Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (distant reading .txt) 📖

hand to his brow. “Methinks either long solitude has bewildered me, or, sweet sir, your apparition dazzles. I know you not—am I sure?—” and Rienzi’s hair bristled while he slowly rose—“Am I sure that it is living man who stands before me? Angels have entered the prison-house before now. Alas! an angel’s comfort never was more needed.”

The stranger answered not, but the captive saw that his heart heaved even beneath his cloak; loud sobs choked his voice; at length, as by a violent effort, he sprung forward, and sunk at the Tribune’s feet. The disguising hat, the long mantle fell to the ground—it was the face of a woman that looked upward through passionate and glazing tears—the arms of a woman that clasped the prisoner’s knees! Rienzi gazed mute and motionless as stone. “Powers and Saints of Heaven!” he murmured at last, “do ye tempt me further!—is it?—no, no—yet speak!”

“Beloved—adored!—do you not know me?”

“It is—it is!” shrieked Rienzi wildly, “it is my Nina—my wife—my—” His voice forsook him. Clasped in each other’s arms, the unfortunates for some moments seemed to have lost even the sense of delight at their reunion. It was as an unconscious and deep trance, through which something like a dream only faintly and indistinctively stirs.

At length recovered—at length restored, the first broken exclamations, the first wild caresses of joy over—Nina lifted her head from her husband’s bosom, and gazed sadly on his countenance—“Oh, what thou hast known since we parted!—what, since that hour when, borne on by thy bold heart and wild destiny, thou didst leave me in the Imperial Court, to seek again the diadem and find the chain! Ah! why did I heed thy commands?—why suffer thee to depart alone? How often in thy progress hitherward, in doubt, in danger, might this bosom have been thy resting-place, and this voice have whispered comfort to thy soul? Thou art well, my Lord—my Cola! Thy pulse beats quicker than of old—thy brow is furrowed. Ah! tell me thou art well!”

“Well,” said Rienzi, mechanically. “Methinks so!—the mind diseased blunts all sense of bodily decay. Well—yes! And thou—thou, at least, art not changed, save to maturer beauty. The glory of the laurel-wreath has not faded from thy brow. Thou shalt yet—” then breaking off abruptly—“Rome—tell me of Rome! And thou—how camest thou hither? Ah! perhaps my doom is sealed, and in their mercy they have vouchsafed that I should see thee once more before the deathsman blinds me. I remember, it is the grace vouchsafed to malefactors. When I was a lord of life and death, I too permitted the meanest criminal to say farewell to those he loved.”

“No—not so, Cola!” exclaimed Nina, putting her hand before his mouth. “I bring thee more auspicious tidings. Tomorrow thou art to be heard. The favour of the Court is propitiated. Thou wilt be acquitted.”

“Ha! speak again.”

“Thou wilt be heard, my Cola—thou must be acquitted!”

“And Rome be free!—Great God, I thank Thee!”

The Tribune sank on his knees, and never had his heart, in his youngest and purest hour, poured forth thanksgiving more fervent, yet less selfish. When he rose again, the whole man seemed changed. His eye had resumed its earlier expressions of deep and serene command. Majesty sate upon his brow. The sorrows of the exile were forgotten. In his sanguine and rapid thoughts, he stood once more the guardian of his country,—and its sovereign!

Nina gazed upon him with that intense and devoted worship, which steeped her vainer and her harder qualities in all the fondness of the softest woman. “Such,” thought she, “was his look eight years ago, when he left my maiden chamber, full of the mighty schemes which liberated Rome—such his look, when at the dawning sun he towered amidst the crouching Barons, and the kneeling population of the city he had made his throne!”

“Yes, Nina!” said Rienzi, as he turned and caught her eye. “My soul tells me that my hour is at hand. If they try me openly, they dare not convict—if they acquit me, they dare not but restore. Tomorrow, saidst thou, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, Rienzi; be prepared!”

“I am—for triumph! But tell me what happy chance brought thee to Avignon?”

“Chance, Cola!” said Nina, with reproachful tenderness. “Could I know that thou wert in the dungeons of the Pontiff, and linger in idle security at Prague? Even at the Emperor’s Court thou hadst thy partisans and favourers. Gold was easily procured. I repaired to Florence—disguised my name—and came hither to plot, to scheme, to win thy liberty, or to die with thee. Ah! did not thy heart tell thee that morning and night the eyes of thy faithful Nina gazed upon this gloomy tower; and that one friend, humble though she be, never could forsake thee!”

“Sweet Nina! Yet—yet—at Avignon power yields not to beauty without reward. Remember, there is a worse death than the pause of life.”

Nina turned pale. “Fear not,” she said, with a low but determined voice; “fear not, that men’s lips should say Rienzi’s wife delivered him. None in this corrupted Court know that I am thy wife.”

“Woman,” said the Tribune, sternly; “thy lips elude the answer I would seek. In our degenerate time and land, thy sex and ours forget too basely what foulness writes a leprosy in the smallest stain upon a matron’s honour. That thy heart would never wrong me, I believe; but if thy weakness, thy fear of my death should wrong me, thou art a bitterer foe to Rienzi than the swords of the Colonna. Nina, speak!”

“Oh, that my soul could speak,” answered Nina. “Thy words are music to me, and not a thought of mine but echoes them. Could I touch this hand, could I meet that eye, and not know that death were dearer to thee than shame? Rienzi, when last we parted, in sadness, yet in hope, what were thy words to me?”

“I remember them well,” returned the Tribune: “‘I leave thee,’ I said, ‘to keep alive at the Emperor’s Court, by thy genius, the Great Cause. Thou hast youth and beauty—and courts have lawless and ruffian suitors. I give thee no caution; it were beneath thee and me. But I leave thee the power of death.’ And with that, Nina—”

“Thy hands tremblingly placed in mine this dagger. I live—need I say more?”

“My noble and beloved Nina, it is enough. Keep the dagger yet.”

“Yes; till we meet in the Capitol of Rome!”

A slight tap was heard at the door; Nina regained, in an instant, her disguise.

“It is on the stroke of midnight,” said the gaoler, appearing at the threshold.

“I come,” said Nina.

“And thou hast to prepare thy thoughts,” she whispered to Rienzi: “arm all thy glorious intellect. Alas! is it again we part? How my heart sinks!”

The presence of the gaoler at the threshold broke the bitterness of parting by abridging it. The false page pressed her lips on the prisoner’s hand, and left the cell.

The gaoler, lingering behind for a moment, placed a parchment on the