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Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 2. The Revolution - Chapter 2.4. The Ambitious Citizen, And The Ambitious Soldier |
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_ The Bishop of Orvietto lingered last, to confer with Rienzi, who awaited him in the recesses of the Lateran. Raimond had the penetration not to be seduced into believing that the late scene could effect any reformation amongst the nobles, heal their divisions, or lead them actively against the infestors of the Campagna. But, as he detailed to Rienzi all that had occurred subsequent to the departure of that hero of the scene, he concluded with saying:-- "You will perceive from this, one good result will be produced: the first armed dissension--the first fray among the nobles--will seem like a breach of promise; and, to the people and to the Pope, a reasonable excuse for despairing of all amendment amongst the Barons,--an excuse which will sanction the efforts of the first, and the approval of the last." "For such a fray we shall not long wait," answered Rienzi. "I believe the prophecy," answered Raimond, smiling; "at present all runs well. Go you with us homeward?" "Nay, I think it better to tarry here till the crowd is entirely dispersed; for if they were to see me, in their present excitement, they might insist on some rash and hasty enterprise. Besides, my Lord," added Rienzi, "with an ignorant people, however honest and enthusiastic, this rule must be rigidly observed--stale not your presence by custom. Never may men like me, who have no external rank, appear amongst the crowd, save on those occasions when the mind is itself a rank." "That is true, as you have no train," answered Raimond, thinking of his own well-liveried menials. "Adieu, then! we shall meet soon." "Ay, at Philippi, my Lord. Reverend Father, your blessing!" It was some time subsequent to this conference that Rienzi quitted the sacred edifice. As he stood on the steps of the church--now silent and deserted--the hour that precedes the brief twilight of the South lent its magic to the view. There he beheld the sweeping arches of the mighty Aqueduct extending far along the scene, and backed by the distant and purpled hills. Before--to the right--rose the gate which took its Roman name from the Coelian Mount, at whose declivity it yet stands. Beyond--from the height of the steps--he saw the villages scattered through the grey Campagna, whitening in the sloped sun; and in the furthest distance the mountain shadows began to darken over the roofs of the ancient Tusculum, and the second Alban (The first Alba--the Alba Longa--whose origin Fable ascribes to Ascanius, was destroyed by Tullus Hostilius. The second Alba, or modern Albano, was erected on the plain below the ancient town, a little before the time of Nero.) city, which yet rises, in desolate neglect, above the vanished palaces of Pompey and Domitian. The Roman stood absorbed and motionless for some moments, gazing on the scene, and inhaling the sweet balm of the mellow air. It was the soft springtime--the season of flowers, and green leaves, and whispering winds--the pastoral May of Italia's poets: but hushed was the voice of song on the banks of the Tiber--the reeds gave music no more. From the sacred Mount in which Saturn held his home, the Dryad and the Nymph, and Italy's native Sylvan, were gone for ever. Rienzi's original nature--its enthusiasm--its veneration for the past--its love of the beautiful and the great--that very attachment to the graces and pomp which give so florid a character to the harsh realities of life, and which power afterwards too luxuriantly developed; the exuberance of thoughts and fancies, which poured itself from his lips in so brilliant and inexhaustible a flood--all bespoke those intellectual and imaginative biasses, which, in calmer times, might have raised him in literature to a more indisputable eminence than that to which action can ever lead; and something of such consciousness crossed his spirit at that moment. "Happier had it been for me," thought he, "had I never looked out from my own heart upon the world. I had all within me that makes contentment of the present, because I had that which can make me forget the present. I had the power to re-people--to create: the legends and dreams of old--the divine faculty of verse, in which the beautiful superfluities of the heart can pour themselves--these were mine! Petrarch chose wisely for himself! To address the world, but from without the world; to persuade--to excite--to command,--for these are the aim and glory of ambition;--but to shun its tumult, and its toil! His the quiet cell which he fills with the shapes of beauty--the solitude, from which he can banish the evil times whereon we are fallen, but in which he can dream back the great hearts and the glorious epochs of the past. For me--to what cares I am wedded! to what labours I am bound! what instruments I must use! what disguises I must assume! to tricks and artifice I must bow my pride! base are my enemies--uncertain my friends! and verily, in this struggle with blinded and mean men, the soul itself becomes warped and dwarfish. Patient and darkling, the Means creep through caves and the soiling mire, to gain at last the light which is the End." In these reflections there was a truth, the whole gloom and sadness of which the Roman had not yet experienced. However august be the object we propose to ourselves, every less worthy path we take to insure it distorts the mental sight of our ambition; and the means, by degrees, abase the end to their own standard. This is the true misfortune of a man nobler than his age--that the instruments he must use soil himself: half he reforms his times; but half, too, the times will corrupt the reformer. His own craft undermines his safety;--the people, whom he himself accustoms to a false excitement, perpetually crave it; and when their ruler ceases to seduce their fancy, he falls their victim. The reform he makes by these means is hollow and momentary--it is swept away with himself: it was but the trick--the show--the wasted genius of a conjuror: the curtain falls--the magic is over--the cup and balls are kicked aside. Better one slow step in enlightenment,--which being made by the reason of a whole people, cannot recede,--than these sudden flashes in the depth of the general night, which the darkness, by contrast doubly dark, swallows up everlastingly again! As, slowly and musingly, Rienzi turned to quit the church, he felt a light touch upon his shoulder. "Fair evening to you, Sir Scholar," said a frank voice. "To you, I return the courtesy," answered Rienzi, gazing upon the person who thus suddenly accosted him, and in whose white cross and martial bearing the reader recognises the Knight of St. John. "You know me not, I think?" said Montreal; "but that matters little, we may easily commence our acquaintance: for me, indeed, I am fortunate enough to have made myself already acquainted with you." "Possibly we have met elsewhere, at the house of one of those nobles to whose rank you seem to belong?" "Belong! no, not exactly!" returned Montreal, proudly. "Highborn and great as your magnates deem themselves, I would not, while the mountains can yield one free spot for my footstep, change my place in the world's many grades for theirs. To the brave, there is but one sort of plebeian, and that is the coward. But you, sage Rienzi," continued the Knight, in a gayer tone, "I have seen in more stirring scenes than the hall of a Roman Baron." Rienzi glanced keenly at Montreal, who met his eye with an open brow. "Yes!" resumed the Knight--"but let us walk on; suffer me for a few moments to be your companion. Yes! I have listened to you--the other eve, when you addressed the populace, and today, when you rebuked the nobles; and at midnight, too, not long since, when (your ear, fair Sir!--lower, it is a secret!)--at midnight, too, when you administered the oath of brotherhood to the bold conspirators, on the ruined Aventine!" As he concluded, the Knight drew himself aside to watch, upon Rienzi's countenance, the effect which his words might produce. A slight tremor passed over the frame of the conspirator--for so, unless the conspiracy succeed, would Rienzi be termed, by others than Montreal: he turned abruptly round to confront the Knight, and placed his hand involuntarily on his sword, but presently relinquished the grasp. "Ha!" said the Roman, slowly, "if this be true, fall Rome! There is treason even among the free!" "No treason, brave Sir!" answered Montreal; "I possess thy secret--but none have betrayed it to me." "And is it as friend or foe that thou hast learned it?" "That as it may be," returned Montreal, carelessly. "Enough, at present, that I could send thee to the gibbet, if I said but the word,--to show my power to be thy foe; enough, that I have not done it, to prove my disposition to be thy friend." "Thou mistakest, stranger! that man does not live who could shed my blood in the streets of Rome! The gibbet! Little dost thou know of the power which surrounds Rienzi." These words were said with some scorn and bitterness; but, after a moment's pause, Rienzi resumed, more calmly:-- "By the cross on thy mantle, thou belongest to one of the proudest orders of knighthood: thou art a foreigner, and a cavalier. What generous sympathies can convert thee into a friend of the Roman people?" "Cola di Rienzi," returned Montreal, "the sympathies that unite us are those which unite all men who, by their own efforts, rise above the herd. True, I was born noble--but powerless and poor: at my beck now move, from city to city, the armed instruments of authority: my breath is the law of thousands. This empire I have not inherited; I won it by a cool brain and a fearless arm. Know me for Walter de Montreal; is it not a name that speaks a spirit kindred to thine own? Is not ambition a common sentiment between us? I do not marshal soldiers for gain only, though men have termed me avaricious--nor butcher peasants for the love of blood, though men have called me cruel. Arms and wealth are the sinews of power; it is power that I desire;--thou, bold Rienzi, strugglest thou not for the same? Is it the rank breath of the garlic-chewing mob--is it the whispered envy of schoolmen--is it the hollow mouthing of boys who call thee patriot and freeman, words to trick the ear--that will content thee? These are but thy instruments to power. Have I spoken truly?" Whatever distaste Rienzi might conceive at this speech he masked effectually. "Certes," said he, "it would be in vain, renowned Captain, to deny that I seek but that power of which thou speakest. But what union can there be between the ambition of a Roman citizen and the leader of paid armies that take their cause only according to their hire--today, fight for liberty in Florence--tomorrow, for tyranny in Bologna? Pardon my frankness; for in this age that is deemed no disgrace which I impute to thy armies. Valour and generalship are held to consecrate any cause they distinguish; and he who is the master of princes, may be well honoured by them as their equal." "We are entering into a less deserted quarter of the town," said the Knight; "is there no secret place--no Aventine--in this direction, where we can confer?" "Hush!" replied Rienzi, cautiously looking round. "I thank thee, noble Montreal, for the hint; nor may it be well for us to be seen together. Wilt thou deign to follow me to my home, by the Palatine Bridge? (The picturesque ruins shown at this day as having once been the habitation of the celebrated Cola di Rienzi, were long asserted by the antiquarians to have belonged to another Cola or Nicola. I believe, however, that the dispute has been lately decided: and, indeed, no one but an antiquary, and that a Roman one, could suppose that there were two Colas to whom the inscription on the house would apply.) there we can converse undisturbed and secure." "Be it so," said Montreal, falling back. With a quick and hurried step, Rienzi passed through the town, in which, wherever he was discovered, the scattered citizens saluted him with marked respect; and, turning through a labyrinth of dark alleys, as if to shun the more public thoroughfares, arrived at length at a broad space near the river. The first stars of night shone down on the ancient temple of Fortuna Virilis, which the chances of Time had already converted into the Church of St. Mary of Egypt; and facing the twice-hallowed edifice stood the house of Rienzi. "It is a fair omen to have my mansion facing the ancient Temple of Fortune," said Rienzi, smiling, as Montreal followed the Roman into the chamber I have already described. "Yet Valour need never pray to Fortune," said the Knight; "the first commands the last." Long was the conference between these two men, the most enterprising of their age. Meanwhile, let me make the reader somewhat better acquainted with the character and designs of Montreal, than the hurry of events has yet permitted him to become. Walter de Montreal, generally known in the chronicles of Italy by the designation of Fra Moreale, had passed into Italy--a bold adventurer, worthy to become a successor of those roving Normans (from one of the most eminent of whom, by the mother's side, he claimed descent) who had formerly played so strange a part in the chivalric errantry of Europe,--realizing the fables of Amadis and Palmerin--(each knight, in himself a host), winning territories and oversetting thrones; acknowledging no laws save those of knighthood; never confounding themselves with the tribe amongst which they settled; incapable of becoming citizens, and scarcely contented with aspiring to be kings. At that time, Italy was the India of all those well-born and penniless adventurers who, like Montreal, had inflamed their imagination by the ballads and legends of the Roberts and the Godfreys of old; who had trained themselves from youth to manage the barb, and bear, through the heats of summer, the weight of arms; and who, passing into am effeminate and distracted land, had only to exhibit bravery in order to command wealth. It was considered no disgrace for some powerful chieftain to collect together a band of these hardy aliens,--to subsist amidst the mountains on booty and pillage,--to make war upon tyrant or republic, as interest suggested, and to sell, at enormous stipends, the immunities of peace. Sometimes they hired themselves to one state to protect it against the other; and the next year beheld them in the field against their former employers. These bands of Northern stipendiaries assumed, therefore, a civil, as well as a military, importance; they were as indispensable to the safety of one state as they were destructive to the security of all. But five years before the present date, the Florentine Republic had hired the services of a celebrated leader of these foreign soldiers,--Gualtier, duke of Athens. By acclamation, the people themselves had elected that warrior to the state of prince, or tyrant, of their state; before the year was completed, they revolted against his cruelties, or rather against his exactions,--for, despite all the boasts of their historians, they felt an attack on their purses more deeply than an assault on their liberties,--they had chased him from their city, and once more proclaimed themselves a Republic. The bravest, and most favoured of the soldiers of the Duke of Athens had been Walter de Montreal; he had shared the rise and the downfall of his chief. Amongst popular commotions, the acute and observant mind of the Knight of St. John had learned no mean civil experience; he had learned to sound a people--to know how far they would endure--to construe the signs of revolution--to be a reader of the times. After the downfall of the Duke of Athens, as a Free Companion, in other words a Freebooter, Montreal had augmented under the fierce Werner his riches and his renown. At present without employment worthy his spirit of enterprise and intrigue, the disordered and chiefless state of Rome had attracted him thither. In the league he had proposed to Colonna--in the suggestions he had made to the vanity of that Signor--his own object was to render his services indispensable--to constitute himself the head of the soldiery whom his proposed designs would render necessary to the ambition of the Colonna, could it be excited--and, in the vastness of his hardy genius for enterprise, he probably foresaw that the command of such a force would be, in reality, the command of Rome;--a counter-revolution might easily unseat the Colonna and elect himself to the principality. It had sometimes been the custom of Roman, as of other Italian, States, to prefer for a chief magistrate, under the title of Podesta, a foreigner to a native. And Montreal hoped that he might possibly become to Rome what the Duke of Athens had been to Florence--an ambition he knew well enough to be above the gentleman of Provence, but not above the leader of an army. But, as we have already seen, his sagacity perceived at once that he could not move the aged head of the patricians to those hardy and perilous measures which were necessary to the attainment of supreme power. Contented with his present station, and taught moderation by his age and his past reverses, Stephen Colonna was not the man to risk a scaffold from the hope to gain a throne. The contempt which the old patrician professed for the people, and their idol, also taught the deep-thinking Montreal that, if the Colonna possessed not the ambition, neither did he possess the policy, requisite for empire. The Knight found his caution against Rienzi in vain, and he turned to Rienzi himself. Little cared the Knight of St. John which party were uppermost--prince or people--so that his own objects were attained; in fact, he had studied the humours of a people, not in order to serve, but to rule them; and, believing all men actuated by a similar ambition, he imagined that, whether a demagogue or a patrician reigned, the people were equally to be victims, and that the cry of "Order" on the one hand, or of "Liberty" on the other, was but the mere pretext by which the energy of one man sought to justify his ambition over the herd. Deeming himself one of the most honourable spirits of his age, he believed in no honour which he was unable to feel; and, sceptic in virtue, was therefore credulous of vice. But the boldness of his own nature inclined him, perhaps, rather to the adventurous Rienzi than to the self-complacent Colonna; and he considered that to the safety of the first he and his armed minions might be even more necessary than to that of the last. At present his main object was to learn from Rienzi the exact strength which he possessed, and how far he was prepared for any actual revolt. The acute Roman took care, on the one hand, how he betrayed to the Knight more than he yet knew, or he disgusted him by apparent reserve on the other. Crafty as Montreal was, he possessed not that wonderful art of mastering others which was so preeminently the gift of the eloquent and profound Rienzi, and the difference between the grades of their intellect was visible in their present conference. "I see," said Rienzi, "that amidst all the events which have lately smiled upon my ambition, none is so favourable as that which assures me of your countenance and friendship. In truth, I require some armed alliance. Would you believe it, our friends, so bold in private meetings, yet shrink from a public explosion. They fear not the patricians, but the soldiery of the patricians; for it is the remarkable feature in the Italian courage, that they have no terror for each other, but the casque and sword of a foreign hireling make them quail like deer." "They will welcome gladly, then, the assurance that such hirelings shall be in their service--not against them; and as much as you desire for the revolution, so many shall you receive." "But the pay and the conditions," said Rienzi, with his dry, sarcastic smile. "How shall we arrange the first, and what shall we hold to be the second?" "That is an affair easily concluded," replied Montreal. "For me, to tell you frankly, the glory and excitement of so great a revulsion would alone suffice. I like to feel myself necessary to the completion of high events. For my men it is otherwise. Your first act will be to seize the revenues of the state. Well, whatever they amount to, the product of the first year, great or small, shall be divided amongst us. You the one half, I and my men the other half." "It is much," said Rienzi, gravely, and as if in calculation,--"but Rome cannot purchase her liberties too dearly. So be it then decided." "Amen!--and now, then, what is your force? for these eighty or a hundred signors of the Aventine,--worthy men, doubtless,--scarce suffice for a revolt!" Gazing cautiously round the room, the Roman placed his hand on Montreal's arm-- "Between you and me, it requires time to cement it. We shall be unable to stir these five weeks. I have too rashly anticipated the period. The corn is indeed cut, but I must now, by private adjuration and address, bind up the scattered sheaves." "Five weeks," repeated Montreal; "that is far longer than I anticipated." "What I desire," continued Rienzi, fixing his searching eyes upon Montreal, "is, that, in the meanwhile, we should preserve a profound calm,--we should remove every suspicion. I shall bury myself in my studies, and convoke no more meetings." "Well--" "And for yourself, noble Knight, might I venture to dictate, I would pray you to mix with the nobles--to profess for me and for the people the profoundest contempt--and to contribute to rock them yet more in the cradle of their false security. Meanwhile, you could quietly withdraw as many of the armed mercenaries as you influence from Rome, and leave the nobles without their only defenders. Collecting these hardy warriors in the recesses of the mountains, a day's march from hence, we may be able to summon them at need, and they shall appear at our gates, and in the midst of our rising--hailed as deliverers by the nobles, but in reality allies with the people. In the confusion and despair of our enemies at discovering their mistake, they will fly from the city." "And its revenues and its empire will become the appanage of the hardy soldier and the intriguing demagogue!" cried Montreal, with a laugh. "Sir Knight, the division shall be equal." "Agreed!" "And now, noble Montreal, a flask of our best vintage!" said Rienzi, changing his tone. "You know the Provencals," answered Montreal, gaily. The wine was brought, the conversation became free and familiar, and Montreal, whose craft was acquired, and whose frankness was natural, unwittingly committed his secret projects and ambition more nakedly to Rienzi than he had designed to do. They parted apparently the best of friends. "By the way," said Rienzi, as they drained the last goblet. "Stephen Colonna betakes him to Corneto, with a convoy of corn, on the 19th. Will it not be as well if you join him? You can take that opportunity to whisper discontent to the mercenaries that accompany him on his mission, and induce them to our plan." "I thought of that before," returned Montreal; "it shall be done. For the present, farewell!" "'Success to the Norman,
Rienzi watched the receding form of his guest with an expression of hate and fear upon his countenance. "Give that man the power," he muttered, "and he may be a second Totila. (Innocent VI., some years afterwards, proclaimed Montreal to be worse than Totila.) Methinks I see, in his griping and ferocious nature,--through all the gloss of its gaiety and knightly grace,--the very personification of our old Gothic foes. I trust I have lulled him! Verily, two suns could no more blaze in one hemisphere, than Walter de Montreal and Cola di Rienzi live in the same city. The star-seers tell us that we feel a secret and uncontrollable antipathy to those whose astral influences destine them to work us evil; such antipathy do I feel for yon fair-faced homicide. Cross not my path, Montreal!--cross not my path!" With this soliloquy Rienzi turned within, and, retiring to his apartment, was seen no more that night. _ |
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