Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best summer reads .txt) 📗

Before the market-place, and at the foot of the Capitol, an immense crowd was assembled. Each man sought to push before his neighbour; each struggled to gain access to one particular spot, round which the crowd was wedged think and dense.

“Corpo di Dio!” said a man of huge stature, pressing onward, like some bulky ship, casting the noisy waves right and left from its prow, “this is hot work; but for what, in the holy Mother’s name, do ye crowd so? See you not, Sir Ribald, that my right arm is disabled, swathed, and bandaged, so that I cannot help myself better than a baby? And yet you push against me as if I were an old wall!”

“Ah, Cecco del Vecchio!—what, man! we must make way for you—you are too small and tender to bustle through a crowd! Come, I will protect you!” said a dwarf of some four feet high, glancing up at the giant.

“Faith,” said the grim smith, looking round on the mob, who laughed loud at the dwarf’s proffer, “we all do want protection, big and small. What do you laugh for, ye apes?—ay, you don’t understand parables.”

“And yet it is a parable we are come to gaze upon,” said one of the mob, with a slight sneer.

“Pleasant day to you, Signor Baroncelli,” answered Cecco del Vecchio; “you are a good man, and love the people; it makes one’s heart smile to see you. What’s all this pother for?”

“Why the Pope’s Notary hath set up a great picture in the marketplace, and the gapers say it relates to Rome; so they are melting their brains out, this hot day, to guess at the riddle.”

“Ho! ho!” said the smith, pushing on so vigorously that he left the speaker suddenly in the rear; “if Cola di Rienzi hath aught in the matter, I would break through stone rocks to get to it.”

“Much good will a dead daub do us,” said Baroncelli, sourly, and turning to his neighbours; but no man listened to him, and he, a would-be demagogue, gnawed his lip in envy.

Amidst half-awed groans and curses from the men whom he jostled aside, and open objurgations and shrill cries from the women, to whose robes and headgear he showed as little respect, the sturdy smith won his way to a space fenced round by chains, in the centre of which was placed a huge picture.

“How came it hither?” cried one; “I was first at the market.”

“We found it here at daybreak,” said a vender of fruit: “no one was by.”

“But why do you fancy Rienzi had a hand in it?”

“Why, who else could?” answered twenty voices.

“True! Who else?” echoed the gaunt smith. “I dare be sworn the good man spent the whole night in painting it himself. Blood of St. Peter! but it is mighty fine! What is it about?”

“That’s the riddle,” said a meditative fish-woman; “if I could make it out, I should die happy.”

“It is something about liberty and taxes, no doubt,” said Luigi, the butcher, leaning over the chains. “Ah, if Rienzi were minded, every poor man would have his bit of meat in his pot.”

“And as much bread as he could eat,” added a pale baker.

“Chut! bread and meat—everybody has that now!—but what wine the poor folks drink! One has no encouragement to take pains with one’s vineyard,” said a vine-dresser.

“Ho, hollo!—long life to Pandulfo di Guido! Make way for master Pandulfo; he is a learned man; he is a friend of the great Notary’s; he will tell us all about the picture; make way, there—make way!”

Slowly and modestly, Pandulfo di Guido, a quiet, wealthy, and honest man of letters, whom nought save the violence of the times could have roused from his tranquil home, or his studious closet, passed to the chains. He looked long and hard at the picture, which was bright with new, and yet moist colours, and exhibited somewhat of the reviving art, which, though hard and harsh in its features, was about that time visible, and, carried to a far higher degree, we yet gaze upon in the paintings of Perugino, who flourished during the succeeding generation. The people pressed round the learned man, with open mouths; now turning their eyes to the picture, now to Pandulfo.

“Know you not,” at length said Pandulfo, “the easy and palpable meaning of this design? Behold how the painter has presented to you a vast and stormy sea—mark how its waves—”

“Speak louder—louder!” shouted the impatient crowd.

“Hush!” cried those in the immediate vicinity of Pandulfo, “the worthy Signor is perfectly audible!”

Meanwhile, some of the more witty, pushing towards a stall in the marketplace, bore from it a rough table, from which they besought Pandulfo to address the people. The pale citizen, with some pain and shame, for he was no practised spokesman, was obliged to assent; but when he cast his eyes over the vast and breathless crowd, his own deep sympathy with their cause inspired and emboldened him. A light broke from his eyes; his voice swelled into power; and his head, usually buried in his breast, became erect and commanding in its air.

“You see before you in the picture” (he began again) “a mighty and tempestuous sea: upon its waves you behold five ships; four of them are already wrecks,—their masts are broken, the waves are dashing through the rent planks, they are past all aid and hope: on each of these ships lies the corpse of a woman. See you not, in the wan face and livid limbs, how faithfully the limner hath painted the hues and loathsomeness of death? Below each of these ships is a word that applies the metaphor to truth. Yonder, you see the name of Carthage; the other three are Troy, Jerusalem, and Babylon. To these four is one common inscription. ‘To exhaustion were we brought by injustice!’ Turn now your eyes to the middle of the sea,—there you behold the fifth ship, tossed amidst the waves, her mast broken, her rudder gone, her sails shivered, but not yet a wreck like the rest, though she soon may be. On her deck kneels a female, clothed in mourning; mark the wo upon her countenance,—how cunningly the artist has conveyed its depth and desolation; she stretches out her arms in prayer, she implores your and Heaven’s assistance. Mark now the superscription—‘This is Rome!’—Yes, it is your country that addresses you in this emblem!”

The crowd waved to and fro, and a deep murmur crept gathering over the silence which they had hitherto kept.

“Now,” continued Pandulfo, “turn your gaze to the right of the picture, and you will behold the cause of the tempest,—you will see why the fifth vessel is thus perilled, and her sisters are thus wrecked. Mark, four different kinds of animals, who, from their horrid jaws, send forth the winds and storms which torture and rack the sea. The first are the