Note 414 — Chapter IV · Political and Religious Lunatics and Mattoids.

Monomaniacs while remaining constant to a fixed erroneous idea, vary, to a degree which amounts to contradiction, in the accessory details. It is thus that I explain the fact that, in his second tribunate he claimed to be the son, not of the emperor, but of a bastard of his. There has been found, near the Ponte Senatorio, in excavating the ruins of a building, restored apparently by Rienzi, this inscription dictated by him—according to Gabrini—in order to publish to the world his disgraceful delusion: “Nicolaus, Tribunus, Severus, Clemens, Laurentii, Teutonici filius, Gabrinius, Romae Senator,” with a timid allusion to a German, who was not Henry, but an illegitimate son of his (Gabrini, Osservazioni storico-critiche sulla Vita di Rienzi, 1706, p. 96).