CHAPTER 1.X.A Rough Spirit Raised, Which May Hereafter Rend the Wizard.
While thus animated was the scene around the Capitol, within one of the apartments of the palace sat the agent and prime cause of that excitement.

In the company of his quiet scribes, Rienzi appeared absorbed in the patient details of his avocation.

While the murmur and the hum, the shout and the tramp, of multitudes, rolled to his chamber, he seemed not to heed them, nor to rouse himself a moment from his task.
With the unbroken regularity of an automaton, he continued to enter in his large book, and with the clear and beautiful characters of the period, those damning figures which taught him, better than declamations, the frauds practised on the people, and armed him with that weapon of plain fact which it is so difficult for abuse to parry.
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B.," said he, in the tranquil voice of business, to the clerks; "see there, the profits of the salt duty; department No.3--very well.

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