CHAPTER 4.IV.The Enemy's Camp.
While Rienzi was preparing, in concert, perhaps, with the ambassadors of the brave Tuscan States, whose pride of country and love of liberty were well fitted to comprehend, and even share them, his schemes for the emancipation from all foreign yoke of the Ancient Queen, and the Everlasting Garden, of the World; the Barons, in restless secrecy, were revolving projects for the restoration of their own power.
One morning, the heads of the Savelli, the Orsini, and the Frangipani, met at the disfortified palace of Stephen Colonna.

Their conference was warm and earnest--now resolute, now wavering, in its object--as indignation or fear prevailed.
"You have heard," said Luca di Savelli, in his usual soft and womanly voice, "that the Tribune has proclaimed, that, the day after tomorrow, he will take the order of knighthood, and watch the night before in the church of the Lateran: He has honoured me with a request to attend his vigil." "Yes, yes, the knave.

What means this new fantasy ?" said the brutal Prince of the Orsini.
"Unless it be to have the cavalier's right to challenge a noble," said old Colonna, "I cannot conjecture.

Will Rome never grow weary of this madman ?" "Rome is the more mad of the two," said Luca di Savelli; "but methinks, in his wildness, the Tribune hath committed one error of which we may well avail ourselves at Avignon." "Ah," cried the old Colonna, "that must be our game; passive here, let us fight at Avignon." "In a word then, he hath ordered that his bath shall be prepared in the holy porphyry vase in which once bathed the Emperor Constantine." "Profanation! profanation!" cried Stephen.

"This is enough to excuse a bull of excommunication.