h the nobles. Perhaps it was for that reason that he had
continued the guest of the Colonna.

When, six years before the present date, the Capitol of the Caesars
witnessed the triumph of Petrarch, the scholastic fame of the young
Rienzi had attracted the friendship of the poet,--a friendship that
continued, with slight interruption, to the last, through careers
so widely different; and afterwards, one among the Roman Deputies to
Avignon, he had been conjoined with Petrarch (According to the modern
historians; but it seems more probable that Rienzi's mission to Avignon
was posterior to that of Petrarch. However this be, it was at Avignon
that Petrarch and Rienzi became most intimate, as Petrarch himself
observes in one of his letters.) to supplicate Clement VI. to remove
the Holy See from Avignon to Rome. It was in this mission that, for
the first time, he evinced his extraordinary powers of eloquence and
persuasion. The pontiff, indeed, more desirous of ease than glory, was
not convinced by the arguments, but he was enchanted with the pleader;
and Rienzi returned to Rome, loaded with honours, and clothed with the
dignity of high and responsible office. No longer the inactive scholar,
the gay companion, he rose at once to pre-eminence above all his
fellow-citizens. Never before had authority been borne with so austere
an integrity, so uncorrupt a zeal. He had sought to impregnate his
colleagues with the same loftiness of principle--he had failed. Now
secure in his footing, he had begun openly to appeal to the people; and
already a new spirit seemed to animate the populace of Rome.

While these were the fortunes of Rienzi, Adrian had been long separated
from him, and absent from Rome.

The Colonna were staunch supporters of the imperial party, and Adrian di
Castello had received and obeyed an invitation to the Emperor's court.
Under that monarch he had initiated himself in arms, and, among the
knights of Germany, he had learned to temper the natural Italian
shrewdness with the chivalry of northern valour.

In leaving Bavaria, he had sojourned a short time in the solitude of one
of his estates by the fairest lake of northern Italy; and thence, with
a mind improved alike by action and study, had visited many of the free
Italian states, imbibed sentiments less prejudiced than those of his
order, and acquired an early reputation for himself while inly marking
the characters and deeds of others. In him, the best qualities o