With these qualities he combined, indeed, the softer passions of his countrymen,--he adored Beauty, and he made a deity of Love.
He had but a few weeks returned to his native city, whither his reputation had already preceded him, and where his early affection for letters and gentleness of bearing were still remembered.

He returned to find the position of Rienzi far more altered than his own.

Adrian had not yet sought the scholar.

He wished first to judge with his own eyes, and at a distance, of the motives and object of his conduct; for partly he caught the suspicions which his own order entertained of Rienzi, and partly he shared in the trustful enthusiasm of the people.
"Certainly," said he now to himself, as he walked musingly onward, "certainly, no man has it more in his power to reform our diseased state, to heal our divisions, to awaken our citizens to the recollections of ancestral virtue.

But that very power, how dangerous is it! Have I not seen, in the free states of Italy, men, called into authority for the sake of preserving the people, honest themselves at first, and then, drunk with the sudden rank, betraying the very cause which had exalted them?
True, those men were chiefs and nobles; but are plebeians less human?
Howbeit I have heard and seen enough from afar,--I will now approach, and examine the man himself." While thus soliloquizing, Adrian but little noted the various passengers, who, more and more rarely as the evening waned, hastened homeward.