. Thank the saints," and Montreal (who was not
without a strange kind of devotion,--indeed he deemed that virtue
essential to chivalry) crossed himself piously, "the free companions are
never long without quarters!"

"Hurrah for the Knight of St. John!" cried the mercenaries. "And hurrah
for fair Provence and bold Germany!" added the Knight, as he waved his
hand on high, struck spurs into his already wearied horse, and, breaking
out into his favourite song,

"His steed and his sword,
And his lady the peerless," &c.,

Montreal, with his troop, struck gallantly across the Campagna.

The Knight of St. John soon, however, fell into an absorbed and moody
reverie; and his followers imitating the silence of their chief, in a
few minutes the clatter of their arms and the jingle of their spurs,
alone disturbed the stillness of the wide and gloomy plains across
which they made towards Terracina. Montreal was recalling with bitter
resentment his conference with Rienzi; and, proud of his own sagacity
and talent for scheming, he was humbled and vexed at the discovery that
he had been duped by a wilier intriguer. His ambitious designs on Rome,
too, were crossed, and even crushed for the moment, by the very means
to which he had looked for their execution. He had seen enough of the
Barons to feel assured that while Stephen Colonna lived, the head of the
order, he was not likely to obtain that mastery in the state which, if
leagued with a more ambitious or a less timid and less potent signor,
might reward his aid in expelling Rienzi. Under all circumstances, he
deemed it advisable to remain aloof. Should Rienzi grow strong, Montreal
might make the advantageous terms he desired with the Barons; should
Rienzi's power decay, his pride, necessarily humbled, might drive him
to seek the assistance, and submit to the proposals, of Montreal.
The ambition of the Provencal, though vast and daring, was not of a
consistent and persevering nature. Action and enterprise were dearer to
him, as yet, than the rewards which they proffered; and if baffled
in one quarter, he turned himself, with the true spirit of the
knight-errant, to any other field for his achievements. Louis, king of
Hungary, stern, warlike, implacable, seeking vengeance for the murder of
his brother, the ill-fated husband of Joanna, (the beautiful and guilty
Queen of Naples--the Mary Stuart of Italy,) had already prepared himself
to subject the garden of Campania to the