Lights there!--My Lord, this is an honour which I can estimate better than express." "Tut, tut! my good friend," said the Bishop, entering, and seating himself familiarly, "no ceremonies between the servants of the Church; and never, I ween well, had she greater need of true friends than now.
These unholy tumults, these licentious contentions, in the very shrines and city of St.Peter, are sufficient to scandalize all Christendom." "And so will it be," said Rienzi, "until his Holiness himself shall be graciously persuaded to fix his residence in the seat of his predecessors, and curb with a strong arm the excesses of the nobles." "Alas, man!" said the Bishop, "thou knowest that these words are but as wind; for were the Pope to fulfil thy wishes, and remove from Avignon to Rome, by the blood of St.Peter! he would not curb the nobles, but the nobles would curb him.

Thou knowest well that until his blessed predecessor, of pious memory, conceived the wise design of escaping to Avignon, the Father of the Christian world was but like many other fathers in their old age, controlled and guarded by his rebellious children.

Recollectest thou not how the noble Boniface himself, a man of great heart, and nerves of iron, was kept in thraldom by the ancestors of the Orsini--his entrances and exits made but at their will--so that, like a caged eagle, he beat himself against his bars and died?
Verily, thou talkest of the memories of Rome--these are not the memories that are very attractive to popes." "Well," said Rienzi, laughing gently, and drawing his seat nearer to the Bishop's, "my Lord has certainly the best of the argument at present; and I must own, that strong, licentious, and unhallowed as the order of nobility was then, it is yet more so now." "Even I," rejoined Raimond, colouring as he spoke, "though Vicar of the Pope, and representative of his spiritual authority, was, but three days ago, subjected to a coarse affront from that very Stephen Colonna, who has ever received such favour and tenderness from the Holy See.

His servitors jostled mine in the open streets, and I myself,--I, the delegate of the sire of kings--was forced to draw aside to the wall, and wait until the hoary insolent swept by.

Nor were blaspheming words wanting to complete the insult.