“But are we strong enough? our numbers are few.  Zeal slackens! the piety of the Baldwins is no more!”

“Your Holiness knows well,” said the Cardinal, “that for the multitude of men there are two watchwords of war—­Liberty and Religion.  If Religion begins to fail, we must employ the profaner word.  ’Up with the Banner of the Church—­and down with the tyrants!’ We will proclaim equal laws and free government; (In correcting the pages of this work, in the year 1847...strange coincidences between the present policy of the Roman Church and that by which in the 14th century it recovered both spiritual and temporal power cannot fail to suggest themselves.) and, God willing, our camp shall prosper better with those promises than the tents of Montreal with the more vulgar shout of ‘Pay and Rapine.’”

“Giles d’Albornoz,” said the Pope, emphatically; and, warmed by the spirit of the Cardinal, he dropped the wonted etiquette of phrase, “I trust implicitly to you.  Now the right hand of the Church—­hereafter, perhaps, its head.  Too well I feel that the lot has fallen on a lowly place.  My successor must requite my deficiencies.”

No changing hue, no brightening glance, betrayed to the searching eye of the Pope whatever emotion these words had called up in the breast of the ambitious Cardinal.  He bowed his proud head humbly as he answered, “Pray Heaven that Innocent vi. may long live to guide the Church to glory.  For Giles d’Albornoz, less priest than soldier, the din of the camp, the breath of the war-steed, suggest the only aspirations which he ever dares indulge.  But has your Holiness imparted to your servant all that—­”

“Nay,” interrupted Innocent, “I have yet intelligence equally ominous.  This John di Vico,—­pest go with him!—­who still styles himself (the excommunicated ruffian!) Prefect of Rome, has so filled that unhappy city with his emissaries, that we have well-nigh lost the seat of the Apostle.  Rome, long in anarchy, seems now in open rebellion.  The nobles—­sons of Belial!—­it is true, are once more humbled; but how?—­One Baroncelli, a new demagogue, the fiercest—­the most bloody that the fiend ever helped—­has arisen—­is invested by the mob with power, and uses it to butcher the people and insult the Pontiff.  Wearied of the crimes of this man, (which are not even decorated by ability,) the shout of the people day and night along the streets is for ’Rienzi the Tribune.’”

“Ha!” said the Cardinal, “Rienzi’s faults then are forgotten in Rome, and there is felt for him the same enthusiasm in that city as in the rest of Italy?”

“Alas!  It is so.”

“It is well, I have thought of this:  Rienzi can accompany my progress—­”

“My son! the rebel, the heretic—­”