The roving tendencies of Adrian were at once fixed and centered; the dreams of his tender mistress had awakened to a life dreaming still, but rounded with a truth. All that earnestness, and energy, and fervour of emotion, which, in her brother, broke forth in the schemes of patriotism and the aspirations of power, were, in Irene, softened down into one object of existence, one concentration of soul,and that was love. Yet, in this range of thought and action, so apparently limited, there was, in reality, no less boundless a sphere than in the wide space of her brothers many-pathed ambition. Not the less had she the power and scope for all the loftiest capacities granted to our clay. Equal was her enthusiasm for her idol; equal, had she been equally tried, would have been her generosity, her devotion:greater, be sure, her courage; more inalienable her worship; more unsullied by selfish purposes and sordid views. Time, change, misfortune, ingratitude, would have left her the same! What state could fall, what liberty decay, if the zeal of mans noisy patriotism were as pure as the silent loyalty of a womans love?
In them everything was young!the heart unchilled, unblighted,that fulness and luxuriance of lifes life which has in it something of divine. At that age, when it seems as if we could never die, how deathless, how flushed and mighty as with the youngness of a god, is all that our hearts create! Our own youth is like that of the earth itself, when it peopled the woods and waters with divinities; when life ran riot, and yet only gave birth to beauty;all its shapes, of poetry,all its airs, the melodies of Arcady and Olympus! The Golden Age never leaves the world: it exists still, and shall exist, till love, health, poetry, are no more; but only for the young!
If I now dwell, though but for a moment, on this interlude in a drama calling forth more masculine passions than that of love, it is because I foresee that the occasion will but rarely recur. If I linger on the description of Irene and her hidden affection, rather than wait for circumstances to portray them better than the authors words can, it is because I foresee that that loving and lovely image must continue to the last rather a shadow than a portrait,thrown in the background, as is the real destiny of such natures, by bolder figures and more gorgeous colours; a something whose presence is rather felt than seen, and whose very harmony with the whole consists in its retiring and subdued repose.
Chapter 1.VIII. The Enthusiastic Man Judged by the Discreet Man
Thou wrongest me, said Rienzi, warmly, to Adrian, as they sat alone, towards the close of a long conference; I do not play the part of a mere demagogue; I wish not to stir the great deeps in order that my lees of fortune may rise to the surface. So long have I brooded over the past, that it seems to me as if I had become a part of itas if I had no separate existence. I have coined my whole soul into one master passion,and its end is the restoration of Rome.
But by what means?
My Lord! my Lord! there is but one way to restore the greatness of a peopleit is an appeal to the people themselves. It is not in the power of princes and barons to make a state permanently glorious; they raise themselves, but they raise not the people with them. All great regenerations are the universal movement of the mass.
Nay, answered Adrian, then have we read history differently. To me, all great regenerations seem to have been the work of the few, and tacitly accepted by the multitude. But let us not dispute after the manner of the schools. Thou sayest loudly that a vast crisis is at hand; that the Good Estate (buono stato) shall be established. How? where are your arms?your soldiers? Are the nobles less strong than heretofore? Is the mob more bold, more constant? Heaven knows that I speak not with the prejudices of my orderI weep for the debasement of my country! I am a Roman, and in that name I forget that I am a noble. But I tremble at the storm you would raise so hazardously. If your insurrection succeed, it will be violent: it will be purchased by bloodby the blood of all the loftiest names of Rome. You will aim at a second expulsion of the Tarquins; but it will be more like a second proscription of Sylla. Massacres and disorders never pave the way to peace. If, on the other hand, you fail, the chains of Rome are riveted for ever: an ineffectual struggle to escape is but an excuse for additional tortures to the slave.
And what, then, would the Lord Adrian have us do? said Rienzi, with that peculiar and sarcastic smile which has before been noted. Shall we wait till the Colonna and Orsini quarrel no more? shall we ask the Colonna for liberty, and the Orsini for justice? My Lord, we cannot appeal to the nobles against the nobles. We must not ask them to moderate their power; we must restore to ourselves that power. There may be danger in the attemptbut we attempt it amongst the monuments of the Forum: and if we fallwe shall perish worthy of our sires! Ye have high descent, and sounding titles, and wide lands, and you talk of your ancestral honours! We, too,we plebeians of Rome,we have ours! Our fathers were freemen! where is our heritage? not soldnot given away: but stolen from us, now by fraud, now by forcefilched from us in our sleep; or wrung from us with fierce hands, amidst our cries and struggles. My Lord, we but ask that lawful heritage to be restored to us: to usnay, to you it is the same; your liberty, alike, is gone. Can you dwell in your fathers house, without towers, and fortresses, and the bought swords of bravos? can you walk in the streets at dark without arms and followers? True, you, a noble, may retaliate; though we dare not. You, in your turn, may terrify and outrage others; but does licence compensate for liberty? They have given you pomp and powerbut the safety of equal laws were a better gift. Oh, were I youwere I Stephen Colonna himself, I should pant, ay, thirstily as I do now, for that free air which comes not through bars and bulwarks against my fellow-citizens, but in the open space of Heavensafe, because protected by the silent Providence of Law, and not by the lean fears and hollow-eyed suspicions which are the comrades of a hated power. The tyrant thinks he is free, because he commands slaves: the meanest peasant in a free state is more free than he is. Oh, my Lord, that youthe brave, the generous, the enlightenedyou, almost alone amidst your order, in the knowledge that we had a countryoh, would that you who can sympathise with our sufferings, would strike with us for their redress!
Thou wilt war against Stephen Colonna, my kinsman; and though I have seen him but little, nor, truth to say, esteem him much, yet he is the boast of our house,how can I join thee?
His life will be safe, his possessions safe, his rank safe. What do we war against? His power to do wrong to others.
Should he discover that thou hast force beyond words, he would be less merciful to thee.
And has he not discovered that? Do not the shouts of the people tell him that I am a man whom he should fear? Does hethe cautious, the wily, the profounddoes he build fortresses, and erect towers, and not see from his battlements the mighty fabric that I, too, have erected?
You! where, Rienzi?
In the hearts of Rome! Does he not see? continued Rienzi. No, no; heall, all his tribe, are blind. Is it not so?
Of a certainty, my kinsman has no belief in your power, else he would have crushed you long ere this. Nay, it was but three days ago that he said, gravely, he would rather you addressed the populace than the best priest in Christendom; for that other orators inflamed the crowd, and no man so stilled and dispersed them as you did.