“Ha!” said he, muttering to himself, and recalling the words of Rienzi seven years before—­“Blessed art thou who hast no blood of kindred to avenge!”

Chapter 10.VI.  The Suspense.

Walter de Montreal was buried in the church of St. Maria dell’ Araceli.  But the “evil that he did lived after him!” Although the vulgar had, until his apprehension, murmured against Rienzi for allowing so notorious a freebooter to be at large, he was scarcely dead ere they compassionated the object of their terror.  With that singular species of piety which Montreal had always cultivated, as if a decorous and natural part of the character of a warrior, no sooner was his sentence fixed, than he had surrendered himself to the devout preparation for death.  With the Augustine Friar he consumed the brief remainder of the night in prayer and confession, comforted his brothers, and passed to the scaffold with the step of a hero and the self-acquittal of a martyr.  In the wonderful delusions of the human heart, far from feeling remorse at a life of professional rapine and slaughter, almost the last words of the brave warrior were in proud commendation of his own deeds.  “Be valiant like me,” he said to his brothers, “and remember that ye are now the heirs to the Humbler of Apulia, Tuscany, and La Marca.”

(Pregovi che vi amiate e siate valorosi al mondo, come fui io, che mi feci fare obbedienza a la Puglia, Toscana, e a La Marca.”—­“Vita di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. cap. 22.  “I pray you love one another, and be valorous as was I, who made Apulia, Tuscany and La Marca own obedience to me.”—­“Life of Cola di Rienzi".)

This confidence in himself continued at the scaffold.  “I die,” he said, addressing the Romans—­“I die contented, since my bones shall rest in the Holy City of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the Soldier of Christ shall have the burial-place of the Apostles.  But I die unjustly.  My wealth is my crime—­the poverty of your state my accuser.  Senator of Rome, thou mayst envy my last hour—­men like Walter de Montreal perish not unavenged.”  So saying, he turned to the East, murmured a brief prayer, knelt down deliberately, and said as to himself, “Rome guard my ashes!—­Earth my memory—­Fate my revenge;—­and, now, Heaven receive my soul!—­Strike!” At the first blow, the head was severed from the body.

His treason but imperfectly known, the fear of him forgotten, all that remained of the recollection of Walter de Montreal (The military renown and bold exploits of Montreal are acknowledged by all the Italian authorities.  One of them declares that since the time of Caesar, Italy had never known so great a Captain.  The biographer of Rienzi, forgetting all the offences of the splendid and knightly robber, seems to feel only commiseration for his fate.  He informs us, moreover, that at Tivoli one of his servants (perhaps our friend, Rodolf of Saxony), hearing his death,