Again, after the expulsion, Du Cerceau says, that the Barons seized upon the “immense riches” he had amassed,—­the words in the original are, “grandi ornamenti,” which are very different things from immense riches.  But the most remarkable sins of commission are in this person’s account of the second rise and fall of Rienzi under the title of Senator.  Of this I shall give but one instance:—­

“The Senator, who perceived it, became only the more cruel.  His jealousies produced only fresh murders.  In the continual dread he was in, that the general discontent would terminate in some secret attempt upon his person, he determined to intimidate the most enterprising, by sacrificing sometimes one, sometimes another, and chiefly those whose riches rendered them the more guilty in his eyes.  Numbers were sent every day to the Capitol prison.  Happy were those who could get off with the confiscation of their estates.”

Of these grave charges there is not a syllable in the original!  And so much for the work of Pere Cerceau and Pere Brumoy, by virtue of which, historians have written of the life and times of Rienzi, and upon the figments of which, the most remarkable man in an age crowded with great characters is judged by the general reader!

I must be pardoned for this criticism, which might not have been necessary, had not the work to which it relates, in the English translation quoted from, (a translation that has no faults but those of the French original,) been actually received as an historical and indisputable authority, and opposed with a triumphant air to some passages in my own narrative which were literally taken from the authentic records of the time.