Rienzi

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Rienzi


Adrian made no reply. This was not the first time he had noted that
Rienzi's strong intellect was strangely conjoined with a deep and
mystical superstition. And this yet more inclined the young noble, who,
though sufficiently devout, yielded but little to the wilder credulities
of the time, to doubt the success of the schemer's projects. In this
he erred greatly, though his error was that of the worldly wise. For
nothing ever so inspires human daring, as the fond belief that it is the
agent of a Diviner Wisdom. Revenge and patriotism, united in one man
of genius and ambition--such are the Archimedian levers that find, in
FANATICISM, the spot out of the world by which to move the world. The
prudent man may direct a state; but it is the enthusiast who regenerates
it,--or ruins.



Chapter 1.IX. "When the People Saw this Picture, Every One Marvelled."

Before the market-place, and at the foot of the Capitol, an immense
crowd was assembled. Each man sought to push before his neighbour; each
struggled to gain access to one particular spot, round which the crowd
was wedged think and dense.

"Corpo di Dio!" said a man of huge stature, pressing onward, like some
bulky ship, casting the noisy waves right and left from its prow, "this
is hot work; but for what, in the holy Mother's name, do ye crowd so?
See you not, Sir Ribald, that my right arm is disabled, swathed, and
bandaged, so that I cannot help myself better than a baby? And yet you
push against me as if I were an old wall!"

"Ah, Cecco del Vecchio!--what, man! we must make way for you--you are
too small and tender to bustle through a crowd! Come, I will protect
you!" said a dwarf of some four feet high, glancing up at the giant.

"Faith," said the grim smith, looking round on the mob, who laughed loud
at the dwarf's proffer, "we all do want protection, big and small. What
do you laugh for, ye apes?--ay, you don't understand parables."

"And yet it is a parable we are come to gaze upon," said one of the mob,
with a slight sneer.

"Pleasant day to you, Signor Baroncelli," answered Cecco del Vecchio;
"you are a good man, and love the people; it makes one's heart smile to
see you. What's all this pother for?"

"Why the Pope's Notary hath set up a great picture in the marketplace,
and the gapers say it relates to Rome; so they are melting their brains
out, this hot day, to guess at the riddle."

"Ho! ho!" said the smith, pushing on so vigorously that he left the
speaker suddenly in the rear; "if Cola di Rienzi hath aught in the
matter, I would break through stone rocks to get to it."

"Much good will a dead daub do us," said Baroncelli, sourly, and turning
to his neighbours; but no man listened to him, and he, a would-be
demagogue, gnawed his lip in envy.

Amidst half-awed groans and curses from the men whom he jostled aside,
and open objurgations and shrill cries from the women, to whose robes
and headgear he showed as little respect, the sturdy smith won his way
to a space fenced round by chains, in the centre of which was placed a
huge picture.

"How came it hither?" cried one; "I was first at the market."

"We found it here at daybreak," said a vender of fruit: "no one was by."

"But why do you fancy Rienzi had a hand in it?"

"Why, who else could?" answered twenty voices.

"True! Who else?" echoed the gaunt smith. "I dare be sworn the good man
spent the whole night in painting it himself. Blood of St. Peter! but it
is mighty fine! What is it about?"

"That's the riddle," said a meditative fish-woman; "if I could make it
out, I should die happy."

"It is something about liberty and taxes, no doubt," said Luigi, the
butcher, leaning over the chains. "Ah, if Rienzi were minded, every poor
man would have his bit of meat in his pot."

"And as much bread as he could eat," added a pale baker.

"Chut! bread and meat--everybody has that now!--but what wine the
poor folks drink! One has no encouragement to take pains with one's
vineyard," said a vine-dresser.

"Ho, hollo!--long life to Pandulfo di Guido! Make way for master
Pandulfo; he is a learned man; he is a friend of the great Notary's; he
will tell us all about the picture; make way, there--make way!"

Slowly and modestly, Pandulfo di Guido, a quiet, wealthy, and honest man
of letters, whom nought save the violence of the times could have roused
from his tranquil home, or his studious closet, passed to the chains. He
looked long and hard at the picture, which was bright with new, and yet
moist colours, and exhibited somewhat of the reviving art, which,
though hard and harsh in its features, was about that time visible, and,
carried to a far higher degree, we yet gaze upon in the paintings of
Perugino, who flourished during the succeeding generation. The people
pressed round the learned man, with open mouths; now turning their eyes
to the picture, now to Pandulfo.

"Know you not," at length said Pandulfo, "the easy and palpable meaning
of this design? Behold how the painter has presented to you a vast and
stormy sea--mark how its waves--"

"Speak louder--louder!" shouted the impatient crowd.

"Hush!" cried those in the immediate vicinity of Pandulfo, "the worthy
Signor is perfectly audible!"

Meanwhile, some of the more witty, pushing towards a stall in the
marketplace, bore from it a rough table, from which they besought
Pandulfo to address the people. The pale citizen, with some pain and
shame, for he was no practised spokesman, was obliged to assent; but
when he cast his eyes over the vast and breathless crowd, his own deep
sympathy with their cause inspired and emboldened him. A light broke
from his eyes; his voice swelled into power; and his head, usually
buried in his breast, became erect and commanding in its air.

"You see before you in the picture" (he began again) "a mighty and
tempestuous sea: upon its waves you behold five ships; four of them are
already wrecks,--their masts are broken, the waves are dashing through
the rent planks, they are past all aid and hope: on each of these ships
lies the corpse of a woman. See you not, in the wan face and livid
limbs, how faithfully the limner hath painted the hues and loathsomeness
of death? Below each of these ships is a word that applies the metaphor
to truth. Yonder, you see the name of Carthage; the other three are
Troy, Jerusalem, and Babylon. To these four is one common inscription.
'To exhaustion were we brought by injustice!' Turn now your eyes to the
middle of the sea,--there you behold the fifth ship, tossed amidst the
waves, her mast broken, her rudder gone, her sails shivered, but not
yet a wreck like the rest, though she soon may be. On her deck kneels
a female, clothed in mourning; mark the wo upon her countenance,--how
cunningly the artist has conveyed its depth and desolation; she
stretches out her arms in prayer, she implores your and Heaven's
assistance. Mark now the superscription--'This is Rome!'--Yes, it is
your country that addresses you in this emblem!"

The crowd waved to and fro, and a deep murmur crept gathering over the
silence which they had hitherto kept.

"Now," continued Pandulfo, "turn your gaze to the right of the picture,
and you will behold the cause of the tempest,--you will see why the
fifth vessel is thus perilled, and her sisters are thus wrecked. Mark,
four different kinds of animals, who, from their horrid jaws, send forth
the winds and storms which torture and rack the sea. The first are the
lions, the wolves, the bears. These, the inscription tells you, are
the lawless and savage signors of the state. The next are the dogs
and swine,--these are the evil counsellors and parasites. Thirdly,
you behold the dragons and the foxes,--and these are false judges and
notaries, and they who sell justice. Fourthly, in the hares, the goats,
the apes, that assist in creating the storm, you perceive, by the
inscription, the emblems of the popular thieves and homicides, ravishers
and spoliators. Are ye bewildered still, O Romans! or have ye mastered
the riddle of the picture?"

Far in their massive palaces the Savelli and Orsini heard the echo of
the shouts that answered the question of Pandulfo.

"Are ye, then, without hope!" resumed the scholar, as the shout ceased,
and hushing, with the first sound of his voice, the ejaculations and
speeches which each man had turned to utter to his neighbour. "Are ye
without hope? Doth the picture, which shows your tribulation, promise
you no redemption? Behold, above that angry sea, the heavens open, and
the majesty of God descends gloriously, as to judgment: and, from the
rays that surround the Spirit of God extend two flaming swords, and
on those swords stand, in wrath, but in deliverance, the two patron
saints--the two mighty guardians of your city! People of Rome, farewell!
The parable is finished." (M. Sismondi attributes to Rienzi a fine
oration at the showing of the picture, in which he thundered against
the vices of the patricians. The contemporary biographer of Rienzi
says nothing of this harangue. But, apparently (since history has its
liberties as well as fiction), M. Sismondi has thought it convenient to
confound two occasions very distinct in themselves.)



Chapter 1.X. A Rough Spirit Raised, Which May Hereafter Rend the Wizard.

While thus animated was the scene around the Capitol, within one of
the apartments of the palace sat the agent and prime cause of that
excitement. In the company of his quiet scribes, Rienzi appeared
absorbed in the patient details of his avocation. While the murmur and
the hum, the shout and the tramp, of multitudes, rolled to his chamber,
he seemed not to heed them, nor to rouse himself a moment from his task.
With the unbroken regularity of an automaton, he continued to enter
in his large book, and with the clear and beautiful characters of
the period, those damning figures which taught him, better than
declamations, the frauds practised on the people, and armed him with
that weapon of plain fact which it is so difficult for abuse to parry.

"Page 2, Vol. B.," said he, in the tranquil voice of business, to the
clerks; "see there, the profits of the salt duty; department No.3--very
well. Page 9, Vol. D.--what is the account rendered by Vescobaldi, the
collector? What! twelve thousand florins?--no more?--unconscionable
rascal!" (Here was a loud shout without of 'Pandulfo!--long live
Pandulfo!') "Pastrucci, my friend, your head wanders; you are listening
to the noise without--please to amuse yourself with the calculation I
entrusted to you. Santi, what is the entry given in by Antonio Tralli?"

A slight tap was heard at the door, and Pandulfo entered.

The clerks continued their labour, though they looked up hastily at the
pale and respectable visitor, whose name, to their great astonishment,
had thus become a popular cry.

"Ah, my friend," said Rienzi, calmly enough in voice, but his hands
trembled with ill-suppressed emotion, "you would speak to me alone,
eh? well, well--this way." Thus saying, he led the citizen into a small
cabinet in the rear of the room of office, carefully shut the door,
and then giving himself up to the natural impatience of his character,
seized Pandulfo by the hand: "Speak!" cried he: "do they take the
interpretation?--have you made it plain and palpable enough?--has it
sunk deep into their souls?"

"Oh, by St. Peter! yes!" returned the citizen, whose spirits were
elevated by his recent discovery that he, too, was an orator--a
luxurious pleasure for a timid man. "They swallowed every word of the
interpretation; they are moved to the marrow--you might lead them this
very hour to battle, and find them heroes. As for the sturdy smith--"

"What! Cecco del Vecchio?" interrupted Rienzi; "ah, his heart is wrought
in bronze--what did he?"

"Why, he caught me by the hem of my robe as I descended my rostrum, (oh!
would you could have seen me!--per fede I had caught your mantle!--I was
a second you!) and said, weeping like a child, 'Ah, Signor, I am but a
poor man, and of little worth; but if every drop of blood in this body
were a life, I would give it for my country!'"

"Brave soul," said Rienzi, with emotion; "would Rome had but fifty
such! No man hath done us more good among his own class than Cecco del
Vecchio."

"They feel a protection in his very size," said Pandulfo. "It is
something to hear such big words from such a big fellow."

"Were there any voices lifted in disapprobation of the picture and its
sentiment?"

"None."

"The time is nearly ripe, then--a few suns more, and the fruit must be
gathered. The Aventine,--the Lateran,--and then the solitary trumpet!"
Thus saying, Rienzi, with folded arms and downcast eyes, seemed sunk
into a reverie.

"By the way," said Pandulfo, "I had almost forgot to tell thee, that the
crowd would have poured themselves hither, so impatient were they to see
thee; but I bade Cecco del Vecchio mount the rostrum, and tell them, in
his blunt way, that it would be unseemly at the present time, when thou
wert engaged in the Capitol on civil and holy affairs, to rush in so
great a body into thy presence. Did I not right?"

"Most right, my Pandulfo."

"But Cecco del Vecchio says he must come and kiss thy hand: and thou
mayst expect him here the moment he can escape unobserved from the
crowd."

"He is welcome!" said Rienzi, half mechanically, for he was still
absorbed in thought.

"And, lo! here he is,"--as one of the scribes announced the visit of the
smith.

"Let him be admitted!" said Rienzi, seating himself composedly.

When the huge smith found himself in the presence of Rienzi, it amused
Pandulfo to perceive the wonderful influences of mind over matter. That
fierce and sturdy giant, who, in all popular commotions, towered above
his tribe, with thews of stone, and nerves of iron, the rallying point
and bulwark of the rest,--stood now colouring and trembling before the
intellect, which (so had the eloquent spirit of Rienzi waked and fanned
the spark which, till then, had lain dormant in that rough bosom)
might almost be said to have created his own. And he, indeed, who first
arouses in the bondsman the sense and soul of freedom, comes as near as
is permitted to man, nearer than the philosopher, nearer even than the
poet, to the great creative attribute of God!--But, if the breast be
uneducated, the gift may curse the giver; and he who passes at once from
the slave to the freeman may pass as rapidly from the freeman to the
ruffian.

"Approach, my friend," said Rienzi, after a moment's pause; "I know all
that thou hast done, and wouldst do, for Rome! Thou art worthy of her
best days, and thou art born to share in their return."

The smith dropped at the feet of Rienzi, who held out his hand to raise
him, which Cecco del Vecchio seized, and reverentially kissed.

"This kiss does not betray," said Rienzi, smiling; "but rise, my
friend,--this posture is only due to God and his saints!"

"He is a saint who helps us at need!" said the smith, bluntly, "and that
no man has done as thou hast. But when," he added, sinking his voice,
and fixing his eyes hard on Rienzi, as one may do who waits a signal to
strike a blow, "when--when shall we make the great effort?"

"Thou hast spoken to all the brave men in thy neighbourhood,--are they
well prepared?"

"To live or die, as Rienzi bids them!"

"I must have the list--the number--names--houses and callings, this
night."

"Thou shalt."

"Each man must sign his name or mark with his own hand."

"It shall be done."

"Then, harkye! attend Pandulfo di Guido at his house this evening,
at sunset. He shall instruct thee where to meet this night some brave
hearts;--thou art worthy to be ranked amongst them. Thou wilt not fail!"

"By the holy Stairs! I will count every minute till then," said the
smith, his swarthy face lighted with pride at the confidence shown him.

"Meanwhile, watch all your neighbours; let no man flag or grow
faint-hearted,--none of thy friends must be branded as a traitor!"

"I will cut his throat, were he my own mother's son, if I find one
pledged man flinch!" said the fierce smith.

"Ha, ha!" rejoined Rienzi, with that strange laugh which belonged to
him; "a miracle! a miracle! The Picture speaks now!"

It was already nearly dusk when Rienzi left the Capitol. The broad space
before its walls was empty and deserted, and wrapping his mantle closely
round him, he walked musingly on.

"I have almost climbed the height," thought he, "and now the precipice
yawns before me. If I fail, what a fall! The last hope of my country
falls with me. Never will a noble rise against the nobles. Never will
another plebeian have the opportunities and the power that I have! Rome
is bound up with me--with a single life. The liberties of all time are
fixed to a reed that a wind may uproot. But oh, Providence! hast thou
not reserved and marked me for great deeds? How, step by step, have I
been led on to this solemn enterprise! How has each hour prepared its
successor! And yet what danger! If the inconstant people, made cowardly
by long thraldom, do but waver in the crisis, I am swept away!"

As he spoke, he raised his eyes, and lo, before him, the first star of
twilight shone calmly down upon the crumbling remnants of the Tarpeian
Rock. It was no favouring omen, and Rienzi's heart beat quicker as that
dark and ruined mass frowned thus suddenly on his gaze.

"Dread monument," thought he, "of what dark catastrophes, to what
unknown schemes, hast thou been the witness! To how many enterprises, on
which history is dumb, hast thou set the seal! How know we whether they
were criminal or just? How know we whether he, thus doomed as a traitor,
would not, if successful, have been immortalized as a deliverer? If I
fall, who will write my chronicle? One of the people? alas! blinded and
ignorant, they furnish forth no minds that can appeal to posterity. One
of the patricians? in what colours then shall I be painted! No tomb will
rise for me amidst the wrecks; no hand scatter flowers upon my grave!"

Thus meditating on the verge of that mighty enterprise to which he had
devoted himself, Rienzi pursued his way. He gained the Tiber, and paused
for a few moments beside its legendary stream, over which the purple and
starlit heaven shone deeply down. He crossed the bridge which leads
to the quarter of the Trastevere, whose haughty inhabitants yet boast
themselves the sole true descendants of the ancient Romans. Here he step
grew quicker and more light; brighter, if less solemn, thoughts crowded
upon his breast; and ambition, lulled for a moment, left his strained
and over-laboured mind to the reign of a softer passion.



Chapter 1.XI. Nina di Raselli.

"I tell you, Lucia, I do not love those stuffs; they do not become me.
Saw you ever so poor a dye?--this purple, indeed! that crimson! Why did
you let the man leave them? Let him take them elsewhere tomorrow.
They may suit the signoras on the other side the Tiber, who imagine
everything Venetian must be perfect; but I, Lucia, I see with my own
eyes, and judge from my own mind."

"Ah, dear lady," said the serving-maid, "if you were, as you doubtless
will be, some time or other, a grand signora, how worthily you would
wear the honours! Santa Cecilia! No other dame in Rome would be looked
at while the Lady Nina were by!"

"Would we not teach them what pomp was?" answered Nina. "Oh! what
festivals would we hold! Saw you not from the gallery the revels given
last week by the Lady Giulia Savelli?"

"Ay, signora; and when you walked up the hall in your silver and pearl
tissue, there ran such a murmur through the gallery; every one cried,
'The Savelli have entertained an angel!'"

"Pish! Lucia; no flattery, girl."

"It is naked truth, lady. But that was a revel, was it not? There was
grandeur!--fifty servitors in scarlet and gold! and the music playing
all the while. The minstrels were sent for from Bergamo. Did not that
festival please you? Ah, I warrant many were the fine speeches made to
you that day!"

"Heigho!--no, there was one voice wanting, and all the music was marred.
But, girl, were I the Lady Giulia, I would not have been contented with
so poor a revel."

"How, poor! Why all the nobles say it outdid the proudest marriage-feast
of the Colonna. Nay, a Neapolitan who sat next me, and who had served
under the young Queen Joanna, at her marriage, says, that even Naples
was outshone."

"That may be. I know nought of Naples; but I know what my court should
have been, were I what--what I am not, and may never be! The banquet
vessels should have been of gold; the cups jewelled to the brim; not
an inch of the rude pavement should have been visible; all should
have glowed with cloth of gold. The fountain in the court should have
showered up the perfumes of the East; my pages should not have been
rough youths, blushing at their own uncouthness, but fair boys, who had
not told their twelfth year, culled from the daintiest palaces of Rome;
and, as for the music, oh, Lucia!--each musician should have worn a
chaplet, and deserved it; and he who played best should have had a
reward, to inspire all the rest--a rose from me. Saw you, too, the
Lady Giulia's robe? What colours! they might have put out the sun
at noonday!--yellow, and blue, and orange, and scarlet! Oh, sweet
Saints!--but my eyes ached all the next day!"

"Doubtless, the Lady Giulia lacks your skill in the mixture of colours,"
said the complaisant waiting-woman.

"And then, too, what a mien!--no royalty in it! She moved along the
hall, so that her train well nigh tripped her every moment; and then
she said, with a foolish laugh, 'These holyday robes are but troublesome
luxuries.' Troth, for the great there should be no holyday robes; 'tis
for myself, not for others, that I would attire! Every day should
have its new robe, more gorgeous than the last;--every day should be a
holyday!"

"Methought," said Lucia, "that the Lord Giovanni Orsini seemed very
devoted to my Lady."

"He! the bear!"

"Bear, he may be! but he has a costly skin. His riches are untold."

"And the fool knows not how to spend them."

"Was not that the young Lord Adrian who spoke to you just by the
columns, where the music played?"

"It might be,--I forget."

"Yet, I hear that few ladies forget when Lord Adrian di Castello woos
them."

"There was but one man whose company seemed to me worth the
recollection," answered Nina, unheeding the insinuation of the artful
handmaid.

"And who was he?" asked Lucia.

"The old scholar from Avignon!"

"What! he with the gray beard? Oh, Signora!"

"Yes," said Nina, with a grave and sad voice; "when he spoke, the whole
scene vanished from my eyes,--for he spoke to me of HIM!"

As she said this, the Signora sighed deeply, and the tears gathered to
her eyes.

The waiting-woman raised her lips in disdain, and her looks in wonder;
but she did not dare to venture a reply.

"Open the lattice," said Nina, after a pause, "and give me yon paper.
Not that, girl--but the verses sent me yesterday. What! art thou
Italian, and dost thou not know, by instinct, that I spoke of the rhyme
of Petrarch?"

Seated by the open casement, through which the moonlight stole soft
and sheen, with one lamp beside her, from which she seemed to shade her
eyes, though in reality she sought to hide her countenance from Lucia,
the young Signora appeared absorbed in one of those tender sonnets which
then turned the brains and inflamed the hearts of Italy. (Although it is
true that the love sonnets of Petrarch were not then, as now, the most
esteemed of his works, yet it has been a great, though a common error,
to represent them as little known and coldly admired. Their effect was,
in reality, prodigious and universal. Every ballad-singer sung them
in the streets, and (says Filippo Villani), "Gravissimi nesciebant
abstinere"--"Even the gravest could not abstain from them.")

Born of an impoverished house, which, though boasting its descent from
a consular race of Rome, scarcely at that day maintained a rank
amongst the inferior order of nobility, Nina di Raselli was the spoiled
child--the idol and the tyrant--of her parents. The energetic and
self-willed character of her mind made her rule where she should have
obeyed; and as in all ages dispositions can conquer custom, she had,
though in a clime and land where the young and unmarried of her sex
are usually chained and fettered, assumed, and by assuming won, the
prerogative of independence. She possessed, it is true, more learning
and more genius than generally fell to the share of women in that day;
and enough of both to be deemed a miracle by her parents;--she had,
also, what they valued more, a surpassing beauty; and, what they feared
more, an indomitable haughtiness;--a haughtiness mixed with a thousand
soft and endearing qualities where she loved; and which, indeed, where
she loved, seemed to vanish. At once vain yet high-minded, resolute yet
impassioned, there was a gorgeous magnificence in her very vanity and
splendour,--an ideality in her waywardness: her defects made a part
of her brilliancy; without them she would have seemed less woman; and,
knowing her, you would have compared all women by her standard. Softer
qualities beside her seemed not more charming, but more insipid. She had
no vulgar ambition, for she had obstinately refused many alliances which
the daughter of Raselli could scarcely have hoped to form. The untutored
minds and savage power of the Roman nobles seemed to her imagination,
which was full of the poetry of rank, its luxury and its graces, as
something barbarous and revolting, at once to be dreaded and despised.
She had, therefore, passed her twentieth year unmarried, but not without
love. The faults, themselves, of her character, elevated that ideal of
love which she had formed. She required some being round whom all her
vainer qualities could rally; she felt that where she loved she must
adore; she demanded no common idol before which to humble so strong and
imperious a mind. Unlike women of a gentler mould, who desire, for a
short period, to exercise the caprices of sweet empire,--when she loved
she must cease to command; and pride, at once, be humbled to devotion.
So rare were the qualities that could attract her; so imperiously did
her haughtiness require that those qualities should be above her own,
yet of the same order; that her love elevated its object like a god.
Accustomed to despise, she felt all the luxury it is to venerate! And
if it were her lot to be united with one thus loved, her nature was
that which might become elevated by the nature that it gazed on. For
her beauty--Reader, shouldst thou ever go to Rome, thou wilt see in the
Capitol the picture of the Cumaean Sibyl, which, often copied, no copy
can even faintly represent. I beseech thee, mistake not this sibyl for
another, for the Roman galleries abound in sibyls. (The sibyl referred
to is the well-known one by Domenichino. As a mere work of art, that by
Guercino, called the Persian sibyl, in the same collection, is perhaps
superior; but in beauty, in character, there is no comparison.) The
sibyl I speak of is dark, and the face has an Eastern cast; the robe
and turban, gorgeous though they be, grow dim before the rich, but
transparent roses of the cheek; the hair would be black, save for that
golden glow which mellows it to a hue and lustre never seen but in the
south, and even in the south most rare; the features, not Grecian, are
yet faultless; the mouth, the brow, the ripe and exquisite contour, all
are human and voluptuous; the expression, the aspect, is something more;
the form is, perhaps, too full for the perfection of loveliness, for the
proportions of sculpture, for the delicacy of Athenian models; but the
luxuriant fault has a majesty. Gaze long upon that picture: it charms,
yet commands, the eye. While you gaze, you call back five centuries. You
see before you the breathing image of Nina di Raselli!