So also, when he wrote that he was persuaded by the prophecies of the Majella hermits already mentioned, that his second exaltation should be much more glorious than the first, as the sun long hidden by the clouds appears more beautiful to the eye of the beholder: Perhaps the Lord, justly indignant at the wicked and unheard-of murder of Rienzi’s illustrious grandfather, Henry VII., and the losses in souls and bodies suffered by the world during the Interregnum, had raised up Cola for the advantage of Charles, chosen him to re-establish the empire, and ordained that he should be _baptized in the Lateran_, in the Church of the Baptist, and in the _bath of Constantine_, that he might be the forerunner of the emperor, as John the Baptist was of Christ. Charles, it is true, had said that the empire could only be restored by a miracle; but was not this a miracle, that one poor man should be able to succour the falling empire, as St. Francis had succoured the Church? Let him awake, and gird on his sword--let him not count for anything the revelation of the friars, since the whole Old and New Testaments were full of revelations: he alone could become master of Rome. If he did not do so at once, Charles would lose at least one hundred thousand gold florins from the tax on salt and the other revenues of the city which had been increased by the approach of the Jubilee.... Within a year and a half, the pope should die, and many cardinals be slain.... In fifteen years there should be but one shepherd and one faith, and the new pope, the Emperor Charles, and Cola should be, as it were, a symbol of the Trinity on earth. Charles should reign in the west, the Tribune in the east. For the present, he was content with supporting the emperor in his journey to Rome--he was willing to open the way for him with the Romans and the other peoples of Italy, who would otherwise be averse to the empire; so that Charles might come among them peaceably and without bloodshed, and his arrival should not be the signal for mourning to the city and the whole nation, as had that of former emperors. So far did he go, that the Archbishop of Prague wrote to him, “that he wondered how the Tribune, who had done things which at first appeared to come from God, could be so far from exercising the virtue of humility as to consider his own elevation the work of the Holy Spirit, and to call himself the candidate of the latter”--words which may well be noted by those who see in his madness only the effect of the superstitions of the period.