“Ha! speak again.”

“Thou wilt be heard, my Cola—­thou must be acquitted!”

“And Rome be free!—­Great God, I thank Thee!”

The Tribune sank on his knees, and never had his heart, in his youngest and purest hour, poured forth thanksgiving more fervent, yet less selfish.  When he rose again, the whole man seemed changed.  His eye had resumed its earlier expressions of deep and serene command.  Majesty sate upon his brow.  The sorrows of the exile were forgotten.  In his sanguine and rapid thoughts, he stood once more the guardian of his country,—­and its sovereign!

Nina gazed upon him with that intense and devoted worship, which steeped her vainer and her harder qualities in all the fondness of the softest woman.  “Such,” thought she, “was his look eight years ago, when he left my maiden chamber, full of the mighty schemes which liberated Rome—­such his look, when at the dawning sun he towered amidst the crouching Barons, and the kneeling population of the city he had made his throne!”

“Yes, Nina!” said Rienzi, as he turned and caught her eye.  “My soul tells me that my hour is at hand.  If they try me openly, they dare not convict—­if they acquit me, they dare not but restore.  Tomorrow, saidst thou, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, Rienzi; be prepared!”

“I am—­for triumph!  But tell me what happy chance brought thee to Avignon?”

“Chance, Cola!” said Nina, with reproachful tenderness.  “Could I know that thou wert in the dungeons of the Pontiff, and linger in idle security at Prague?  Even at the Emperor’s Court thou hadst thy partisans and favourers.  Gold was easily procured.  I repaired to Florence—­disguised my name—­and came hither to plot, to scheme, to win thy liberty, or to die with thee.  Ah! did not thy heart tell thee that morning and night the eyes of thy faithful Nina gazed upon this gloomy tower; and that one friend, humble though she be, never could forsake thee!”

“Sweet Nina!  Yet—­yet—­at Avignon power yields not to beauty without reward.  Remember, there is a worse death than the pause of life.”

Nina turned pale.  “Fear not,” she said, with a low but determined voice; “fear not, that men’s lips should say Rienzi’s wife delivered him.  None in this corrupted Court know that I am thy wife.”

“Woman,” said the Tribune, sternly; “thy lips elude the answer I would seek.  In our degenerate time and land, thy sex and ours forget too basely what foulness writes a leprosy in the smallest stain upon a matron’s honour.  That thy heart would never wrong me, I believe; but if thy weakness, thy fear of my death should wrong me, thou art a bitterer foe to Rienzi than the swords of the Colonna.  Nina, speak!”

“Oh, that my soul could speak,” answered Nina.  “Thy words are music to me, and not a thought of mine but echoes them.  Could I touch this hand, could I meet that eye, and not know that death were dearer to thee than shame?  Rienzi, when last we parted, in sadness, yet in hope, what were thy words to me?”