Chapter 6.1. The Retreat of the Lover.
By the borders of one of the fairest lakes of Northern Italy stood the
favourite mansion of Adrian di Castello, to which in his softer and less
patriotic moments his imagination had often and fondly turned; and thither
the young nobleman, dismissing his more courtly and distinguished
companions in the Neapolitan embassy, retired after his ill-starred return
to Rome. Most of those thus dismissed joined the Barons; the young
Annibaldi, whose daring and ambitious nature had attached him strongly to
the Tribune, maintained a neutral ground; he betook himself to his castle
in the Campagna, and did not return to Rome till the expulsion of Rienzi.
The retreat of Irene's lover was one well fitted to feed his melancholy
reveries. Without being absolutely a fortress, it was sufficiently strong
to resist any assault of the mountain robbers or petty tyrants in the
vicinity; while, built by some former lord from the materials of the half-
ruined villas of the ancient Romans, its marbled columns and tesselated
pavements relieved with a wild grace the grey stone walls and massive
towers of feudal masonry. Rising from a green eminence gently sloping to
the lake, the stately pile cast its shadow far and dark over the beautiful
waters; by its side, from the high and wooded mountains on the background,
broke a waterfall, in irregular and sinuous course - now hid by the
foliage, now gleaming in the light, and collecting itself at last in a
broad basin - beside which a little fountain, inscribed with half-
obliterated letters, attested the departed elegance of the classic age -
some memento of lord and poet whose very names were lost; thence descending
through mosses and lichen, and odorous herbs, a brief, sheeted stream bore
its surplus into the lake. And there, amidst the sturdier and bolder
foliage of the North, grew, wild and picturesque, many a tree transplanted,
in ages back, from the sunnier East; not blighted nor stunted in that
golden clime, which fosters almost every produce of nature as with a
mother's care. The place was remote and solitary. The roads that
conducted to it from the distant towns were tangled, intricate,
mountainous, and beset by robbers. A few cottages, and a small convent, a
quarter of a league up the verdant margin, were the nearest habitations;
and, save by some occasional pilgrim or some bewildered traveller, the
loneliness of the mansion was rarely invaded. It was precisely the spot
which proffered rest to a man weary of the world, and indulged the memories
which grow in rank luxuriance over the wrecks of passion. And he whose
mind, at once gentle and self-dependent, can endure solitude, might have
ransacked all earth for a more fair and undisturbed retreat.
But not to such a solitude had the earlier dreams of Adrian dedicated the
place. Here had he thought - should one bright being have presided - here
should love have found its haven: and hither, when love at length admitted
of intrusion, hither might wealth and congenial culture have invited all
the gentler and better spirits which had begun to move over the troubled
face of Italy, promising a second and younger empire of poesy, and lore,
and art. To the graceful and romantic but somewhat pensive and inert,
temperament of the young noble, more adapted to calm and civilized than
stormy and barbarous times, ambition proffered no reward so grateful as
lettered leisure and intellectual repose. His youth coloured by the
influence of Petrarch, his manhood had dreamed of a happier Vaucluse not
untenanted by a Laura. The visions which had connected the scene with the
image of Irene made the place still haunted by her shade; and time and
absence only ministering to his impassioned meditations, deepened his
melancholy and increased his love.
In this lone retreat - which even in describing from memory, for these eyes
have seen, these feet have trodden, this heart yet yearneth for, the spot -
which even, I say, in thus describing, seems to me (and haply also to the
gentle reader) a grateful and welcome transit from the storms of action and
the vicissitudes of ambition, so long engrossing the narrative; - in this
lone retreat Adrian passed the winter, which visits with so mild a change
that intoxicating clime. The roar of the world without was borne but in
faint and indistinct murmurings to his ear. He learned only imperfectly,
and with many contradictions, the news which broke like a thunderbolt over
Italy, that the singular and aspiring man - himself a revolution - who had
excited the interest of all Europe, the brightest hopes of the
enthusiastic, the profusest adulation of the great, the deepest terror of
the despot, the wildest aspirations of all free spirits, had been suddenly
stricken from his state, his name branded and his head proscribed. This
event, which happened at the end of December, reached Adrian, through a
wandering pilgrim, at the commencement of March, somewhat more than two
months after the date; the March of that awful year 1348, which saw Europe,
and Italy especially, desolated by the direst pestilence which history has
recorded, accursed alike by the numbers and the celebrity of its victims,
and yet strangely connected with some not unpleasing images by the grace of
Boccaccio and the eloquence of Petrarch.
The pilgrim who informed Adrian of the revolution at Rome was unable to
give him any clue to the present fate of Rienzi or his family. It was only
known that the Tribune and his wife had escaped, none knew whither; many
guessed that they were already dead, victims to the numerous robbers who
immediately on the fall of the Tribune settled back to their former habits,
sparing neither age nor sex, wealth nor poverty. As all relating to the
ex-Tribune was matter of eager interest, the pilgrim had also learned that,
previous to the fall of Rienzi, his sister had left Rome, but it was not
known to what place she had been conveyed.
The news utterly roused Adrian from his dreaming life. Irene was then in
the condition his letter dared to picture - severed from her brother,
fallen from her rank, desolate and friendless. "Now," said the generous
and high-hearted lover, "she may be mine without a disgrace to my name.
Whatever Rienzi's faults, she is not implicated in them. Her hands are not
red with my kinsman's blood; nor can men say that Adrian di Castello allies
himself with a House whose power is built upon the ruins of the Colonnas.
The Colonna are restored - again triumphant - Rienzi is nothing - distress
and misfortune unite me at once to her on whom they fall!"
But how were these romantic resolutions to be executed - Irene's dwelling-
place unknown? He resolved himself to repair to Rome and make the
necessary inquiries: accordingly he summoned his retainers: - blithe
tidings to them, those of travel! The mail left the armoury - the banner
the hall - and after two days of animated bustle, the fountain by which
Adrian had passed so many hours of revery was haunted only by the birds of
the returning spring; and the nightly lamp no longer cast its solitary ray
from his turret chamber over the bosom of the deserted lake.
