Rienzi

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Rienzi


"Why, how now, Signor di Castello, is our company so unpleasing, is our
music so jarring, or are our brows so wrinkled, that you should fly as
the traveller flies from the witches he surprises at Benevento? Nay, you
cannot mean to leave us yet?"

"Fair dame," returned the cavalier, somewhat disconcerted, "it is in
vain that I seek to rally my mournful spirits, or to fit myself for the
court to which nothing sad should come. Your laws hang about me like a
culprit--better timely flight than harsh expulsion."

As he spoke he moved on, and would have passed the gate, but Mariana
caught his arm.

"Nay," said she, softly; "are there no eyes of dark light, and no neck
of wintry snow, that can compensate to thee for the absent one? Tarry
and forget, as doubtless in absence even thou art forgotten!"

"Lady," answered Adrian, with great gravity, not unmixed with an
ill-suppressed disdain, "I have not sojourned long enough amidst the
sights and sounds of woe, to blunt my heart and spirit into callousness
to all around. Enjoy, if thou canst, and gather the rank roses of the
sepulchre; but to me, haunted still by funeral images, Beauty fails to
bring delight, and Love,--even holy love--seems darkened by the Shadow
of Death. Pardon me, and farewell."

"Go, then," said the Florentine, stung and enraged at his coldness; "go
and find your mistress amidst the associations on which it pleases your
philosophy to dwell. I did but deceive thee, blind fool! as I had hoped
for thine own good, when I told thee Irene--(was that her name?)--was
gone from Florence. Of her I know nought, and heard nought, save from
thee. Go back and search the vault, and see whether thou lovest her
still!"



Chapter 6.IV. We Obtain What We Seek, and Know it Not.

In the fiercest heat of the day, and on foot, Adrian returned to
Florence. As he approached the city, all that festive and gallant scene
he had quitted seemed to him like a dream; a vision of the gardens and
bowers of an enchantress, from which he woke abruptly as a criminal
may wake on the morning of his doom to see the scaffold and the
deathsman;--so much did each silent and lonely step into the funeral
city bring back his bewildered thoughts at once to life and to death.
The parting words of Mariana sounded like a knell at his heart. And
now as he passed on--the heat of the day, the lurid atmosphere, long
fatigue, alternate exhaustion and excitement, combining with the
sickness of disappointment, the fretting consciousness of precious
moments irretrievably lost, and his utter despair of forming any
systematic mode of search--fever began rapidly to burn through his
veins. His temples felt oppressed as with the weight of a mountain; his
lips parched with intolerable thirst; his strength seemed suddenly to
desert him; and it was with pain and labour that he dragged one languid
limb after the other.

"I feel it," thought he, with the loathing nausea and shivering dread
with which nature struggles ever against death; "I feel it upon me--the
Devouring and the Viewless--I shall perish, and without saving her; nor
shall even one grave contain us!"

But these thoughts served rapidly to augment the disease which began to
prey upon him; and ere he reached the interior of the city, even thought
itself forsook him. The images of men and houses grew indistinct and
shadowy before his eyes; the burning pavement became unsteady and
reeling beneath his feet; delirium gathered over him, and he went on his
way muttering broken and incoherent words; the few who met fled from
him in dismay. Even the monks, still continuing their solemn and sad
processions, passed with a murmured bene vobis to the other side from
that on which his steps swerved and faltered. And from a booth at the
corner of a street, four Becchini, drinking together, fixed upon him
from their black masks the gaze that vultures fix upon some dying
wanderer of the desert. Still he crept on, stretching out his arms like
a man in the dark, and seeking with the vague sense that yet struggled
against the gathering delirium, to find out the mansion in which he
had fixed his home; though many as fair to live, and as meet to die in,
stood with open portals before and beside his path.

"Irene, Irene!" he cried, sometimes in a muttered and low tone,
sometimes in a wild and piercing shriek, "where art thou? Where? I come
to snatch thee from them; they shall not have thee, the foul and ugly
fiends! Pah! how the air smells of dead flesh! Irene, Irene! we will
away to mine own palace and the heavenly lake--Irene!"

While thus benighted, and thus exclaiming, two females suddenly emerged
from a neighbouring house, masked and mantled.

"Vain wisdom!" said the taller and slighter of the two, whose mantle, it
is here necessary to observe, was of a deep blue, richly broidered with
silver, of a shape and a colour not common in Florence, but usual in
Rome, where the dress of ladies of the higher rank was singularly bright
in hue and ample in fold--thus differing from the simpler and more
slender draperies of the Tuscan fashion--"Vain wisdom, to fly a
relentless and certain doom!"

"Why, thou wouldst not have us hold the same home with three of the
dead in the next chamber--strangers too to us--when Florence has so many
empty halls? Trust me, we shall not walk far ere we suit ourselves with
a safer lodgment."

"Hitherto, indeed, we have been miraculously preserved," sighed the
other, whose voice and shape were those of extreme youth; "yet would
that we knew where to fly--what mount, what wood, what cavern, held my
brother and his faithful Nina! I am sick with horrors!"

"Irene, Irene! Well then, if thou art at Milan or some Lombard town, why
do I linger here? To horse, to horse! Oh, no! no!--not the horse with
the bells! not the death-cart." With a cry, a shriek, louder than
the loudest of the sick man's, broke that young female away from her
companion. It seemed as if a single step took her to the side of Adrian.
She caught his arm--she looked in his face--she met his unconscious eyes
bright with a fearful fire. "It has seized him!"--(she then said in a
deep but calm tone)--"the Plague!"

"Away, away! are you mad?" cried her companion; "hence, hence,--touch me
not now thou hast touched him--go!--here we part!"

"Help me to bear him somewhere, see, he faints, he droops, he
falls!--help me, dear Signora, for pity, for the love of God!"

But, wholly possessed by the selfish fear which overcame all humanity
in that miserable time, the elder woman, though naturally kind, pitiful,
and benevolent, fled rapidly away, and soon vanished. Thus left alone
with Adrian, who had now, in the fierceness of the fever that preyed
within him, fallen on the ground, the strength and nerve of that young
girl did not forsake her. She tore off the heavy mantle which encumbered
her arms, and cast it from her; and then, lifting up the face of her
lover--for who but Irene was that weak woman, thus shrinking not from
the contagion of death?--she supported him on her breast, and called
aloud and again for help. At length the Becchini, in the booth before
noticed, (hardened in their profession, and who, thus hardened,
better than the most cautious, escaped the pestilence,) lazily
approached--"Quicker, quicker, for Christ's love!" said Irene. "I have
much gold; I will reward you well: help me to bear him under the nearest
roof."

"Leave him to us, young lady: we have had our eye upon him," said one of
the gravediggers. "We'll do our duty by him, first and last."

"No--no! touch not his head--that is my care. There, I will help you;
so,--now then,--but be gentle!"

Assisted by these portentous officers, Irene, who would not release
her hold, but seemed to watch over the beloved eyes and lips, (set and
closed as they were,) as if to look back the soul from parting, bore
Adrian into a neighbouring house, and laid him on a bed; from which
Irene (preserving as only women do, in such times, the presence of mind
and vigilant providence which make so sublime a contrast with their
keen susceptibilities) caused them first to cast off the draperies and
clothing, which might retain additional infection. She then despatched
them for new furniture, and for whatsoever leech money might yet bribe
to a duty, now chiefly abandoned to those heroic Brotherhoods who,
however vilified in modern judgment by the crimes of some unworthy
members, were yet, in the dark times, the best, the bravest, and the
holiest agents, to whom God ever delegated the power to resist the
oppressor--to feed the hungry--to minister to woe; and who, alone,
amidst that fiery Pestilence, (loosed, as it were, a demon from the
abyss, to shiver into atoms all that binds the world to Virtue and to
Law,) seemed to awaken, as by the sound of an angel's trumpet, to that
noblest Chivalry of the Cross--whose faith is the scorn of self--whose
hope is beyond the Lazar-house--whose feet, already winded for
immortality, trample, with a conqueror's march, upon the graves of
Death!

While this the ministry and the office of love,--along that street in
which Adrian and Irene had met at last--came singing, reeling, roaring,
the dissolute and abandoned crew who had fixed their quarters in the
Convent of Santa Maria de' Pazzi, their bravo chief at their head, and
a nun (no longer in nun's garments) upon either arm. "A health to the
Plague!" shouted the ruffian: "A health to the Plague!" echoed his
frantic Bacchanals.

"A health to the Plague, may she ever, as now, Loose the rogue from his
chain, and the nun from her vow; To the gaoler a sword--to the captive a
key, Hurrah for Earth's Curse! 'tis a blessing to me."

"Holla!" cried the chief, stopping; "here, Margherita; here's a brave
cloak for thee, my girl: silver enow on it to fill thy purse, if it ever
grow empty; which it may, if ever the Plague grow slack."

"Nay," said the girl, who, amidst all the havoc of debauch, retained
much of youth and beauty in her form and face; "nay, Guidotto; perhaps it
has infection."

"Pooh, child, silver never infects. Clap it on, clap it on. Besides,
fate is fate, and when it is thine hour there will be other means
besides the gavocciolo."

So saying, he seized the mantle, threw it roughly over her shoulders,
and dragged her on as before, half pleased with the finery, half
frightened with the danger; while gradually died away, along the lurid
air and the mournful streets, the chant of that most miserable mirth.



Chapter 6.V. The Error.

For three days, the fatal three days, did Adrian remain bereft of
strength and sense. But he was not smitten by the scourge which
his devoted and generous nurse had anticipated. It was a fierce and
dangerous fever, brought on by the great fatigue, restlessness, and
terrible agitation he had undergone.

No professional mediciner could be found to attend him; but a good
friar, better perhaps skilled in the healing art than many who claimed
its monopoly, visited him daily. And in the long and frequent absences
to which his other and numerous duties compelled the monk, there was one
ever at hand to smooth the pillow, to wipe the brow, to listen to the
moan, to watch the sleep. And even in that dismal office, when, in
the frenzy of the sufferer, her name, coupled with terms of passionate
endearment, broke from his lips, a thrill of strange pleasure crossed
the heart of the betrothed, which she chid as if it were a crime. But
even the most unearthly love is selfish in the rapture of being loved!
Words cannot tell, heart cannot divine, the mingled emotions that broke
over her when, in some of these incoherent ravings, she dimly understood
that for her the city had been sought, the death dared, the danger
incurred. And as then bending passionately to kiss that burning brow,
her tears fell fast over the idol of her youth, the fountains from which
they gushed were those, fathomless and countless, which a life could not
weep away. Not an impulse of the human and the woman heart that was not
stirred; the adoring gratitude, the meek wonder thus to be loved, while
deeming it so simple a merit thus to love;--as if all sacrifice in her
were a thing of course,--to her, a virtue nature could not paragon,
worlds could not repay! And there he lay, the victim to his own fearless
faith, helpless--dependent upon her--a thing between life and death,
to thank, to serve--to be proud of, yet protect, to compassionate, yet
revere--the saver, to be saved! Never seemed one object to demand at
once from a single heart so many and so profound emotions; the romantic
enthusiasm of the girl--the fond idolatry of the bride--the watchful
providence of the mother over her child.

And strange to say, with all the excitement of that lonely watch,
scarcely stirring from his side, taking food only that her strength
might not fail her,--unable to close her eyes,--though, from the same
cause, she would fain have taken rest, when slumber fell upon her
charge--with all such wear and tear of frame and heart, she seemed
wonderfully supported. And the holy man marvelled, in each visit, to see
the cheek of the nurse still fresh, and her eye still bright. In her
own superstition she thought and felt that Heaven gifted her with a
preternatural power to be true to so sacred a charge; and in this fancy
she did not wholly err:--for Heaven did gift her with that diviner
power, when it planted in so soft a heart the enduring might and energy
of Affection! The friar had visited the sick man late on the third
night, and administered to him a strong sedative. "This night," said he
to Irene, "will be the crisis: should he awaken, as I trust he may, with
a returning consciousness, and a calm pulse, he will live; if not, young
daughter, prepare for the worst. But should you note any turn in the
disease, that may excite alarm, or require my attendance, this scroll
will inform you where I am, if God spare me still, at each hour of the
night and morning."

The monk retired, and Irene resumed her watch.

The sleep of Adrian was at first broken and interrupted--his features,
his exclamations, his gestures, all evinced great agony, whether mental
or bodily: it seemed, as perhaps it was, a fierce and doubtful struggle
between life and death for the conquest of the sleeper. Patient, silent,
breathing but by long-drawn gasps, Irene sate at the bed-head. The lamp
was removed to the further end of the chamber, and its ray, shaded by
the draperies, did not suffice to give to her gaze more than the outline
of the countenance she watched. In that awful suspense, all the thoughts
that hitherto had stirred her mind lay hushed and mute. She was only
sensible to that unutterable fear which few of us have been happy enough
not to know. That crushing weight under which we can scarcely breathe
or move, the avalanche over us, freezing and suspended, which we
cannot escape from, beneath which, every moment, we may be buried and
overwhelmed. The whole destiny of life was in the chances of that single
night! It was just as Adrian at last seemed to glide into a deeper
and serener slumber, that the bells of the death-cart broke with their
boding knell the palpable silence of the streets. Now hushed, now
revived, as the cart stopped for its gloomy passengers, and coming
nearer and nearer after every pause. At length she heard the heavy
wheels stop under the very casement, and a voice deep and muffled
calling aloud, "Bring out the dead!" She rose, and with a noiseless
step, passed to secure the door, when the dull lamp gleamed upon the
dark and shrouded forms of the Becchini.

"You have not marked the door, nor set out the body," said one gruffly;
"but this is the third night! He is ready for us."

"Hush, he sleeps--away, quick, it is not the Plague that seized him."

"Not the Plague?" growled the Becchino in a disappointed tone;
"I thought no other illness dared encroach upon the rights of the
gavocciolo!"

"Go--here's money; leave us."

And the grisly carrier sullenly withdrew. The cart moved on, the bell
renewed its summons, till slowly and faintly the dreadful larum died in
the distance.

Shading the lamp with her hand, Irene stole to the bed side, fearful
that the sound and the intrusion had disturbed the slumberer. But his
face was still locked, as in a vice, with that iron sleep. He stirred
not--the breath scarcely passed his lips--she felt his pulse, as the
wan hand lay on the coverlid--there was a slight beat--she was
contented--removed the light, and, retiring to a corner of the room,
placed the little cross suspended round her neck upon the table, and
prayed, in her intense suffering, to Him who had known death, and
who--Son of Heaven though he was, and Sovereign of the Seraphim--had
also prayed, in his earthly travail, that the cup might pass away.

The Morning broke, not, as in the North, slowly and through shadow,
but with the sudden glory with which in those climates Day leaps
upon earth--like a giant from his sleep. A sudden smile--a burnished
glow--and night had vanished. Adrian still slept; not a muscle seemed to
have stirred; the sleep was even heavier than before; the silence became
a burthen upon the air. Now, in that exceeding torpor so like unto
death, the solitary watcher became alarmed and terrified. Time
passed--morning glided to noon--still not a sound nor motion. The
sun was midway in Heaven--the Friar came not. And now again touching
Adrian's pulse, she felt no flutter--she gazed on him, appalled and
confounded; surely nought living could be so still and pale. "Was it
indeed sleep, might it not be--" She turned away, sick and frozen; her
tongue clove to her lips. Why did the father tarry?--she would go to
him--she would learn the worst--she could forbear no longer. She glanced
over the scroll the Monk had left her: "From sunrise," it said, "I shall
be at the Convent of the Dominicans. Death has stricken many of the
brethren." The Convent was at some distance, but she knew the spot, and
fear would wing her steps. She gave one wistful look at the sleeper and
rushed from the house. "I shall see thee again presently," she murmured.
Alas! what hope can calculate beyond the moment? And who shall claim the
tenure of 'The Again?'

It was not many minutes after Irene had left the room, ere, with a long
sigh, Adrian opened his eyes--an altered and another man; the fever was
gone, the reviving pulse beat low indeed, but calm. His mind was once
more master of his body, and, though weak and feeble, the danger was
past, and life and intellect regained.

"I have slept long," he muttered; "and oh, such dreams! And methought
I saw Irene, but could not speak to her, and while I attempted to grasp
her, her face changed, her form dilated, and I was in the clutch of
the foul gravedigger. It is late--the sun is high--I must be up and
stirring. Irene is in Lombardy. No, no; that was a lie, a wicked lie;
she is at Florence, I must renew my search."

As this duty came to his remembrance, he rose from the bed--he was
amazed at his own debility: at first he could not stand without support
from the wall; by degrees, however, he so far regained the mastery of
his limbs as to walk, though with effort and pain. A ravening hunger
preyed upon him, he found some scanty and light food in the chamber,
which he devoured eagerly. And with scarce less eagerness laved his
enfeebled form and haggard face with the water that stood at hand. He
now felt refreshed and invigorated, and began to indue his garments,
which he found thrown on a heap beside the bed. He gazed with surprise
and a kind of self-compassion upon his emaciated hands and shrunken
limbs, and began now to comprehend that he must have had some severe but
unconscious illness. "Alone, too," thought he; "no one near to tend me!
Nature my only nurse! But alas! alas! how long a time may thus have
been wasted, and my adored Irene--quick, quick, not a moment more will I
lose."

He soon found himself in the open street; the air revived him; and that
morning had sprung up the blessed breeze, the first known for weeks. He
wandered on very slowly and feebly till he came to a broad square,
from which, in the vista, might be seen one of the principal gates of
Florence, and the fig-trees and olive-groves beyond, it was then that
a Pilgrim of tall stature approached towards him as from the gate; his
hood was thrown back, and gave to view a countenance of great but
sad command; a face, in whose high features, massive brow, and proud,
unshrinking gaze, shaded by an expression of melancholy more stern than
soft, Nature seemed to have written majesty, and Fate disaster. As in
that silent and dreary place, these two, the only tenants of the street,
now encountered, Adrian stopped abruptly, and said in a startled and
doubting voice: "Do I dream still, or do I behold Rienzi?"

The Pilgrim paused also, as he heard the name, and gazing long on the
attenuated features of the young lord, said: "I am he that was Rienzi!
and you, pale shadow, is it in this grave of Italy that I meet with the
gay and high Colonna? Alas, young friend," he added, in a more relaxed
and kindly voice, "hath the Plague not spared the flower of the Roman
nobles? Come, I, the cruel and the harsh Tribune, I will be thy nurse:
he who might have been my brother, shall yet claim from me a brother's
care."

With these words he wound his arm tenderly round Adrian; and the young
noble, touched by his compassion, and agitated by the surprise, leaned
upon Rienzi's breast in silence.

"Poor youth," resumed the Tribune, for so, since rather fallen than
deposed, he may yet be called; "I ever loved the young, (my brother died
young;) and you more than most. What fatality brought thee hither?"

"Irene!" replied Adrian, falteringly.

"Is it so, really? Art thou a Colonna, and yet prize the fallen? The
same duty has brought me also to the city of Death. From the furthest
south--over the mountains of the robber--through the fastnesses of my
foes--through towns in which the herald proclaimed in my ear the price
of my head--I have passed hither, on foot and alone, safe under the
wings of the Almighty One. Young man, thou shouldst have left this task
to one who bears a wizard's life, and whom Heaven and Earth yet reserve
for an appointed end!"

The Tribune said this in a deep and inward voice; and in his raised eye
and solemn brow might be seen how much his reverses had deepened his
fanaticism, and added even to the sanguineness of his hopes.

"But," asked Adrian, withdrawing gently from Rienzi's arm, "thou
knowest, then, where Irene is to be found; let us go together. Lose not
a moment in this talk; time is of inestimable value, and a moment in
this city is often but the border to eternity."

"Right," said Rienzi, awakening to his object. "But fear not, I have
dreamt that I shall save her, the gem and darling of my house. Fear not,
I have no fear."

"Know you where to seek?" said Adrian, impatiently; "the Convent holds
far other guests."

"Ha! so said my dream!"

"Talk not now of dreams," said the lover; "but if you have no other
guide, let us part at once in quest of her. I will take yonder street,
you take the opposite, and at sunset let us meet in the same spot."

"Rash man!" said the Tribune, with great solemnity; "scoff not at the
visions which Heaven makes a parable to its Chosen. Thou seekest counsel
of thy human wisdom; I, less presumptuous, follow the hand of the
mysterious Providence, moving even now before my gaze as a pillar of
light through the wilderness of dread. Ay, meet we here at sunset, and
prove whose guide is the most unerring. If my dream tell me true, I
shall see my sister living, ere the sun reach yonder hill, and by a
church dedicated to St. Mark."

The grave earnestness with which Rienzi spoke impressed Adrian with a
hope which his reason would not acknowledge. He saw him depart with that
proud and stately step to which his sweeping garments gave a yet more
imposing dignity, and then passed up the street to the right hand.
He had not got half way when he felt himself pulled by the mantle. He
turned, and saw the shapeless mask of a Becchino.

"I feared you were sped, and that another had cheated me of my office,"
said the gravedigger, "seeing that you returned not to the old Prince's
palace. You don't know me from the rest of us I see, but I am the one
you told to seek--"

"Irene!"

"Yes, Irene di Gabrini; you promised ample reward."

"You shall have it."

"Follow me."

The Becchino strode on, and soon arrived at a mansion. He knocked twice
at the porter's entrance, an old woman cautiously opened the door. "Fear
not, good aunt," said the gravedigger; "this is the young Lord I spoke
to thee of. Thou sayest thou hadst two ladies in the palace, who alone
survived of all the lodgers, and their names were Bianca de Medici,
and--what was the other?"

"Irene di Gabrini, a Roman lady. But I told thee this was the fourth day
they left the house, terrified by the deaths within it."

"Thou didst so: and was there anything remarkable in the dress of the
Signora di Gabrini?"