University of Virginia Library

Scene III.

—Before San Giovanni in Laterano. A comet blazing in the morning sky.
Enter Rienzi in state, wearing over his armour the Imperial Dalmatic; his helmet coronetted, and wreathed with laurel and olive.
Rien.
No preparation made for our reception.
Step forward, herald, and acquaint the Legate
We are here, upon his summons. Well?

Herald.
My lord,
The doors are shut.

Rien.
Sound all my silver trumpets.
[Flourish.
Insolent pause—again! (Flourish.)
Once more! (Flourish.)
They hear.

[The doors are thrown open, and Rienzi is about to enter, when he is confronted by the Cardinal Legate, Bertrand de Deux, who appears in the Church porch, attended by Bishop of Orvieto and Clergy.
Cardinal.
Forbear, wake not the slumbering seraphim
Who wield the Church's thunder!

Rien.
Cardinal,
If you have aught against me, I am here
To answer it, as to the Pope himself
I have already answered.

Card.
If your pride
Can brook no lowlier answer, I hold here
Rejoinder which will make that answer pale.

[Holds up Bull of Excommunication.
Rien.
What is my crime, that I should stand accurst?

Card.
First, manifest heresy, in setting up
Your private judgment 'gainst the Church's doctrine.

Rien.
Tut! Cardinal, you know this cannot hold;
You know I am no heretic.

Card.
Next, sacrilege,
Which, like the leprosy of Constantine,
Whose font your sinful body hath defiled,
Clings to your soul, and must sequester you
From Christ's fair flock.

Rien.
Is, then, a heathen's laver
Too holy for a shriven Christian's bath?
What washed him clean, why should it wash me foul?

Card.
This mirth is like a madman in a storm
Mocking the bolt that smites him. Next, I say,
Revolt against the Church's temporal power.
You have left drinking at the silver fount
Of all authority, Christ's Vicar here,
For that vexed pool, the People; in whose mire
You have mocked law's image, and affect to bow
To this lewd idol that your hands have made—
Citing, with contumelious arrogance,
The Emperor to your bar. You interlope
Between the Holy Father and his flock,
Judging contending princes. Furthermore,
In factious wars you have made dismal slaughter
Of the most noble families of Rome,
Whom, by your impious pomp and blustering pride,
You have incensed against you; and withal
You have laid hands upon the revenues
Of the Apostolic See, to lavish them
On your vainglorious pageantries of state.

Rien.
(aside).
This bull's a waspish creature after all;
Its sting is in its tail. (Aloud.)
Thanks, Cardinal,
You rate me as a broker who grows fat,
Robbing his principal; but the Pope's abused.
He reads me through the flaws of alien minds,
Whose cold and flinty thoughts of me they shape
To pebbles for his eye. What, Rome must be
The purse for Avignon to void at will!
Her Tribune, who to smooth the Pope's own way
Exalts the valleys and makes mountains low,
Must threadbare walk, that priests and cardinals
May play the prince in purple, keep—

Card.
No more!
Bridle your scandalous tongue, or I shall do
With hearty zeal what I had fain left undone.

Rien.
Ay, truth grows scandal in a Churchman's ear.
Your charges make me mad—I cheat the Pope
Of his fair revenues! I, who have made
Gold rain like manna in his treasuries,
His barren feofs break into ear with gold!
Shall I not spend, as steward for the Pope,
On his own city, and for his own good,
What as his steward I've won?

Card.
Come humbly, then,
And, like a steward, render your account;
Not with the audacious lunacy of your pride
Blazoned upon your back. Put off that robe,
Which fits your shoulders worse than cloth of gold
Becomes a beggar's tattered gaberdine.
You stand, self-pilloried, in braggart show,
A laughter for the world you trumpet round you
To note your shame.

Rien.
Laughter's the wit of fools;
The base man's sting; the vain man's martyrdom;
And oft the great man's herald. Let the world laugh,
My deeds are prophecies, my pageants words,
He that hath ears to hear may hear. This robe
I hold a summer cloud whose radiance owns
The splendour of its fount; but the sun's fire
Is native to himself. There let it lie—
[Lays down the Dalmatic at the Cardinal's feet.
I am Rienzi still.

Card.
Stript of his pride,
Rienzi would be greater than himself;
But 'tis his skin, and it must feel the rod,
If here not timely shed. I call upon you
For full submission.

Rien.
Look you, Cardinal,
Why will you go about to blast your harvests?
The gold I've spent I've made a golden net
In which all Christendom is meshed about,
Come Jubilee-time, for such a haul of fish,
Each with his penny in his mouth, as ne'er
St. Peter caught before. But for these wars,
Made by the bandits whose too gentle fate
You deign to pity, not a mesh were torn.
Come, Cardinal, your blessing, not your curse;
For this is my desert.

Card.
Your tongue runs loose.
I am not here to bandy words with you.
Submit you to the Pope, and rendering me
Your Tribuneship, proceed to Avignon,
To clear yourself, or you shall have my curse.

Rien.
To Avignon? When I'm as needful here
As autumn sun to the vintage! That's impossible.
And, for my Tribuneship, I took it not
From Priest or Pope, but from the people's hand,
And to the people only will resign it.

Card.
Is that your answer? Think again. I warn you
That over your proud head an avalanche hangs
A breath may loosen. Think!

Rien.
Well, let it fall,
If folly tickle you to its loosing. Cardinal,
You waste the Church's field. You may crush me,
Though I have better hopes; but you'll enthrone
Upon my fall mere anarchy in Rome.

Card.
Is this your answer? Will you peaceably
Leave for a time your office in my hand,
Or dare, like Satan's self, vain war with heaven?

Rien.
The Tribuneship is not the Pope's to take,
Nor mine to yield him.

Card.
Rash, misguided man,
Is this your final answer?

Rien.
Yes.

Card.
Then be
Anathema maranatha! Fix the bull
On the church door. Fall every one away
From that accursed heretic, on pain
Of the extremest anger of the Church!

[Rienzi's followers and the people fall back, leaving him standing alone.
Card.
(to Bp. of Orvieto).
For you, my lord, you are relieved of all
Your functions here in Rome. Your health demands
Some timely sequestration in your see,
To which we now remand you. (Exit Bp. of O.)
The rite shall be
Straightway performed with bell and book and candle.

[Exeunt Cardinal and suite into Church.
Enter a Messenger, who hands Rienzi a letter, and exit.
Rien.
(aside).
From Cola Orsino. Ha! What mischief's here?

(Reads.)
“Make what terms you can with the Legate.
The Barons, with his connivance, have laid a new plot
against you. The Count of Minorbino, Montréal's
lieutenant, has been admitted in the night, and now
holds the Arco di San Salvatore, from which I cannot
dislodge him, the troops being mutinous, the people
grown cold.”

O lethargy of Rome's self-traitorous heart!
(Aloud.)
Sound trumpets, there!
[A flourish feebly blown.
(Aside.)
I fear all's lost; my cowards melt from me.
(Aloud.)
Back, soldiers, to your ranks, display my banner!
Fools! can the curse of a designing priest
More cow you than a troop of German spears?
Arm, Romans, arm! This Cardinal has betrayed you;
The Count of Minorbino scares the town
With his vile scum of cut-throats! Follow me
All who have swords, and we'll enrich the fields,
These aliens waste, with their pernicious blood!

[They hang back sullenly, soldiers and citizens confused together.
Voices.
Can he talk the Church's curse from his head?

Rien.
What, will none stir? O cowards, renegades!
Rome and Rienzi! Dastards, are ye mum?

Cecco.

Faith, he may fight his own battles himself
now. We beat the Barons for him, and what came of
it but taxes, taxes?

Voices.
Down with the taxes!

Rien.
Poor-spirited knaves, seditious 'gainst yourselves,
Have ye no value, then, for what ye pay?
Will ye, like foolish traders, look to find
All profit for no spending—eat up all
Your corn, like stupid hinds, and sow no seed?

Voices.

We have reaped but a poor harvest in your
wars and revellings.

Rien.
Who made those wars? Not I.

Voices.
Thou art accurst!

Rien.
Betray your shepherd, then—let in the wasters.
I am wounded for your love, accurst for you;
For this ye wag your heads at me—fall off
From your allegiance! Blush, ye ungrateful churls
I blush to look on you.

Voices.
He has had some wrong, indeed.

Rien.
Well, have your way,
Abandon me, and I'll abandon you.
I'll be no more your Tribune.

Voices.
Nay, be our Tribune still.

Others.
Let's follow him!

Others.
But no more taxes.

Rien.
Once more, will ye come on?
[They hang back.
Ye give me tears for arms. O slaves in grain,
'Twould stain my sword to prick such swinish droves
To empire! Slaves to your own veering minds,
And craving bellies, be again the slaves
Of things that batten on your misery!
Thus I depose—O not myself, but you,
Goths of your glory, Vandals of your power;
Down to the mire that I have dragged you from,
And grovel there!
[He flings down the insignia of his office.
Swine, trample every pearl
That shines a star before the face of God
Into debauchment! Dunghills will grow flowers,
But rotten states no honourable thing.
Begone from me, for I am gone from you;
And when I come again, pray lest I come
Your tyrant, not your Tribune. Off, I say!
[He drives them out, then sits down on a fallen column.
Accurst, deposed, here let me make my lair,
A ruin among ruins. Rienzi fallen?
Then Rome should fall—the crumbling of each stone
Shaped by the might of her imperial hands
Make earthquake in the world. They crumble not
In the fierce beams of yon portentous star
Which, like the torch of God, hangs o'er the earth,
Threatening its last combustion; why should I,
Who am much more immortal, quail at a curse?
Though it flame thick with terrors it must pass
With my fair hearing. But will Rome's eclipse
Pass with that curse? Or must I pass myself,
Become a living legend of myself
Wandering the world? O gall! O infamy!
Better die now; and yet I would not die
Till I've made breathing space in this bad world
For noble things to thrive.

Enter Cola Orsino and Francesca, disguised as Friars.
Fran.
Speak you to him, my lord!

Cola O.
Tribune!

Rien.
Ha! Captain,
Come you to make a market of my life?
The Cardinal will cheapen me with you.

Cola O.
I come to save you, for the next great move
In the great game we play.

Rien.
What, back me still,
Double or quits with Fortune; and such stakes
As might make Emperors pale? O noble friend!
I have had dreams, Orsino, I have had dreams—
Great ones, I think.

Cola O.
The greatest dreamed by man,
Since Joseph dreamed in Bethlehem.

Rien.
Oh, for Rome,
I thought to have plucked empire from the stars,
And made the changes of the watery moon
Heralds of deeds accomplished.

Cola O.
So you did.

Rien.
But who shall with a foot stay Fortune's wheel,
And so sit uppermost? You see I am tamed.

Cola O.
Tut, tut! You soared a flight too high for Fortune.

Rien.
Ay, like the wild swan with a bolt in his brain,
I towered before I fell—my height was falling.
But who comes with you?

Cola O.
One you know.

[Francesca throws back her cowl, and advances.
Rien.
Francesca!
Oh, I must seek thy safety!

Fran.
Nay, thy own—
My safety is thy side.

Cola O.
(enveloping Rienzi in a friar's habit).
So, doff your helm.
Good-morrow, friar! We must 'scape from Rome.

Rien.
Rome? There's no Rome—the ghost of Rome has fled
Back to the tomb. O cowards, slaves! Escape?
Ay, they have left us nought to die for.

Cola O.
Tribune,
You know my castle of Sant' Angelo,
By Tivoli? There be our rendezvous,
Where you may rest concealed, and spy events.
The worst game, played to the end has hope for friend.
Your children are sent on; your wife with me
You'll trust awhile? You follow best alone.

Fran.
I stir not save with thee.

Rien.
Nay, good Francesca—
O noble friend! All thought of—all contrived.
Away, away!

Fran.
My place is at thy side.

Rien.
'Twould peril both—go with this trustiest friend.
In this disguise I'll range about the town,
To hear what's said of me—then join you soon.
Away!

Fran.
I must perforce. Being a woman,
I must be mewed from danger's honest face,
While his worse sons, anxiety and fear,
Are left my guardians.

Cola O.
Madam, your husband's sake
Demands this trial.

Fran.
Then, for my husband's sake,
I'll meet these torturers patiently. Farewell,
My dearest lord—more mine for all this woe!

Rien.
Farewell, my love—keep such a heart as I have,
And all is well.
[Exeunt Cola Orsino and Francesca.
Now, in my fall's first hour,
To plot again my rising. I'll come here
By night, and with a pictured prophecy
Preach from these walls once more. Tremble, ye vile,
For, to purge Rome, Rienzi shall return!

[Exit.