_ It was yet noon when Adrian beheld before him the lofty mountains that shelter Palestrina, the Praeneste of the ancient world. Back to a period before Romulus existed, in the earliest ages of that mysterious civilisation which in Italy preceded the birth of Rome, could be traced the existence and the power of that rocky city. Eight dependent towns owned its sway and its wealth; its position, and the strength of those mighty walls, in whose ruins may yet be traced the masonry of the remote Pelasgi, had long braved the ambition of the neighbouring Rome. From that very citadel, the Mural Crown (Hence, apparently, its Greek name of Stephane. Palestrina is yet one of the many proofs which the vicinity of Rome affords of the old Greek civilization of Italy.) of the mountain, had waved the standard of Marius; and up the road which Adrian's scanty troop slowly wound, had echoed the march of the murtherous Sylla, on his return from the Mithridatic war. Below, where the city spread towards the plain, were yet seen the shattered and roofless columns of the once celebrated Temple of Fortune; and still the immemorial olives clustered grey and mournfully around the ruins.
A more formidable hold the Barons of Rome could not have selected; and as Adrian's military eye scanned the steep ascent and the rugged walls, he felt that with ordinary skill it might defy for months all the power of the Roman Senator. Below, in the fertile valley, dismantled cottages and trampled harvests attested the violence and rapine of the insurgent Barons; and at that very moment were seen, in the old plain of the warlike Hernici, troops of armed men, driving before them herds of sheep and cattle, collected in their lawless incursions. In sight of that Praeneste, which had been the favourite retreat of the luxurious Lords of Rome in its most polished day, the Age of Iron seemed renewed.
The banner of the Colonna, borne by Adrian's troop, obtained ready admittance at the Porta del Sole. As he passed up the irregular and narrow streets that ascended to the citadel, groups of foreign mercenaries,--half-ragged, half-tawdry knots of abandoned women,--mixed here and there with the liveries of the Colonna, stood loitering amidst the ruins of ancient fanes and palaces, or basked lazily in the sun, upon terraces, through which, from amidst weeds and grass, glowed the imperishable hues of the rich mosaics, which had made the pride of that lettered and graceful nobility, of whom savage freebooters were now the heirs.
The contrast between the Past and Present forcibly occurred to Adrian, as he passed along; and, despite his order, he felt as if Civilization itself were enlisted against his House upon the side of Rienzi.
Leaving his train in the court of the citadel, Adrian demanded admission to the presence of his cousin. He had left Stefanello a child on his departure from Rome, and there could therefore be but a slight and unfamiliar acquaintance betwixt them, despite their kindred.
Peals of laughter came upon his ear, as he followed one of Stefanello's gentlemen through a winding passage that led to the principal chamber. The door was thrown open, and Adrian found himself in a rude hall, to which some appearance of hasty state and attempted comfort had been given. Costly arras imperfectly clothed the stone walls, and the rich seats and decorated tables, which the growing civilization of the northern cities of Italy had already introduced into the palaces of Italian nobles, strangely contrasted the rough pavement, spread with heaps of armour negligently piled around. At the farther end of the apartment, Adrian shudderingly perceived, set in due and exact order, the implements of torture.
Stefanello Colonna, with two other Barons, indolently reclined on seats drawn around a table, in the recess of a deep casement, from which might be still seen the same glorious landscape, bounded by the dim spires of Rome, which Hannibal and Pyrrhus had ascended that very citadel to survey!
Stefanello himself, in the first bloom of youth, bore already on his beardless countenance those traces usually the work of the passions and vices of maturest manhood. His features were cast in the mould of the old Stephen's; in their clear, sharp, high-bred outline might be noticed that regular and graceful symmetry, which blood, in men as in animals, will sometimes entail through generations; but the features were wasted and meagre. His brows were knit in an eternal frown; his thin and bloodless lips wore that insolent contempt which seems so peculiarly cold and unlovely in early youth; and the deep and livid hollows round his eyes, spoke of habitual excess and premature exhaustion. By him sat (reconciled by hatred to one another) the hereditary foes of his race; the soft, but cunning and astute features of Luca di Savelli, contrasted with the broad frame and ferocious countenance of the Prince of the Orsini.
The young head of the Colonna rose with some cordiality to receive his cousin. "Welcome," he said, "dear Adrian; you are arrived in time to assist us with your well-known military skill. Think you not we shall stand a long siege, if the insolent plebeian dare adventure it? You know our friends, the Orsini and the Savelli? Thanks to St. Peter, or Peter's delegate, we have now happily meaner throats to cut than those of each other!"
Thus saying, Stefanello again threw himself listlessly on his seat, and the shrill, woman's voice of Savelli took part in the dialogue.
"I would, noble Signor, that you had come a few hours earlier: we are still making merry at the recollection--he, he, he!"
"Ah, excellent," cried Stefanello, joining in the laugh; "our cousin has had a loss. Know Adrian, that this base fellow, whom the Pope has had the impudence to create Senator, dared but yesterday to send us a varlet, whom he called--by our Lady!--his ambassador!"
"Would you could have seen his mantle, Signor Adrian!" chimed in the Savelli: "purple velvet, as I live, decorated in gold, with the arms of Rome: we soon spoiled his finery."
"What!" exclaimed Adrian, "you did not break the laws of all nobility and knighthood?--you offered no insult to a herald!"
"Herald, sayst thou?" cried Stefanello, frowning till his eyes were scarce visible. "It is for Princes and Barons alone to employ heralds. An' I had had my will, I would have sent back the minion's head to the usurper."
"What did ye then?" asked Adrian, coldly.
"Bade our swineherds dip the fellow in the ditch, and gave him a night's lodging in a dungeon to dry himself withal."
"And this morning--he, he, he!" added the Savelli, "we had him before us, and drew his teeth, one by one;--I would you could have heard the fellow mumble out for mercy!"
Adrian rose hastily, and struck the table fiercely with his gauntlet.
"Stefanello Colonna," said he, colouring with noble rage, "answer me: did you dare to inflict this indelible disgrace upon the name we jointly bear? Tell me, at least, that you protested against this foul treason to all the laws of civilization and of honour. You answer not. House of the Colonna, can such be thy representative!"
"To me these words!" said Stefanello, trembling with passion. "Beware! Methinks thou art the traitor, leagued perhaps with yon rascal mob. Well do I remember that thou, the betrothed of the Demagogue's sister, didst not join with my uncle and my father of old, but didst basely leave the city to her plebeian tyrant."
"That did he!" said the fierce Orsini, approaching Adrian menacingly, while the gentle cowardice of Savelli sought in vain to pluck him back by the mantle--"that did he! and but for thy presence, Stefanello--"
"Coward and blusterer!" interrupted Adrian, fairly beside himself with indignation and shame, and dashing his gauntlet in the very face of the advancing Orsini--"wouldst thou threaten one who has maintained, in every list of Europe, and against the stoutest Chivalry of the North, the honour of Rome, which thy deeds the while disgraced? By this gage, I spit upon and defy thee. With lance and with brand, on horse and on foot, I maintain against thee and all thy line, that thou art no knight to have thus maltreated, in thy strongholds, a peaceful and unarmed herald. Yes, even here, on the spot of thy disgrace, I challenge thee to arms!"
"To the court below! Follow me," said Orsini, sullenly, and striding towards the threshold. "What, ho there! my helmet and breast-plate!"
"Stay, noble Orsini," said Stefanello. "The insult offered to thee is my quarrel--mine was the deed--and against me speaks this degenerate scion of our line. Adrian di Castello--sometime called Colonna--surrender your sword: you are my prisoner!"
"Oh!" said Adrian, grinding his teeth, "that my ancestral blood did not flow through thy veins--else--but enough! Me! your equal, and the favoured Knight of the Emperor, whose advent now brightens the frontiers of Italy!--me--you dare not detain. For your friends, I shall meet them yet perhaps, ere many days are over, where none shall separate our swords. Till then, remember, Orsini, that it is against no unpractised arm that thou wilt have to redeem thine honour!"
Adrian, his drawn sword in his hand, strode towards the door, and passed the Orsini, who stood, lowering and irresolute, in the centre of the apartment.
Savelli whispered Stefanello. "He says, 'Ere many days be past!' Be sure, dear Signor, that he goes to join Rienzi. Remember, the alliance he once sought with the Tribune's sister may be renewed. Beware of him! Ought he to leave the castle? The name of a Colonna, associated with the mob, would distract and divide half our strength."
"Fear me not," returned Stefanello, with a malignant smile. "Ere you spoke, I had determined!"
The young Colonna lifted the arras from the wall, opened a door, and passed into a low hall, in which sate twenty mercenaries.
"Quick!" said he. "Seize and disarm yon stranger in the green mantle--but slay him not. Bid the guard below find dungeons for his train. Quick! ere he reach the gate."
Adrian had gained the open hall below--his train and his steed were in sight in the court--when suddenly the soldiery of the Colonna, rushing through another passage than that which he had passed, surrounded and intercepted his retreat.
"Yield thee, Adrian di Castello," cried Stefanello from the summit of the stairs; "or your blood be on your own head."
Three steps did Adrian make through the press, and three of his enemies fell beneath his sword. "To the rescue!" he shouted to his band, and already those bold and daring troopers had gained the hall. Presently the alarum bell tolled loud--the court swarmed with soldiers. Oppressed by numbers, beat down rather than subdued, Adrian's little train was soon secured, and the flower of the Colonna, wounded, breathless, disarmed, but still uttering loud defiance, was a prisoner in the fortress of his kinsman. _