Never will another plebeian have the opportunities and the power that I have! Rome is bound up with me--with a single life.

The liberties of all time are fixed to a reed that a wind may uproot.

But oh, Providence! hast thou not reserved and marked me for great deeds?
How, step by step, have I been led on to this solemn enterprise! How has each hour prepared its successor! And yet what danger! If the inconstant people, made cowardly by long thraldom, do but waver in the crisis, I am swept away!" As he spoke, he raised his eyes, and lo, before him, the first star of twilight shone calmly down upon the crumbling remnants of the Tarpeian Rock.

It was no favouring omen, and Rienzi's heart beat quicker as that dark and ruined mass frowned thus suddenly on his gaze.
"Dread monument," thought he, "of what dark catastrophes, to what unknown schemes, hast thou been the witness! To how many enterprises, on which history is dumb, hast thou set the seal! How know we whether they were criminal or just?
How know we whether he, thus doomed as a traitor, would not, if successful, have been immortalized as a deliverer?
If I fall, who will write my chronicle?
One of the people?
alas! blinded and ignorant, they furnish forth no minds that can appeal to posterity.

One of the patricians?
in what colours then shall I be painted! No tomb will rise for me amidst the wrecks; no hand scatter flowers upon my grave!" Thus meditating on the verge of that mighty enterprise to which he had devoted himself, Rienzi pursued his way.