If I now dwell, though but for a moment, on this interlude in a drama calling forth more masculine passions than that of love, it is because I foresee that the occasion will but rarely recur.  If I linger on the description of Irene and her hidden affection, rather than wait for circumstances to portray them better than the author’s words can, it is because I foresee that that loving and lovely image must continue to the last rather a shadow than a portrait,—­thrown in the background, as is the real destiny of such natures, by bolder figures and more gorgeous colours; a something whose presence is rather felt than seen, and whose very harmony with the whole consists in its retiring and subdued repose.

Chapter 1.VIII.  The Enthusiastic Man Judged by the Discreet Man.

“Thou wrongest me,” said Rienzi, warmly, to Adrian, as they sat alone, towards the close of a long conference; “I do not play the part of a mere demagogue; I wish not to stir the great deeps in order that my lees of fortune may rise to the surface.  So long have I brooded over the past, that it seems to me as if I had become a part of it—­as if I had no separate existence.  I have coined my whole soul into one master passion,—­and its end is the restoration of Rome.”

“But by what means?”

“My Lord! my Lord! there is but one way to restore the greatness of a people—­it is an appeal to the people themselves.  It is not in the power of princes and barons to make a state permanently glorious; they raise themselves, but they raise not the people with them.  All great regenerations are the universal movement of the mass.”

“Nay,” answered Adrian, “then have we read history differently.  To me, all great regenerations seem to have been the work of the few, and tacitly accepted by the multitude.  But let us not dispute after the manner of the schools.  Thou sayest loudly that a vast crisis is at hand; that the Good Estate (buono stato) shall be established.  How? where are your arms?—­your soldiers?  Are the nobles less strong than heretofore?  Is the mob more bold, more constant?  Heaven knows that I speak not with the prejudices of my order—­I weep for the debasement of my country!  I am a Roman, and in that name I forget that I am a noble.  But I tremble at the storm you would raise so hazardously.  If your insurrection succeed, it will be violent:  it will be purchased by blood—­by the blood of all the loftiest names of Rome.  You will aim at a second expulsion of the Tarquins; but it will be more like a second proscription of Sylla.  Massacres and disorders never pave the way to peace.  If, on the other hand, you fail, the chains of Rome are riveted for ever:  an ineffectual struggle to escape is but an excuse for additional tortures to the slave.”