“Did we not tell thee,” quoth the giant, frowning, “that the Colonna were, not less than the Orsini, the foes of the people?  Look at thy followers and clients:  are they not cutting the throats of humble men by way of vengeance for the crime of a great one?  But that is the way one patrician always scourges the insolence of another.  He lays the rod on the backs of the people, and then cries, ‘See how just I am!’”

“I do not answer thee now,” answered Adrian; “but if thou regrettest with me this waste of blood, join with me in attempting to prevent it.”

“I—­not I! let the blood of the slaves flow today:  the time is fast coming when it shall be washed away by the blood of the lords.”

“Away, ruffian!” said Adrian, seeking no further parley, and touching the smith with the flat side of his sword.  In an instant the hammer of the smith swung in the air, and, but for the active spring of the young noble, would infallibly have crushed him to the earth.  Ere the smith could gain time for a second blow, Adrian’s sword passed twice through his right arm, and the weapon fell heavily to the ground.

“Slay him, slay him!” cried several of the clients of the Colonna, now pressing, dastard-like, round the disarmed and disabled smith.

“Ay, slay him!” said, in tolerable Italian, but with a barbarous accent, one man, half-clad in armour, who had but just joined the group, and who was one of those wild German bandits whom the Colonna held in their pay; “he belongs to a horrible gang of miscreants sworn against all order and peace.  He is one of Rienzi’s followers, and, bless the Three Kings! raves about the People.”

“Thou sayest right, barbarian,” said the sturdy smith, in a loud voice, and tearing aside the vest from his breast with his left hand; “come all—­Colonna and Orsini—­dig to this heart with your sharp blades, and when you have reached the centre, you will find there the object of your common hatred—­’Rienzi and the People!’”

As he uttered these words, in language that would have seemed above his station (if a certain glow and exaggeration of phrase and sentiment were not common, when excited, to all the Romans), the loudness of his voice rose above the noise immediately round him, and stilled, for an instant, the general din; and when, at last, the words, “Rienzi and the People” rang forth, they penetrated midway through the increasing crowd, and were answered as by an echo, with a hundred voices—­“Rienzi and the People!”

But whatever impression the words of the mechanic made on others, it was equally visible in the young Colonna.  At the name of Rienzi the glow of excitement vanished from his cheek; he started back, muttered to himself, and for a moment seemed, even in the midst of that stirring commotion, to be lost in a moody and distant revery.  He recovered, as the shout died away; and saying to the smith, in a low tone, “Friend, I am sorry for thy wound; but seek me on the morrow, and thou shalt find thou hast wronged me;” he beckoned to the German to follow him, and threaded his way through the crowd, which generally gave back as he advanced.  For the bitterest hatred to the order of the nobles was at that time in Rome mingled with a servile respect for their persons, and a mysterious awe of their uncontrollable power.