So, save by one attendant, alone, and in peace cheap sale fake oakley sunglasses, the young patrician proceeded leisurely through the long streets, empty and deserted, - for nearly one half of the inhabitants were assembled at the walls, and nearly the other half were engaged in a more peaceful duty, - until, penetrating the interior, the wide and elevated space of the Capitol broke upon his sight.  The sun was slowly setting over an immense multitude that overspread the spot, and high above a scaffold raised in the centre, shone, to the western ray, the great Gonfalon of Rome, studded with silver stars.

Adrian reined in his steed.  "This," thought he, is scarcely the hour thus publicly to confer with Rienzi; yet fain would I, mingled with the crowd, judge how far his power is supported, and in what manner it is borne."  Musing a little, he withdrew into one of the obscurer streets, then wholly deserted, surrendered his horse to his squire, and, borrowing of the latter his morion and long mantle, passed to one of the more private entrances of the Capitol, and, enveloped in his cloak, stood - one of the crowd - intent upon all that followed.

"And what," he asked of a plainly dressed citizen fake oakley sunglasses, "is the cause of this assembly?"

"Heard you not the proclamation?" returned the other in some surprise.  "Do you not know that the Council of the City and the Guilds of the Artisans have passed a vote to proffer to Rienzi the title of king of Rome?"

The Knight of the Emperor, to whom belonged that august dignity, drew back in dismay.

"And," resumed the citizen, "this assembly of all the lesser Barons, Councillors, and Artificers, is convened to hear the answer."

"Of course it will be assent?"

"I know not - there are strange rumours; hitherto the Liberator has concealed his sentiments."

At that instant a loud flourish of martial music announced the approach of Rienzi.  The crowd tumultuously divided, and presently, from the Palace of the Capitol to the scaffold, passed Rienzi, still in complete armour, save the helmet fake oakleys, and with him, in all the pomp of his episcopal robes, Raimond of Orvietto.

If he had not been beyond humor, he would have smiled at the idea that in the face of all eternity it mattered what nation on one little planet eventually possessed a fragment called California.  To him that fair land was empty and purposeless save for one figure, and even of her he thought with the terrible calm of dissolution.  During these last months of illness and isolation he had been less lonely than at any time of his life save during those few weeks in California, for he had lived with her incessantly in spirit; and in that subtle imaginative communion had pressed close to a profound and complex soul, revealed before only in flashes to a vision astray in the confusion of the senses.  He had felt that her response to his passion was far more vital and enduring than dwelt in the capacity of most women; he had appreciated her gifts of mind, her piquant variousness that scotched monot- ony, the admirable characteristics that would give a man repose and content in his leisure, and subtly advance his career.  But in those long reveries fake oakley sunglasses, at the head of his forlorn caravan or in the desolate months of convalescence, he had arrived at an abso- lute understanding of what she herself had divined while half comprehending.

Theirs was one of the few immortal loves that reveal the rarely sounded deeps of the soul while in its frail tenement on earth; and he harbored not a doubt that their love was stronger than mortality and that their ultimate union was decreed.  Mean- while, she would suffer, no one but he could dream how completely, but her strong soul would conquer, and she would live the life she had visioned in mo- ments of despair; not of cloistered selfishness, but of incomparable usefulness to her little world; and far happier, in her eternal youthfulness of heart, in that divine life of the imagination where he must always be with her as she had known him briefly at his best, than in the blunt commonplaceness of daily existence, the routine and disillusionment of the world.  Perhaps--who knew?--he had, after all, given her the best that man can offer to a woman of exalted nature; instead of taking again with his left hand what his right had bestowed; completed the great gift of life with the priceless beacon of death.

How unlike was life to the old Greek tragedies! He recalled his prophetic sense of impending hap- piness, success, triumph, as he entered California, the rejuvenescence of his spirit in the renewal of his wasted forces even before he loved the woman. Every event of the past year, in spite of the obstacles that mortal must expect, had marched with his am- bitions and desires, and straight toward a future that would have given him the most coveted of all destinies, a station in history.  There had not been a hint that his brain, so meaningly and consummately equipped replica oakley sunglasses, would perish in the ruins of his body in less than a twelvemonth from that fragrant morn- ing when he had entered the home of Concha Ar- guello tingling with a pagan joy in mere existence, a sudden rush of desire for the keen, wild happiness of youth--

His eyes wandered from the bright cross above the little cemetery where he was to lie, and con- tracted with an expression of wonder.  Where had Jon found Castilian roses in this barren land?  No man had ever been more blest in a servant, but could even he--here--  With the last triumph of will over matter he raised his head, his keen, search- ing gaze noting every detail of the room, bare and unlovely save for its altar and ikons, its kneeling priests and nuns.  His eyes expanded, his nostrils quivered.  As he sank down in the embrace of that final delusion, his unconquerably sanguine spirit flared high before a vision of eternal and unthink- able happiness.

So died Rezanov; and with him the hope of Rus- sians and the hindrance of Americans in the west; and the mortal happiness and earthly dross of the saintliest of California's women.