambition, so long engrossing the narrative;—­in this lone retreat Adrian passed the winter, which visits with so mild a change that intoxicating clime.  The roar of the world without was borne but in faint and indistinct murmurings to his ear.  He learned only imperfectly, and with many contradictions, the news which broke like a thunderbolt over Italy, that the singular and aspiring man—­himself a revolution—­who had excited the interest of all Europe, the brightest hopes of the enthusiastic, the profusest adulation of the great, the deepest terror of the despot, the wildest aspirations of all free spirits, had been suddenly stricken from his state, his name branded and his head proscribed.  This event, which happened at the end of December, reached Adrian, through a wandering pilgrim, at the commencement of March, somewhat more than two months after the date; the March of that awful year 1348, which saw Europe, and Italy especially, desolated by the direst pestilence which history has recorded, accursed alike by the numbers and the celebrity of its victims, and yet strangely connected with some not unpleasing images by the grace of Boccaccio and the eloquence of Petrarch.

The pilgrim who informed Adrian of the revolution at Rome was unable to give him any clue to the present fate of Rienzi or his family.  It was only known that the Tribune and his wife had escaped, none knew whither; many guessed that they were already dead, victims to the numerous robbers who immediately on the fall of the Tribune settled back to their former habits, sparing neither age nor sex, wealth nor poverty.  As all relating to the ex-Tribune was matter of eager interest, the pilgrim had also learned that, previous to the fall of Rienzi, his sister had left Rome, but it was not known to what place she had been conveyed.

The news utterly roused Adrian from his dreaming life.  Irene was then in the condition his letter dared to picture—­severed from her brother, fallen from her rank, desolate and friendless.  “Now,” said the generous and high-hearted lover, “she may be mine without a disgrace to my name.  Whatever Rienzi’s faults, she is not implicated in them.  Her hands are not red with my kinsman’s blood; nor can men say that Adrian di Castello allies himself with a House whose power is built upon the ruins of the Colonnas.  The Colonna are restored—­again triumphant—­Rienzi is nothing—­distress and misfortune unite me at once to her on whom they fall!”

But how were these romantic resolutions to be executed—­Irene’s dwelling-place unknown?  He resolved himself to repair to Rome and make the necessary inquiries:  accordingly he summoned his retainers:—­blithe tidings to them, those of travel!  The mail left the armoury—­the banner the hall—­and after two days of animated bustle, the fountain by which Adrian had passed so many hours of revery was haunted only by the birds of the returning spring; and the nightly lamp no longer cast its solitary ray from his turret chamber over the bosom of the deserted lake.