your renovated liberties--upon the very altar that these walls contain!
and never! oh, never! since the world began, shall men have made a more
grateful offering to their God!"

So intense was the sensation these words created in the audience--so
breathless and overpowered did they leave the souls with they took by
storm--that Rienzi had descended the scaffold, and already disappeared
behind the curtain from which he had emerged, ere the crowd were fully
aware that he had ceased.

The singularity of this sudden apparition--robed in mysterious
splendour, and vanishing the moment its errand was fulfilled--gave
additional effect to the words it had uttered. The whole character of
that bold address became invested with a something preternatural and
inspired; to the minds of the vulgar, the mortal was converted into the
oracle; and, marvelling at the unhesitating courage with which their
idol had rebuked and conjured the haughty barons,--each of whom they
regarded in the light of sanctioned executioners, whose anger could be
made manifest at once by the gibbet or the axe,--the people could not
but superstitiously imagine that nothing less than authority from above
could have gifted their leader with such hardihood, and preserved him
from the danger it incurred. In fact, it was in this very courage of
Rienzi that his safety consisted; he was placed in those circumstances
where audacity is prudence. Had he been less bold, the nobles would have
been more severe; but so great a license of speech in an officer of the
Holy See, they naturally imagined, was not unauthorised by the assent of
the Pope, as well as by the approbation of the people. Those who did not
(like Stephen Colonna) despise words as wind, shrank back from the task
of punishing one whose voice might be the mere echo of the wishes of the
pontiff. The dissensions of the nobles among each other, were no less