But Heaven had decreed that no single man, however gifted, or however
powerful, should long counteract or master the destinies of Rienzi: and
perhaps in no more glittering scene of his life did he ever evince so
dexterous and subtle an intellect as he now did in extricating himself
from the wiles of the Cardinal. Repairing to Perugia, he had, as we have
seen, procured, through the brothers of Montreal, men and money for his
return. But the Knight of St. John was greatly mistaken, if he imagined
that Rienzi was not thoroughly aware of the perilous and treacherous
tenure of the support he had received. His keen eye read at a glance the
aims and the characters of the brothers of Montreal--he knew that while
affecting to serve him, they designed to control--that, made the debtor
of the grasping and aspiring Montreal, and surrounded by the troops
conducted by Montreal's brethren, he was in the midst of a net which, if
not broken, would soon involve fortune and life itself in its fatal and
deadly meshes. But, confident in the resources and promptitude of his
own genius, he yet sanguinely trusted to make those his puppets, who
dreamed that he was their own; and, with empire for the stake, he cared
not how crafty the antagonists he was compelled to engage.

Meanwhile, uniting to all his rasher and all his nobler qualities, a
profound dissimulation, he appeared to trust implicitly to his Provencal
companions; and his first act on entering the Capitol, after the
triumphal procession, was to reward with the highest dignities in his
gift, Messere Arimbaldo and Messere Brettone de Montreal!

High feasting was there that night in the halls of the Capitol; but
dearer to Rienzi than all the pomp of the day, were the smiles of Nina.
Her proud and admiring eyes, swimming with delicious tears, fixed upon
his countenance, she but felt that they were re-united, and that the
hours, however brilliantly illumined, were hastening to that moment,
when, after so desolate and dark an absence, they might once more be
alone.

Far other the thoughts of Adrian Colonna, as he sate alone in the dreary
palace in the yet more dreary quarter of his haughty race. Irene then
was alive,--he had been deceived by some strange error,--she had escaped
the devouring pestilence; and something in the pale sadness of her
gentle features, even in that day of triumph, told him he was still
remembered. But as his mind by degrees calmed itself from its first wild
and