hy friends must be branded as a traitor!"

"I will cut his throat, were he my own mother's son, if I find one
pledged man flinch!" said the fierce smith.

"Ha, ha!" rejoined Rienzi, with that strange laugh which belonged to
him; "a miracle! a miracle! The Picture speaks now!"

It was already nearly dusk when Rienzi left the Capitol. The broad space
before its walls was empty and deserted, and wrapping his mantle closely
round him, he walked musingly on.

"I have almost climbed the height," thought he, "and now the precipice
yawns before me. If I fail, what a fall! The last hope of my country
falls with me. Never will a noble rise against the nobles. Never will
another plebeian have the opportunities and the power that I have! Rome
is bound up with me--with a single life. The liberties of all time are
fixed to a reed that a wind may uproot. But oh, Providence! hast thou
not reserved and marked me for great deeds? How, step by step, have I
been led on to this solemn enterprise! How has each hour prepared its
successor! And yet what danger! If the inconstant people, made cowardly
by long thraldom, do but waver in the crisis, I am swept away!"

As he spoke, he raised his eyes, and lo, before him, the first star of
twilight shone calmly down upon the crumbling remnants of the Tarpeian
Rock. It was no favouring omen, and Rienzi's heart beat quicker as that
dark and ruined mass frowned thus suddenly on his gaze.

"Dread monument," thought he, "of what dark catastrophes, to what
unknown schemes, hast thou been the witness! To how many enterprises, on
which history is dumb, hast thou set the seal! How know we whether they
were criminal or just? How know we whether he, thus doomed as a traitor,
would not, if successful, have been immortalized as a deliverer? If I
fall, who will write my chronicle? One of the people? alas! blinded and
ignorant, they furnish forth no minds that can appeal to posterity. One
of the patricians? in what colours then shall I be painted! No tomb will
rise for me amidst the wrecks; no hand scatter flowers upon my grave!"

Thus meditating on the verge of that mighty enterprise to which he had
devoted himself, Rienzi pursued his way. He gained the Tiber, and paused
for a few moments beside its legendary stream, over which the purple and
starlit heaven shone deeply down. He crossed the bridge which leads
to the quarter of the Trastevere, whose haughty inhabitants yet boast
themselves the sole true desc