ay. Nina he still loved with the same
tenderness, and, if possible, she adored him more than ever: but, the
zest and freshness of triumphant ambition gone, somehow or other,
their intercourse together had not its old charm. Formerly they talked
constantly of the future--of the bright days in store for them. Now,
with a sharp and uneasy pang, Rienzi turned from all thought of that
"gay tomorrow." There was no "gay tomorrow" for him! Dark and thorny
as was the present hour, all beyond seemed yet less cheering and
more ominous. Still he had some moments, brief but brilliant, when,
forgetting the iron race amongst whom he was thrown, he plunged into
scholastic reveries of the worshipped Past, and half-fancied that he
was of a People worthy of his genius and his devotion. Like most men who
have been preserved through great dangers, he continued with increasing
fondness to nourish a credulous belief in the grandeur of his own
destiny. He could not imagine that he had been so delivered, and for no
end! He was the Elected, and therefore the Instrument, of Heaven.
And thus, that Bible which in his loneliness, his wanderings, and his
prison, had been his solace and support, was more than ever needed in
his greatness.

It was another cause of sorrow and chagrin to one who, amidst such
circumstances of public danger, required so peculiarly the support and
sympathy of private friends,--that he found he had incurred amongst his
old coadjutors the common penalty of absence. A few were dead; others,
wearied with the storms of public life, and chilled in their ardour
by the turbulent revolutions to which, in every effort for her
amelioration, Rome had been subjected, had retired,--some altogether
from the city, some from all participation in political affairs. In his
halls, the Tribune-Senator was surrounded by unfamiliar faces, and a new
generation. Of the heads of the popular party, most were animated by a
stern dislike to the Pontifical domination, and looked with suspicion
and repugnance upon one who, if he governed for the People, had been
trusted and honoured by the Pope. Rienzi was not a man to forget former
friends, however lowly, and had already found time to seek an interview
with Cecco del Vecchio. But that stern Republican had received him with
coldness. His foreign mercenaries, and his title of Senator, were things
that the artisan could not digest. With his usual bluntness, he had said
so to Rienzi.

"As for the last," a