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

his way. Upon his countenance was deep calm but it was not the calm of contentment. He passed on, and the street was again desolate. Meanwhile Rienzi reached the Capitol in silence, and mounted to the apartments of the palace, where Nina, pale and breathless, awaited his return.

“Well, well, thou smilest! No—it is that dread smile, worse than frowns. Speak, beloved, speak! What said the Cardinal?”

“Little thou wilt love to hear. He spoke at first high and solemnly, about the crime of declaring the Romans free; next about the treason of asserting that the election of the King of Rome was in the hands of the Romans.”

“Well—thy answer.”

“That which became Rome’s Tribune: I re-asserted each right, and proved it. The Cardinal passed to other charges.”

“What?”

“The blood of the Barons by San Lorenzo—blood only shed in our own defence against perjured assailants; this is in reality the main crime. The Colonna have the Pope’s ear. Furthermore, the sacrilege—yes, the sacrilege (come laugh, Nina, laugh!) of bathing in a vase of porphyry used by Constantine while yet a heathen.”

“Can it be! What saidst thou?”

“I laughed. ‘Cardinal,’ quoth I, ‘what was not too good for a heathen is not too good for a Christian Catholic!’ And verily the sour Frenchman looked as if I had smote him on the hip. When he had done, I asked him, in my turn, ‘Is it alleged against me that I have wronged one man in my judgment-court?’—Silence. ‘Is it said that I have broken one law of the state?’—Silence. ‘Is it even whispered that trade does not flourish—that life is not safe—that abroad or at home the Roman name is not honoured, to that point which no former rule can parallel?’—Silence. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘Lord Cardinal, I demand thy thanks, not thy censure.’ The Frenchman looked, and looked, and trembled, and shrunk, and then out he spake. ‘I have but one mission to fulfil, on the part of the Pontiff—resign at once thy Tribuneship, or the Church inflicts upon thee its solemn curse.’”

“How—how?” said Nina, turning very pale; “what is it that awaits thee?”

“Excommunication!”

This awful sentence, by which the spiritual arm had so often stricken down the fiercest foe, came to Nina’s ear as a knell. She covered her face with her hands. Rienzi paced the room with rapid strides. “The curse!” he muttered; “the Church’s curse—for me—for ME!”

“Oh, Cola! didst thou not seek to pacify this stern—”

“Pacify! Death and dishonour! Pacify! ‘Cardinal,’ I said, and I felt his soul shrivel at my gaze, ‘my power I received from the people—to the people alone I render it. For my soul, man’s word cannot scathe it. Thou, haughty priest, thou thyself art the accursed, if, puppet and tool of low cabals and exiled tyrants, thou breathest but a breath in the name of the Lord of Justice, for the cause of the oppressor, and against the rights of the oppressed.’ With that I left him, and now—”

“Ay, now—now what will happen? Excommunication! In the metropolis of the Church, too—the superstition of the people! Oh, Cola!”

“If,” muttered Rienzi, “my conscience condemned me of one crime—if I had stained my hands in one just man’s blood—if I had broken one law I myself had framed—if I had taken bribes, or wronged the poor, or scorned the orphan, or shut my heart to the widow—then, then—but no! Lord, thou wilt not desert me!”

“But man may!” thought Nina mournfully, as she perceived that one of Rienzi’s dark fits of fanatical and mystical revery was growing over him—fits which he suffered no living eye, not even Nina’s, to witness when they gathered to their height. And now, indeed, after a short interval of muttered soliloquy, in which his face worked so that the veins on his temples swelled like cords, he abruptly left the room, and sought the private oratory connected with his closet. Over the emotions there indulged let us draw the veil. Who shall describe those awful and mysterious moments, when man, with all his fiery passions, turbulent thoughts, wild hopes, and despondent fears, demands the solitary audience of his Maker?

It was long after this conference with Nina, and the midnight bell had long tolled, when Rienzi stood alone, upon one of the balconies of the palace, to cool, in the starry air, the fever that yet lingered on his exhausted frame. The night was exceedingly calm, the air clear, but chill, for it was now December. He gazed intently upon those solemn orbs to which our wild credulity has referred the prophecies of our doom.

“Vain science!” thought the Tribune, “and gloomy fantasy, that man’s fate is pre-ordained—irrevocable—unchangeable, from the moment of his birth! Yet, were the dream not baseless, fain would I know which of yon stately lights is my natal star,—which images—which reflects—my career in life, and the memory I shall leave in death.” As this thought crossed him, and his gaze was still fixed above, he saw, as if made suddenly more distinct than the stars around it, that rapid and fiery comet which in the winter of 1347 dismayed the superstitions of those who recognised in the stranger of the heavens the omen of disaster and of woe. He recoiled as it met his eye, and muttered to himself, “Is such indeed my type! or, if the legendary lore speak true, and these strange fires portend nations ruined and rulers overthrown, does it foretell my fate? I will think no more.” (Alas! if by the Romans associated with the fall of Rienzi, that comet was by the rest of Europe connected with the more dire calamity of the Great Plague that so soon afterwards ensued.) As his eyes fell, they rested upon the colossal Lion of Basalt in the place below, the starlight investing its grey and towering form with a more ghostly whiteness; and then it was, that he perceived two figures in black robes lingering by the pedestal which supported the statue, and apparently engaged in some occupation which he could not guess. A fear shot through his veins, for he had never been able to divest himself of the vague idea that there was some solemn and appointed connexion between his fate and that old Lion of Basalt. Somewhat relieved, he heard his sentry challenge the intruders; and as they came forward to the light, he perceived that they wore the garments of monks.

“Molest us not, son,” said one of them to the sentry. “By order of the Legate of the Holy Father we affix to this public monument of justice and of wrath, the bull of excommunication against a heretic and rebel. WOE TO THE ACCURSED OF THE CHURCH!”