“So, you have revived!  Ah!  I thought it was only the effluvia; few stand it as we do.  And so, as your search is over, deeming you would now be quitting Florence if you have any sense left to you, I went for your good horse.  I have fed him since your departure from the palace.  Indeed I fancied he would be my perquisite, but there are plenty as good.  Come, young sir, mount.  I feel a pity for you, I know not why, except that you are the only one I have met for weeks who seem to care for another more than for yourself.  I hope you are satisfied now that I showed some brains, eh! in your service; and as I have kept my promise, you’ll keep yours.”

“Friend,” said Adrian, “here is gold enough to make thee rich; here, too, is a jewel that merchants will tell thee princes might vie to purchase.  Thou seemest honest, despite thy calling, or thou mightest have robbed and murdered me long since.  Do me one favour more.”

“By my poor mother’s soul, yes.”

“Take yon—­yon clay from that fearful place.  Inter it in some quiet and remote spot—­apart—­alone!  You promise me?—­you swear it?—­it is well!  And now help me on my horse.  Farewell Italy, and if I die not with this stroke, may I die as befits at once honour and despair—­with trumpet and banner round me—­in a well-fought field against a worthy foe!—­Save a knightly death, nothing is left to live for!”

BOOK VII.  THE PRISON.

     “Fu rinchiuso in una torre grossa e larga; avea libri assai,
     suo Tito Livio, sue storie di Roma, la Bibbia.” &c.—­“Vita
     di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. c. 13.

     “He was immured in a high and spacious tower; he had books
     enough, his Titus Livius, his histories of Rome, the Bible,”
     &c.

Chapter 7.I.  Avignon.—­The Two Pages.—­The Stranger Beauty.

There is this difference between the Drama of Shakspeare, and that of almost every other master of the same art; that in the first, the catastrophe is rarely produced by one single cause—­one simple and continuous chain of events.  Various and complicated agencies work out the final end.  Unfettered by the rules of time and place, each time, each place depicted, presents us with its appropriate change of action, or of actors.  Sometimes the interest seems to halt, to turn aside, to bring us unawares upon objects hitherto unnoticed, or upon qualities of the characters hitherto hinted at, not developed.  But, in reality, the pause in the action is but to collect, to gather up, and to grasp, all the varieties of circumstance that conduce to the Great Result:  and the art of fiction is only deserted for the fidelity of history.  Whoever seeks to place before the world the true representation of a man’s life and times, and, enlarging the Dramatic into the Epic, extends his narrative over the vicissitudes of years, will find himself unconsciously, in this, the imitator