riesly spectacle of death met his
eye. The people below, assembled in large concourse, rejoiced at the
execution of one whose whole life had been infamy and rapine--but who
had seemed beyond justice--with all the fierce clamour that marks the
exultation of the rabble over a crushed foe. And where Rienzi stood,
he heard heir shouts of "Long live the Tribune, the just judge, Rome's
liberator!" But at that time other thoughts deafened his senses to the
popular enthusiasm.

"My poor brother!" he said, with tears in his eyes, "it was owing to
this man's crimes--and to a crime almost similar to that for which he
has now suffered--that thou wert entrained to the slaughter; and they
who had no pity for the lamb, clamour for compassion to the wolf! Ah,
wert thou living now, how these proud heads would bend to thee; though
dead, thou wert not worthy of a thought. God rest thy gentle soul, and
keep my ambition pure as it was when we walked at twilight, side by side
together!"

The Tribune shut the casement, and turning away, sought the chamber of
Nina. On hearing his step without, she had already risen from the couch,
her eyes sparkling, her bosom heaving; and as he entered, she threw
herself on his neck, and murmured as she nestled to his breast,--"Ah,
the hours since we parted!"

It was a singular thing to see that proud lady, proud of her beauty, her
station, her new honours;--whose gorgeous vanity was already the talk
of Rome, and the reproach to Rienzi,--how suddenly and miraculously she
seemed changed in his presence! Blushing and timid, all pride in herself
seemed merged in her proud love for him. No woman ever loved to the full
extent of the passion, who did not venerate where she loved, and who
did not feel humbled (delighted in that humility) by her exaggerated and
overweening estimate of the superiority of the object of her worship.

And it might be the consciousness of this distinction between himself
and all other created things, which continued to increase the love of
the Tribune to his bride, to blind him to her failings towards others,
and to indulge her in a magnificence of parade, which, though to a
certain point politic to assume, was carried to an extent which if it
did not conspire to produce his downfall, has served the Romans with
an excuse for their own cowardice and desertion, and historians with
a plausible explanation of causes they had not the industry to fathom.
Rienzi returned his wife's caresses