He is one of Rienzi's followers, and, bless the Three Kings! raves about the People." "Thou sayest right, barbarian," said the sturdy smith, in a loud voice, and tearing aside the vest from his breast with his left hand; "come all--Colonna and Orsini--dig to this heart with your sharp blades, and when you have reached the centre, you will find there the object of your common hatred--'Rienzi and the People!'" As he uttered these words, in language that would have seemed above his station (if a certain glow and exaggeration of phrase and sentiment were not common, when excited, to all the Romans), the loudness of his voice rose above the noise immediately round him, and stilled, for an instant, the general din; and when, at last, the words, "Rienzi and the People" rang forth, they penetrated midway through the increasing crowd, and were answered as by an echo, with a hundred voices--"Rienzi and the People!" But whatever impression the words of the mechanic made on others, it was equally visible in the young Colonna.

At the name of Rienzi the glow of excitement vanished from his cheek; he started back, muttered to himself, and for a moment seemed, even in the midst of that stirring commotion, to be lost in a moody and distant revery.

He recovered, as the shout died away; and saying to the smith, in a low tone, "Friend, I am sorry for thy wound; but seek me on the morrow, and thou shalt find thou hast wronged me;" he beckoned to the German to follow him, and threaded his way through the crowd, which generally gave back as he advanced.

For the bitterest hatred to the order of the nobles was at that time in Rome mingled with a servile respect for their persons, and a mysterious awe of their uncontrollable power.
As Adrian passed through that part of the crowd in which the fray had not yet commenced, the murmurs that followed him were not those which many of his race could have heard.
"A Colonna," said one.
"Yet no ravisher," said another, laughing wildly.
"Nor murtherer," muttered a third, pressing his hand to his breast.
"'Tis not against him that my father's blood cries aloud." "Bless him," said a fourth, "for as yet no man curses him!" "Ah, God help us!" said an old man, with a long grey beard, leaning on his staff: "The serpent's young yet; the fangs will show by and by." "For shame, father! he is a comely youth, and not proud in the least.
What a smile he hath!" quoth a fair matron, who kept on the outskirt of the melee.
"Farewell to a man's honour when a noble smiles on his wife!" was the answer.
"Nay," said Luigi, a jolly butcher, with a roguish eye, "what a man can win fairly from maid or wife, that let him do, whether plebeian or noble--that's my morality; but when an ugly old patrician finds fair words will not win fair looks, and carries me off a dame on the back of a German boar, with a stab in the side for comfort to the spouse,--then, I say, he is a wicked man, and an adulterer." While such were the comments and the murmurs that followed the noble, very different were the looks and words that attended the German soldier.
Equally, nay, with even greater promptitude, did the crowd make way at his armed and heavy tread; but not with looks of reverence:--the eye glared as he approached; but the cheek grew pale--the head bowed--the lip quivered; each man felt a shudder of hate and fear, as recognizing a dread and mortal foe.

And well and wrathfully did the fierce mercenary note the signs of the general aversion.