His pride, or some superstition equally weak, though more excusable, led him to bathe in the porphyry vase which an absurd legend consecrated to Constantine; and this, as Savelli predicted, cost him dear.

These appointed ceremonies concluded, his arms were placed in that part of the church, within the columns of St.John.
And here his state bed was prepared.

(In a more northern country, the eve of knighthood would have been spent without sleeping.

In Italy, the ceremony of watching the armour does not appear to have been so rigidly observed.) The attendant barons, pages, and chamberlains, retired out of sight to a small side chapel in the edifice; and Rienzi was left alone.

A single lamp, placed beside his bed, contended with the mournful rays of the moon, that cast through the long casements, over aisle and pillar, its "dim religious light." The sanctity of the place, the solemnity of the hour, and the solitary silence round, were well calculated to deepen the high-wrought and earnest mood of that son of fortune.