Rienzi

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Rienzi


Annibaldi was soon arrayed for the encounter, and Adrian gave the word
to the trumpeters. The Roman was of a stature almost equal to that of
Montreal, and though some years younger, seemed, in his armour, nearly
of the same thews and girth, so that the present antagonists appeared
at the first glance more evenly matched than the last. But this time
Montreal, well horsed, inspired to the utmost by shame and pride,
felt himself a match for an army; and he met the young Baron with
such prowess, that while the very plume on his casque seemed scarcely
stirred, the Italian was thrown several paces from his steed, and it was
not till some moments after his visor was removed by his squires that
he recovered his senses. This event restored Montreal to all his natural
gaiety of humour, and effectually raised the spirits of his followers,
who had felt much humbled by the previous encounter.

He himself assisted Annibaldi to rise with great courtesy, and a
profusion of compliments, which the proud Roman took in stern silence,
and then led the way to the pavilion, loudly ordering the banquet to be
spread. Annibaldi, however, loitered behind, and Adrian, who penetrated
his thoughts, and who saw that over their cups a quarrel between
the Provencal and his friend was likely to ensue, drawing him aside,
said:--"Methinks, dear Annibaldi, it would be better if you, with the
chief of our following, were to proceed onward to Fondi, where I will
join you at sunset. My squires, and some eight lances, will suffice for
my safeguard here; and, to say truth, I desire a few private words
with our strange host, in the hope that he may be peaceably induced
to withdraw from hence without the help of our Roman troops, who have
enough elsewhere to feed their valour."

Annibaldi pressed his companion's hand: "I understand thee," he replied
with a slight blush, "and, indeed, I could but ill brook the complacent
triumph of the barbarian. I accept thy offer."



Chapter 3.III. The Conversation between the Roman and the
Provencal--Adeline's History--the Moonlit Sea--the Lute and the Song.

As soon as Annibaldi, with the greater part of the retinue, was gone,
Adrian, divesting himself of his heavy greaves, entered alone the
pavilion of the Knight of St. John. Montreal had already doffed all his
armour, save the breastplate, and he now stepped forward to welcome his
guest with the winning and easy grace which better suited his birth
than his profession. He received Adrian's excuses for the absence of
Annibaldi and the other knights of his train with a smile which seemed
to prove how readily he divined the cause, and conducted him to the
other and more private division of the pavilion in which the repast
(rendered acceptable by the late exercise of guest and host) was
prepared; and here Adrian for the first time discovered Adeline. Long
inurement to the various and roving life of her lover, joined to a
certain pride which she derived from conscious, though forfeited, rank,
gave to the outward manner of that beautiful lady an ease and freedom
which often concealed, even from Montreal, her sensitiveness to her
unhappy situation. At times, indeed, when alone with Montreal, whom she
loved with all the devotion of romance, she was sensible only to the
charm of a presence which consoled her for all things; but in his
frequent absence, or on the admission of any stranger, the illusion
vanished--the reality returned. Poor lady! Nature had not formed,
education had not reared, habit had not reconciled, her to the breath of
shame!

The young Colonna was much struck by her beauty, and more by her gentle
and highborn grace. Like her lord she appeared younger than she was;
time seemed to spare a bloom which an experienced eye might have told
was destined to an early grave; and there was something almost girlish
in the lightness of her form--the braided luxuriance of her rich auburn
hair, and the colour that went and came, not only with every moment,
but almost with every word. The contrast between her and Montreal
became them both--it was the contrast of devoted reliance and protecting
strength: each looked fairer in the presence of the other: and as Adrian
sate down to the well-laden board, he thought he had never seen a pair
more formed for the poetic legends of their native Troubadours.

Montreal conversed gaily upon a thousand matters--pressed the wine
flasks--and selected for his guest the most delicate portions of the
delicious spicola of the neighbouring sea, and the rich flesh of the
wild boar of the Pontine Marshes.

"Tell me," said Montreal, as their hunger was now appeased--"tell me,
noble Adrian, how fares your kinsman, Signor Stephen? A brave old man
for his years."

"He bears him as the youngest of us," answered Adrian.

"Late events must have shocked him a little," said Montreal, with an
arch smile. "Ah, you look grave--yet commend my foresight;--I was the
first who prophesied to thy kinsman the rise of Cola di Rienzi; he seems
a great man--never more great than in conciliating the Colonna and the
Orsini."

"The Tribune," returned Adrian, evasively, "is certainly a man of
extraordinary genius. And now, seeing him command, my only wonder is how
he ever brooked to obey--majesty seems a very part of him."

"Men who win power, easily put on its harness, dignity," answered
Montreal; "and if I hear aright--(pledge me to your lady's health)--the
Tribune, if not himself nobly born will soon be nobly connected."

"He is already married to a Raselli, an old Roman house," replied
Adrian.

"You evade my pursuit,--Le doulx soupir! le doulx soupir! as the old
Cabestan has it"--said Montreal, laughing. "Well, you have pledged me
one cup to your lady, pledge another to the fair Irene, the Tribune's
sister--always provided they two are not one.--You smile and shake your
head."

"I do not disguise from you, Sir Knight," answered Adrian, "that when my
present embassy is over, I trust the alliance between the Tribune and a
Colonna will go far towards the benefit of both."

"I have heard rightly, then," said Montreal, in a grave and thoughtful
tone. "Rienzi's power must, indeed, be great."

"Of that my mission is a proof. Are you aware, Signor de Montreal, that
Louis, King of Hungary--"

"How! what of him?"

"Has referred the decision of the feud between himself and Joanna of
Naples, respecting the death of her royal spouse, his brother, to the
fiat of the Tribune? This is the first time, methinks, since the death
of Constantine, that so great a confidence and so high a charge were
ever intrusted to a Roman!"

"By all the saints in the calendar," cried Montreal, crossing himself,
"this news is indeed amazing! The fierce Louis of Hungary waive the
right of the sword, and choose other umpire than the field of battle!"

"And this," continued Adrian, in a significant tone, "this it was which
induced me to obey your courteous summons. I know, brave Montreal, that
you hold intercourse with Louis. Louis has given to the Tribune the best
pledge of his amity and alliance; will you do wisely if you--"

"Wage war with the Hungarian's ally," interrupted Montreal. "This you
were about to add; the same thought crossed myself. My Lord, pardon
me--Italians sometimes invent what they wish. On the honour of a knight
of the Empire, these tidings are the naked truth?"

"By my honour, and on the Cross," answered Adrian, drawing himself up;
"and in proof thereof, I am now bound to Naples to settle with the Queen
the preliminaries of the appointed trial."

"Two crowned heads before the tribunal of a plebeian, and one a
defendant against the charge of murther!" muttered Montreal; "the news
might well amaze me!"

He remained musing and silent a little while, till looking up, he caught
Adeline's tender gaze fixed upon him with that deep solicitude with
which she watched the outward effect of schemes and projects she was too
soft to desire to know, and too innocent to share.

"Lady mine," said the Provencal, fondly, "how sayest thou? must we
abandon our mountain castle, and these wild woodland scenes, for the
dull walls of a city? I fear me so.--The Lady Adeline," he continued,
turning to Adrian, "is of a singular bias; she hates the gay crowds
of streets and thoroughfares, and esteems no palace like the solitary
outlaw's hold. Yet, methinks, she might outshine all the faces of
Italy,--thy mistress, Lord Adrian, of course, excepted."

"It is an exception which only a lover, and that too a betrothed lover,
would dare to make," replied Adrian, gallantly.

"Nay," said Adeline, in a voice singularly sweet and clear, "nay, I know
well at what price to value my lord's flattery, and Signor di Castello's
courtesy. But you are bound, Sir Knight, to a court, that, if fame speak
true, boasts in its Queen the very miracle and mould of beauty."

"It is some years since I saw the Queen of Naples," answered Adrian;
"and I little dreamed then, when I gazed upon that angel face, that I
should live to hear her accused of the foulest murther that ever stained
even Italian royalty."

"And, as if resolved to prove her guilt," said Montreal, "ere long
be sure she will marry the very man who did the deed. Of this I have
certain proof."

Thus conversing, the Knights wore away the daylight, and beheld from the
open tent the sun cast his setting glow over the purple sea. Adeline
had long retired from the board, and they now saw her seated with her
handmaids on a mound by the beach; while the sound of her lute faintly
reached their ears. As Montreal caught the air, he turned from the
converse, and sighing, half shaded his face with his hand. Somehow or
other the two Knights had worn away all the little jealousy or pique
which they had conceived against each other at Rome. Both imbued with
the soldier-like spirit of the age, their contest in the morning had
served to inspire them with that strange kind of respect, and even
cordiality, which one brave man even still (how much more at that day!)
feels for another, whose courage he has proved while vindicating his
own. It is like the discovery of a congenial sentiment hitherto latent;
and, in a life of camps, often establishes sudden and lasting friendship
in the very lap of enmity. This feeling had been ripened by their
subsequent familiar intercourse, and was increased on Adrian's side by
the feeling, that in convincing Montreal of the policy of withdrawing
from the Roman territories, he had obtained an advantage that well
repaid whatever danger and delay he had undergone.

The sigh, and the altered manner of Montreal, did not escape Adrian, and
he naturally connected it with something relating to her whose music had
been its evident cause.

"Yon lovely dame," said he, gently, "touches the lute with an exquisite
and fairy hand, and that plaintive air seems to my ear as of the
minstrelsy of Provence."

"It is the air I taught her," said Montreal, sadly, "married as it is
to indifferent words, with which I first wooed a heart that should never
have given itself to me! Ay, young Colonna, many a night has my boat
been moored beneath the starlit Sorgia that washes her proud father's
halls, and my voice awaked the stillness of the waving sedges with a
soldier's serenade. Sweet memories! bitter fruit!"

"Why bitter? ye love each other still."

"But I am vowed to celibacy, and Adeline de Courval is leman where she
should be wedded dame. Methinks I fret at that thought even more than
she,--dear Adeline!"

"Your lady, as all would guess, is then nobly born?"

"She is," answered Montreal, with a deep and evident feeling which, save
in love, rarely, if ever, crossed his hardy breast. "She is! our tale is
a brief one:--we loved each other as children: Her family was wealthier
than mine: We were separated. I was given to understand that she
abandoned me. I despaired, and in despair I took the cross of St. John.
Chance threw us again together. I learned that her love was
undecayed. Poor child!--she was even then, sir, but a child! I,
wild,--reckless--and not unskilled, perhaps, in the arts that woo and
win. She could not resist my suit or her own affection!--We fled. In
those words you see the thread of my after history. My sword and
my Adeline were all my fortune. Society frowned on us. The Church
threatened my soul. The Grand Master my life. I became a knight of
fortune. Fate and my right hand favoured me. I have made those who
scorned me tremble at my name. That name shall yet blaze, a star or a
meteor, in the front of troubled nations, and I may yet win by force
from the Pontiff the dispensation refused to my prayers. On the same
day, I may offer Adeline the diadem and the ring.--Eno' of this;--you
marked Adeline's cheek!--Seems it not delicate? I like not that
changeful flush,--and she moves languidly,--her step that was so
blithe!"

"Change of scene and the mild south will soon restore her health," said
Adrian; "and in your peculiar life she is so little brought in contact
with others, especially of her own sex, that I trust she is but seldom
made aware of whatever is painful in her situation. And woman's love,
Montreal, as we both have learned, is a robe that wraps her from many a
storm!"

"You speak kindly," returned the Knight; "but you know not all our cause
of grief. Adeline's father, a proud sieur, died,--they said of a broken
heart,--but old men die of many another disease than that! The mother, a
dame who boasted her descent from princes, bore the matter more sternly
than the sire; clamoured for revenge,--which was odd, for she is as
religious as a Dominican, and revenge is not Christian in a woman,
though it is knightly in a man!--Well, my Lord, we had one boy, our
only child; he was Adeline's solace in my absence,--his pretty ways were
worth the world to her! She loved him so, that, but he had her eyes and
looked like her when he slept, I should have been jealous! He grew up in
our wild life, strong and comely; the young rogue, he would have been a
brave knight! My evil stars led me to Milan, where I had business with
the Visconti. One bright morning in June, our boy was stolen; verily
that June was like a December to us!"

"Stolen!--how?--by whom?"

"The first question is answered easily,--the boy was with his nurse in
the courtyard, the idle wench left him for but a minute or two--so she
avers--fetch him some childish toy; when she returned he was gone; not a
trace left, save his pretty cap with the plume in it! Poor Adeline, many
a time have I found her kissing that relic till it was wet with tears!"

"A strange fortune, in truth. But what interest could--"

"I will tell you," interrupted Montreal, "the only conjecture I could
form;--Adeline's mother, on learning we had a son, sent to Adeline a
letter, that well nigh broke her heart, reproaching her for her love
to me, and so forth, as if that had made her the vilest of the sex.
She bade her take compassion on her child, and not bring him up to a
robber's life,--so was she pleased to style the bold career of Walter de
Montreal. She offered to rear the child in her own dull halls, and fit
him, no doubt, for a shaven pate and a monk's cowl. She chafed much that
a mother would not part with her treasure! She alone, partly in revenge,
partly in silly compassion for Adeline's child, partly, it may be, from
some pious fanaticism, could, it so seemed to me, have robbed us of our
boy. On inquiry, I learned from the nurse--who, but that she was of the
same sex as Adeline, should have tasted my dagger,--that in their walks,
a woman of advanced years, but seemingly of humble rank, (that might
be disguise!) had often stopped, and caressed and admired the child. I
repaired at once to France, sought the old Castle of De Courval;--it had
passed to the next heir, and the old widow was go on, none knew whither,
but, it was conjectured, to take the veil in some remote convent."

"And you never saw her since?"

"Yes, at Rome," answered Montreal, turning pale; "when last there I
chanced suddenly upon her; and then at length I learned my boy's fate,
and the truth of my own surmise; she confessed to the theft--and my
child was dead! I have not dared to tell Adeline of this; it seems to me
as if it would be like plucking the shaft from the wounded side--and she
would die at once, bereft of the uncertainty that rankles within her.
She has still a hope--it comforts her; though my heart bleeds when I
think on its vanity. Let this pass, my Colonna."

And Montreal started to his feet as if he strove, by a strong effort, to
shake off the weakness that had crept over him in his narration.

"Think no more of it. Life is short--its thorns are many--let us not
neglect any of its flowers. This is piety and wisdom too; Nature that
meant me to struggle and to toil, gave me, happily, the sanguine heart
and the elastic soul of France; and I have lived long enough to own that
to die young is not an evil. Come, Lord Adrian, let us join my lady ere
you part, if part you must; the moon will be up soon, and Fondi is but
a short journey hence. You know that though I admire not your Petrarch,
you with more courtesy laud our Provencal ballads, and you must hear
Adeline sing one that you may prize them the more. The race of the
Troubadours is dead, but the minstrelsy survives the minstrel!"

Adrian, who scarce knew what comfort to administer to the affliction of
his companion, was somewhat relieved by the change in his mood, though
his more grave and sensitive nature was a little startled at its
suddenness. But, as we have before seen, Montreal's spirit (and this
made perhaps its fascination) was as a varying and changeful sky;
the gayest sunshine, and the fiercest storm swept over it in rapid
alternation; and elements of singular might and grandeur, which,
properly directed and concentrated, would have made him the blessing and
glory of his time, were wielded with a boyish levity, roused into war
and desolation, or lulled into repose and smoothness, with all the
suddenness of chance, and all the fickleness of caprice.

Sauntering down to the beach, the music of Adeline's lute sounded more
distinctly in their ears, and involuntarily they hushed their steps
upon the rich and odorous turf, as in a voice, though not powerful,
marvellously sweet and clear, and well adapted to the simple fashion of
the words and melody, she sang the following stanzas:--

Lay of the Lady of Provence.

1.

Ah, why art thou sad, my heart? Why
Darksome and lonely?
Frowns the face of the happy sky
Over thee only?
Ah me, ah me!
Render to joy the earth!
Grief shuns, not envies, Mirth;
But leave one quiet spot,
Where Mirth may enter not,
To sigh, Ah, me!--
Ah me.

2.

As a bird, though the sky be clear,
Feels the storm lower;
My soul bodes the tempest near,
In the sunny hour;
Ah me, ah me!
Be glad while yet we may!
I bid thee, my heart, be gay;
And still I know not why,--
Thou answerest with a sigh,
(Fond heart!) Ah me!--
Ah me!

3.

As this twilight o'er the skies,
Doubt brings the sorrow;
Who knows when the daylight dies,
What waits the morrow?
Ah me, ah me!
Be blithe, be blithe, my lute,
Thy strings will soon be mute;
Be blithe--hark! while it dies,
The note forewarning, sighs
Its last--Ah me!
Ah me!

"My own Adeline--my sweetest night-bird," half-whispered Montreal, and
softly approaching, he threw himself at his lady's feet--"thy song is
too sad for this golden eve."

"No sound ever went to the heart," said Adrian, "whose arrow was not
feathered by sadness. True sentiment, Montreal, is twin with melancholy,
though not with gloom."

The lady looked softly and approvingly up at Adrian's face; she was
pleased with its expression; she was pleased yet more with words of
which women rather than men would acknowledge the truth. Adrian returned
the look with one of deep and eloquent sympathy and respect; in fact,
the short story he had heard from Montreal had interested him deeply in
her; and never to the brilliant queen, to whose court he was bound, did
his manner wear so chivalric and earnest a homage as it did to that lone
and ill-fated lady on the twilight shores of Terracina.

Adeline blushed slightly and sighed; and then, to break the awkwardness
of a pause which had stolen over them, as Montreal, unheeding the last
remark of Adrian, was tuning the strings of the lute, she said--"Of
course the Signor di Castello shares the universal enthusiasm for
Petrarch?"

"Ay," cried Montreal; "my lady is Petrarch mad, like the rest of them:
but all I know is, that never did belted knight and honest lover woo in
such fantastic and tortured strains."

"In Italy," answered Adrian, "common language is exaggeration;--but even
your own Troubadour poetry might tell you that love, ever seeking a new
language of its own, cannot but often run into what to all but lovers
seems distortion and conceit."

"Come, dear Signor," said Montreal, placing the lute in Adrian's hands,
"let Adeline be the umpire between us, which music--yours or mine--can
woo the more blandly."

"Ah," said Adrian, laughing; "I fear me, Sir Knight, you have already
bribed the umpire."

Montreal's eyes and Adeline's met; and in that gaze Adeline forgot all
her sorrows.

With a practised and skilful hand, Adrian touched the strings; and
selecting a song which was less elaborate than those mostly in vogue
amongst his countrymen, though still conceived in the Italian spirit,
and in accordance with the sentiment he had previously expressed to
Adeline, he sang as follows:--

Love's Excuse for Sadness.

Chide not, beloved, if oft with thee I feel not rapture wholly; For aye
the heart that's fill'd with love, Runs o'er in melancholy. To streams
that glide in noon, the shade From summer skies is given; So, if my
breast reflects the cloud, 'Tis but the cloud of heaven! Thine image
glass'd within my soul So well the mirror keepeth; That, chide me not,
if with the light The shadow also sleepeth.

"And now," said Adrian, as he concluded, "the lute is to you: I but
preclude your prize."

The Provencal laughed, and shook his head.--"With any other umpire, I
had had my lute broken on my own head, for my conceit in provoking such
a rival; but I must not shrink from a contest I have myself provoked,
even though in one day twice defeated." And with that, in a deep and
exquisitely melodious voice, which wanted only more scientific culture
to have challenged any competition, the Knight of St. John poured forth:

The Lay of the Troubadour.

1.

Gentle river, the moonbeam is hush'd on thy tide,
On thy pathway of light to my lady I glide.
My boat, where the stream laves the castle, I moor,--
All at rest save the maid and her young Troubadour!
As the stars to the waters that bore
My bark, to my spirit thou art;
Heaving yet, see it bound to the shore,
So moor'd to thy beauty my heart,--
Bel' amie, bel' amie, bel' amie!

2.

Wilt thou fly from the world? It hath wealth for the vain;
But Love breaks his bond when there's gold in the chain;
Wilt thou fly from the world? It hath courts for the proud;--
But Love, born in caves, pines to death in the crowd.
Were this bosom thy world, dearest one,
Thy world could not fail to be bright;
For thou shouldst thyself be its sun,
And what spot could be dim in thy light--
Bel' amie, bel' amie, bel' amie?

3.

The rich and the great woo thee dearest; and poor,
Though his fathers were princes, thy young Troubadour!
But his heart never quail'd save to thee, his adored,--
There's no guile in his lute, and no stain on his sword.
Ah, I reck not what sorrows I know,
Could I still on thy solace confide;
And I care not, though earth be my foe,
If thy soft heart be found by my side,--
Bel' amie, bel' amie, bel' amie!

4.

The maiden she blush'd, and the maiden she sighed,
Not a cloud in the sky, not a gale on the tide;
But though tempest had raged on the wave and the wind,
That castle, methinks, had been still left behind!
Sweet lily, though bow'd by the blast,
(To this bosom transplanted) since then,
Wouldst thou change, could we call the past,
To the rock from thy garden again--
Bel' amie, bel' amie, bel' amie?

Thus they alternated the time with converse and song, as the wooded
hills threw their sharp, long shadows over the sea; while from many a
mound of waking flowers, and many a copse of citron and orange, relieved
by the dark and solemn aloe, stole the summer breeze, laden with mingled
odours; and, over the seas, coloured by the slow-fading hues of purple
and rose, that the sun had long bequeathed to the twilight, flitted the
gay fireflies that sparkle along that enchanted coast. At length, the
moon slowly rose above the dark forest-steeps, gleaming on the gay
pavilion and glittering pennon of Montreal,--on the verdant sward,--the
polished mail of the soldiers, stretched on the grass in various groups,
half-shaded by oaks and cypress, and the war-steeds grazing peaceably
together--a wild mixture of the Pastoral and the Iron time.