of an army. But, as we have already seen, his sagacity perceived at once
that he could not move the aged head of the patricians to those hardy
and perilous measures which were necessary to the attainment of supreme
power. Contented with his present station, and taught moderation by his
age and his past reverses, Stephen Colonna was not the man to risk a
scaffold from the hope to gain a throne. The contempt which the old
patrician professed for the people, and their idol, also taught the
deep-thinking Montreal that, if the Colonna possessed not the ambition,
neither did he possess the policy, requisite for empire. The Knight
found his caution against Rienzi in vain, and he turned to Rienzi
himself. Little cared the Knight of St. John which party were
uppermost--prince or people--so that his own objects were attained; in
fact, he had studied the humours of a people, not in order to serve, but
to rule them; and, believing all men actuated by a similar ambition, he
imagined that, whether a demagogue or a patrician reigned, the people
were equally to be victims, and that the cry of "Order" on the one hand,
or of "Liberty" on the other, was but the mere pretext by which the
energy of one man sought to justify his ambition over the herd. Deeming
himself one of the most honourable spirits of his age, he believed in
no honour which he was unable to feel; and, sceptic in virtue, was
therefore credulous of vice.

But the boldness of his own nature inclined him, perhaps, rather to
the adventurous Rienzi than to the self-complacent Colonna; and he
considered that to the safety of the first he and his armed minions
might be even more necessary than to that of the last. At present
his main object was to learn from Rienzi the exact strength which he
possessed, and how far he was prepared for any actual revolt.

The acute Roman took care, on the one hand, how he betrayed to the