Rienzi

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Rienzi


As the trumpet from the distance sent forth its long and melancholy
note, it was as the last warning of the parting genius of the place;
and when silence swallowed up the sound, a gloom fell over the whole
assembly. They began to regret, to repent, when regret and repentance
availed no more. The buffoonery of Baroncelli became suddenly
displeasing; and the orator had the mortification of seeing his audience
disperse in all directions, just as he was about to inform them what
great things he himself could do in their behalf.

Meanwhile the Tribune, passing unscathed through the dangerous quarter
of the enemy, who, dismayed at his approach, shrunk within their
fortress, proceeded to the Castle of St. Angelo, whither Nina had
already preceded him; and which he entered to find that proud lady with
a smile for his safety,--without a tear for his reverse.



Chapter 5.VII. The Successors of an Unsuccessful Revolution--Who is to
Blame--the Forsaken one or the Forsakers?

Cheerfully broke the winter sun over the streets of Rome, as the army
of the Barons swept along them. The Cardinal Legate at the head; the old
Colonna (no longer haughty and erect, but bowed, and broken-hearted
at the loss of his sons) at his right hand;--the sleek smile of Luca
Savelli--the black frown of Rinaldo Orsini, were seen close behind. A
long but barbarous array it was; made up chiefly of foreign hirelings;
nor did the procession resemble the return of exiled citizens, but the
march of invading foes.

"My Lord Colonna," said the Cardinal Legate, a small withered man, by
birth a Frenchman, and full of the bitterest prejudices against the
Romans, who had in a former mission very ill received him, as was their
wont with foreign ecclesiastics; "this Pepin, whom Montreal has deputed
at your orders, hath done us indeed good service."

The old Lord bowed, but made no answer. His strong intellect was already
broken, and there was dotage in his glassy eye. The Cardinal muttered,
"He hears me not; sorrow hath brought him to second childhood!" and
looking back, motioned to Luca Savelli to approach.

"Luca," said the Legate, "it was fortunate that the Hungarian's black
banner detained the Provencal at Aversa. Had he entered Rome, we might
have found Rienzi's successor worse than the Tribune himself. Montreal,"
he added, with a slight emphasis and a curled lip, "is a gentleman, and
a Frenchman. This Pepin, who is his delegate, we must bribe, or menace
to our will."

"Assuredly," answered Savelli, "it is not a difficult task: for Montreal
calculated on a more stubborn contest, which he himself would have found
leisure to close--"

"As Podesta, or Prince of Rome! the modest man! We Frenchmen have a due
sense of our own merits; but this sudden victory surprises him as it
doth us, Luca; and we shall wrest the prey from Pepin, ere Montreal can
come to his help! But Rienzi must die. He is still, I hear, shut up in
St. Angelo. The Orsini shall storm him there ere the day be much older.
Today we possess the Capitol--annul all the rebel's laws--break up his
ridiculous parliament, and put all the government of the city under
three senators--Rinaldo Orsini, Colonna, and myself; you, my Lord, I
trust, we shall fitly provide for."

"Oh! I am rewarded enough by returning to my palace; and a descent
on the Jewellers' quarter will soon build up its fortifications. Luca
Savelli is not an ambitious man. He wants but to live in peace."

The Cardinal smiled sourly, and took the turn towards the Capitol.

In the front space the usual gapers were assembled. "Make way! make
way! knaves!" cried the guards, trampling on either side the crowd, who,
accustomed to the sedate and courteous order of Rienzi's guard, fell
back too slowly for many of them to escape severe injury from the pikes
of the soldiers and the hoofs of the horses. Our friend, Luigi, the
butcher, was one of these, and the surliness of the Roman blood was past
boiling heat when he received in his ample stomach the blunt end of a
German's pike. "There, Roman," said the rude mercenary, in his barbarous
attempt at Italian, "make way for your betters; you have had enough
crowds and shows of late, in all conscience."

"Betters!" gulped out the poor butcher; "a Roman has no betters; and if
I had not lost two brothers by San Lorenzo, I would--"

"The dog is mutinous," said one of the followers of the Orsini,
succeeding the German who had passed on, "and talks of San Lorenzo!"

"Oh!" said another Orsinist, who rode abreast, "I remember him of old.
He was one of Rienzi's gang."

"Was he?" said the other, sternly; "then we cannot begin salutary
examples too soon;" and, offended at something swaggering and insolent
in the butcher's look, the Orsinist coolly thrust him through the heart
with his pike, and rode on over his body.

"Shame! Shame!" "Murder! Murder!" cried the crowd: and they began to
press, in the passion of the moment, round the fierce guards.

The Legate heard the cry, and saw the rush: he turned pale. "The rascals
rebel again!" he faltered.

"No, your Eminence--no," said Luca; "but it may be as well to infuse a
wholesome terror; they are all unarmed; let me bid the guards disperse
them. A word will do it."

The Cardinal assented; the word was given; and, in a few minutes, the
soldiery, who still smarted under the vindictive memory of defeat from
an undisciplined multitude, scattered the crowd down the streets without
scruple or mercy--riding over some, spearing others--filling the air
with shrieks and yells, and strewing the ground with almost as many
men as a few days before would have sufficed to have guarded Rome, and
preserved the constitution! Through this wild, tumultuous scene, and
over the bodies of its victims, rode the Legate and his train, to
receive in the Hall of the Capitol the allegiance of the citizens, and
to proclaim the return of the oppressors.

As they dismounted at the stairs, a placard in large letters struck
the eye of the Legate. It was placed upon the pedestal of the Lion of
Basalt, covering the very place that had been occupied by the bull of
excommunication. The words were few, and ran thus:

"TREMBLE! RIENZI SHALL RETURN!"

"How! what means this mummery!" cried the Legate, trembling already, and
looking round to the nobles.

"Please your Eminence," said one of the councillors, who had come from
the Capitol to meet the Legate, "we saw it at daybreak, the ink yet
moist, as we entered the Hall. We deemed it best to leave it for your
Eminence to deal with."

"You deemed! Who are you, then?"

"One of the members of the Council, your Eminence, and a stanch opponent
of the Tribune, as is well known, when he wanted the new tax--"

"Council--trash! No more councils now! Order is restored at last. The
Orsini and the Colonna will look to you in future. Resist a tax, did
you? Well, that was right when proposed by a tyrant; but I warn you,
friend, to take care how you resist the tax we shall impose. Happy
if your city can buy its peace with the Church on any terms:--and his
Holiness is short of the florins."

The discomfited councillor shrank back.

"Tear off yon insolent placard. Nay, hold! fix over it our proclamation
of ten thousand florins for the heretic's head! Ten thousand? methinks
that is too much now--we will alter the cipher. Meanwhile Rinaldo
Orsini, Lord Senator, march thy soldiers to St. Angelo; let us see if
the heretic can stand a siege."

"It needs not, your Eminence," said the councillor, again officiously
bustling up; "St. Angelo is surrendered. The Tribune, his wife, and one
page, escaped last night, it is said, in disguise."

"Ha!" said the old Colonna, whose dulled sense had at length arrived at
the conclusion that something extraordinary arrested the progress of his
friends. "What is the matter? What is that placard? Will no one tell me
the words? My old eyes are dim."

As he uttered the questions, in the shrill and piercing treble of age,
a voice replied in a loud and deep tone--none knew whence it came; the
crowd was reduced to a few stragglers, chiefly friars in cowl and
serge, whose curiosity nought could daunt, and whose garb ensured them
safety--the soldiers closed the rear: a voice, I say, came, startling
the colour from many a cheek--in answer to the Colonna, saying:

"TREMBLE! RIENZI SHALL RETURN!"




BOOK VI. THE PLAGUE.

"Erano gli anni della fruttifera Incarnazione del Figliuolo
di Dio al numero pervenuti di mille trecento quarant'otto,
quando nell' egregia citta di Fiorenza oltre ad ogni altra
Italica bellissima, pervenna la mortifera pestilenza."--
Boccaccio, "Introduzione al Decamerone".

"The years of the fructiferous incarnation of the Son of God
had reached the number of one thousand three hundred and
forty-eight, when into the illustrious city of Florence,
beautiful beyond every other in Italy, entered the death-
fraught pestilence."--"Introduction to the Decameron".




Chapter 6.1. The Retreat of the Lover.

By the borders of one of the fairest lakes of Northern Italy stood the
favourite mansion of Adrian di Castello, to which in his softer and
less patriotic moments his imagination had often and fondly turned;
and thither the young nobleman, dismissing his more courtly and
distinguished companions in the Neapolitan embassy, retired after his
ill-starred return to Rome. Most of those thus dismissed joined the
Barons; the young Annibaldi, whose daring and ambitious nature had
attached him strongly to the Tribune, maintained a neutral ground; he
betook himself to his castle in the Campagna, and did not return to Rome
till the expulsion of Rienzi.

The retreat of Irene's lover was one well fitted to feed his melancholy
reveries. Without being absolutely a fortress, it was sufficiently
strong to resist any assault of the mountain robbers or petty tyrants in
the vicinity; while, built by some former lord from the materials of
the half-ruined villas of the ancient Romans, its marbled columns and
tesselated pavements relieved with a wild grace the grey stone walls and
massive towers of feudal masonry. Rising from a green eminence gently
sloping to the lake, the stately pile cast its shadow far and dark over
the beautiful waters; by its side, from the high and wooded mountains on
the background, broke a waterfall, in irregular and sinuous course--now
hid by the foliage, now gleaming in the light, and collecting itself at
last in a broad basin--beside which a little fountain, inscribed with
half-obliterated letters, attested the departed elegance of the classic
age--some memento of lord and poet whose very names were lost; thence
descending through mosses and lichen, and odorous herbs, a brief,
sheeted stream bore its surplus into the lake. And there, amidst the
sturdier and bolder foliage of the North, grew, wild and picturesque,
many a tree transplanted, in ages back, from the sunnier East; not
blighted nor stunted in that golden clime, which fosters almost every
produce of nature as with a mother's care. The place was remote and
solitary. The roads that conducted to it from the distant towns were
tangled, intricate, mountainous, and beset by robbers. A few cottages,
and a small convent, a quarter of a league up the verdant margin, were
the nearest habitations; and, save by some occasional pilgrim or some
bewildered traveller, the loneliness of the mansion was rarely invaded.
It was precisely the spot which proffered rest to a man weary of the
world, and indulged the memories which grow in rank luxuriance over the
wrecks of passion. And he whose mind, at once gentle and self-dependent,
can endure solitude, might have ransacked all earth for a more fair and
undisturbed retreat.

But not to such a solitude had the earlier dreams of Adrian dedicated
the place. Here had he thought--should one bright being have
presided--here should love have found its haven: and hither, when love
at length admitted of intrusion, hither might wealth and congenial
culture have invited all the gentler and better spirits which had begun
to move over the troubled face of Italy, promising a second and younger
empire of poesy, and lore, and art. To the graceful and romantic but
somewhat pensive and inert, temperament of the young noble, more
adapted to calm and civilized than stormy and barbarous times, ambition
proffered no reward so grateful as lettered leisure and intellectual
repose. His youth coloured by the influence of Petrarch, his manhood
had dreamed of a happier Vaucluse not untenanted by a Laura. The visions
which had connected the scene with the image of Irene made the place
still haunted by her shade; and time and absence only ministering to his
impassioned meditations, deepened his melancholy and increased his love.

In this lone retreat--which even in describing from memory, for these
eyes have seen, these feet have trodden, this heart yet yearneth for,
the spot--which even, I say, in thus describing, seems to me (and haply
also to the gentle reader) a grateful and welcome transit from the
storms of action and the vicissitudes of ambition, so long engrossing
the narrative;--in this lone retreat Adrian passed the winter, which
visits with so mild a change that intoxicating clime. The roar of the
world without was borne but in faint and indistinct murmurings to his
ear. He learned only imperfectly, and with many contradictions, the
news which broke like a thunderbolt over Italy, that the singular and
aspiring man--himself a revolution--who had excited the interest of all
Europe, the brightest hopes of the enthusiastic, the profusest adulation
of the great, the deepest terror of the despot, the wildest aspirations
of all free spirits, had been suddenly stricken from his state, his name
branded and his head proscribed. This event, which happened at the
end of December, reached Adrian, through a wandering pilgrim, at the
commencement of March, somewhat more than two months after the date; the
March of that awful year 1348, which saw Europe, and Italy especially,
desolated by the direst pestilence which history has recorded, accursed
alike by the numbers and the celebrity of its victims, and yet strangely
connected with some not unpleasing images by the grace of Boccaccio and
the eloquence of Petrarch.

The pilgrim who informed Adrian of the revolution at Rome was unable to
give him any clue to the present fate of Rienzi or his family. It was
only known that the Tribune and his wife had escaped, none knew whither;
many guessed that they were already dead, victims to the numerous
robbers who immediately on the fall of the Tribune settled back to their
former habits, sparing neither age nor sex, wealth nor poverty. As all
relating to the ex-Tribune was matter of eager interest, the pilgrim had
also learned that, previous to the fall of Rienzi, his sister had left
Rome, but it was not known to what place she had been conveyed.

The news utterly roused Adrian from his dreaming life. Irene was then
in the condition his letter dared to picture--severed from her brother,
fallen from her rank, desolate and friendless. "Now," said the generous
and high-hearted lover, "she may be mine without a disgrace to my name.
Whatever Rienzi's faults, she is not implicated in them. Her hands are
not red with my kinsman's blood; nor can men say that Adrian di Castello
allies himself with a House whose power is built upon the ruins of
the Colonnas. The Colonna are restored--again triumphant--Rienzi is
nothing--distress and misfortune unite me at once to her on whom they
fall!"

But how were these romantic resolutions to be executed--Irene's
dwelling-place unknown? He resolved himself to repair to Rome and make
the necessary inquiries: accordingly he summoned his retainers:--blithe
tidings to them, those of travel! The mail left the armoury--the banner
the hall--and after two days of animated bustle, the fountain by which
Adrian had passed so many hours of revery was haunted only by the
birds of the returning spring; and the nightly lamp no longer cast its
solitary ray from his turret chamber over the bosom of the deserted
lake.



Chapter 6.II. The Seeker.

It was a bright, oppressive, sultry morning, when a solitary horseman
was seen winding that unequalled road, from whose height, amidst
figtrees, vines, and olives, the traveller beholds gradually break upon
his gaze the enchanting valley of the Arno, and the spires and domes of
Florence. But not with the traveller's customary eye of admiration and
delight passed that solitary horseman, and not upon the usual activity,
and mirth, and animation of the Tuscan life, broke that noon-day sun.
All was silent, void, and hushed; and even in the light of heaven there
seemed a sicklied and ghastly glare. The cottages by the road-side were
some shut up and closed, some open, but seemingly inmateless. The plough
stood still, the distaff plied not: horse and man had a dreary holiday.
There was a darker curse upon the land than the curse of Cain! Now
and then a single figure, usually clad in the gloomy robe of a friar,
crossed the road, lifting towards the traveller a livid and amazed
stare, and then hurried on, and vanished beneath some roof, whence
issued a faint and dying moan, which but for the exceeding stillness
around could scarcely have pierced the threshold. As the traveller
neared the city, the scene became less solitary, yet more dread. There
might be seen carts and litters, thick awnings wrapped closely round
them, containing those who sought safety in flight, forgetful that the
Plague was everywhere! And while these gloomy vehicles, conducted by
horses, gaunt, shadowy skeletons, crawling heavily along, passed by,
like hearses of the dead, sometimes a cry burst the silence in which
they moved, and the traveller's steed started aside, as some wretch, on
whom the disease had broke forth, was dropped from the vehicle by the
selfish inhumanity of his comrades, and left to perish by the way.
Hard by the gate a waggon paused, and a man with a mask threw out its
contents in a green slimy ditch that bordered the road. These were
garments and robes of all kind and value; the broidered mantle of the
gallant, the hood and veil of my lady, and the rags of the peasant.
While glancing at the labour of the masker, the cavalier beheld a herd
of swine, gaunt and half famished, run to the spot in the hopes of
food, and the traveller shuddered to think what food they might have
anticipated! But ere he reached the gate, those of the animals that had
been busiest rooting at the infectious heap, dropped down dead amongst
their fellows. (The same spectacle greeted, and is recorded by,
Boccaccio.)

"Ho, ho," said the masker, and his hollow voice sounded yet more hollow
through his vizard,--"comest thou here to die, stranger? See, thy brave
mantle of triple-pile and golden broidery will not save thee from the
gavocciolo. (The tumour that made the fatal symptom.) Ride on, ride
on;--today fit morsel for thy lady's kiss, tomorrow too foul for the rat
and worm!"

Replying not to this hideous welcome, Adrian, for it was he, pursued his
way. The gates stood wide open: this was the most appalling sign of all,
for, at first, the most jealous precaution had been taken against the
ingress of strangers. Now all care, all foresight, all vigilance, were
vain. And thrice nine warders had died at that single post, and the
officers to appoint their successors were dead too! Law and Police, and
the Tribunals of Health, and the Boards of Safety, Death had stopped
them all! And the Plague killed art itself, social union, the harmony
and mechanism of civilization, as if they had been bone and flesh!

So, mute and solitary, went on the lover, in his quest of love, resolved
to find and to save his betrothed, and guided (that faithful and loyal
knight!) through the Wilderness of Horror by the blessed hope of that
strange passion, noblest of all when noble, basest of all when base!
He came into a broad and spacious square lined with palaces, the usual
haunt of the best and most graceful nobility of Italy. The stranger
was alone now, and the tramp of his gallant steed sounded ghastly and
fearful in his own ears, when just as he turned the corner of one of the
streets that led from it, he saw a woman steal forth with a child in her
arms, while another, yet in infancy clung to her robe. She held a large
bunch of flowers to her nostrils, (the fancied and favourite mode to
prevent infection), and muttered to the children, who were moaning with
hunger,--"Yes, yes, you shall have food! Plenty of food now for the
stirring forth. But oh, that stirring forth!"--and she peered about and
round, lest any of the diseased might be near.

"My friend," said he, "can you direct me to the convent of--"

"Away, man, away!" shrieked the woman.

"Alas!" said Adrian, with a mournful smile, "can you not see that I am
not, as yet, one to spread contagion?"

But the woman, unheeding him, fled on; when, after a few paces, she was
arrested by the child that clung to her.

"Mother, mother!" it cried, "I am sick--I cannot stir."

The woman halted, tore aside the child's robe, saw under the arm the
fatal tumour, and, deserting her own flesh, fled with a shriek along the
square. The shriek rang long in Adrian's ears, though not aware of the
unnatural cause;--the mother feared not for her infant, but herself. The
voice of Nature was no more heeded in that charnel city than it is in
the tomb itself! Adrian rode on at a brisker pace, and came at length
before a stately church; its doors were wide open, and he saw within
a company of monks (the church had no other worshippers, and they were
masked) gathered round the altar, and chanting the Miserere Domine;--the
ministers of God, in a city hitherto boasting the devoutest population
in Italy, without a flock!

The young Cavalier paused before the door, and waited till the service
was done, and the monks descended the steps into the street.

"Holy fathers," said he then, "may I pray your goodness to tell me my
nearest way to the convent Santa Maria de' Pazzi?"

"Son," said one of these featureless spectres, for so they seemed in
their shroud-like robes, and uncouth vizards,--"son, pass on your
way, and God be with you. Robbers or revellers may now fill the holy
cloisters you speak of. The abbess is dead; and many a sister sleeps
with her. And the nuns have fled from the contagion."

Adrian half fell from his horse, and, as he still remained rooted to the
spot, the dark procession swept on, hymning in solemn dirge through the
desolate street the monastic chaunt--

"By the Mother and the Son,
Death endured and mercy won:
Spare us, sinners though we be;
Miserere Domine!"

Recovering from his stupor, Adrian regained the brethren, and, as they
closed the burthen of their song, again accosted them.

"Holy fathers, dismiss me not thus. Perchance the one I seek may yet be
heard of at the convent. Tell me which way to shape my course."

"Disturb us not, son," said the monk who spoke before. "It is an ill
omen for thee to break thus upon the invocations of the ministers of
Heaven."

"Pardon, pardon! I will do ample penance, pay many masses; but I seek a
dear friend--the way--the way--"

"To the right, till you gain the first bridge. Beyond the third bridge,
on the riverside, you will find the convent," said another monk, moved
by the earnestness of Adrian.

"Bless you, holy father," faltered forth the Cavalier, and spurred
his steed in the direction given. The friars heeded him not, but again
resumed their dirge. Mingled with the sound of his horse's hoofs on the
clattering pavement, came to the rider's ear the imploring line--

"Miserere Domine!"

Impatient, sick at heart, desperate, Adrian flew through the street at
the full speed of his horse. He passed the marketplace--it was empty
as the desert;--the gloomy and barricadoed streets, in which the
countercries of Guelf and Ghibeline had so often cheered on the Chivalry
and Rank of Florence. Now huddled together in vault and pit, lay Guelf
and Ghibeline, knightly spurs and beggar's crutch. To that silence the
roar even of civil strife would have been a blessing! The first bridge,
the riverside, the second, the third bridge, all were gained, and Adrian
at last reined his steed before the walls of the convent. He fastened
his steed to the porch, in which the door stood ajar, half torn from its
hinges, traversed the court, gained the opposite door that admitted to
the main building, came to the jealous grating, now no more a barrier
from the profane world, and as he there paused a moment to recover
breath and nerve, wild laughter and loud song, interrupted and mixed
with oaths, startled his ear. He pushed aside the grated door, entered,
and, led by the sounds, came to the refectory. In that meeting-place of
the severe and mortified maids of heaven, he now beheld gathered round
the upper table, used of yore by the abbess, a strange, disorderly,
ruffian herd, who at first glance seemed indeed of all ranks, for some
wore serge, or even rags, others were tricked out in all the bravery
of satin and velvet, plume and mantle. But a second glance sufficed to
indicate that the companions were much of the same degree, and that the
finery of the more showy was but the spoil rent from unguarded palaces
or tenantless bazaars; for under plumed hats, looped with jewels, were
grim, unwashed, unshaven faces, over which hung the long locks which the
professed brethren of the sharp knife and hireling arm had just begun
to assume, serving them often instead of a mask. Amidst these savage
revellers were many women, young and middle-aged, foul and fair, and
Adrian piously shuddered to see amongst the loose robes and uncovered
necks of the professional harlots the saintly habit and beaded rosary
of nuns. Flasks of wine, ample viands, gold and silver vessels, mostly
consecrated to holy rites, strewed the board. As the young Roman paused
spellbound at the threshold, the man who acted as president of the
revel, a huge, swarthy ruffian, with a deep scar over his face, which,
traversing the whole of the left cheek and upper lip, gave his large
features an aspect preternaturally hideous, called out to him--