Rienzi

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Rienzi


"Your commands are obeyed. Rienzi will receive an examination on his
faith. It is well that he should be prepared. It may suit your purpose,
as to which I am so faintly enlightened, to appear to the prisoner what
you are--the obtainer of this grace. See how implicitly one noble heart
can trust another! I send by the bearer an order that will admit one of
your servitors to the prisoner's cell. Be it, if you will, your task to
announce to him the new crisis of his fate. Ah! madam, may fortune be
as favourable to me, and grant me the same intercessor--from thy lips my
sentence is to come."

As Albornoz finished this epistle, he summoned his confidential
attendant, a Spanish gentleman, who saw nothing in his noble birth that
should prevent his fulfilling the various hests of the Cardinal.

"Alvarez," said he, "these to the Signora Cesarini by another hand; thou
art unknown to her household. Repair to the state tower; this to the
Governor admits thee. Mark who is admitted to the prisoner Cola di
Rienzi: Know his name, examine whence he comes. Be keen, Alvarez. Learn
by what motive the Cesarini interests herself in the prisoner's
fate. All too of herself, birth, fortunes, lineage, would be welcome
intelligence. Thou comprehendest me? It is well. One caution--thou
hast no mission from, no connexion with, me. Thou art an officer of the
prison, or of the Pope,--what thou wilt. Give me the rosary; light the
lamp before the crucifix; place yon hair-shirt beneath those arms.
I would have it appear as if meant to be hidden! Tell Gomez that the
Dominican preacher is to be admitted."

"Those friars have zeal," continued the Cardinal to himself, as, after
executing his orders, Alvarez withdrew. "They would burn a man--but only
on the Bible? They are worth conciliating, if the triple crown be really
worth the winning; were it mine, I would add the eagle's plume to it."

And plunged into the aspiring future, this bold man forgot even the
object of his passion. In real life, after a certain age, ambitious men
love indeed; but it is only as an interlude. And indeed with most men,
life has more absorbing though not more frequent concerns than those of
love. Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

The Cesarini was alone when the Cardinal's messenger arrived, and he
was scarcely dismissed with a few lines, expressive of a gratitude which
seemed to bear down all those guards with which the coldness of the
Signora usually fenced her pride, before the page Angelo was summoned to
her presence.

The room was dark with the shades of the gathering night when the youth
entered, and he discerned but dimly the outline of the Signora's stately
form; but by the tone of her voice, he perceived that she was deeply
agitated.

"Angelo," said she, as he approached, "Angelo--" and her voice failed
her. She paused as for breath and again proceeded. "You alone have
served us faithfully; you alone shared our escape, our wanderings,
our exile--you alone know my secret--you of my train alone are
Roman!--Roman! it was once a great name. Angelo, the name has fallen;
but it is only because the nature of the Roman Race fell first. Haughty
they are, but fickle; fierce, but dastard; vehement in promise, but
rotten in their faith. You are a Roman, and though I have proved your
truth, your very birth makes me afraid of falsehood."

"Madam," said the page; "I was but a child when you admitted me of your
service, and I am yet only on the verge of manhood. But boy though I
yet be, I would brave the stoutest lance of knight, or freebooter, in
defence of the faith of Angelo Villani, to his liege Lady and his native
land."

"Alas! alas!" said the Signora, bitterly, "such have been the words
of thousands of thy race. What have been their deeds? But I will trust
thee, as I have trusted ever. I know that thou art covetous of honour,
that thou hast youth's comely and bright ambition."

"I am an orphan and a bastard," said Angelo, bluntly! "And circumstance
stings me sharply on to action; I would win my own name."

"Thou shalt," said the Signora. "We shall live yet to reward thee.
And now be quick. Bring hither one of thy page's suits,--mantle and
head-gear. Quick, I say, and whisper not to a soul what I have asked of
thee."



Chapter 7.V. The Inmate of the Tower.

The night slowly advanced, and in the highest chamber of that dark and
rugged tower which fronted the windows of the Cesarini's palace sate a
solitary prisoner. A single lamp burned before him on a table of stone,
and threw its rays over an open Bible; and those stern but fantastic
legends of the prowess of ancient Rome, which the genius of Livy has
dignified into history. ("Avea libri assai, suo Tito Livio, sue storie
di Roma, la Bibbia et altri libri assai, non finava di studiare."--"Vita
di Cola di Rienzi", lib. ii. cap. 13. See translation to motto to Book
VII. page 202.) A chain hung pendent from the vault of the tower, and
confined the captive; but so as to leave his limbs at sufficient liberty
to measure at will the greater part of the cell. Green and damp were the
mighty stones of the walls, and through a narrow aperture, high out of
reach, came the moonlight, and slept in long shadow over the rude floor.
A bed at one corner completed the furniture of the room. Such for months
had been the abode of the conqueror of the haughtiest Barons, and the
luxurious dictator of the stateliest city of the world!

Care, and travel, and time, and adversity, had wrought their change in
the person of Rienzi. The proportions of his frame had enlarged from the
compact strength of earlier manhood, the clear paleness of his cheek was
bespread with a hectic and deceitful glow. Even in his present
studies, intent as they seemed, and genial though the lecture to a mind
enthusiastic even to fanaticism, his eyes could not rivet themselves as
of yore steadily to the page. The charm was gone from the letters.
Every now and then he moved restlessly, started, re-settled himself, and
muttered broken exclamations like a man in an anxious dream. Anon, his
gaze impatiently turned upward, about, around, and there was a strange
and wandering fire in those large deep eyes, which might have thrilled
the beholder with a vague and unaccountable awe.

Angelo had in the main correctly narrated the more recent adventures of
Rienzi after his fall. He had first with Nina and Angelo betaken himself
to Naples, and found a fallacious and brief favour with Louis, king
of Hungary; that harsh but honourable monarch had refused to yield his
illustrious guest to the demands of Clement, but had plainly declared
his inability to shelter him in safety. Maintaining secret intercourse
with his partisans at Rome, the fugitive then sought a refuge with the
Eremites, sequestered in the lone recesses of the Monte Maiella, where
in solitude and thought he had passed a whole year, save the time
consumed in his visit to and return from Florence. Taking advantage of
the Jubilee in Rome, he had then, disguised as a pilgrim, traversed the
vales and mountains still rich in the melancholy ruins of ancient Rome,
and entering the city, his restless and ambitious spirit indulged in new
but vain conspiracies! (Rainald, Ann. 1350, N. 4, E. 5.) Excommunicated
a second time by the Cardinal di Ceccano, and again a fugitive, he
shook the dust from his feet as he left the city, and raising his
hands towards those walls, in which are yet traced the witness of
the Tarquins, cried aloud--"Honoured as thy prince--persecuted as thy
victim--Rome, Rome, thou shalt yet receive me as thy conqueror!"

Still disguised as a pilgrim, he passed unmolested through Italy into
the Court of the Emperor Charles of Bohemia, where the page, who had
probably witnessed, had rightly narrated, his reception. It is doubtful,
however, whether the conduct of the Emperor had been as chivalrous as
appears by Angelo's relation, or whether he had not delivered Rienzi to
the Pontiff's emissaries. At all events it is certain, that from Prague
to Avignon, the path of the fallen Tribune had been as one triumph. His
strange adventures--his unbroken spirit--the new power that
Intellect daily and wonderfully excited over the minds of the rising
generation--the eloquence of Petrarch, and the common sympathy of the
vulgar for fallen greatness,--all conspired to make Rienzi the hero of
the age. Not a town through which he passed which would not have risked
a siege for his protection--not a house that would not have sheltered
him--not a hand that would not have struck in his defence. Refusing
all offers of aid, disdaining all occasion of escape, inspired by his
indomitable hope, and his unalloyed belief in the brightness of his own
destinies, the Tribune sought Avignon--and found a dungeon!

These, his external adventures, are briefly and easily told; but who
shall tell what passed within?--who narrate the fearful history of
the heart?--who paint the rapid changes of emotion and of thought--the
indignant grief--the stern dejection--the haughty disappointment that
saddened while it never destroyed the resolve of that great soul? Who
can say what must have been endured, what meditated, in the hermitage
of Maiella;--on the lonely hills of the perished empire it had been his
dream to restore;--in the Courts of Barbarian Kings;--and above all,
on returning obscure and disguised, amidst the crowds of the Christian
world, to the seat of his former power? What elements of memory, and
in what a wild and fiery brain! What reflections to be conned in the
dungeons of Avignon, by a man who had pushed into all the fervour
of fanaticism--four passions, a single one of which has, in excess,
sufficed to wreck the strongest reason--passions, which in themselves
it is most difficult to combine,--the dreamer--the aspirant--the very
nympholept of Freedom, yet of Power--of Knowledge, yet of Religion!

"Ay," muttered the prisoner, "ay, these texts are
comforting--comforting. The righteous are not alway oppressed." With
a long sigh he deliberately put aside the Bible, kissed it with great
reverence, remained silent, and musing for some minutes; and then as a
slight noise was heard at one corner of the cell, said softly, "Ah, my
friends, my comrades, the rats! it is their hour--I am glad I put aside
the bread for them!" His eye brightened as it now detected those strange
and unsocial animals venturing forth through a hole in the wall, and,
darkening the moonshine on the floor, steal fearlessly towards him.
He flung some fragments of bread to them, and for some moments watched
their gambols with a smile. "Manchino, the white-faced rascal! he beats
all the rest--ha, ha! he is a superior wretch--he commands the tribe,
and will venture the first into the trap. How will he bite against the
steel, the fine fellow! while all the ignobler herd will gaze at him
afar off, and quake and fear, and never help. Yet if united, they might
gnaw the trap and release their leader! Ah, ye are base vermin, ye eat
my bread, yet if death came upon me, ye would riot on my carcass. Away!"
and clapping his hands, the chain round him clanked harshly, and the
noisome co-mates of his dungeon vanished in an instant.

That singular and eccentric humour which marked Rienzi, and which had
seemed a buffoonery to the stolid sullenness of the Roman nobles, still
retained its old expression in his countenance, and he laughed loud as
he saw the vermin hurry back to their hiding-place.

"A little noise and the clank of a chain--fie, how ye imitate mankind!"
Again he sank into silence, and then heavily and listlessly
drawing towards him the animated tales of Livy, said, "An hour to
midnight!--waking dreams are better than sleep. Well, history tells us
how men have risen--ay, and nations too--after sadder falls than that of
Rienzi or of Rome!"

In a few minutes, he was apparently absorbed in the lecture; so intent
indeed, was he in the task, that he did not hear the steps which wound
the spiral stairs that conducted to his cell, and it was not till the
wards harshly grated beneath the huge key, and the door creaked on
its hinges, that Rienzi, in amaze at intrusion at so unwonted an hour,
lifted his eyes. The door had reclosed on the dungeon, and by the lonely
and pale lamp he beheld a figure leaning, as for support, against the
wall. The figure was wrapped from head to foot in the long cloak of the
day, which, aided by a broad hat, shaded by plumes, concealed even the
features of the visitor.

Rienzi gazed long and wistfully.

"Speak," he said at length, putting his hand to his brow. "Methinks
either long solitude has bewildered me, or, sweet sir, your apparition
dazzles. I know you not--am I sure?--" and Rienzi's hair bristled while
he slowly rose--"Am I sure that it is living man who stands before
me? Angels have entered the prison-house before now. Alas! an angel's
comfort never was more needed."

The stranger answered not, but the captive saw that his heart heaved
even beneath his cloak; loud sobs choked his voice; at length, as by a
violent effort, he sprung forward, and sunk at the Tribune's feet. The
disguising hat, the long mantle fell to the ground--it was the face of a
woman that looked upward through passionate and glazing tears--the arms
of a woman that clasped the prisoner's knees! Rienzi gazed mute and
motionless as stone. "Powers and Saints of Heaven!" he murmured at last,
"do ye tempt me further!--is it?--no, no--yet speak!"

"Beloved--adored!--do you not know me?"

"It is--it is!" shrieked Rienzi wildly, "it is my Nina--my wife--my--"
His voice forsook him. Clasped in each other's arms, the unfortunates
for some moments seemed to have lost even the sense of delight at
their reunion. It was as an unconscious and deep trance, through which
something like a dream only faintly and indistinctively stirs.

At length recovered--at length restored, the first broken exclamations,
the first wild caresses of joy over--Nina lifted her head from her
husband's bosom, and gazed sadly on his countenance--"Oh, what thou hast
known since we parted!--what, since that hour when, borne on by thy bold
heart and wild destiny, thou didst leave me in the Imperial Court,
to seek again the diadem and find the chain! Ah! why did I heed thy
commands?--why suffer thee to depart alone? How often in thy progress
hitherward, in doubt, in danger, might this bosom have been thy
resting-place, and this voice have whispered comfort to thy soul? Thou
art well, my Lord--my Cola! Thy pulse beats quicker than of old--thy
brow is furrowed. Ah! tell me thou art well!"

"Well," said Rienzi, mechanically. "Methinks so!--the mind diseased
blunts all sense of bodily decay. Well--yes! And thou--thou, at least,
art not changed, save to maturer beauty. The glory of the laurel-wreath
has not faded from thy brow. Thou shalt yet--" then breaking off
abruptly--"Rome--tell me of Rome! And thou--how camest thou hither? Ah!
perhaps my doom is sealed, and in their mercy they have vouchsafed that
I should see thee once more before the deathsman blinds me. I remember,
it is the grace vouchsafed to malefactors. When I was a lord of life and
death, I too permitted the meanest criminal to say farewell to those he
loved."

"No--not so, Cola!" exclaimed Nina, putting her hand before his mouth.
"I bring thee more auspicious tidings. Tomorrow thou art to be heard.
The favour of the Court is propitiated. Thou wilt be acquitted."

"Ha! speak again."

"Thou wilt be heard, my Cola--thou must be acquitted!"

"And Rome be free!--Great God, I thank Thee!"

The Tribune sank on his knees, and never had his heart, in his youngest
and purest hour, poured forth thanksgiving more fervent, yet less
selfish. When he rose again, the whole man seemed changed. His eye had
resumed its earlier expressions of deep and serene command. Majesty sate
upon his brow. The sorrows of the exile were forgotten. In his sanguine
and rapid thoughts, he stood once more the guardian of his country,--and
its sovereign!

Nina gazed upon him with that intense and devoted worship, which steeped
her vainer and her harder qualities in all the fondness of the softest
woman. "Such," thought she, "was his look eight years ago, when he left
my maiden chamber, full of the mighty schemes which liberated Rome--such
his look, when at the dawning sun he towered amidst the crouching
Barons, and the kneeling population of the city he had made his throne!"

"Yes, Nina!" said Rienzi, as he turned and caught her eye. "My soul
tells me that my hour is at hand. If they try me openly, they dare not
convict--if they acquit me, they dare not but restore. Tomorrow, saidst
thou, tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, Rienzi; be prepared!"

"I am--for triumph! But tell me what happy chance brought thee to
Avignon?"

"Chance, Cola!" said Nina, with reproachful tenderness. "Could I know
that thou wert in the dungeons of the Pontiff, and linger in idle
security at Prague? Even at the Emperor's Court thou hadst thy
partisans and favourers. Gold was easily procured. I repaired to
Florence--disguised my name--and came hither to plot, to scheme, to win
thy liberty, or to die with thee. Ah! did not thy heart tell thee that
morning and night the eyes of thy faithful Nina gazed upon this gloomy
tower; and that one friend, humble though she be, never could forsake
thee!"

"Sweet Nina! Yet--yet--at Avignon power yields not to beauty without
reward. Remember, there is a worse death than the pause of life."

Nina turned pale. "Fear not," she said, with a low but determined voice;
"fear not, that men's lips should say Rienzi's wife delivered him. None
in this corrupted Court know that I am thy wife."

"Woman," said the Tribune, sternly; "thy lips elude the answer I would
seek. In our degenerate time and land, thy sex and ours forget too
basely what foulness writes a leprosy in the smallest stain upon a
matron's honour. That thy heart would never wrong me, I believe; but if
thy weakness, thy fear of my death should wrong me, thou art a bitterer
foe to Rienzi than the swords of the Colonna. Nina, speak!"

"Oh, that my soul could speak," answered Nina. "Thy words are music to
me, and not a thought of mine but echoes them. Could I touch this hand,
could I meet that eye, and not know that death were dearer to thee than
shame? Rienzi, when last we parted, in sadness, yet in hope, what were
thy words to me?"

"I remember them well," returned the Tribune: "'I leave thee,' I said,
'to keep alive at the Emperor's Court, by thy genius, the Great Cause.
Thou hast youth and beauty--and courts have lawless and ruffian suitors.
I give thee no caution; it were beneath thee and me. But I leave thee
the power of death.' And with that, Nina--"

"Thy hands tremblingly placed in mine this dagger. I live--need I say
more?"

"My noble and beloved Nina, it is enough. Keep the dagger yet."

"Yes; till we meet in the Capitol of Rome!"

A slight tap was heard at the door; Nina regained, in an instant, her
disguise.

"It is on the stroke of midnight," said the gaoler, appearing at the
threshold.

"I come," said Nina.

"And thou hast to prepare thy thoughts," she whispered to Rienzi: "arm
all thy glorious intellect. Alas! is it again we part? How my heart
sinks!"

The presence of the gaoler at the threshold broke the bitterness
of parting by abridging it. The false page pressed her lips on the
prisoner's hand, and left the cell.

The gaoler, lingering behind for a moment, placed a parchment on the
table. It was the summons from the court appointed for the trial of the
Tribune.



Chapter 7.VI. The Scent Does Not Lie.--The Priest and the Soldier.

On descending the stairs, Nina was met by Alvarez.

"Fair page," said the Spaniard, gaily, "thy name, thou tellest me, is
Villani?--Angelo Villani--why I know thy kinsman, methinks. Vouchsafe,
young master, to enter this chamber, and drink a night-cup to thy lady's
health; I would fain learn tidings of my old friends."

"At another time," answered the false Angelo, drawing the cloak closer
round her face; "it is late--I am hurried."

"Nay," said the Spaniard, "you escape me not so easily;" and he caught
firm hold of the page's shoulder.

"Unhand me, sir!" said Nina, haughtily, and almost weeping, for her
strong nerves were yet unstrung. "Gaoler, at thy peril--unbar the
gates."

"So hot," said Alvarez, surprised at so great a waste of dignity in
a page; "nay, I meant not to offend thee. May I wait on thy pageship
tomorrow?"

"Ay, tomorrow," said Nina, eager to escape.

"And meanwhile," said Alvarez, "I will accompany thee home--we can
confer by the way."

So saying, without regarding the protestations of the supposed page, he
passed with Nina into the open air. "Your lady," said he, carelessly,
"is wondrous fair; her lightest will is law to the greatest noble of
Avignon. Methinks she is of Naples--is it so? Art thou dumb, sweet
youth?"

The page did not answer, but with a step so rapid that it almost put the
slow Spaniard out of breath, hastened along the narrow space between the
tower and the palace of the Signora Cesarini, nor could all the efforts
of Alvarez draw forth a single syllable from his reluctant companion,
till they reached the gates of the palace, and he found himself
discourteously left without the walls.

"A plague on the boy!" said he, biting his lips; "if the Cardinal thrive
as well as his servant, by're Lady, Monsignore is a happy man!"

By no means pleased with the prospect of an interview with Albornoz,
who, like most able men, valued the talents of those he employed exactly
in proportion to their success, the Spaniard slowly returned home. With
the licence accorded to him, he entered the Cardinal's chamber somewhat
abruptly, and perceived him in earnest conversation with a Cavalier,
whose long moustache, curled upward, and the bright cuirass worn
underneath his mantle, seemed to betoken him of martial profession.
Pleased with the respite, Alvarez hastily withdrew: and, in fact, the
Cardinal's thoughts at that moment, and for that night, were bent upon
other subjects than those of love.

The interruption served, however, to shorten the conversation between
Albornoz and his guest. The latter rose.

"I think," said he, buckling on a short and broad rapier, which he laid
aside during the interview,--"I think, my Lord Cardinal, you encourage
me to consider that our negotiation stands a fair chance of a prosperous
close. Ten thousand florins, and my brother quits Viterbo, and launches
the thunderbolt of the Company on the lands of Rimini. On your part--"

"On my part it is agreed," said the Cardinal, "that the army of the
Church interferes not with the course of your brother's arms--there is
peace between us. One warrior understands another!"

"And the word of Giles d'Albornoz, son of the royal race of Arragon, is
a guarantee for the faith of a Cardinal," replied the Cavalier, with a
smile. "It is, my Lord, in your former quality that we treat."

"There is my right hand," answered Albornoz, too politic to heed the
insinuation. The Cavalier raised it respectfully to his lips, and his
armed tread was soon heard descending the stairs.

"Victory," cried Albornoz, tossing his arms aloof; "Victory, now thou
art mine!"

With that he rose hastily, deposited his papers in an iron chest, and
opening a concealed door behind the arras, entered a chamber that rather
resembled a monk's cell than the apartment of a prince. Over a mean
pallet hung a sword, a dagger, and a rude image of the Virgin. Without
summoning Alvarez, the Cardinal unrobed, and in a few moments was
asleep.



Chapter 7.VII. Vaucluse and its Genius Loci.--Old Acquaintance Renewed.

The next day at early noon the Cavalier, whom our last chapter presented
to the reader, was seen mounted on a strong Norman horse, winding his
way slowly along a green and pleasant path some miles from Avignon. At
length he found himself in a wild and romantic valley, through which
wandered that delightful river whose name the verse of Petrarch has
given to so beloved a fame. Sheltered by rocks, and in this part winding
through the greenest banks, enamelled with a thousand wild flowers and
water-weeds, went the crystal Sorgia. Advancing farther, the landscape
assumed a more sombre and sterile aspect. The valley seemed enclosed or
shut in by fantastic rocks of a thousand shapes, down which dashed and
glittered a thousand rivulets. And, in the very wildest of the scene,
the ground suddenly opened into a quaint and cultivated garden, through
which, amidst a profusion of foliage, was seen a small and lonely
mansion,--the hermitage of the place. The horseman was in the valley
of the Vaucluse; and before his eye lay the garden and the house of
PETRARCH! Carelessly, however, his eye scanned the consecrated spot;
and unconsciously it rested, for a moment, upon a solitary figure seated
musingly by the margin of the river. A large dog at the side of the
noonday idler barked at the horseman as he rode on. "A brave animal and
a deep bay!" thought the traveller; to him the dog seemed an object much
more interesting than its master. And so,--as the crowd of little men
pass unheeding and unmoved, those in whom Posterity shall acknowledge
the landmarks of their age,--the horseman turned his glance from the
Poet!