Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best ebook reader for ubuntu .txt) 📕

Chapter 4.VII    The Festival.


BOOK V   
THE CRISIS.

Chapter 5.I    The Judgment of the Tribune.

Chapter 5.II    The Flight.

Chapter 5.III    The Battle.

Chapter 5.IV    The Hollowness of the Base.

Chapter 5.V    The Rottenness of the Edifice.

Chapter 5.VI    The Fall of the Temple.

Chapter 5.VII    The Successors of an Unsuccessful Revolution—Who is to


BOOK VI   
THE PLAGUE.

Chapter 6.1    The Retreat of the Lover.

Chapter 6.II    The Seeker.

Chapter 6.III    The Flowers Amidst the Tombs.

Chapter 6.IV    We Obtain What We Seek, and Know it Not.

Chapter 6.V    The Error.


BOOK VII   
THE PRISON.

Chapter 7.I    Avignon.—The Two Pages.—The Stranger Beauty.

Chapter 7.II    The Character of a Warrior Priest—an Interview—the

Chapter 7.III    Holy Men.—Sagacious Deliberations.—Just Resolves.—And

Chapter 7.IV    The Lady and the Page.

Chapter 7.V    The Inmate of the Tower.

Chapter 7.VI    The Scent Does Not Lie.—The Priest and the Soldier.

Chapter 7.VII    Vaucluse and its Genius Loci.—Old Acquaintance Renewed.

Chapter 7.VIII    The Crowd.—The Trial.—The Verdict.—The Soldier and

Chapter 7.IX    Albornoz and Nina.


BOOK VIII   
THE GRAND COMPANY.

Chapter 8.I    The Encampment.

Chapter 8.II    Adrian Once More the Guest of Montreal.

Chapter 8.III    Faithful and Ill-fated Love.—The Aspirations Survive the


BOOK IX   
THE RETURN.

Chapter 9.I    The Triumphal Entrance.

Chapter 9.II    The Masquerade.

Chapter 9.III    Adrian’s Adventures at Palestrina.

Chapter 9.IV    The Position of the Senator.—The Work of Years.—The

Chapter 9.V    The Biter Bit.

Chapter 9.VI    The Events Gather to the End.


BOOK X   
THE LION Of BASALT.

Chapter 10.I    The Conjunction of Hostile Planets in the House of Death.

Chapter 10.II    Montreal at Rome.—His Reception of Angelo Villani.

Chapter 10.III    Montreal’s Banquet.

Chapter 10.IV    The Sentence of Walter de Montreal.

Chapter 10.V    The Discovery.

Chapter 10.VI    The Suspense.

Chapter 10.VII    The Tax.

Chapter 10.VIII    The Threshold of the Event.

Chapter The Last       The Close of the Chase.


Appendix I   
Some Remarks on the Life and Character of Rienzi.

Appendix II    A Word Upon the Work by Pere du Cerceau and Pere Brumoy,

Preface to The First Edition of Rienzi.

I began this tale two years ago at Rome. On removing to Naples, I threw it aside for “The Last Days of Pompeii,” which required more than “Rienzi” the advantage of residence within reach of the scenes described. The fate of the Roman Tribune continued, however, to haunt and impress me, and, some time after “Pompeii” was published, I renewed my earlier undertaking. I regarded the completion of these volumes, indeed, as a kind of duty;—for having had occasion to read the original authorities from which modern historians have drawn their accounts of the life of Rienzi, I was led to believe that a very remarkable man had been superficially judged, and a very important period crudely examined. (See Appendix, Nos. I and II.) And this belief was sufficiently strong to induce me at first to meditate a more serious work upon the life and times of Rienzi. (I have adopted the termination of Rienzi instead of Rienzo, as being more familiar to the general reader.—But the latter is perhaps the more accurate reading, since the name was a popular corruption from Lorenzo.) Various reasons concurred against this project—and I renounced the biography to commence the fiction. I have still, however, adhered, with a greater fidelity than is customary in Romance, to all the leading events of the public life of the Roman Tribune; and the Reader will perhaps find in these pages a more full and detailed account of the rise and fall of Rienzi, than in any English work of which I am aware. I have, it is true, taken a view of his character different in some respects from that of Gibbon or Sismondi. But it is a view, in all its main features, which I believe (and think I could prove) myself to be warranted in taking, not less by the facts of History than the laws of Fiction. In the meanwhile, as I have given the facts from which I have drawn my interpretation of the principal agent, the reader has sufficient data for his own judgment. In the picture of the Roman Populace, as in that of the Roman Nobles of the fourteenth century, I follow literally the descriptions left to us;—they are not flattering, but they are faithful, likenesses.

Preserving generally the real chronology of Rienzi’s life, the plot of this work extends over a space of some years, and embraces the variety of characters necessary to a true delineation of events. The story, therefore, cannot have precisely that order of interest found in fictions strictly and genuinely dramatic, in which (to my judgment at least) the time ought to be as limited as possible, and the characters as few;—no new character of importance to the catastrophe being admissible towards the end of the work. If I may use the word Epic in its most modest and unassuming acceptation, this Fiction, in short, though indulging in dramatic situations, belongs, as a whole, rather to the Epic than the Dramatic school.

I cannot conclude without rendering the tribute of my praise and homage to the versatile and gifted Author of the beautiful Tragedy of Rienzi. Considering that our hero be the same—considering that we had the same materials from which to choose our several stories—I