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

would infallibly have crushed him to the earth. Ere the smith could gain time for a second blow, Adrian’s sword passed twice through his right arm, and the weapon fell heavily to the ground.

“Slay him, slay him!” cried several of the clients of the Colonna, now pressing, dastard-like, round the disarmed and disabled smith.

“Ay, slay him!” said, in tolerable Italian, but with a barbarous accent, one man, half-clad in armour, who had but just joined the group, and who was one of those wild German bandits whom the Colonna held in their pay; “he belongs to a horrible gang of miscreants sworn against all order and peace. He is one of Rienzi’s followers, and, bless the Three Kings! raves about the People.”

“Thou sayest right, barbarian,” said the sturdy smith, in a loud voice, and tearing aside the vest from his breast with his left hand; “come all—Colonna and Orsini—dig to this heart with your sharp blades, and when you have reached the centre, you will find there the object of your common hatred—‘Rienzi and the People!’”

As he uttered these words, in language that would have seemed above his station (if a certain glow and exaggeration of phrase and sentiment were not common, when excited, to all the Romans), the loudness of his voice rose above the noise immediately round him, and stilled, for an instant, the general din; and when, at last, the words, “Rienzi and the People” rang forth, they penetrated midway through the increasing crowd, and were answered as by an echo, with a hundred voices—“Rienzi and the People!”

But whatever impression the words of the mechanic made on others, it was equally visible in the young Colonna. At the name of Rienzi the glow of excitement vanished from his cheek; he started back, muttered to himself, and for a moment seemed, even in the midst of that stirring commotion, to be lost in a moody and distant revery. He recovered, as the shout died away; and saying to the smith, in a low tone, “Friend, I am sorry for thy wound; but seek me on the morrow, and thou shalt find thou hast wronged me;” he beckoned to the German to follow him, and threaded his way through the crowd, which generally gave back as he advanced. For the bitterest hatred to the order of the nobles was at that time in Rome mingled with a servile respect for their persons, and a mysterious awe of their uncontrollable power.

As Adrian passed through that part of the crowd in which the fray had not yet commenced, the murmurs that followed him were not those which many of his race could have heard.

“A Colonna,” said one.

“Yet no ravisher,” said another, laughing wildly.

“Nor murtherer,” muttered a third, pressing his hand to his breast. “‘Tis not against him that my father’s blood cries aloud.”

“Bless him,” said a fourth, “for as yet no man curses him!”

“Ah, God help us!” said an old man, with a long grey beard, leaning on his staff: “The serpent’s young yet; the fangs will show by and by.”

“For shame, father! he is a comely youth, and not proud in the least. What a smile he hath!” quoth a fair matron, who kept on the outskirt of the melee.

“Farewell to a man’s honour when a noble smiles on his wife!” was the answer.

“Nay,” said Luigi, a jolly butcher, with a roguish eye, “what a man can win fairly from maid or wife, that let him do, whether plebeian or noble—that’s my morality; but when an ugly old patrician finds fair words will not win fair looks, and carries me off a dame on the back of a German boar, with a stab in the side for comfort to the spouse,—then, I say, he is a wicked man, and an adulterer.”

While such were the comments and the murmurs that followed the noble, very different were the looks and words that attended the German soldier.

Equally, nay, with even greater promptitude, did the crowd make way at his armed and heavy tread; but not with looks of reverence:—the eye glared as he approached; but the cheek grew pale—the head bowed—the lip quivered; each man felt a shudder of hate and fear, as recognizing a dread and mortal foe. And well and wrathfully did the fierce mercenary note the signs of the general aversion. He pushed on rudely—half-smiling in contempt, half-frowning in revenge, as he looked from side to side; and his long, matted, light hair, tawny-coloured moustache, and brawny front, contrasted strongly with the dark eyes, raven locks, and slender frames of the Italians.

“May Lucifer double damn those German cut-throats!” muttered, between his grinded teeth, one of the citizens.

“Amen!” answered, heartily, another.

“Hush!” said a third, timorously looking round; “if one of them hear thee, thou art a lost man.”

“Oh, Rome! Rome! to what art thou fallen!” said bitterly one citizen, clothed in black, and of a higher seeming than the rest; “when thou shudderest in thy streets at the tread of a hired barbarian!”

“Hark to one of our learned men, and rich citizens!” said the butcher, reverently.

“‘Tis a friend of Rienzi’s,” quoth another of the group, lifting his cap.

With downcast eyes, and a face in which grief, shame, and wrath, were visibly expressed, Pandulfo di Guido, a citizen of birth and repute, swept slowly through the crowd, and disappeared.

Meanwhile, Adrian, having gained a street which, though in the neighbourhood of the crowd, was empty and desolate, turned to his fierce comrade. “Rodolf!” said he, “mark!—no violence to the citizens. Return to the crowd, collect the friends of our house, withdraw them from the scene; let not the Colonna be blamed for this day’s violence; and assure our followers, in my name, that I swear, by the knighthood I received at the Emperor’s hands, that by my sword shall Martino di Porto be punished for his outrage. Fain would I, in person, allay the tumult, but my presence only seems to sanction it. Go—thou hast weight with them all.”

“Ay, Signor, the weight of blows!” answered the grim soldier. “But the command is hard; I would fain let their puddle-blood flow an hour or two longer. Yet, pardon me; in obeying thy orders, do I obey those of my master, thy kinsman? It is old Stephen Colonna—who seldom spares blood or treasure, God bless him—(save his own!)—whose money I hold, and to whose hests I am sworn.”

“Diavolo!” muttered the cavalier, and the angry spot was on his cheek; but, with the habitual self-control of the Italian nobles, he smothered his rising choler, and said aloud, with calmness, but dignity—

“Do as I bid thee; check this tumult—make us the forbearing party. Let all be still within one hour hence, and call on me tomorrow for thy reward; be this purse an earnest of my future thanks. As for my kinsman, whom I command thee to name more reverently, ‘tis in his name I speak. Hark! the din increases—the contest swells—go—lose not another moment.”

Somewhat awed by the quiet firmness of the patrician, Rodolf nodded, without answer, slid the money into his bosom, and stalked away into the