families for some days to lament over their remains;
and it was only in private and in secret that he permitted them to be
interred in their ancestral vaults: an excess of vengeance which
sullied his laurels, but which was scarcely inconsistent with the stern
patriotism of his character. Impatient to finish what he had begun,
anxious to march at once to Marino, where the insurgents collected their
shattered force, he summoned his Council, and represented the certainty
of victory, and its result in the complete restoration of peace. But
pay was due to the soldiery; they already murmured; the treasury was
emptied, it was necessary to fill it by raising a new tax.

Among the councillors were some whose families had suffered grievously
in the battle--they lent a lukewarm attention to propositions
of continued strife. Others, among whom was Pandulfo, timid but
well-meaning, aware that grief and terror even of their own triumph
had produced reaction amongst the people, declared that they would not
venture to propose a new tax. A third party, headed by Baroncelli--a
demagogue whose ambition was without principle--but who, by pandering
to the worst passions of the populace, by a sturdy coarseness of nature
with which they sympathised--and by that affectation of advancing what
we now term the "movement," which often gives to the fiercest fool an
advantage over the most prudent statesman, had quietly acquired a great
influence with the lower ranks--offered a more bold opposition. They
dared even to blame the proud Tribune for the gorgeous extravagance they
had themselves been the first to recommend--and half insinuated
sinister and treacherous motives in his acquittal of the Barons from
the accusation of Rodolf. In the very Parliament which the Tribune
had revived and remodelled for the support of freedom--freedom was
abandoned. His fiery eloquence met with a gloomy silence, and finally,
the votes were against his propositions for the new tax and the march
to Marino. Rienzi broke up the Council in haste and disorder. As he left
the hall, a letter was put into his hands; he read it, and remained for
some moments as one thunderstruck. He then summoned the Captain of his
Guards, and ordered a band of fifty horsemen to be prepared for his
commands; he repaired to Nina's apartment, he found her alone, and
stood for some moments gazing upon her so intently that she was awed and
chilled from all attempt at speech. At length he said, abru