As Adrian passed through that part of the crowd in which the fray had not yet commenced, the murmurs that followed him were not those which many of his race could have heard.

“A Colonna,” said one.

“Yet no ravisher,” said another, laughing wildly.

“Nor murtherer,” muttered a third, pressing his hand to his breast.  “’Tis not against him that my father’s blood cries aloud.”

“Bless him,” said a fourth, “for as yet no man curses him!”

“Ah, God help us!” said an old man, with a long grey beard, leaning on his staff:  “The serpent’s young yet; the fangs will show by and by.”

“For shame, father! he is a comely youth, and not proud in the least.  What a smile he hath!” quoth a fair matron, who kept on the outskirt of the melee.

“Farewell to a man’s honour when a noble smiles on his wife!” was the answer.

“Nay,” said Luigi, a jolly butcher, with a roguish eye, “what a man can win fairly from maid or wife, that let him do, whether plebeian or noble—­that’s my morality; but when an ugly old patrician finds fair words will not win fair looks, and carries me off a dame on the back of a German boar, with a stab in the side for comfort to the spouse,—­then, I say, he is a wicked man, and an adulterer.”

While such were the comments and the murmurs that followed the noble, very different were the looks and words that attended the German soldier.

Equally, nay, with even greater promptitude, did the crowd make way at his armed and heavy tread; but not with looks of reverence:—­the eye glared as he approached; but the cheek grew pale—­the head bowed—­the lip quivered; each man felt a shudder of hate and fear, as recognizing a dread and mortal foe.  And well and wrathfully did the fierce mercenary note the signs of the general aversion.  He pushed on rudely—­half-smiling in contempt, half-frowning in revenge, as he looked from side to side; and his long, matted, light hair, tawny-coloured moustache, and brawny front, contrasted strongly with the dark eyes, raven locks, and slender frames of the Italians.

“May Lucifer double damn those German cut-throats!” muttered, between his grinded teeth, one of the citizens.

“Amen!” answered, heartily, another.

“Hush!” said a third, timorously looking round; “if one of them hear thee, thou art a lost man.”

“Oh, Rome!  Rome! to what art thou fallen!” said bitterly one citizen, clothed in black, and of a higher seeming than the rest; “when thou shudderest in thy streets at the tread of a hired barbarian!”

“Hark to one of our learned men, and rich citizens!” said the butcher, reverently.

“’Tis a friend of Rienzi’s,” quoth another of the group, lifting his cap.

With downcast eyes, and a face in which grief, shame, and wrath, were visibly expressed, Pandulfo di Guido, a citizen of birth and repute, swept slowly through the crowd, and disappeared.