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 it - as 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
people - it 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 order - I 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 blood - by 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
attempt - but we attempt it amongst the monuments of the Forum: and if we
fall - we 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 sold - not given away: but stolen from us, now
by fraud, now by force - filched 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 us - nay, to you it is the
same; your liberty, alike, is gone. Can you dwell in your father's 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 power - but the safety of equal laws were a better gift.
Oh, were I you - were 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 Heaven -
safe, 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
you - the brave, the generous, the enlightened - you, almost alone amidst
your order, in the knowledge that we had a country - oh, 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 he - the cautious, the wily, the
profound - does 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; he -
all, 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."
"And I called him profound! Does not Heaven hush the air most when most it
prepares the storm? Ay, my Lord, I understand. Stephen Colonna despises
me. I have been" - (here, as he continued, a deep blush mantled over his
cheek) - "you remember it - at his palace in my younger days, and pleased
him with witty tales and light apophthegms. Nay - ha! ha! - he would call
me, I think, sometimes, in gay compliment, his jester - his buffoon! I
have brooked his insult; I have even bowed to his applause. I would
undergo the same penance, stoop to the same shame, for the same motive, and
in the same cause. What did I desire to effect? Can you tell me? No! I
will whisper it, then, to you: it was - the contempt of Stephen Colonna.
Under that contempt I was protected, till protection became no longer
necessary. I desired not to be thought formidable by the patricians, in
order that, quietly and unsuspected, I might make my way amongst the
people. I have done so; I now throw aside the mask. Face to face with
Stephen Colonna, I could tell him, this very hour, that I brave his anger;
that I laugh at his dungeons and armed men. But if he think me the same
Rienzi as of old, let him; I can wait my hour."
"Yet," said Adrian, waiving an answer to the haughty language of his
companion, "tell me, what dost thou ask for the people, in order to avoid
an appeal to their passions? - ignorant and capricious as they are, thou
canst not appeal to their reason."
"I ask full justice and safety for all men. I will be contented with no
less a compromise. I ask the nobles to dismantle their fortresses; to
disband their armed retainers; to acknowledge no impunity for crime in high
lineage; to claim no protection save in the courts of the common law."
"Vain desire!" said Adrian. "Ask what may yet be granted."
"Ha - ha!" replied Rienzi, laughing bitterly, "did I not tell you it was a
vain dream to ask for law and justice at the hands of the great? Can you
blame me, then, that I ask it elsewhere?" Then, suddenly changing his tone
and manner, he added with great solemnity - "Waking life hath false and
vain dreams; but sleep is sometimes a mighty prophet. By sleep it is that
Heaven mysteriously communes with its creatures, and guides and sustains
its earthly agents in the path to which its providence leads them on."
Adrian made no reply. This was not the first time he had noted that
Rienzi's strong intellect was strangely conjoined with a deep and mystical
superstition. And this yet more inclined the young noble, who, though
sufficiently devout, yielded but little to the wilder credulities of the
time, to doubt the success of the schemer's projects. In this he erred
greatly, though his error was that of the worldly wise. For nothing ever
so inspires human daring, as the fond belief that it is the agent of a
Diviner Wisdom. Revenge and patriotism, united in one man of genius and
ambition - such are the Archimedian levers that find, in FANATICISM, the
spot out of the world by which to move the world. The prudent man may
direct a state; but it is the enthusiast who regenerates it, - or ruins.
