e it for your
Eminence to deal with."

"You deemed! Who are you, then?"

"One of the members of the Council, your Eminence, and a stanch opponent
of the Tribune, as is well known, when he wanted the new tax--"

"Council--trash! No more councils now! Order is restored at last. The
Orsini and the Colonna will look to you in future. Resist a tax, did
you? Well, that was right when proposed by a tyrant; but I warn you,
friend, to take care how you resist the tax we shall impose. Happy
if your city can buy its peace with the Church on any terms:--and his
Holiness is short of the florins."

The discomfited councillor shrank back.

"Tear off yon insolent placard. Nay, hold! fix over it our proclamation
of ten thousand florins for the heretic's head! Ten thousand? methinks
that is too much now--we will alter the cipher. Meanwhile Rinaldo
Orsini, Lord Senator, march thy soldiers to St. Angelo; let us see if
the heretic can stand a siege."

"It needs not, your Eminence," said the councillor, again officiously
bustling up; "St. Angelo is surrendered. The Tribune, his wife, and one
page, escaped last night, it is said, in disguise."

"Ha!" said the old Colonna, whose dulled sense had at length arrived at
the conclusion that something extraordinary arrested the progress of his
friends. "What is the matter? What is that placard? Will no one tell me
the words? My old eyes are dim."

As he uttered the questions, in the shrill and piercing treble of age,
a voice replied in a loud and deep tone--none knew whence it came; the
crowd was reduced to a few stragglers, chiefly friars in cowl and
serge, whose curiosity nought could daunt, and whose garb ensured them
safety--the soldiers closed the rear: a voice, I say, came, startling
the colour from many a cheek--in answer to the Colonna, saying:

"TREMBLE! RIENZI SHALL RETURN!"

BOOK VI. THE PLAGUE.

"Erano gli anni della fruttifera Incarnazione del Figliuolo
di Dio al numero pervenuti di mille trecento quarant'otto,
quando nell' egregia citta di Fiorenza oltre ad ogni altra
Italica bellissima, pervenna la mortifera pestilenza."--
Boccaccio, "Introduzione al Decamerone".

"The years of the fructiferous incarnation of the Son of God
had reached the number of one thousand three hundred and
forty-eight, when into the illustrious city of Florence,
beautiful beyond every other in Italy, entered the death-
fraught pestilence."-