han, 'O God hast thou betrayed me?'" This
evinced, perhaps, alarm or consternation at the fall of his standard--a
consternation natural, not to a coward, but a fanatic, at such an event.
But not a word is said about Rienzi's cowardice in the action itself;
it is not stated when the accident happened--nothing bears out the
implication that the Tribune was remote from the contest, and knew
little of what passed. And if this ignorant Frenchman had consulted
any other contemporaneous historian whatever, he would have found it
asserted by them all, that the fight was conducted with great valour,
both by the Roman populace and their leader on the one side, and the
Barons on the other.--G. Vill. lib. xii. cap. 105; Cron. Sen. tom. xv.
Murat. page 119; Cron. Est. page 444. Yet Gibbon rests his own sarcasm
on the Tribune's courage solely on the baseless exaggeration of this
Pere Du Cerceau.

So little, indeed, did this French pretender know of the history of the
time and place he treats of, that he imagines the Stephen Colonna who
was killed in the battle above-mentioned was the old Stephen Colonna,
and is very pathetic about his "venerable appearance," &c. This error,
with regard to a man so eminent as Stephen Colonna the elder, is
inexcusable: for, had the priest turned over the other pages of the very
collection in which he found the biography he deforms, he would
have learned that old Stephen Colonna was alive some time after that
battle.--(Cron. Sen. Murat. tom. xv. page 121.)

Again, just before Rienzi's expulsion from the office of Tribune, Du
Cerceau, translating in his headlong way the old biographer's account of
the causes of Rienzi's loss of popularity, says, "He shut himself up in
his palace, and his presence was known only by the rigorous punishments
which he caused his agents to inflict upon the innocent." Not a word of
this in the original!

Again, after the expulsion, Du Cerceau says, that the Barons seized upon
the "immense riches" he had amassed,--the words in the original are,
"grandi ornamenti," which are very different things from immense riches.
But the most remarkable sins of commission are in this person's account
of the second rise and fall of Rienzi under the title of Senator. Of
this I shall give but one instance:--

"The Senator, who perceived it, became only the more cruel. His
jealousies produced only fresh murders. In the continual dread he was
in, that the general discontent would terminate in