his throne!"

"Yes, Nina!" said Rienzi, as he turned and caught her eye. "My soul
tells me that my hour is at hand. If they try me openly, they dare not
convict--if they acquit me, they dare not but restore. Tomorrow, saidst
thou, tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, Rienzi; be prepared!"

"I am--for triumph! But tell me what happy chance brought thee to
Avignon?"

"Chance, Cola!" said Nina, with reproachful tenderness. "Could I know
that thou wert in the dungeons of the Pontiff, and linger in idle
security at Prague? Even at the Emperor's Court thou hadst thy
partisans and favourers. Gold was easily procured. I repaired to
Florence--disguised my name--and came hither to plot, to scheme, to win
thy liberty, or to die with thee. Ah! did not thy heart tell thee that
morning and night the eyes of thy faithful Nina gazed upon this gloomy
tower; and that one friend, humble though she be, never could forsake
thee!"

"Sweet Nina! Yet--yet--at Avignon power yields not to beauty without
reward. Remember, there is a worse death than the pause of life."

Nina turned pale. "Fear not," she said, with a low but determined voice;
"fear not, that men's lips should say Rienzi's wife delivered him. None
in this corrupted Court know that I am thy wife."

"Woman," said the Tribune, sternly; "thy lips elude the answer I would
seek. In our degenerate time and land, thy sex and ours forget too
basely what foulness writes a leprosy in the smallest stain upon a
matron's honour. That thy heart would never wrong me, I believe; but if
thy weakness, thy fear of my death should wrong me, thou art a bitterer
foe to Rienzi than the swords of the Colonna. Nina, speak!"

"Oh, that my soul could speak," answered Nina. "Thy words are music to
me, and not a thought of mine but echoes them. Could I touch this hand,
could I meet that eye, and not know that death were dearer to thee than
shame? Rienzi, when last we parted, in sadness, yet in hope, what were
thy words to me?"

"I remember them well," returned the Tribune: "'I leave thee,' I said,
'to keep alive at the Emperor's Court, by thy genius, the Great Cause.
Thou hast youth and beauty--and courts have lawless and ruffian suitors.
I give thee no caution; it were beneath thee and me. But I leave thee
the power of death.' And with that, Nina--"

"Thy hands tremblingly placed in mine this dagger. I live--need I say
more?"

"My noble and beloved Nina, it is enough. Keep the dagger yet."

"Yes; till we mee