“Alas! alas!” said the Signora, bitterly, “such have been the words of thousands of thy race.  What have been their deeds?  But I will trust thee, as I have trusted ever.  I know that thou art covetous of honour, that thou hast youth’s comely and bright ambition.”

“I am an orphan and a bastard,” said Angelo, bluntly!  “And circumstance stings me sharply on to action; I would win my own name.”

“Thou shalt,” said the Signora.  “We shall live yet to reward thee.  And now be quick.  Bring hither one of thy page’s suits,—­mantle and head-gear.  Quick, I say, and whisper not to a soul what I have asked of thee.”

Chapter 7.V.  The Inmate of the Tower.

The night slowly advanced, and in the highest chamber of that dark and rugged tower which fronted the windows of the Cesarini’s palace sate a solitary prisoner.  A single lamp burned before him on a table of stone, and threw its rays over an open Bible; and those stern but fantastic legends of the prowess of ancient Rome, which the genius of Livy has dignified into history. ("Avea libri assai, suo Tito Livio, sue storie di Roma, la Bibbia et altri libri assai, non finava di studiare.”—­“Vita di Cola di Rienzi”, lib. ii. cap. 13.  See translation to motto to Book VII. page 202.) A chain hung pendent from the vault of the tower, and confined the captive; but so as to leave his limbs at sufficient liberty to measure at will the greater part of the cell.  Green and damp were the mighty stones of the walls, and through a narrow aperture, high out of reach, came the moonlight, and slept in long shadow over the rude floor.  A bed at one corner completed the furniture of the room.  Such for months had been the abode of the conqueror of the haughtiest Barons, and the luxurious dictator of the stateliest city of the world!

Care, and travel, and time, and adversity, had wrought their change in the person of Rienzi.  The proportions of his frame had enlarged from the compact strength of earlier manhood, the clear paleness of his cheek was bespread with a hectic and deceitful glow.  Even in his present studies, intent as they seemed, and genial though the lecture to a mind enthusiastic even to fanaticism, his eyes could not rivet themselves as of yore steadily to the page.  The charm was gone from the letters.  Every now and then he moved restlessly, started, re-settled himself, and muttered broken exclamations like a man in an anxious dream.  Anon, his gaze impatiently turned upward, about, around, and there was a strange and wandering fire in those large deep eyes, which might have thrilled the beholder with a vague and unaccountable awe.