l half sinks beneath the mighty burthen I have heaped upon it. I want
new courage as the dread hour approaches; and from thy words and looks I
drink it."

"Oh!" answered Nina, blushing as she spoke, "glorious is indeed the lot
which I have bought by my love for thee: glorious to share thy schemes,
to cheer thee in doubt, to whisper hope to thee in danger."

"And give grace to me in triumph!" added Rienzi, passionately. "Ah!
should the future ever place upon these brows the laurel-wreath due to
one who has saved his country, what joy, what recompence, to lay it
at thy feet! Perhaps, in those long and solitary hours of languor and
exhaustion which fill up the interstices of time,--the dull space for
sober thought between the epochs of exciting action,--perhaps I should
have failed and flagged, and renounced even my dreams for Rome, had they
not been linked also with my dreams for thee!--had I not pictured to
myself the hour when my fate should elevate me beyond my birth; when thy
sire would deem it no disgrace to give thee to my arms; when thou,
too, shouldst stand amidst the dames of Rome, more honoured, as more
beautiful, than all; and when I should see that pomp, which my own soul
disdains, ('Quem semper abhorrui sicut cenum' is the expression used by
Rienzi, in his letter to his friend at Avignon, and which was probably
sincere. Men rarely act according to the bias of their own tastes.) made
dear and grateful to me because associated with thee! Yes, it is these
thoughts that have inspired me, when sterner ones have shrunk back
appalled from the spectres that surround their goal. And oh! my Nina,
sacred, strong, enduring must be, indeed, the love which lives in the
same pure and elevated air as that which sustains my hopes of liberty
and fame!"

This was the language which, more even than the vows of fidelity and the
dear adulation which springs from the heart's exuberance, had bound the
proud and vain soul of Nina to the chains that it so willingly wore.
Perhaps, indeed, in the absence of Rienzi, her weaker nature pictured to
herself the triumph of humbling the highborn signoras, and eclipsing the
barbarous magnificence of the chiefs of Rome; but in his presence,
and listening to his more elevated and generous ambition, as yet all
unsullied by one private feeling save the hope of her, her higher
sympathies were enlisted with his schemes, her mind aspired to raise
itself to the height of his, and she thought less of