“My Lord,” answered Rienzi, “judge, by one fact, how strongly I am surrounded by friends of no common class:  thou knowest how loudly I speak against the nobles—­I cite them by their name—­I beard the Savelli, the Orsini, the Colonna, in their very hearing.  Thinkest thou that they forgive me? thinkest thou that, were only the plebeians my safeguard and my favourers, they would not seize me by open force,—­that I had not long ere this found a gag in their dungeons, or been swallowed up in the eternal dumbness of the grave?  Observe,” continued he, as, reading the Vicar’s countenance, he perceived the impression he had made—­“observe, that, throughout the whole world, a great revolution has begun.  The barbaric darkness of centuries has been broken; the Knowledge which made men as demigods in the past time has been called from her urn; a Power, subtler than brute force, and mightier than armed men, is at work; we have begun once more to do homage to the Royalty of Mind.  Yes, that same Power which, a few years ago, crowned Petrarch in the Capitol, when it witnessed, after the silence of twelve centuries, the glories of a Triumph,—­which heaped upon a man of obscure birth, and unknown in arms, the same honours given of old to emperors and the vanquishers of kings,—­which united in one act of homage even the rival houses of Colonna and Orsini,—­which made the haughtiest patricians emulous to bear the train, to touch but the purple robe, of the son of the Florentine plebeian,—­which still draws the eyes of Europe to the lowly cottage of Vaucluse,—­which gives to the humble student the all-acknowledged licence to admonish tyrants, and approach, with haughty prayers, even the Father of the Church;—­yes, that same Power, which, working silently throughout Italy, murmurs under the solid base of the Venetian oligarchy; (It was about eight years afterwards that the long-smothered hate of the Venetian people to that wisest and most vigilant of all oligarchies, the Sparta of Italy, broke out in the conspiracy under Marino Faliero.) which, beyond the Alps, has wakened into visible and sudden life in Spain, in Germany, in Flanders; and which, even in that barbarous Isle, conquered by the Norman sword, ruled by the bravest of living kings, (Edward iii., in whose reign opinions far more popular than those of the following century began to work.  The Civil Wars threw back the action into the blood.  It was indeed an age throughout the world which put forth abundant blossoms, but crude and unripened fruit;—­a singular leap, followed by as singular a pause.) has roused a spirit Norman cannot break—­kings to rule over must rule by—­yes, that same Power is everywhere abroad:  it speaks, it conquers in the voice even of him who is before you; it unites in his cause all on whom but one glimmering of light has burst, all in whom one generous desire can be kindled!  Know, Lord Vicar, that there is not a man in Rome, save our oppressors themselves—­not a man who has learned one syllable of our ancient