an he is. Oh, my Lord, that
you--the brave, the generous, the enlightened--you, almost alone amidst
your order, in the knowledge that we had a country--oh, would that you
who can sympathise with our sufferings, would strike with us for their
redress!"

"Thou wilt war against Stephen Colonna, my kinsman; and though I have
seen him but little, nor, truth to say, esteem him much, yet he is the
boast of our house,--how can I join thee?"

"His life will be safe, his possessions safe, his rank safe. What do we
war against? His power to do wrong to others."

"Should he discover that thou hast force beyond words, he would be less
merciful to thee."

"And has he not discovered that? Do not the shouts of the people tell
him that I am a man whom he should fear? Does he--the cautious, the
wily, the profound--does he build fortresses, and erect towers, and not
see from his battlements the mighty fabric that I, too, have erected?"

"You! where, Rienzi?"

"In the hearts of Rome! Does he not see?" continued Rienzi. "No, no;
he--all, all his tribe, are blind. Is it not so?"

"Of a certainty, my kinsman has no belief in your power, else he would
have crushed you long ere this. Nay, it was but three days ago that he
said, gravely, he would rather you addressed the populace than the best
priest in Christendom; for that other orators inflamed the crowd, and no
man so stilled and dispersed them as you did."

"And I called him profound! Does not Heaven hush the air most when
most it prepares the storm? Ay, my Lord, I understand. Stephen Colonna
despises me. I have been"--(here, as he continued, a deep blush mantled
over his cheek)--"you remember it--at his palace in my younger days,
and pleased him with witty tales and light apophthegms. Nay--ha! ha!--he
would call me, I think, sometimes, in gay compliment, his jester--his
buffoon! I have brooked his insult; I have even bowed to his applause.
I would undergo the same penance, stoop to the same shame, for the same
motive, and in the same cause. What did I desire to effect? Can you tell
me? No! I will whisper it, then, to you: it was--the contempt of Stephen
Colonna. Under that contempt I was protected, till protection became
no longer necessary. I desired not to be thought formidable by the
patricians, in order that, quietly and unsuspected, I might make my way
amongst the people. I have done so; I now throw aside the mask. Face
to face with Stephen Colonna, I could tell him, this ver