Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 164 of 660 (24%)
page 164 of 660 (24%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
"Look at the populace below! how they murmur and gape,--and how their
eyes sparkle--and what looks they bend at us!" said Luca di Savelli to his mortal enemy, Castruccio Malatesta: the sense of a common danger united in one moment, but only for a moment, the enmity of years. "Diavolo!" muttered Raselli (Nina's father) to a baron, equally poor, "but the clerk has truth in his lips. 'Tis a pity he is not noble." "What a clever brain marred!" said a Florentine merchant. "That man might be something, if he were sufficiently rich." Adrian and Montreal were silent: the first seemed lost in thought,--the last was watching the various effects produced upon the audience. "Silence!" proclaimed the officers. "Silence, for my Lord Vicar." At this announcement, every eye turned to Raimond, who, rising with much clerical importance, thus addressed the assembly:-- "Although, Barons and Citizens of Rome, my well-beloved flock, and children,--I, no more than yourselves, anticipated the exact nature of the address ye have just heard,--and, albeit, I cannot feel unalloyed contentment at the manner, nor, I may say, at the whole matter of that fervent exhortation--yet (laying great emphasis on the last word), I cannot suffer you to depart without adding to the prayers of our Holy Father's servant, those, also, of his Holiness's spiritual representative. It is true! the Jubilee approaches! The Jubilee approaches--and yet our roads, even to the gates of Rome, are infested with murderous and godless ruffians! What pilgrim can venture across the Apennines to worship at the altars of St. Peter? The Jubilee |
|