e smith, in a low tone, "Friend, I
am sorry for thy wound; but seek me on the morrow, and thou shalt find
thou hast wronged me;" he beckoned to the German to follow him, and
threaded his way through the crowd, which generally gave back as he
advanced. For the bitterest hatred to the order of the nobles was at
that time in Rome mingled with a servile respect for their persons, and
a mysterious awe of their uncontrollable power.

As Adrian passed through that part of the crowd in which the fray had
not yet commenced, the murmurs that followed him were not those which
many of his race could have heard.

"A Colonna," said one.

"Yet no ravisher," said another, laughing wildly.

"Nor murtherer," muttered a third, pressing his hand to his breast.
"'Tis not against him that my father's blood cries aloud."

"Bless him," said a fourth, "for as yet no man curses him!"

"Ah, God help us!" said an old man, with a long grey beard, leaning on
his staff: "The serpent's young yet; the fangs will show by and by."

"For shame, father! he is a comely youth, and not proud in the least.
What a smile he hath!" quoth a fair matron, who kept on the outskirt of
the melee.

"Farewell to a man's honour when a noble smiles on his wife!" was the
answer.

"Nay," said Luigi, a jolly butcher, with a roguish eye, "what a man
can win fairly from maid or wife, that let him do, whether plebeian or
noble--that's my morality; but when an ugly old patrician finds fair
words will not win fair looks, and carries me off a dame on the back of
a German boar, with a stab in the side for comfort to the spouse,--then,
I say, he is a wicked man, and an adulterer."

While such were the comments and the murmurs that followed the noble,
very different were the looks and words that attended the German
soldier.

Equally, nay, with even greater promptitude, did the crowd make way at
his armed and heavy tread; but not with looks of reverence:--the eye
glared as he approached; but the cheek grew pale--the head bowed--the
lip quivered; each man felt a shudder of hate and fear, as recognizing
a dread and mortal foe. And well and wrathfully did the fierce
mercenary note the signs of the general aversion. He pushed on
rudely--half-smiling in contempt, half-frowning in revenge, as he looked
from side to side; and his long, matted, light hair, tawny-coloured
moustache, and brawny front, contrasted strongly with the dark eyes,
raven locks, and slender frames of the It