It had sometimes been the custom of Roman, as of other Italian, States, to prefer for a chief magistrate, under the title of Podesta, a foreigner to a native.

And Montreal hoped that he might possibly become to Rome what the Duke of Athens had been to Florence--an ambition he knew well enough to be above the gentleman of Provence, but not above the leader of an army.

But, as we have already seen, his sagacity perceived at once that he could not move the aged head of the patricians to those hardy and perilous measures which were necessary to the attainment of supreme power.

Contented with his present station, and taught moderation by his age and his past reverses, Stephen Colonna was not the man to risk a scaffold from the hope to gain a throne.

The contempt which the old patrician professed for the people, and their idol, also taught the deep-thinking Montreal that, if the Colonna possessed not the ambition, neither did he possess the policy, requisite for empire.