y hour, that I
brave his anger; that I laugh at his dungeons and armed men. But if he
think me the same Rienzi as of old, let him; I can wait my hour."

"Yet," said Adrian, waiving an answer to the haughty language of his
companion, "tell me, what dost thou ask for the people, in order to
avoid an appeal to their passions?--ignorant and capricious as they are,
thou canst not appeal to their reason."

"I ask full justice and safety for all men. I will be contented with no
less a compromise. I ask the nobles to dismantle their fortresses; to
disband their armed retainers; to acknowledge no impunity for crime in
high lineage; to claim no protection save in the courts of the common
law."

"Vain desire!" said Adrian. "Ask what may yet be granted."

"Ha--ha!" replied Rienzi, laughing bitterly, "did I not tell you it was
a vain dream to ask for law and justice at the hands of the great? Can
you blame me, then, that I ask it elsewhere?" Then, suddenly changing
his tone and manner, he added with great solemnity--"Waking life hath
false and vain dreams; but sleep is sometimes a mighty prophet. By sleep
it is that Heaven mysteriously communes with its creatures, and guides
and sustains its earthly agents in the path to which its providence
leads them on."

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,