“So happy—­if we could have many hours like this!” murmured Nina, sinking on his breast.  “Yet sometimes I wish—­”

“And I too,” interrupted Rienzi; “for I read thy woman’s thought—­I too sometimes wish that fate had placed us in the lowlier valleys of life!  But it may come yet!  Irene wedded to Adrian—­Rome married to Liberty—­and then, Nina, methinks you and I would find some quiet hermitage, and talk over old gauds and triumphs, as of a summer’s dream.  Beautiful, kiss me!  Couldst thou resign these pomps?”

“For a desert with thee, Cola!”

“Let me reflect,” resumed Rienzi; “is not today the seventh of October?  Yes! on the seventh, be it noted, my foes yielded to my power!  Seven! my fated number, whether ominous of good or evil!  Seven months did I reign as Tribune—­seven (There was the lapse of one year between the release of Rienzi from Avignon, and his triumphal return to Rome:  a year chiefly spent in the campaign of Albornoz.) years was I absent as an exile; tomorrow, that sees me without an enemy, completes my seventh week of return!”

“And seven was the number of the crowns the Roman Convents and the Roman Council awarded thee, after the ceremony which gave thee the knighthood of the Santo Spirito!” (This superstition had an excuse in strange historical coincidences; and the number seven was indeed to Rienzi what the 3rd of September was to Cromwell.  The ceremony of the seven crowns which he received after his knighthood, on the nature of which ridiculous ignorance has been shown by many recent writers, was, in fact, principally a religious and typical donation, (symbolical of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,) conferred by the heads of convents—­and that part of the ceremony which was political, was republican, not regal.) said Nina, adding, with woman’s tender wit, “the brightest association of all!”

“Follies seem these thoughts to others, and to philosophy, in truth, they are so,” said Rienzi; “but all my life long, omen and type and shadow have linked themselves to action and event:  and the atmosphere of other men hath not been mine.  Life itself a riddle, why should riddles amaze us?  The Future!—­what mystery in the very word!  Had we lived all through the Past, since Time was, our profoundest experience of a thousand ages could not give us a guess of the events that wait the very moment we are about to enter!  Thus deserted by Reason, what wonder that we recur to the Imagination, on which, by dream and symbol, God sometimes paints the likeness of things to come?  Who can endure to leave the Future all unguessed, and sit tamely down to groan under the fardel of the Present?  No, no! that which the foolish-wise call Fanaticism, belongs to the same part of us as Hope.  Each but carries us onward—­from a barren strand to a glorious, if unbounded sea.  Each is the yearning for the great beyond, which attests our immortality.  Each has its visions and chimeras—­some