e insolence of the orator, and
the affront offered to themselves.

"Per fede!" quoth Reginaldo di Orsini, "this is past bearing,--the
plebeian has gone too far!"

"Look at the populace below! how they murmur and gape,--and how their
eyes sparkle--and what looks they bend at us!" said Luca di Savelli to
his mortal enemy, Castruccio Malatesta: the sense of a common danger
united in one moment, but only for a moment, the enmity of years.

"Diavolo!" muttered Raselli (Nina's father) to a baron, equally poor,
"but the clerk has truth in his lips. 'Tis a pity he is not noble."

"What a clever brain marred!" said a Florentine merchant. "That man
might be something, if he were sufficiently rich."

Adrian and Montreal were silent: the first seemed lost in thought,--the
last was watching the various effects produced upon the audience.

"Silence!" proclaimed the officers. "Silence, for my Lord Vicar."

At this announcement, every eye turned to Raimond, who, rising with much
clerical importance, thus addressed the assembly:--

"Although, Barons and Citizens of Rome, my well-beloved flock, and
children,--I, no more than yourselves, anticipated the exact nature of
the address ye have just heard,--and, albeit, I cannot feel unalloyed
contentment at the manner, nor, I may say, at the whole matter of that
fervent exhortation--yet (laying great emphasis on the last word), I
cannot suffer you to depart without adding to the prayers of our
Holy Father's servant, those, also, of his Holiness's spiritual
representative. It is true! the Jubilee approaches! The Jubilee
approaches--and yet our roads, even to the gates of Rome, are infested
with murderous and godless ruffians! What pilgrim can venture across the
Apennines to worship at the altars of St. Peter? The Jubilee
approaches: what scandal shall it be to Rome if these shrines be without
pilgrims--if the timid recoil from, if the bold fall victims to, the
dangers of the way! Wherefore, I pray you all, citizens and chiefs
alike,--I pray you all to lay aside those unhappy dissensions which have
so long consumed the strength of our sacred city; and, uniting with each
other in the ties of amity and brotherhood, to form a blessed league
against the marauders of the road. I see amongst you, my Lords, many of
the boasts and pillars of the state; but, alas! I think with grief
and dismay on the causeless and idle hatred that has grown up between
you!--a scandal to our city, and reflecting,