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R O M 0 L A.

BY

GEORGE ELIOT

AUTHOR OF

" ADAM BEDE," " THB MILL ON THE FLOSS," " SILAS MABNER,"
AND " SCENES Or CLERICAL LIFE."

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. ni.

LONDON:

SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.

M.DCCC.LXIII.

[ The -Bight of Translation is reserved.']

CONTENTS

TO THE THIRD VOLUME.

BOOK II L— continued.

Chap. ^ Pack

I. Check 1

II. Counter- CHECK '

III. The Pyramid of Vanities 18

IV. Tessa Abroad and at Home 28

V. MoNNA Brigida's Conversion 46

VI. A Prophetess 55

VII. On San Miniato 67

Vin. The Evening and the Morning 76

IX. Waiting 82

X. The other Wife 88

XI. Why Tito was Safe 108

Xn. A Final Understanding 119

XIII. Pleading 129

IV CONTENTS.

Chap. Page

XIV. Tub Scaffold 145

XV. Drifting Away ' 156

XVI. The Benediction , 164

XVII. Ripening Schemes 172

XVIII. The Pbophet in his Cell 191

XIX. The Tbial by Fire 205

XX. A Masque of the Fubies 218

XXL Waiting by the River 226

XXII. Romola's Waking 237

XXIII. Homeward ., 253

XXIV. Meeting Again 259

XXV. The Confession 268

XXVI. The Last Silence 280

Epilogue 286

K 0 M O L A.

CHAPTER I.
CHECK.

Tito's clever arrangements had been unpleasantly
frustrated by trivial incidents which could not enter
into a clever man's calculations. It was very seldom
that he walked with Romola in the evening, yet he
had happened to be walking with her precisely on
this evening when her presence was supremely incon-
venient. Life was so complicated a game that the
devices of skill were liable to be defeated at every
turn by airblown chances, incalculable as the descent
of thistle-down.

It was not that he minded about the failure of
Spini's plot, but he felt an awkward difficulty in so
adjusting his warning to Savonarola on the one hand,
and to Spini on the other, as not to incur suspicion.
Suspicion roused in the popular party might be fatal

VOL. ni. 43

2 ROMOLA.

to his reputation and ostensible position in Florence :
suspicion roused in Dolfo Spini might be as disagree-
able in its effects as the hatred of a fierce dog not to
be chained.

If Tito went forthwith to the monastery to warn
Savonarola before the monks went to rest, his warning
would follow so closely on his delivery of the forged
letters that he could not escape unfavourable surmises.
He could not warn Spini at once without telling him
the true reason, since he could not immediately allege
the discovery that Savonarola had changed his pur-
pose ; and he knew Spini well enough to know that
his understanding would discern nothing but that
Tito had "turned round" and frustrated the plot.
On the other hand, by deferring his warning to Savo-
narola until the early morning, he would be almost
sure to lose the opportunity of warning Spini that
the Frate had changed his mind; and the band of
Compagnacci would come back in all the rage of
disappointment. This last, however, was the risk
he chose, trusting to his power of soothing Spini by
assuring him that the failure was due only to the
Frate' s caution.

Tito was annoyed. If he had had to smile it would
have been an unusual effort to him. He was deter-
mined not to encounter Eomola again, and he did not
go home that night.

She watched through the night, and never took off
her clothes. She heard the rain become heavier and

CHECK. 3

heavier. She liked to hear the rain : the stormy
heavens seemed a safeguard against men's devices,
compeUing them to inaction. And Eomola's mind
was again assailed, not only by the utmost doubt of
her husband, but by doubt as to her own conduct.
What lie might he not have told her? What pro-
ject might he not have, of which she was still
ignorant ? Every one who trusted Tito was in danger ;
it was useless to try and persuade herself of the con-
trary. And was not she selfishly listening to the
promptings of her own pride, when she shrank from
warning men against him ? '* If her husband was a
malefactor, her place was in the prison by his side'*
— that might be; she was contented to fulfil that
claim. But was she, a wife, to allow a husband to
inflict the injuries that would make him a malefactor,
when it might be in her power to prevent them?
Prayer seemed impossible to her. The activity of her
thought excluded a mental state of which the essence
is expectant passivity.

The excitement became stronger and stronger. Her
imagination, in a state of morbid activity, conjured
up possible schemes by which, after all, Tito would
have eluded her threat ; and towards daybreak the
rain became less violent, till at last it ceased, the
breeze rose again and dispersed the clouds, and the
morning fell clear on all the objects around her. It
made her uneasiness all the less endurable. She
wrapped her mantle round her, and ran up to the

43—2

4 KOMOLA.

loggia, as if there could be anything in the wide
landscape that might determine her action; as if
there could he anything but roofs hiding the line
of street along which Savonarola might be walking
towards betrayal.

If she went to her godfather, might she not induce
him, without any specific revelation, to take measures
for preventing Fra Girolamo from passing the gates ?
But that might be too late. Bomola thought, wdth
new distress, that she had failed to learn any guiding
details from Tito, and it was already long past seven.
She must go to San Marco : there was nothing else
to be done.

She hurried down the stairs, she went out into the
street without looking at her sick people, and walked
at a swift pace along the Yia de' Bardi towards the
Ponte Yecchio. She would go through the heart of
the city; it was the most direct road, and, besides,
in the great Piazza there was a chance of encounter-
ing her husband, who, by some possibility to which
she still clung, might satisfy her of the Frate's
safety, and leave no need for her to go to San Marco.
When she arrived in front of the Palazzo Vecchio,
she looked eagerly into the pillared court ; then her
eyes swept the Piazza ; but the well-known figure,
once painted in her heart by young love, and now
branded there by eating pain, was nowhere to be
seen. She hurried straight on to the Piazza del
Duomo. It was already full of movement: there

CHECK. 6

were worshippers passing up and down the marhle
steps, there were men pausing for chat, and there
were market-people carr3dng their burdens. Between
these moving figures Eomola caught a gHmpse of her
husband. On his way from San Marco he had turned
into Nello's shop, and was now leaning against the
door-post. As Eomola approached she could see
that he was standing and talking, with the easiest
air in the world, holding his cap in his hand, and
shaking back his freshly-combed hair. The contrast
of this ease with the bitter anxieties he had created
convulsed her with indignation : the new vision of
his hardness heightened her dread. She recognized
Cronaca and two other frequenters of San Marco
standing near her husband. It flashed through her
mind — " I will compel him to speak before those
men." And her light step brought her close upon
him before he had time to move, while Cronaca was
saying, " Here comes Madonna Romola."

A slight shock passed through Tito's frame as he
felt himself face to face with his wife. She was
haggard with her anxious watching, but there was
a flash of something else than anxiety in her eyes
as she said, —

" Is the Frate gone beyond the gates ?'*
** No," said Tito, feeling completely helpless before
this woman, and needing all the self-command he
possessed to preserve a countenance in which there
should seem to be nothing stronger than surprise.

# KOMOLA.

" And you are certain that he is not going?" she
insisted.

" I am certain that he is not going."

" That is enough," said Romola, and she turned
up the steps, to take refuge in the Duomo, till she
could recover from her agitation.

Tito never had a feeling so near hatred as that
with which his eyes followed Eomola retreating up
the steps.

There were present not only genuine followers of
the Frate, hut Ser Ceccone, the notary, who at that
time, like Tito himself, was secretly an agent of the
Mediceans.

Ser Francesco di Ser Barone, more briefly known
to infamy as Ser Ceccone, was not learned, not
handsome, not successful, and the reverse of
generous. He was a traitor without charm. It
followed that he was not fond of Tito Melema.

CHAPTER n.

COUNTER-CHECK.

It was late in the afternoon wlien Tito returned
home. Romola, seated opposite the cabinet in her
narrow room, copying documents, was about to desist
from her work because the light was getting dim,
when her husband entered. He had come straight
to this room to seek her, with a thoroughly defined
intention, and there was some something new to
Bomola in his manner and expression as he looked
at her silently on entering, and, without taking off
his cap and mantle, leaned one elbow on the cabinet,
and stood directly in front of her.

Romola, fully assured during the day of the Frate's
safety, was feeling the reaction of some penitence for
the access of distrust and indignation which had
impelled her to address her husband pubHcly on
a matter that she knew he wished to be private.
She told herself that she had probably been wi-ong.
The scheming duplicity which she had heard even
Jaer godfather allude to as inseparable from party
tactics might be sufficient to account for the con-

8 EOMOLA.

nection with Spini, without the supposition that Tito
had ever meant to further the plot. She wanted to
atone for her impetuosity by confessing that she had
been too hasty, and for some hours her mind had
been dwelling on the possibility that this confession
of hers might lead to other frank words breaking the
two years' silence of their hearts. The silence had
been so complete, that Tito was ignorant of her
having fled from him and come back again; they
had never approached an avowal of that past which,
both in its young love and in the shock that shattered
the love, lay locked away from them like a banquet*
room where death had once broken the feast.

She looked up at him with that submission in her
glance which belonged to her state of self-reproof;
but the subtle change in his face and manner arrested
her speech. For a few moments they remained
silent, looking at each other.

Tito himself felt that a crisis was come in his
married life. The husband's determination to mas-
tery, which lay deep below all blandness and beseech-
ingness, had risen permanently to the surface now,
and seemed to alter his face, as a face is altered by
a hidden muscular tension with which a man is
secretly throttling or stamping out the life from
something feeble, yet dangerous.

*' Komola," he began, in the cool liquid tone that
made her shiver, "it is time that we should under-
stand each other." He paused.

COUNTER-CHECK. 9

** That is what I most desire, Tito," she said,
faintly. Her sweet pale face, with all its anger gone
and nothing hut the timidity of self-doubt in it,
seemed to give a marked predominance to her hus-
band's dark strength.

" You took a step this morning," Tito went on,
** which you must now yourself perceive to have been
useless — which exposed you to remark and may
involve me in serious practical difficulties."

*' I acknowledge that I was too hasty ; I am sorry
for any injustice I may have done you." Romola
spoke these words in a fuller and firmer tone ; Tito,
she hoped, would look less hard when she had
expressed her regret, and then she could say other
things.

" I wish you once for all to understand," he said,
without any change of voice, " that such collisions
are incompatible with our position as husband and
wife. I wish you to reflect on the mode in which
you were led to take that step, that the process may
not be repeated."

** That depends chiefly on you, Tito," said Romola,
taking fire slightly. It was not what she had at all
thought of saying, but we see a very little way before
us in mutual speech.

" You would say, I suppose," answered Tito,
**that nothing is to occur in future which can
excite your unreasonable suspicions. You were
frank enough to say last night that you have no

10 EOMOLA.

belief in me. I am not surprised at any exaggerated
conclusion you may draw from slight premisses, but
I wish to point out to you what is likely to be the
fruit of your making such exaggerated conclusions
a ground for interfering in affairs of w^hich you are
ignorant. Your attention is thoroughly awake to
what I am saying ? "

He paused for a reply.

*^ Yes," said Komola, flushing in irrepressible
resentment at this cold tone of superiority.

"Well, then, it may possibly not be very long
before some other chance words or incidents set your
imagination at work devising crimes for me, and you
may perhaps rush to the Palazzo Yecchio to alarm the
Signoria and set the city in an uproar. Shall I tell
you what may be the result ? Not simply the dis-
grace of your husband, to which you look forward
with so much courage, but the arrest and ruin of
many among the chief men in Florence, including
Messer Bernardo del Nero."

Tito had meditated a decisive move, and he had
made it. The flush died out of Komola's face, and
her very lips were pale — an unusual effect with her,
for she was little subject to fear. Tito perceived
his success.

" You would perhaps flatter yourself," he went on,
" that you were performing a heroic deed of deliver-
ance ; you might as well try to turn locks with fine
words as apply such notions to the politics of Florence.

COUNTER-CHECK. 11

Tlie question now is, not whether you can have any
belief in me, but whether, now you have been warned,
you will dare to rush, like a blind man with a torch in
his hand, amongst intricate affairs of which you know
nothing."

Komola felt as if her mind were held in a vice by
Tito's : the possibiHties he had indicated were rising
before her with terrible clearness.

" I am too rash," she said. " I will try not to be
rash."

"Kemember," said Tito, vdth unsparing insistance,
" that your act of distrust towards me this morning
might, for aught you knew, have had more fatal
effects than that sacrifice of your husband which you
have learned to contemplate without flinching."

" Tito, it is not so," Komola burst forth in a plead-
ing tone, rising and going nearer to him, with a des-
perate resolution to speak out. "It is false that
I would willingly sacrifice you. It has been the
greatest effort of my life to cling to you. I went
away in my anger two years ago, and I came back
again because I was more bound to you than to any-
thing else on earth. But it is useless. You shut
me out from your mind. You affect to think of me as
a being too unreasonable to share in the knowledge
of j^our affairs. You will be open with me about
nothing."

She looked like his good angel pleading with him,
as she bent her face towards him with dilated eyes,

12 ROMOLA.

and laid her hand upon his arm. But Romola's
touch and glance no longer stirred any fibre of ten-
derness in her husband. The good-humoured, tole-
rant Tito, incapable of hatred, incapable almost of
impatience, disposed always to be gentle towards the
rest of the world, felt himself becoming strangely
hard towards this wife whose presence had once been
the strongest influence he had known. With all his
softness of disposition, he had a masculine effective-
ness of intellect and purpose which, like sharpness
of edge, is itself an energy, working its way without
any strong momentum. Bomola had an energy of
her own which thwarted his, and no man, w^ho is not
exceptionally feeble, will endure being thwarted by
his wife. Marriage must be a relation either of
sympathy or of conquest.

No emotion darted across his face as he heard
Romola for the first time speak of having gone away
from him. His lips only looked a little harder as he
smiled slightly and said —

" My Romola, when certain conditions are ascer-
tained, we must make up our minds to them. No
amount of wishing will fill the Arno, as your people
say, or turn a plum into an orange. I have not
observed even that prayers have much efiicacy that
way. You are so constituted as to have certain
strong impressions inaccessible to reason : I cannot
share those impressions, and you have withdrawn
all trust from me in consequence. You have changed

COUNTER CHECK. 13

towards me; it has followed that I have changed
towards you. It is useless to take any retrospect.
We have simply to adapt ourselves to altered con-
ditions."

** Tito, it would not be useless for us to speak
openly," said Komola, with the sort of exasperation
that comes from using living muscle against some
lifeless insurmountable resistance. " It was the
sense of deception in you that changed me, and
that has kept us apart. And it is not true that I
changed first. You changed towards me the night
you first wore that chain armour. You had some
secret from me — it was about that old man — and I
saw him again yesterday. Tito," she went on, in a
tone of agonized entreaty, " if you would once teU
me everything, let it be what it may — I would not
mind pain — that there might be no wall between
us ! Is it not possible that we could begin a new
life?"

This time there was a flash of emotion across Tito's
face. He stood perfectly still ; but the flash seemed
to have whitened him. He took no notice of Ro-
mola's appeal, but after a moment's pause, said
quietly,—

^' Your impetuosity about trifles, Eomola, has a
freezing influence that would cool the baths of Nero."
At these cutting words, Eomola shrank and drew
herself up into her usual self- sustained attitude. Tito
went on. " If by ^ that old man ' you mean the mad

14 ROMOLA.

Jacopo di Nola who attempted my life and made a;
strange accusation against me, of whicli I told you
nothing because it would have alarmed you to no
purpose, he, poor wretch, has died in prison. I saw
his name in the list of dead."

*' I know nothing about his accusation," said
Komola. " But I know he is the man whom I saw
with the rope round his neck in the Duomo — the
man whose portrait Piero di Cosimo painted,
grasping your arm as he saw him grasp it the day
the French entered, the day you first wore the
armour."

*'And where is he now, pray?" said Tito, still
pale, but governing himself.

" He was lying lifeless in the street from starva-
tion," said Komola. "I revived him with bread and
wine. I brought him to our door, but he refused
to come in. Then I gave him some money, and
he went away without telling me anything. But
he had found out that I was your wife. Who
is he?"

" A man, half mad, half imbecile, who was once
my father's servant in Greece, and who has a ran-
corous hatred towards me because I got him dis-
missed for theft. Now you have the whole mystety,
and the further satisfaction of knowing that I am
again in danger of assassination. The fact of my
wearing the armour, about which you seem to have
thought so much, must have led you to infer that I

COUNTER-CHECK. 15

was in danger from this man. Was that the reason
you chose to cultivate his acquaintance and invite him
into the house ? "

Komola was mute. To speak was only like rush-
ing with bare breast against a shield.

Tito moved from his leaning posture, slowly took
off his cap and mantle, and pushed back his hair.
He was collecting himself for some final words. And
Eomola stood upright looking at him as she might
have looked at some on-coming deadly force, to be
met only by silent endurance.

" We need not refer to these matters again, Romola,"
he said, precisely in the same tone as that in which he
had spoken at first. " It is enough if you will remem-
ber that the next time your generous ardour leads you
to interfere in poHtical affairs, you are Hkely, not to
save any one from danger, but to be raising scaffolds
and setting houses on fire. You are not yet a suffi-
ciently ardent Piagnone to believe that Messer Ber-
nardo del Nero is the Prince of Darkness, and Messer
Francesco Yalori the archangel Michael. I think I
need demand no promise from you?"

" I have understood you too well, Tito."

" It is enough," he said, leaving the room.

Eomola turned round with despair in her face and
sank into her seat. " Oh, God, I have tried — I can-
not help it. We shall always be divided." Those
words passed silently through her mind. " Unless,'*
she said aloud, as if some sudden vision had startled

16 ROMOLA.

her into speech — ** unless misery should come and
join us ! "

Tito, too, had a new thought in his mind after he
had closed the door hehind him. With the project
of leaving Florence as soon as his life there had
hecome a high enough stepping-stone to a life else-
where, perhaps at Eome or Milan, there was now for
the first time associated a desire to he free from
Bomola, and to leave her hehind him. She had
ceased to helong to the desirahle furniture of his
life : there was no possibility of an easy relation
between them without genuineness on his part.
Genuineness implied confession of the. past, and con-
fession involved a change of purpose. But Tito had
as little bent that way as a leopard has to lap milk
when its teeth are grown. From all relations that
were not easy and agreeable, we know that Tito
shrank : why should he cling to them ?

And Eomola had made his relations difficult with
others besides herself. He had had a troublesome
interview with Dolfo Spini, who had come back in a
rage after an ineffectual soaking with rain and long
waiting in ambush, and that scene between Eomola
and himself at Nello's door, once reported in Spini's
ear, might be a seed of something more unmanage-
able than suspicion. But now, at least, he believed
that he had mastered Eomola by a terror which
appealed to the strongest forces of her nature. He
had alarmed her affection and her conscience by the

COUNTER-GHECK. 17

shadowy image of consequences ; lie had arrested her
intellect by hanging before it the idea of a hopeless
complexity in affairs which defied any moral judg-
ment.

Yet Tito was not at ease. The world was not yet
quite cushioned with velvet, and, if it had been, he
could not have abandoned himself to that softness
with thorough enjoyment ; for before he went out
again this evening he put on his coat of chain
armour.

VOL. III. , -i-i

18 KOMOLA.

CHAPTER III.

THE PYKAMID OF VANITIES.

The wintry days passed for Romola as the white
ships pass one who is standing lonely on the shore
— passing in silence and sameness, yet each hearing
a hidden burden of coming change. Tito's hint had
mingled so much dread with her interest in the
progress of public affairs that she had begun
to court ignorance rather than knowledge. The
threatening German Emperor was gone again; and,
in other ways besides, the position of Florence was
alleviated; but so much distress remained that
Romola's active duties were hardly diminished, and
in these, as usual, her mind found a refuge from
its doubt.

She dared not rejoice that the relief which had
come in extremity and had appeared to justify the
policy of the Frate's party was making that party so
triumphant, that Francesco Valori, hot-tempered
chieftain of the Piagnoni, had been elected Gonfa-
loniere at the beginning of the year, and was making

THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES. 19

haste to have as much of his own liberal way as
possible during his two months of power. That
seemed for the moment like a strengthening of the
party most attached to freedom, and a reinforcement
of protection to Savonarola ; but Bomola was now
alive to every suggestion likely to deepen her fore-
boding, that whatever the present might be, it was
only an unconscious brooding over the mixed germs
of Change which might any day become tragic. And
already by Carnival time, a little after mid-February,
her presentiment was confirmed by the signs of a
very decided change : the Mediceans had ceased to
be passive, and were openly exerting themselves to
procure the election of Bernardo del Nero, as the
new Gonfaloniere.

On the last day of the Carnival, between ten and
eleven in the morning, Eomola walked out, according
to promise, towards the Corso degli Albizzi, to fetch
her cousin Brigida, that they might both be ready to
start from the Via de' Bardi early in the afternoon,
and take their places at a window which Tito had had
reserved for them in the Piazza della Signoria, where
there was to be a scene of so new and striking a sort,
that all Florentine eyes must desire to see it. For
the Piagnoni were having their own way thoroughly
about the mode of keeping the Carnival. In vain
Dolfo Spini and his companions had struggled to
get up the dear old masques and practical jokes,
well spiced with indecency. Such things were

44—2

20 ROMOLA.

not to be in a city where Christ had been declared
king.

Romola set out in that languid state of mind with
which every one enters on a long day of sight-seeing
purely for the sake of gratifying a child, or some dear
childish friend. The day was certainly an epoch in
carnival-keeping; but this phase of reform had not
touched her enthusiasm : and she did not know that
it was an epoch in her own life when another lot
would begin to be no longer secretly but visibly
entwined with her own.

She chose to go through the great Piazza that she
might take a first survey of the unparalleled sight
there while she was still alone. Entering it from
the south, she saw something monstrous and many-
coloured in the shape of a pyramid, or, rather, like
a huge fir-tree, sixty feet high, with shelves on the
branches, widening and widening towards the base
till they reached a circumference of eighty yards.
The Piazza was full of life : slight young figures, in
white garments, with olive wreaths on their heads,
were moving to and fro about the base of the pyra-
midal tree, carrying baskets full of bright-coloured
things; and maturer forms, some in the monastic
frock, some in the loose tunics and dark red caps
of artists, were helping and examining, or else re-
treating to various points in the distance to survey
the wondrous whole; while a considerable group,
amongst whom Eomola recognized Piero di Cosimo,

THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES. 21

standing on the marble steps of Orgagna's Loggia,
seemed to be keeping aloof in discontent and scorn.

Approaching nearer, she paused to look at the
multifarious objects ranged in gradation from the
base to the summit of the pyramid. There were
tapestries and brocades of immodest design, pictures
and sculptures held too likely to incite to vice ;
there were boards and tables for all sorts of games,
playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them,
dice, and other apparatus for gambling; there were
worldly music-books, and musical instruments in all
the pretty varieties of lute, drum, cymbal, and trum-
pet ; there were masks and masquerading dresses
used in the old carnival shows ; there were handsome
-copies of Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Pulci, and other
books of a vain or impure sort; there were all the
implements of feminine vanity — rouge-pots, false
hair, mirrors, perfumes, powders, and transparent
Teils intended to provoke inquisitive glances : lastly,
at the veiy summit, there was the unflattering effigy
of a probably mythical Venetian merchant, who was
understood to have ofi'ered a heavy sum for this col-
lection of marketable abominations, and, soaring
above him in sui'passing ugliness, the symbolic figure
of the old debauched Carnival.

This was the preparation for a new sort of bon-
fire— the Burning of Vanities. Hidden in the
interior of the pyramid was a plentiful store of dry
fuel and gunpowder ; and on this last day of the

22 ROMOLA.

festival, at evening, the pile of vanities was to be
set ablaze to tlie sound of trumpets, and the ugly old
Carnival was to tumble into the flames amid the
Bongs of reforming triumph.

This crowning act of the new festivities could
hardly have been prepared but for a peculiar orga-
nization which had been started by Savonarola two
years before. The mass of the Florentine boyhood
and youth was no longer left to its own genial
promptings towards street mischief and crude dis-
soluteness. Under the training of Fra Domenico,
a sort of lieutenant to Savonarola, lads and striplings,
the hope of Florence, were to have none but pure
words on their lips, were to have a zeal for unseen
good that should put to shame the lukewarmness of
their elders, and were to know no pleasures save of an
angelic sort — singing divine praises and walking in
white robes. It was for them that the ranges of seats
had been raised high against the walls of the Duomo ;
and they had been used to hear Savonarola appeal to
them as the future glory of a city specially appointed
to do the work of God.

These fresh-cheeked troops were the chief agents
in the regenerated merriment of the new Carnival,
which was a sort of sacred parody of the old. Had
there been bonfires in the old time ? There was to
be a bonfire now, consuming impurity from off the
earth. Had there been symbolic processions ? There
were to be processions now, but the symbols were to

THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES. 23

be white robes and red crosses and olive wreaths —
emblems of peace and innocent gladness — and the
banners and images held aloft were to tell the
triumphs of goodness. Had there been dancing in
a ring under the open sky of the piazza, to the sound
of choral voices chanting loose songs ? There was
to be dancing in a ring now, but dancing of monks
and laity in fraternal love and divine joy, and the
music was to be the music of hymns. As for the
collections from street passengers, they were to be
greater than ever — not for gross and superfluous
suppers, but — for the benefit of the hungry and
needy ; and, besides, there was the collecting of the
Anathema, or the Vanities to be laid on the great
pyramidal bonfire.

Troops of young inquisitors went from house to
house on this exciting business of asking that the
Anathema should be given up to them. Perhaps,
after the more avowed vanities had been surrendered,
Madonna, at the head of the household, had still
certain little reddened balls brought from the Levant,
intended to produce on a sallow cheek a sudden
bloom of the most ingenuous falsity? If so, let
her bring them down and cast them into the basket
of doom. Or, perhaps, she had ringlets and coils ol
"dead hair?" — if so, let her bring them to the
street-door, not on her head, but in her hands, and
publicly renounce the Anathema which hid the
respectable signs of age under a ghastly mockery

24 KOMOLA.

of youth. And, in reward, she would hear fresh
young voices pronounce a blessing on her and her
house.

The beardless inquisitors, organized into little
regiments, doubtless took to their work very will-
ingly. To coerce people by shame, or other spiritual
pelting, to the giving up of things it will probably
vex them to part with, is a form of piety to which
the boyish mind is most readily converted ; and if
some obstinately wicked men got enraged and threat-
ened the whip or the cudgel, this also was exciting.
Savonarola himself evidently felt about the training
of these boys the difficulty weighing on all minds
with noble yearnings towards great ends, yet with
that imperfect perception of means which forces
a resort to some supernatural constraining influence
as the only sure hope. The Florentine youth had
had very evil habits and foul tongues : it seemed at
first an unmixed blessing when they were got to shout
'* Viva Gesic ! " But Savonarola was forced at last
to say from the pulpit, " There is a little too much
shouting of ' Viva Gesii ! ' This constant utterance
of sacred words brings them into contempt. Let me
have no more of that shouting till the next Festa."

Nevertheless, as the long stream of white-robed
youthfulness, with its little red crosses and olive
wreaths, had gone to the Duomo at dawn this morn-
ing to receive the communion from the hands of
Savonarola, it was a sight of beauty ; and, doubtless,

THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES. 25

many of those young souls were laying up memories
of hope and awe that might save them from ever rest-
ing in a merely vulgar view of their work as men and
citizens. There is no kind of conscious obedience
that is not an advance on lawlessness, and these boys
became the generation of men who fought greatly and
endured greatly in the last struggle of their Eepublic.
Now, in the intermediate hours between the early
communion and dinner-time, they were making their
last perambulations to collect alms and vanities, and
this was why Komola saw the slim white figures
moving to and fro about the base of the great pyra-
mid.

" What think you of this folly. Madonna Eomola?'*
said a brusque voice close to her ear. "Your Pia-
gnoni will make Vinferno a pleasant prospect to us, if
they are to carry things their own way on earth. It's
enough to fetch a cudgel over the mountains to see
painters, like Lorenzo di Credi and young Baccio
there, helping to burn colour out of hfe in this
fashion."

*' My good Piero," said Eomola, looking up and
smiling at the grim man, " even you must be glad to
see some of these things burnt. Look at those gew-
gaws and wigs and rouge -pots : I have heard you talk
as indignantly against those things as Era Girolamo
himself."

"What then?" said Piero, turning round on her
sharply. " I never said a woman should make a

26 ROMOLA.

black patch of herself against the background. Va !
Madonna Antigone, it's a shame for a woman with
your hair and shoulders to run into such nonsense
— leave it to women who are not worth painting.
What ! the most holy Virgin herself has always been
dressed well ; that's the doctrine of the Church : —
talk of heresy, indeed ! And I should like to know
what the excellent Messer Bardo would have said to
the burning of the divine poets by these Frati, who
are no better an imitation of men than if they were
onions with the bulbs uppermost. Look at that
Petrarca sticking up beside a rouge-pot : do the idiots
pretend that the heavenly Laura was a painted har-
ridan ? And BoccacciO;, now : do you mean to say,
Madonna Komola — you who are fit to be a model for
a wise Saint Catherine of Egypt — do you mean to
say you have never read the stories of the immortal
Messer Giovanni ?"

*' It is true I have read them, Piero," said Komola.
" Some of them a great many times over, when I was
a little girl. I used to get the book down when my
father was asleep, so that I could read to myself."

'' Ebbene ?" said Piero, in a fiercely challenging
tone.

" There are some things in them I do not want
ever to forget," said Eomola ; " but you must confess,
Piero, that a great many of those stories are only
about low deceit for the lowest ends. Men do not
want books to make them think lightly of vice, as if

THE PYRAiUD OF VANITIES. 27

life were a vulgar joke. And I cannot blame Era
Girolamo for teaching that we owe our time to some-
thing better."

" Yes, yes, it's very well to say so now you've read
them," said Piero, bitterly, turning on his heel and
walking away from her.

Eomola, too, walked on, smiling at Piero's in-
nuendo, with a sort of tenderness towards the odd
painter's anger, because she knew that her father
would have felt something like it. For herself, she
was conscious of no inward collision with the strict
and sombre view of pleasure which tended to repress
poetry in the attempt to repress vice. Sorrow and
joy have each their peculiar narrowness ; and a reli-
gious enthusiasm Hke Savonarola's, which ultimately
blesses mankind by giving the soul a strong propul-
sion towards sympathy with pain, indignation against
wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must
always incur the reproach of a great negation.
Komola's Hfe had given her an affinity for sadness
which inevitably made her unjust towards merriment.
That subtle result of culture which we call Taste was
subdued by the need for deeper motive; just as the
nicer demands of the palate are annihilated by urgent
hunger. Moving habitually amongst scenes of suffer-
ing, and carrying woman's heaviest disappointment
in her heart, the severity which allied itself with self-
renouncing beneficent strength had no dissonance
for her.

28 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER IV.

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME,

Another figure easily recognized by us — a figure not
clad in black, but in the old red, green, and white —
was approaching the Piazza that morning to see the
Carnival. She came from an opposite point, for
Tessa no longer lived on the hill of San Giorgio.
After what had happened there with Baldassarre,
Tito had thought it best for that and other reasons to
find her a new home, but still in a quiet airy quarter,
in a house bordering on the wide garden grounds
north of the Porta Santa Croce.

Tessa was not come out sight-seeing without
special leave. Tito had been with her the evening
before, and she had kept back the entreaty which she
felt to be swelling her heart and throat until she saw
iiim in a state of radiant ease, with one arm round the
sturdy Lillo, and the other resting gently on her own
shoulder as she tried to make the tiny Ninna steady
on her legs. She was sure then that the weariness
with which he had come in and flung himself into
his chair had quite melted away from his brow and

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 29

lips. Tessa had not been slow at learning a few
small stratagems by which she might avoid vexing
Naldo and yet have a little of her own way. She
could read nothing else, but she had learned to read
a good deal in her husband's face.

And certainly the charm of that bright, gentle-
humoured Tito who woke up under the Loggia de'
Cerchi on a Lenten morning five years before, not
having yet given any hostages to deceit, never re-
turned so nearly as in the person of Naldo, seated in
that straight-backed, carved arm-chair which he had
provided for his comfort when he came to see Tessa
and the children. Tito himself was surprised at
the growing sense of relief which he felt in these
moments. No guile was needed towards Tessa :
she was too ignorant and too innocent to suspect him
of anything. And the little voices calling him
**Babbo" were very sweet in his ears for the short
while that he heard them. When he thought of
leaving Florence, he never thought of leaving Tessa
and the little ones behind. He was very fond of
these round-cheeked, wide-eyed human things that
clung about him and knew no evil of him. And
wherever affection can spring, it is like the green leaf
and the blossom — pure, and breathing purity, what-
ever soil it may grow in. Poor Eomola, with
all her self-sacrificing effort, was really helping to
harden Tito's nature by chilling it with a posi-
tive dislike which had beforehand seemed impos-

30 EOMOLA.

sible in him ; but Tessa kept open the fountains of
kindness.

" Ninna is very good without me now," began
Tessa, feehng her request rising very high in her
throat, and letting Ninna seat herself on the floor.
'* I can leave her with Monna Lisa any time, and if
she is in the cradle and cries, Lillo is as sensible as
can be — he goes and thumps Monna Lisa."

Lillo, whose great dark eyes looked all the darker
because his curls were of a light brown like his
mother's, jumped off Babbo's knee, and went forth-
with to attest his intelligence by thumping Monna
Lisa, who was shaking her head slowly over her
spinning at the other end of the room.

" A wonderful boy ! " said Tito, laughing.

''Isn't he?" said Tessa, eagerly, getting a little
closer to him, " and I might go and see the Carnival
to-morrow, just for an hour or two, mightn't I?"

" Oh, you wicked pigeon ! " said Tito, pinching
her cheek; ''those are your longings, are they?
What have you to do with carnivals now you are an
old woman with two children ? "

" But old women like to see things," said Tessa,
her lower lip hanging a little. " Monna Lisa said
she should like to go, only she's so deaf she can't
hear what is behind her, and she thinks we couldn't
take care of both the children."

"No, indeed, Tessa," said Tito, looking rather
grave, " you must not think of taking the chil-

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 31

dren into the crowded streets, else I shall be
angry."

" But I have never been into the Piazza without
leave," said Tessa, in a frightened, pleading tone,
'^ since the Holy Saturday, and I think Nofri is dead,
for you know the poor madre died ; and I shall never
forget the carnival I saw once ; it was so pretty — all
roses and a king and queen under them — and singing.
I liked it better than the San Giovanni."

"But there's nothing like that now, my Tessa.
They are going to make a bonfire in the Piazza —
that's all. But I cannot let you go out by yourself in
the evening."

" Oh, no, no ! I don't want to go in the evening.
I only want to go and see the procession by daylight.
There will be a procession — is it not true ? "

"Yes, after a sort," said Tito, "as lively as a
flight of cranes. You must not expect roses and
glittering kings and queens, my Tessa. However,
I suppose any string of people to be called a proces-
sion will please your blue eyes. And there's a thing
they have raised in the Piazza de' Signori for the
bonfire. You may like to see that. But come home
early, and look like a grave little old woman ; and if
you see any men with feathers and swords, keep out
of their way : they are very fierce, and like to cut old
women's heads off."

" Santa Madonna ! where do they come from? Ah!
you are laughing ; it is not so bad. But I will keep

32 EOMOLA.

away from them. Only," Tessa went on in a
whisper, putting her lips near Naldo's ear, "if I
might take Lillo with me ! He is very sensible."

" But who will thump Monna Lisa then, if she
doesn't hear ? " said Tito, finding it difficult not to
laugh, bill thinking it necessary to look serious ►
" No, Tessa, you could not take care of Lillo if you
got into a crowd, and he's too heavy for you to carry
him."

"It is true," said Tessa, rather sadly, "and he
likes to run away. I forgot that. Then I will go
alone. But now look at Ninna — you have not looked
at her enough."

Ninna was a blue-eyed thing, at the tottering,
tumbling age — a fair solid, which, like a loaded die,
found its base with a constancy that warranted pre-
diction. Tessa went to snatch her up, and when
Babbo was paying due attention to the recent teeth
and other marvels, she said, in a whisper, " And shall
I buy some confetti for the children ?"

Tito drew some small coins from his scarsella, and
poured them into her palm.

" That will buy no end," said Tessa, dehghted at
this abundance. " I shall not mind going without
Lillo so much, if I bring him something."

So Tessa set out in the morning towards the great
Piazza where the bonfire was to be. She did not
think the February breeze cold enough to demand
further covering than her green woollen dress. A

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 33

mantle would have been oppressive, for it would have
hidden a new necklace and a new clasp, mounted
wdth silver, the only ornamental presents Tito had
ever made her. Tessa did not think at all of showing
her figure, for no one had ever told her it was pretty ;
but she was quite sure that her necklace and clasp
were of the prettiest sort ever worn by the richest
contadina, and she arranged her white hood over her
head so that the front of her necklace might be well
displayed. These ornaments, she considered, must
inspire respect for her as the wife of some one who
could afibrd to buy them.

She tripped along very cheerily in the February
sunshine, thinking much of the purchases for the
little ones, with which she was to fill her small basket,
and not thinking at all of any one who might be
observing her. Yet her descent from her upper story
into the street had been watched, and she was being
kept in sight as she walked by a person who had often
waited in vain to see if it were not Tessa who lived in
that house to which he had more than once dogged
Tito. Baldassarre was carrying a package of yarn :
he was constantly employed in that way, as a means
of earning his scanty bread, and keeping the sacred
fire of vengeance alive ; and he had come out of his
way this morning, as he had often done before, that
he might pass by the house to which he had followed
Tito in the evening. His long imprisonment had so
intensified his timid suspicion and his belief in some

VOL. III. 45

34 KOMOLA. .

diabolic fortune favouring Tito, that he had not dared
to pursue him, except under cover of a crowd or of
the darkness ; he felt, with instinctive horror, that if
Tito's eyes fell upon him, he should again be held up
to obloquy, again be dragged away ; his weapon
would be taken from him, and he should be cast
helpless into a prison -cell. His fierce purpose had
become as stealthy as a serpent's, which depends for
its prey on one dart of the fang. Justice was weak
and unfriended ; and he could not hear again the
voice that pealed the promise of vengeance in the
Duomo : he had been there again and again, but that
voice, too, had apparently been stifled by cunning
strong-armed wickedness. For a long while, Baldas-
sarre's ruling thought was to ascertain whether Tito
still wore the armour, for now at last his fainting
hope would have been contented with a successful
stab on this side the grave; but he would never
risk his precious knife again. It was a weary time
he had had to wait for the chance of answering this
question by touching Tito's back in the press of the
street. Since then, the knowledge that the sharp
steel was useless, and that he had no hope but in
some new device, had fallen with leaden weight on
his enfeebled mind. A dim vision of winning one of
those two wives to aid him came before him con-
tinually, and continually slid away. The wife
who had lived on the hill was no longer there.
If he could find her again, he might grasp some

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 35

thread of a project, and work his way to more
clearness.

And this morning he had succeeded. He was
quite certain now where this wife lived, and as he
walked, bent a little under his burden of yarn, yet
keeping the green and white figure in sight, his mind
was dwelling upon her and her circumstances as
feeble eyes dwell on lines and colours, trying to
interpret them into consistent significance.

Tessa had to pass through various long streets
without seeing any other sign of the Carnival than
unusual groups of the country people in their best
garments, and that disposition in everybody to chat
and loiter which marks the early hours of a holiday
before the spectacle has begun. Presently, in her
disappointed search for remarkable objects, her eyes
fell on a man with a pedlar's basket before him, who
seemed to be selling nothing but little red crosses to
all the passengers. A little red cross would be pretty
to hang up over her bed; it would also help to
keep off harm, and would perhaps make Ninna
stronger. Tessa went to the other side of the street
that she might ask the pedlar the price of the crosses,
fearing that they would cost a little too much for her
to spare from her purchase of sweets. The pedlar's
back had been turned towards her hitherto, but when
she came near him she recognized an old acquaint-
ance of the Mercato, Bratti Ferravecchi, and, accus-
tomed to feel that she was to avoid old acquaintances,

45—2

36 ROMOLA.

Bhe turned away again and passed to the other side
of the street. But Bratti's eye was too well
practised in looking out at the corner after possible
customers, for her movement to have escaped him,
and she was presently arrested by a tap on the arm
from one of the red crosses.

" Young woman," said Bratti, as she unwillingly
turned her head, " you come from some castello a
good way off, it seems to me, else you'd never think
of walldng about, this blessed Carnival, without a
red cross in your hand. Santa Madonna ! Four
white quattrini is a small price to pay for your soul —
prices rise in purgatory, let me tell you."

" Oh, I should like one," said Tessa, hastily, "but
I couldn't spare four white quattrini."

Bratti had at first regarded Tessa too abstractedly
as a mere customer to look at her with any scrutiny,
but when she began to speak he exclaimed, " By the
head of San Giovanni, it must be the little Tessa,
and looking as fresh as a ripe apple ! What, you've
done none the worse, then, for running away from
father Nofri ? You were in the right of it, for he
goes on crutches now, and a crabbed fellow with
crutches is dangerous ; he can reach across the house
and beat a woman as he sits."

** I'm married," said Tessa, rather demurely,,
remembering Naldo's command that she should
behave with gravity ; *^ and my husband takes great
care of me."

TESSA ABEOAD AND AT HOME. 37

*' Ah, then you've fallen on your feet ! Nofri said
you were good-for-nothing vermin ; hut what then ?
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the
stars down. I always said you did well to run away,
and it isn't often Bratti's in the wrong. Well, and
so you've got a husband and plenty of money ? Then
you'll never think much of giving four white
quattrini for a red cross. I get no profit ; but what
with the famine and the new religion, all other
merchandise is gone down. You live in the country
where the chesnuts are plenty, eh? You've never
wanted for polenta, I can see."

"No, I've never wanted anything," said Tessa,
still on her guard.

" Then you can afford to buy a cross. I got a
Padre to bless them, and you get blessing and all
for four quattrini. It isn't for the profit ; I hardly
get a danaro by the whole lot. But then they're
holy wares, and it's getting harder and harder work
to see your way to Paradise : the very Carnival is
like Holy Week, and the least you can do to keep
the Devil from getting the upper hand is to buy a
cross. God guard you ! think what the Devil's tooth
is ! You've seen him biting the man in San Giovanni,
I should hope ? "

Tessa felt much teased and frightened. " Oh,
Bratti," she said, with a discomposed face, "I want
to buy a great many confetti : I've got little Lillo
^nd Ninna at home. And nice coloured sweet things

38 EOMOLA.

cost a great deal. And they will not like the cross
so well, though I know it would he good to have it."

" Come, then," said Bratti, fond of laying up a
store of merits by imagining possible extortions and
then heroically renouncing them, " since you're an
old acquaintance, you shall have it for two quattrini.
It's making you a present of the cross, to say
nothing of the blessing."

Tessa was reaching out her two quattrini with
trembling hesitation, when Bratti said, abruptly,
" Stop a bit ! Where do you live ? "

" Oh, a long way oif," she answered, almost auto-
matically, being preoccupied with her quattrini ;
"beyond San Ambrogio, in the Yia Piccola, at
the top of the house where the wood is stacked
below."

"Very good," said Bratti, in a patronizing tone;
" then I'll let you have the cross on trust, and call
for the money. So you live inside the gates ? WeU,
well, I shall be passing."

"No, no!" said Tessa, frightened lest Naldo
should be angry at this revival of an old acquaint-
ance. " I can spare the money. Take it now."

"No," said Bratti, resolutely; "I'm not a hard-
hearted pedlar. I'll call and see if you've got any
rags, and you shall make a bargain. See, here's the
cross : and there's Pippo's shop not far behind you :
you can go and fill your basket, and I must go and
get mine empty. Addio, piccind,'^

TESSA ABKOAD AND AT HOME. 39

Bratti went on his way, and Tessa, stimulated to
change her money into confetti before further acci-
dents, went into Pippo's shop, a little fluttered by
the thought that she had let Bratti know more about
her than her husband would approve. There were
certainly more dangers in coming to see the Carnival
than in staying at home; and she would have felt
this more strongly if she had known that the wicked
old man, who had wanted to kill her husband on the
hill, was still keeping her in sight. But she had not
noticed the man with the burden on his back.

The consciousness of having a small basketful of
things to make the children glad, dispersed her
anxiety, and as she entered the Via de' Libraj her
face had its usual expression of child-like content.
And now she thought there was really a procession
coming, for she saw white robes and a banner, and
her heart began to palpitate with expectation. She
stood a little aside, but in that narrow street there
was the pleasure of being obHged to look very close.
The banner was pretty : it was the Holy Mother
with the Babe, whose love for her Tessa had
believed in more and more since she had had her
babies ; and the figures in white had not only green
wreaths on their heads, but little red crosses by their
side, which caused her some satisfaction that she also
had her red cross. Certainly, they looked as beautiful
as the angels on the clouds, and to Tessa's mind they
too had a background of cloud, like everything else

40 ROMOLA.

that came to her in life. How and whence did they
come ? She did not mind much ahout knowinsr.
But one thing surprised her as newer than wreaths
and crosses ; it was that some of the white figures
carried haskets between them. What could the bas-
kets be for ?

But now they were very near, and, to her astonish-
ment, they wheeled aside and came straight up to
her. She trembled as she would have done if St.
Michael in the picture had shaken his head at her,
and was conscious of nothing but terrified wonder
till she saw close to her a round boyish face, lower
than her own, and heard a treble voice saying,
*' Sister, you carry the Anathema about you. Yield
it up to the blessed Gesu, and he will adorn you
with the gems of His grace."

Tessa was only more frightened, understanding
nothing. Her first conjecture settled on her basket
of sweets. They wanted that, these alarming angels.
Oh, dear, dear ! She looked down at it.

*' No, sister," said a taller youth, pointing to her
necklace and the clasp of her belt, "it is those
vanities that are the Anathema. Take off that
necklace and unclasp that belt, that they may be
burned in the holy Bonfire of Vanities, and save you
from burning."

*' It is the truth, my sister," said a still taller
youth, evidently the archangel of this band.
*' Listen to these voices speaking the divine mes-

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 41

sage. You already carry a red cross : let that be
your only adornment. Yield up your necklace and
belt, and you shall obtain grace."

This was too much. Tessa, overcome with awe,
dared not say " no," but she was equally unable to
render up her beloved necklace and clasp. Her pout-
ing lips were quivering, the tears rushed to her eyes,
and a great drop fell. For a moment she ceased
to see anything ; she felt nothing but confused terror
and misery. Suddenly a gentle hand was laid on
her arm, and a soft, wonderful voice, as if the Holy
Madonna were speaking, said, " Do not be afraid ; no
one shall harm you."

Tessa looked up and saw a lady -in black, with a
young heavenly face and loving hazel eyes. She had
never seen any one like this lady before, and under
other circumstances might have had awe-struck
thoughts about her ; but now everything else was
overcome by the sense that loving protection was
near her. The tears only fell the faster, relieving
her swelling heart, as she looked up at the heavenly
face, and, putting her hand to her necklace, said
sobbingly,

** I can't give them to be burnt. My husband — he
bought them for me — and they are so pretty — and
Ninna — Oh, I wish I'd never come ! "

" Do not ask her for them," said Komola, speaking
to the white-robed boys in a tone of mild authority.
^^ It answers no good end for people to give up such

42 EOMOLA.

things against their will. That is not what Fra
Girolamo approves : he would have such things
given up freely."

Madonna Eomola's word was not to be resisted,
and the white train moved on. They even moved
with haste, as if some new object had caught their
eyes ; and Tessa felt with bliss that they were gone,
and that her necklace and clasp were still with her.

" Oh, I will go back to the house," she said, still
agitated ; *' I will go nowhere else. But if I should
meet them again, and you not be there ?" she added,
expecting everything from this heavenly lady.

'^ Stay a little," said Komola. " Come with me
under this doorway, and we will hide the necklace
and clasp, and then you will be in no danger."

She led Tessa under the archway, and said, "Now,
can we find room for your necklace and belt in your
basket ? Ah ! your basket is full of crisp things
that will break : let us be careful, and lay the heavy
necklace under them."

It was like a change in a dream to Tessa — the
escape from nightmare into floating safety and joy —
to find herself taken care of by this lady, so lovely,
and powerful, and gentle. She let Romola unfasten
her necklace and clasp, while she herself did nothing
but look up at the face that bent over her.

'' They are sweets for Lillo and Ninna," she said,
as Romola carefully lifted up the light parcels in the
basket, and placed the ornaments below them.

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 43

" Those are your children ? " said Komola,
smiling. " And you would rather go home to
them than see any more of the Carnival ? Else you
have not far to go to the Piazza de' Signori, and
there you would see the pile for the great bonfire."

"No; oh, no!" said Tessa, eagerly; "I shall
never like bonfires again. I will go back."

" You live at some castello, doubtless," said
Komola, not waiting for an answer. "Towards which
gate do you go ? "

" Towards Por' Santa Croce."

" Come then," said Komola, taking her by the
hand and leading her to the corner of a street nearly
opposite. "If you go down there," she said, pausing,
" you will soon be in a straight road. And I must
leave you now, because some one else expects me.
You will not be frightened. Your pretty things are
quite safe now. Addio."

" Addio, Madonna," said Tessa, almost in a whis-
per, not knowing what else it would be right to say;
and in an instant the heavenly lady was gone. Tessa
turned to catch a last glimpse, but she only saw the
tall gliding figure vanish round the projecting stone-
work. So she went on her way in wonder, longing
to be once more safely housed with Monna Lisa,
nndesirous of carnivals for evermore:

Baldassarre had kept Tessa in sight till the mo-
ment of her parting with Komola : then he went
away with his bundle of yarn. It seemed to him

44 ROMOLA.

that lie had discerned a clue wliicli might guide him
if he could only grasp the necessary details firmly
enough. He had seen the two wives together, and
the sight had brought to his conceptions that vivid-
ness which had been wanting before. His power of
imagining facts needed to be reinforced continually
by the senses. The tall wife was the noble and
rightful wife ; she had the blood in her that would
be readily kindled to resentment; she would know
what scholarship was, and how it might lie locked in
by the obstructions of the stricken body, like a trea-
sure buried by earthquake. She could believe him :
she would be inclined to believe him, if he proved to
her that her husband was unfaithful. Women cared
about that : they would take vengeance for that. If
this wife of Tito's loved him, she would have a sense
of injury which Baldassarre's mind dwelt on with
keen longing, as if it would be the strength of another
Will added to his own, the strength of another mind
to form devices.

Both these wives had been kind to Baldassarre, and
their acts towards him, being bound up with the very
image of them, had not vanished from his memory ;
yet the thought of their pain could not present itself
to him as a check. To him it seemed that pain was
the order of the world for all except the hard and
base. If any were innocent, if any were noble,
where could the utmost gladness lie for them?
Where it lay for him — in unconquerable hatred

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. 45

and triumphant vengeance. But he must be cau-
tious : he must watch this wife in the Via de' Bardi,
and learn more of her ; for even here frustration
was possible. There was no power for him now but
in patience.

46 EOMOLA.

CHAPTEE V.

MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION.

When Romola said that some one else expected her,
she meant her cousin Brigida, but she was far from
suspecting how much that good kinswoman was in
need of her. Returning together towards the Piazza,
they had descried the company of youths coming
to a stand before Tessa, and when Romola, having
approached near enough to see the simple little
contadina's distress, said, " Wait for me a moment,
cousin," Monna Brigida said hastily, " Ah, I will
not go on : come for me to Boni's shop, — I shall
go back there."

The truth was, Monna Brigida had a conscious-
ness on the one hand of certain "vanities" carried
on her person, and on the other of a growing alarm
lest the Piagnoni should be right in holding that
rouge, and false hair, and pearl embroidery, en-
damaged the soul. Their serious view of things
filled the air like an odour; nothing seemed to
have exactly the same flavour as it used to have
and there was the dear child Romola, in her youth

MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION. 47

and beauty, leading a life that was uncomfortably
suggestive of rigorous demands on woman. A widow
at fifty-five whose satisfaction has been largely
drawn from what she thinks of her own person, and
what she believes others think of it, requires a great
fund of imagination to keep her spirits buoyant.
And Monna Brigida had begun to have frequent
struggles at her toilet. If her soul would prosper
better without them, was it really worth while to put
on the rouge and the braids ? But when she lifted
up the hand-mirror and saw a sallow face with
baggy cheeks, and crow's feet that were not to be dis-
simulated by any simpering of the lips — when she
parted her grey hair, and let it lie in simple Piagnone
fashion round her face, her courage failed. Monna
Berta would certainly burst out laughing at her, and
call her an old hag, and as Monna Berta was really
only fifty-two, she had a superiority which would
make the observation cutting. Every woman who
was not a Piagnone would give a shrug at the sight
of her, and the men would accost her as if she were
their grandmother. Whereas, at fifty-five a woman
was not so very old — she only required making up
a little. So the rouge and the braids and the
embroidered berretta went on again, and Monna
Brigida was satisfied with the accustomed effect;
as for her neck, if she covered it up, people might
suppose it was too old to show, and on the contrary,
with the necklaces round it, it looked better than

48 ROMOLA.

Monna Berta's. This very day, wlien she was pre-
paring for the Piagnone Carnival, such a struggle had
occurred, and the conflicting fears and longings which
caused the struggle, caused her to turn back and
seek refuge in the druggist's shop rather than
encounter the collectors of the Anathema when
Romola was not by her side.

But Monna Brigida was not quite rapid enough in
her retreat. She had been descried, even before she
turned away, by the white-robed boys in the rear of
those who wheeled round towards Tessa, and the
willingness with which Tessa was given up was,
perhaps, slightly due to the fact that part of the
troop had already accosted a personage carrying more
markedly upon her the dangerous weight of the
Anathema. It happened that several of this troop
were at the youngest age taken into peculiar training ;
and a small fellow of ten, his olive wreath resting
above cherubic cheeks and wide brown eyes, his
imagination really possessed with a hovering awe at
existence as something in which great consequences
impended on being good or bad, his longings never-
theless running in the direction of mastery and
mischief, was the first to reach Monna Brigida and
place himself across her path. She felt angry, and
looked for an open door, but there was not one at
hand, and by attempting to escape now, she would
only make things worse. But it was not the cherubic-
faced young one who first addressed her; it was a

MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION. 49

youth of fifteen, who held one handle of a wide
basket.

*' Venerable mother ! " he began, '* the blessed
Jesus commands you to give up the Anathema
which you carry upon you. That cap embroidered
with pearls, those jewels that fasten up your false
hair — let them be given up and sold for the poor;
and cast the hair itself away from you, as a lie that is
only fit for burning. Doubtless, too, you have other
jewels under your silk mantle."

" Yes, lady," said the youth at the other handle,
who had many of Fra Girolamo's phrases by heart,
" they are too heavy for you : they are heavier than a
millstone, and are weighting you for perdition. Will
you adorn yourself with the hunger of the poor, and
be proud to cany God's curse upon your head ?"

" In truth you are old, buona madre," said the
cherubic boy, in a sweet soprano. *' You look very
ugly with the red on your cheeks and that black
glistening hair, and those fine things. It is only
Satan who can like to see you. Your Angel is sorry.
He wants you to rub away the red."

The little fellow snatched a soft silk scarf from the
basket, and held it towards Monna Brigida, that she
might use it as her guardian angel desired. Her
anger and mortification were fast giving way to
spiritual alarm. Monna Berta and that cloud of
witnesses, highly-dressed society in general, were not
looking at her, and she was surrounded by young

VOL. III. 46

50 EOMOLA.

monitors, whose white robes, and wreaths, and red
crosses, and dreadful candour, had something awful
in their unusualness. Her Franciscan confessor, Fra
Cristoforo, of Santa Croce, was not at hand to rein-
force her distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was
helplessly possessed and shaken by a' vague sense
that a supreme warning was come to her. Unvisited
by the least suggestion of any other course that was
open to her, she took the scarf that was held out,
and rubbed her cheeks, with trembling submis-
siveness.

*'It is well, madonna," said the second youth.
" It is a holy beginning. And when you have taken
those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly
grace will descend on it." The infusion of mischief
was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of
the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the
berretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell
down over Monna Brigida's face, and dragged the
rest of the head-gear forward. It was a new reason
for not hesitating : she put up her hands hastily,
undid the other fastenings, and flung down into the
basket of doom her beloved crimson-velvet berretta,
with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed-pearls,
and stood an unrouged woman, with grey hair pushed
backward from a face where certain deep lines of age
had triumphed over embonpoint.

But the berretta was not allowed to lie in the
basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it

MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION. 51

up, and held it up pitilessly, with the false hair
dangling.

" See, venerable mother," said the taller youth,
" what ugly Hes you have delivered yourself from !
And now you look like the blessed Saint Anna, the
mother of the Holy Virgin."

Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, and
never showing herself in the world again, were rush-
ing through Monna Brigida's mind. There was
nothing possible for her but to take care of her soul.
Of course, there were spectators laughing : she had
no need to look round to assure herself of that.
Well! it would, perhaps, be better to be forced to
think more of Paradise. But at the thought that the
dear accustomed world was no longer in her choice,
there gathered some of those hard tears which just
moisten elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a
large rough hand holding a red cross, which was sud-
denly thrust before her over the shoulders of the boys,
while a strong guttural voice said, —

" Only four quattrini, madonna, blessing and all !
Buy it. You'll find a comfort in it now your wig's
gone. Deh ! what are we sinners doing all our lives ?
Making soup in a basket, and getting nothing but the
scum for our stomachs. Better buy a blessing, ma-
donna ! Only four quattrini ; the profit is not so much
as the smell of a danaro, and it goes to the poor."

Monna Brigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was pro-
ceeding to the further submission of reaching money

46—2

52 EOMOLA.

from her embroidered scarsella, at present hidden by
her silk mantle, when the group round her, which
she had not yet entertained the idea of escaping,
opened before a figure as welcome as an angel loosing
prison bolts.

*' Eomola, look at me !" said Monna Brigida, in a
piteous tone, putting out both her hands.

The white troop was already moving away, with a
slight consciousness that its zeal about the head-gear
had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensa-
tion from any further demand for penitential offerings.

*' Dear cousin, don't be distressed," said Eomola,
smitten with pity, yet hardly able to help smiling at
the sudden apparition of her kinswoman in a genuine,
natural guise, strangely contrasted with all memories
of her. She took the black drapery from her own head,
and threw it over Monna Brigida's. " There," she
went on soothingly, " no one will remark you now.
We will turn down the Via del Palagio and go straight
to our house."

They hastened away, Monna Brigida grasping
Romola's hand tightly, as if to get a stronger
assurance of her being actually there.

*•* Ah, my Romola, my dear child," said the short
fat woman, hurrying with frequent steps to keep pace
with the majestic young figure beside her. *' What
an old scarecrow I am ! I must be good — I mean to
be good ! "

" Yes, yes; buy a cross ! " said the guttural voice,

MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION. 53

while the rough hand was thrust once more before
Monna Brigida ; for Bratti was not to be abashed by
Eomola's presence into renouncing a probable cus-
tomer, and had quietly followed up their retreat.
*^ Only four quattrini, blessing and all — and if there
was any proJ&t, it would all go to the poor."

Monna Brigida would have been compelled to
pause, even if she had been in a less submissive
mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest
Eomola's remonstrance, and with the other reached
out a grosso, worth many white quattrini, saying, in
an entreating tone —

" Take it, good man, and begone."

** You're in the right, madonna," said Bratti,
taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into
her hand, "I'll not offer you change, for I might as
well rob you of a mass. What ! we must all be
scorched a little, but you'll come off the easier ;
better fall from the window than the roof. A good
Easter and a good year to you ! "

"Well, Romola," cried Monna Brigida, patheti'
cally, as Bratti left them, "if I'm to be a Piagnone
it's no matter how I look ! "

" Dear cousin," said Romola, smiling at her affec-
tionately, "you don't know how much better you
look than you ever did before. I see now how good-
natured your face is, like yourself. That red and
finery seemed to thrust themselves forward and hide
expression. Ask our Piero or any other painter if he

54 KOMOLA.

would not rather paint your portrait now than before.
I think all lines of the human face have something
either touching or grand, unless they seem to come
from low passions. How fine old men are, like my
godfather ! Why should not old women look grand
and simple?"

" Yes, when one gets to be sixty, my Eomola,"
said Brigida, relapsing a little ; " but I'm only fifty-
five, and Monna Berta, and everybody — but it's no
use : I will be good, like you. Your mother, if she'd
been alive, would have been as old as I am ; we were
cousins together. One must either die or get old.
But it doesn't matter about being old, if one's a
Piagnone.'*

55

CHAPTER VL

A PROPHETESS.

The incidents of that Carnival day seemed to Romola
to carry no other personal consequences to her than
the new care of supporting poor cousin Brigida in her
fluctuating resignation to age and grey hairs; but
they introduced a Lenten time in which she was kept
at a high pitch of mental excitement and active effort.

Bernardo del Nero had been elected Gonfaloniere.
By great exertions the Medicean party had so far
triumphed, and that triumph had deepened Romola's
presentiment of some secretly prepared scheme likely
to ripen either into success or betrayal during these
two months of her godfather's authority. Every
morning the dim daybreak as it peered into her room
seemed to be that haunting fear coming back to her.
Every morning the fear went with her as she passed
through the streets on her way to the early sermon
in the Duomo : but there she gradually lost the sense
of its chill presence, as men lose the dread of death
in the clash of battle.

In the Duomo she felt herself sharing in a pas-

5Q ROMOLA.

sionate conflict wliicli had wider relations than any
enclosed within the walls of Florence. For Savo-
narola was preaching — preaching the last course of
Lenten sermons he was ever allowed to finish in the
Duomo : he knew that excommunication was immi-
nent, and he had reached the point of defying it. He
held up the condition of the Church in the terrible
mirror of his unflinching speech, which called things
by their right names and dealt in no polite peri-
phrases ; he proclaimed with heightening confidence
the advent of renovation — of a moment when there
would be a general revolt against corruption. As to
his own destiny, he seemed to have a double and
alternating prevision : sometimes he saw himself
taking a glorious part in that revolt, sending forth a
voice that would be heard through all Christendom,
and making the dead body of the Church tremble into
new life, as the body of Lazarus trembled when the
divine voice pierced the sepulchre ; sometimes he saw
no prospect for himself but persecution and martyr-
dom : — this life for him was only a vigil, and only
after death would come the dawn.

The position was one which must have had its
impressiveness for all minds that wel:e not of the
dullest order, even if they were inclined, as Macchia-
velli was, to interpret the Frate's character by a key
that pre-supposed no loftiness. To Komola, whose
kindred ardour gave her a firm belief in Savonarola's
genuine greatness of purpose, the crisis was as stir-

A PEOPHETESS. 57

ring as if it had been part of her personal lot. It
blent itself as an exalting memory with all her daily
labours ; and those labours were calling not only for
difficult perseverance, but for new courage. Famine
had never yet taken its flight from Florence, and all
distress, by its long continuance, was getting harder
to bear ; disease was spreading in the crowded city,
and the Plague was expected. As Komola walked,
often in weariness, among the sick, the hungry, and
the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by
something more than her pity — by the belief in a
heroism struggling for sublime ends, towards which
the daily action of her pity could only tend feebly, as
the dews that freshen the weedy ground to-day tend
to prepare an unseen harvest in the years to come.

But that mighty music which stirred her in the
Duomo was not without its jarring notes. Since
those first days of glowing hope when the Frate,
seeing the near triumph of good in the reform of the
Republic and the coming of the French deliverer, had
preached peace, charity, and oblivion of political
differences, there had been a marked change of con-
ditions : political intrigue had been too obstinate to
allow of the desired oblivion ; the belief in the
deliverer, who had turned his back on his high
mission, seemed to have wrought harm ; and hostility,
both on a petty and on a grand scale, was attacking
the Prophet with new weapons and new determination.

It followed that the spirit of contention and self-

58 ROMOLA.

vindication pierced more and more conspicuonsly
in his sermons; that he was urged to meet the
popular demands not only by increased insistance
and detail concerning visions and private revelations,
but by a tone of defiant confidence against objectors ;
and from having denounced the desire for the mira-
culous, and declared that miracles had no relation to
true faith, he had come to assert that at the right
moment the Divine power would attest the truth of
his prophetic preaching by a miracle. And con-
tinually, in the rapid transitions of excited feeling, as
the vision of triumphant good receded behind the
actual predominance of evil, the threats of coming
vengeance against vicious tyrants and corrupt priests
gathered some impetus from personal exasperation,
as well as from indignant zeal.

In the career of a great public orator who yields
himself to the inspiration of the moment, that conflict
of selfish and unselfish emotion which in most men
is hidden in the chamber of the soul, is brought into
terrible evidence : the language of the inner voices
is written out in letters of fire.

But if the tones of exasperation jarred on Romola,
there was often another member of Fra Girolamo's
audience to whom they were the only thrilling tones,
like the vibration of deep bass notes to the deaf.
Baldassarre had found out that the wonderful Frate
was preaching again, and as often as he could, he
went to hear the Lenten sermon, that he might drink

A PROPHETESS. 59

in the threats of a voice which seemed like a power
on the side of justice. He went the more because
he had seen that Komola went too ; for he was wait-
ing and watching for a time when not only outward
circumstance, but his own varying mental state, would
mark the right moment for seeking an interview with
her. Twice Komola had caught sight of his face
in the Duomo — once when its dark glance was fixed
on hers. She wished not to see it again, and yet she
looked for it, as men look for the reappearance of
a portent. But any revelation that might be yet
to come about this old man was a subordinate fear
now : it referred, she thought, only to the past, and
her anxiety was almost absorbed by the present.

Yet the stirring Lent passed by ; April, the second
and final month of her godfather's supreme authority,
was near its close ; and nothing had occurred to fulfil
her presentiment. In the public mind, too, there
had been fears, and rumours had spread from Kome
of a menacing activity on the part of Piero de*
Medici ; but in a few days the suspected Bernardo
would go out of power.

Romola was trying to gather some courage from the
review of her futile fears, when on the twenty-seventh,
as she was walking out on her usual errands of mercy
in the afternoon, she was met by a messenger from
Camilla Rucellai, chief among the feminine seers of
Florence, desiring her presence forthwith on matters
of the highest moment. Romola, who shrank with

60 ROMOLA.

unconquerable disgust from the shrill excitability of
those illuminated women, and had just now a special
repugnance towards Camilla because of a report that
she had announced revelations hostile to Bernardo
del Nero, was at first inclined to send back a flat
refusal. Camilla's message might refer to public
affairs, and Komola's immediate prompting was to
close her ears against knowledge that might only-
make her mental burden heavier. But it had become
so thoroughly her habit to reject her impulsive choice,
and to obey passively the guidance of outward claims,
that, reproving herself for allowing her presenti-
ments to make her cowardly and selfish, she ended
by compliance, and went straight to Camilla.

She found the nervous grey-haired woman in a
chamber arranged as much as possible like a convent
cell. The thin fingers clutching Eomola as she sat,
and the eager voice addressing her at first in a loud
whisper, caused her a physical shrinking that made
it difficult for her to keep her seat.

Camilla had a vision to communicate — a vision in
which it had been revealed to her by Eomola' s Angel,
that Eomola Imew certain secrets concerning her god-
father, Bernardo del Nero, which, if disclosed, might
save the Eepublic from peril. Camilla's voice rose
louder and higher as she narrated her vision, and
ended by exhorting Eomola to obey the command of
her Angel, and separate herself from the enemy of
God.

A PROPHETESS. 61

Eomola's impetuosity was that of a massive nature,
and, except in moments when she was deeply stirred,
her manner was calm and self-controlled. She had
a constitutional disgust for the shallow excitability
of women like Camilla, whose faculties seemed all
wrought up into fantasies, leaving nothing for emo-
tion and thought. The exhortation was not yet
ended when she started up and attempted to wrench
her arm from Camilla's tightening grasp. It was of
no use. The prophetess kept her hold like a crab,
and, only incited to more eager exhortation by
Eomola's resistance, was carried beyond her own
intention into a shrill statement of other visions
which were to corroborate this. Christ himself had
appeared to her and ordered her to send his com-
mands to certain citizens in office that they should
throw Bernardo del Nero from the window of the
Palazzo Yecchio. Era Girolamo himself knew of it,
and had not dared this time to say that the vision
was not of Divine authority.

*'And since then," said Camilla, in her excited
treble, straining upward with wild eyes towards
Eomola's face, " the Blessed Infant has come to
me and laid a wafer of sweetness on my tongue
in token of his pleasure that I had done his will."

" Let me go ! " said Eomola, in a deep voice of
anger. ** God grant you are mad ! else you are
detestably wicked ! "

The violence of her effort to be free was too strong

62 KOMOLA.

for Camilla this time. She wrenched away her arm
and rushed out of the room, not pausing till she had
gone hurriedly far along the street, and found herself
close to the church of the Badia. She had but to
pass behind the curtain under the old stone arch, and
she would find a sanctuary shut in from the noise
and hurry of the street, where all objects and all uses
suggested the thought of an eternal peace subsisting
in the midst of turmoil.

She turned in, and sinking down on the step of the
altar in front of Filippino Lippi's serene Virgin
appearing to St. Bernard, she waited in hope that
the inward tumult which agitated her would by-and-
by subside.

The thought which pressed on her the most acutely
was, that Camilla could allege Savonarola's counte-
nance of her wicked folly. Komola did not for a
moment believe that he had sanctioned the throwing
of Bernardo del Nero from the window as a Divine
suggestion ; she felt certain that tliere was falsehood
or mistake in that allegation. Savonarola had be-
come more and more severe in his views of resist-
ance to malcontents ; but the ideas of strict law and
order were fundamental to all his political teaching.
Still, since he knew the possibly fatal effects of
visions Hke Camilla's, since he had a marked dis-
trust of such spirit- seeing women, and kept aloof
from them as much as possible, why, with his readi-
ness to denounce wrong from the pulpit, did he not

%

A PROPHETESS. 63

publicly denounce these pretended revelations which
brought new darkness instead of light across the
conception of a Supreme Will ? Why ? The answer
came with painful clearness : he was fettered inwardly
by the consciousness that such revelations were not,
in their basis, distinctly separable from his own
visions; he was fettered outwardly by the foreseen
consequence of raising a cry against himself even
among members of his own party, as one who would
suppress all Divine inspiration of which he himself
was not the vehicle — he or his confidential and sup-
plementary seer of visions, Fra Salvestro.

Eomola, kneeling with buried face on the altar
step, was enduring one of those sickening moments,
when the enthusiasm which had come to her as the
only energy strong enough to make life worthy,
seemed to be inevitably bound up with vain dreams
and wilful eye-shutting. Her mind rushed back
with a new attraction towards the strong worldly
sense, the dignified prudence, the untheoretic virtues
of her godfather, who was to be treated as a sort of
Agag because he held that a more restricted form of
government was better than the Great Council, and
because he would not pretend to forget old ties to the
banished family.

But with this last thought rose the presenti-
ment of some plot to restore the Medici ; and then
again she felt that the popular party was half
justified in its fierce suspicion. Again she felt that

64 KOMOLA.

to keep the Government of Florence pure, and to
keep out a vicious rule, was a sacred cause ; the
Frate was right there, and had carried her under-
standing irrevocahly with him. But at this moment
the assent of her understanding went alone ; it was
given unwillingly. Her heart was recoiling from a
right allied to so much narrowness ; a right appa-
rently entailing that hard systematic judgment of
men which measures them hy assents and denials
quite superficial to the manhood within them. Her
affection and respect were clinging with new tenacity
to her godfather, and with him to those memories of
her father which were in the same opposition to the
division of men into sheep and goats hy the easy
mark of some political or religious symhol.

After all has been said that can he said about the
widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they
would hardly be such strong agents unless they were
taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle
of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in
the struggle of the affections, seeking a justifica-
tion for love and hope.

If Komola's intellect had been less capable of
discerning the complexities in human things, all the
early loving associations of her life would have for-
bidden her to accept implicitly the denunciatory
exclusiveness of Savonarola. She had simply felt
that his mind had suggested deeper and more effica-
cious truth to her than any other, and the large

A PROPHETESS. 65

breathing room she found in his grand view of
human duties had made her patient towards that part
of his teaching which she could not absorb, so long
as its practical effect came into collision with no
strong force in her. But now a sudden insurrection
of feeling had brought about that collision. Her
indignation, once roused by Camilla's visions, could
not pause there, but ran hke an illuminating fire over
all the kindred facts in Savonarola's teaching, and for
the moment she felt what was true in the scornful
sarcasms she heard continually flung against him,
more keenly than what was false.

But it was an illumination that made all life look
ghastly to her. Where were the beings to whom she
could cHng, with whom she could work and endure,
with the belief that she was working for the right ?
On the side from which moral energy came lay a
fanaticism from which she was shrinking with newly
startled repulsion; on the side to which she was
drawn by affection and memory, there was the pre-
sentiment of some secret plotting, which her judg-
ment told her would not be unfairly called crime.
And still surmounting every other thought was the
dread inspired by Tito's hints, lest that presentiment
should be converted into knowledge, in such a way
that she would be torn by irreconcilable claims.

Calmness would not come even on the altar step ;
it would not come from looking at the serene picture
where the saint, writing in the rocky solitude, was

VOL. III. 47

66 EOMOLA.

being visited by faces with celestial peace in tliera.
Romola was in the bard press of human difficulties,
and that rocky solitude was too far off. She rose
from her knees that she might hasten to her sick
people in the courtyard, and by some immediate
beneficent action, revive that sense of worth in life
which at this moment was unfed by any wider faith.
But when she turned round, she found herseK face
to face with a man who was standing only two yards
off her. The man was Baldassarre.

67

CHAPTER yn.

ON SAN MINIATO.

** I WOULD speak with you," said Baldassarre, as
Eomola looked at him in silent expectation. It was
plain that he had followed her, and had been waiting
for her. She was going at last to know the secret
about him.

" Yes," she said, with the same sort of submis-
sion that she might have shown under an imposed
penance. "But you msh to go where no one can
hear us ? "

" Where he will not come upon us," said Baldas-
sarre, turning and glancing behind him timidly.
*' Out — in the air — away from the streets."

" I sometimes go to San Miniato at this hour,"
said Romola. " If you like, I wiU go now, and you
can follow me. It is far, but we can be solitary
there."

He nodded assent, and Eomola set out. To some
women it might have seemed an alarming risk to go
to a comparatively solitary spot with a man who had
some of the outward signs of that madness which

47—2

68 ROMOLA.

Tito attributed to him. But Romola was not given
to personal fears, and slie was glad of the distance
that interposed some delay before another blow fell
on her. The afternoon was far advanced, and the
sun was already low in the west, when she paused on
some rough ground in the shadow of the cypress
trunks, and looked round for Baldassarre. He was
not far off, but when he reached her, he was glad to
sink down on an edge of stony earth. His thick- set
frame had no longer the sturdy vigour which belonged
to it when he first appeared with the rope round him
in the Duomo ; and under the transient tremor caused
by the exertion of walking up the hill, his eyes seemed
to have a more helpless vagueness.

" The hill is steep," said Romola, with compas-
sionate gentleness, seating herself by him. " And I
fear you have been weakened by want."

He turned his head and fixed his eyes on her in
silence, unable, now the moment for speech was
come, to seize the words that would convey the
thought he wanted to utter: and she remained as
motionless as she could, lest he should suppose her
impatient. He looked like nothing higher than a
common-bred, neglected old man ; but she was used
now to be very near to such people, and to think
a great deal about their troubles. Gradually his
glance gathered a more definite expression, and at
last he said with abrupt emphasis —

" Ah ! you would have been my daughter !'*

ON SAN MINIATO. 69

The swift flush came in Romola's face and went
back again as swiftly, leaving her with white lips
a little apart, like a marble image of horror. For
her mind, this revelation was made. She di\dned
the facts that lay behind that single word, and in
the first moment there could be no check to the
impulsive belief which sprang from her keen expe-
rience of Tito's nature. The sensitive response of
her face was a stimulus- to Baldassarre ; for the first
time his words had wrought their right effect. He
went on with gathering eagerness and firmness, lay-
ing his hand on her arm.

" You are a woman of proud blood — is it not true ?
You go to hear the preacher ; you hate baseness —
baseness that smiles and triumphs. You hate your
husband?"

"Oh, God! were you really his father?" said
Romola, in a low voice, too entirely possessed by the
images of the past to take any note of Baldassarre's
question. "Or was it as he said? Did you take
him when he was little?"

"Ah, you believe me — you know what he is!"
said Baldassarre, exultingly, tightening the pressure
on her arm, as if the contact gave him power. "You
will help me?"

" Yes," said Romola, not interpreting the words as
he meant them. She laid her palm gently on the
rough hand that grasped her arm, and the tears
came to her. eyes as she looked at him. " Oh ! it is

70 ROMOLA.

piteous ! Tell me — why, you were a great scholar ;
you taught liim. How is it ?"

She broke oif. Tito's allegation of this man's
madness had come across her ; and where were the
signs even of past refinement ? But she had the
self-command not to move her hand. She sat per-
fectly still, waiting to listen with new caution.

"It is gone ! — it is all gone ! " said Baldassarre ;
"and they would not believe me, because he lied,
and said I was mad ; and they had me dragged to
prison. And I am old — my mind will not come
back. And the world is against me."

He paused a moment, and his eyes sank as if he
were under a wave of despondency. Then he looked
up at her again, and said with renewed eagerness —

" But you are not against me. He made you love
him, and he has been false to yoi^; and you hate
him. Yes, he made mc love him : he was beautiful
and gentle, and I was a lonely man. I took him
when they were beating him. He slept in my bosom
when he was little, and I watched him as he grew,
and gave him all my knowledge, and everything that
was mine I meant to be his. I had many things :
money, and books, and gems. He had my gems —
he sold them ; and he left me in slavery. He never
came to seek me, and when I came back poor and in
misery, he denied me. He said I was a madman."

" He told us his father was dead — was drowned,'*
said Romola faintly. " Surely he must have believed

ON SAN MINIATO. 71

it then. Oh ! he could not have been so base
then/'*

A vision had risen of what Tito was to her in those
first days when she thought no more of wrong in him
than a child thinks of poison in flowers. The yearn-
ing regret that lay in that memory brought some
relief from the tension of horror. With one great
sob the tears rushed forth.

"Ah, you are young, and the tears come easily,"
said Baldassarre, with some impatience. "But tears are
no good ; they only put out the fire within, and it is the
fire that works. Tears will hinder us. Listen to me."

Romola turned towards him with a slight start.
Again the possibility of his madness had darted
through her mind, and checked the rush of behef.
If, after all, this man were only a mad assassin ?
But her deep belief in his story still lay behind, and
it was more in sympathy than in fear that she avoided
the risk of paining him by any show of doubt.

" Tell me," she said, as gently as she could, "how
did you lose your memory — your scholarship ?"

" I was ill. I can't tell how long — it was a blank.
I remember nothing, only at last I was sitting in the
sun among the stones, and everything else was dark-
ness. And slowly, and by degrees, I felt something
besides that : a longing for something — I did not
know what — that never came. And when I was in
the ship on the waters I began to know what I longed
for ; it was for the Boy to come back — it was to find

72 ROMOLA.

all my thoughts again, for I was locked away outside
them all. And I am outside now. I feel nothing
but a wall and darkness."

Baldassarre had become dreamy again, and sank
into silence, resting his head between his hands ;
and again Komola's belief in him had submerged all
cautioning doubts. The pity with which she dwelt
on his words seemed like the revival of an old pang.
Had she not daily seen how her father missed Dino
and the future he had dreamed of in that son ?

" It all came back once," Baldassarre went on
presently. " I was master of everything. I saw
all the world again, and my gems, and my books ;
and I thought I had him in my power, and I went
to expose him where — where the lights were and the
trees ; and he lied again, and said I was mad, and
they dragged me away to prison. . . . Wicked-
ness is strong; and he wears armour."

The fierceness had flamed up again. He spoke with
his former intensity, and again he grasped Romola's
arm.

** But you will help me ? He has been false to you too.
He has another wife, and she has children. He makes
her believe he is her husband, and she is a foolish,
helpless thing. I will show you where she lives."

The first shock that passed through Eomola was
visibly one of anger. The woman's sense of indignity
was inevitably foremost. Baldassarre instinctively
felt her in sympathy with him.

ON SAN MINIATO. 73

" You hate him," he went on. " Is it not true?
There is no love between you ; I know that. I know
w^omen can hate; and you have proud blood. You
hate falseness, and you can love revenge."

Komola sat paralysed by the shock of conflicting
feelings. She was not conscious of the grasp that
w^as bruising her tender arm.

" You shall contrive it," said Baldassarre, pre-
sently, in an eager whisper. "I have learned by
heart that you are his rightful wife. You are a noble
woman. You go to hear the preacher of vengeance ;
you will help justice. But you will think for me.
My mind goes — everything goes sometimes — all but
the fire. The fire is God : it is justice : it will not
die. You believe that — is it not true ? If they will
not hang him for robbing me, you will take away his
armour — you will make him go without it, and I will
stab him. I have a knife, and my arm is still strong
enough."

He put his hand under his tunic, and reached out
the hidden knife, feeling the edge abstractedly, as if
he needed the sensation to keep alive his ideas.

It seemed to Komola as if every fresh hour of her
life were to become more difficult than the last. Her
judgment was too vigorous and rapid for her to fall
into the mistake of using futile deprecatory words to
a man in Baldassarre's state of mind. She chose
not to answer his last speech. She would win time
for his excitement to allay itself by asking some-

74 ROMOLA.

thing else that she cared to know. She spoke rather
tremulously —

*' You say she is foolish and helpless — that other
wife — and believes him to be her real husband.
Perhaps he is : perhaps he married her before he
married me."

" I cannot tell," said Baldassarre, pausing in that
action of feeling the knife, and looking bewildered.
" I can remember no more. I only know where she
lives. You shall see her. I will take you ; but not
now," he added hurriedly, " he may be there. The
night is coming on."

"It is true," said Komola, starting up with a
sudden consciousness that the sun had set and the
hills were darkening ; " but you will come and take
me — when?"

" In the morning," said Baldassarre, dreaming
that she, too, wanted to hurry to her vengeance.

" Come to me, then, where you came to me to-day,
in the church. I will be there at ten ; and if you are
not there, I will go again towards midday. Can you
remember?"

** Midday," said Baldassarre — "only midday. The
same place, and midday. And, after that," he added,
rising, and grasping her arm again with his left
hand, while he held the knife in his right ; "we
will have our revenge. He shaU feel the sharp edge
of justice. The world is against me, but you will
help me."

ON SAN MINIATO. 75

" I would help you in other ways," said Eomola,
making a first, timid effort to dispel his illusion
about her. ** I fear you are in want; you have to
labour, and get little. I should like to bring you
comforts, and make you feel again that there is some
one who cares for you."

" Talk no more about that," said Baldassarre,
fiercely. " I will have nothing else. Help me to
wring one drop of vengeance on this side of the
grave. I have nothing but my knife. It is sharp ;
but there is a moment after the thrust when men
see the face of death, — and it shall be my fiace that
he will see."

He loosed his hold, and sank down again in a
sitting posture. Eomola felt helpless : she must
defer all intentions till the morrow.

" Midday, then," she said, in a distinct voice.

" Yes," he answered, with an air of exhaustion.
"Go; I wiU rest here."

She hastened away. Turning at the last spot
whence he was likely to be in sight, she saw him
seated still.

ROMOLA.

CHAPTEK YIII.

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING.

BoMOLA had a purpose in her mind as she was
hastening away ; a purpose which had been grow-
ing through the afternoon hours Hke a side-stream,
rising higher and higher along with the main current.
It was less a resolve than a necessity of her feeling.
Heedless of the darkening streets, and not caring to
call for Maso's slow escort, she hurried across the
bridge where the river showed itself black before the
distant dying red, and took the most direct way to
the Old Palace. She might encounter her husband
there. No matter. She could not weigh proba-
bilities; she must discharge her heart. She did
not know what she passed in the pillared court or
up the wide stairs; she only knew that she asked
an usher for the Gonfaloniere, giving her name, and
begging to be shown into a private room.

She was not left long alone with the frescoed figures
and the newly-lit tapers. Soon the door opened, and
Bernardo del Nero entered, still carrying his white
head erect above his silk lucco.

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING. 77

" Romola, my child, what is this ? " he said, in a
tone of anxious surprise as he closed the door.

She had uncovered her head and went towards him
without speaking. He laid his hand on her shoulder,
and held her a little way from him that he might see
her better. Her face was haggard from fatigue and
long agitation, her hair had rolled down in disorder ;
but there was an excitement in her eyes that seemed
to have triumphed over the bodily consciousness.

" What has he done ? " said Bernardo, abruptly.
" Tell me everything, child ; throw away pride. I
am your father."

"It is not about myself — nothing about myself,"
said Eomola, hastily. " Dearest godfather, it is
about you. I have heard things — some I cannot tell
you. But you are in danger in the palace ; you are
in danger everywhere. There are fanatical men who
would harm you, and — and there are traitors. Trust
nobody. If you trust, you will be betrayed."

Bernardo smiled.

" Have you worked yourself up into this agitation,
my poor child," he said, raising his hand to her head
and patting it gently, "to tell such old truths as that
to an old man like me ? "

" Oh, no, no ! they are not old truths I mean," said
Romola, pressing her clasped hands painfully toge-
ther, as if that action would help her to suppress
what must not be told. " They are fresh things that
I know, but cannot tell. Dearest godfather, you

78 KOMOLA.

know I am not foolish. I would not come to you
without reason. Is it too late to warn you against
any one, every one who seems to be working on your
side ? Is it too late to say, * G-o to your yilla and
keep away in the country when these three more
days of office are over ? ' Oh, God ! perhaps it is too
late ! and if any harm comes to you, it will be as if I
had done it ! "

The last words had burst from Eomola involun-
tarily: a long-stifled feeling had found spasmodic
utterance. But she herself was startled and
arrested.

" I mean," she added, hesitatingly, " I know
nothing positive. I only know what fills me with
feai-s."

" Poor child ! " said Bernardo, looking at her
with quiet penetration for a moment or two. Then
he said — " Go, Komola, go home and rest. These
fears may be only big ugly shadows of something
very little and harmless. Even traitors must see
their interest in betraying ; the rats will run where
they smell the cheese, and there is no knowing yet
which way the scent will come."

He paused, and turned away his eyes from her
with an air of abstraction, till, with a slow shrug, he
added —

*^ As for warnings, they are of no use to me, child.
I enter into no plots, but I never forsake my colours.
If I march abreast with obstinate men, who will rush

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING. 79

on guns and pikes, I must share the consequences.
Let us say no more about that. I have not many
years left at the bottom of my sack for them to rob
me of. Go, child; go home and rest.*'

He put his hand on her head again caressingly,
and she could not help clinging to his arm, and
pressing her brow against his shoulder. Her god-
father's caress seemed the last thing that was left to
her out of that young filial life, which now looked so
happy to her even in its troubles, for they were
troubles untainted by anything hatefuL

*' Is silence best, my Eomola ? " said the old man.

" Yes, now; but I cannot tell whether it always will
be," she answered, hesitatingly, raising her head with
an appealing look.

" Well, you have a father's ear while I am above
ground" — he lifted the black drapery and folded it
round her head, adding — "and a father's home; re-
member that." Then opening the door, he said :
" There, hasten away. You are like a black ghost ;
you will be safe enough."

When Komola fell asleep that night, she slept
deep. Agitation had reached its limits ; she must
gather strength before she could suffer more ; and,
in spite of rigid habit, she slept on far beyond
sunrise.

When she awoke, it was to the sound of guns.
Piero de' Medici, with thirteen hundred men at his
back, was before the gate that looks towards Kome.

80 ROMOLA.

So much Komola learned from Maso, with many
circumstantial additions of dubious quality. A
countryman had come in and alarmed the Signoria
hefore it was light, else the city would have been
taken by surprise. His master was not in the house,
having been summoned to the Palazzo long ago.
She sent out the old man again, that he might
gather news, while she went up to the loggia from
time to time to try and discern any signs of the
dreaded entrance having been made, or of its having
been effectively repelled. Maso brought her word that
the great Piazza was full of armed men, and that
many of the chief citizens suspected as friends of
the Medici had been summoned to the palace and
detained there. Some of the people seemed not to
mind whether Piero got in or not, and some said the
Signoria itself had invited him ; but however that
might be, they were giving him an ugly welcome ;
and the soldiers from Pisa were coming against him.

In her memory of those morning hours, there
were not many things that Komola could distinguish
as actual external experiences standing markedly out
above the tumultuous waves of retrospect and antici-
pation. She knew that she had really walked to the
Badia by the appointed time in spite of street alarms ;
she knew that she had waited there in vain. And the
scene she had witnessed when she came out of the
church, and stood watching on the steps while
the doors were being closed behind her for the

THE EVENING AND THE MORNING. 81

afternoon interval, always came back to her like a
remembered waking.

There was a change in the faces and tones of the
people, armed and unarmed, who were pausing or
hurrying along the streets. The guns were firing
again, but the sound only provoked laughter. She
soon knew the cause of the change. Piero de' Medici
and his horsemen had turned their backs on Florence,
and were galloping as fast as they could along the
Siena road. She learned this from a substantial
shopkeeping Piagnone, who had not yet laid down
his pike.

" It is true," he ended, with a certain bitterness in
his emphasis. *' Piero is gone, but there are those
left behind who were in the secret of his coming —
we all know that ; and if the new Signoria does its
duty we shall soon know tvho they are."

The words darted through Romola like a sharp
spasm ; but the evil they foreshadowed was not yet
close upon her, and as she entered her home again,
her most pressing anxiety was the possibility that she
had lost sight for a long while of Baldassarre.

TOL. III. 48

82 EOMOLA.

CHAPTER IX.

WAITING.

The lengthening sunny days went on without bring-
ing either what Romola most desired or what she
most dreaded. They brought no sign from Baldas-
sarre, and, in spite of special watch on the part of
the Government, no revelation of the suspected
conspiracy. But they brought other things which
touched her closely, and bridged the phantom-
crowded space of anxiety with active sympathy in
immediate trial. They brought the spreading Plague
and the Excommunication of Savonarola.

Both those events tended to arrest her incipient
alienation from the Frate, and to rivet again her
attachment to the man who had opened to her the
new life of duty, and who seemed now to be worsted
in the fight for principle against profligacy. For
Romola could not carry from day to day into the
abodes of pestilence and misery the sublime excite-
ment of a gladness that, since such anguish existed,
she too existed to make some of the anguish less

WAITING. 83

bitter,* witliout remembering that she owed this
transcendent moral hfe to Fra Girolamo. She could
not witness the silencing and excommunication of a
man whose distinction from the great mass of the
clergy lay, not in any heretical belief, not in his
superstitions, but in the energy with which he sought
to make the Christian life a reality, without feeling
herself drawn strongly to his side.

Far on in the hot days of June the Excom-
munication, for some weeks arrived from Home,
was solemnly published in the Duomo. Komola
went to witness the scene, that the resistance it
inspired might invigorate that sympathy with Savo-
narola, which was one source of her strength. It
was in memorable contrast with the scene she had
been accustomed to witness there.

Instead of upturned citizen-faces filling the vast
area under the morning light, the youngest rising
amphitheatre-wise towards the walls and making a
garland of hope around the memories of age — instead
of the mighty voice thrilling all hearts with the sense
of great things, visible and invisible, to be struggled
for — there were the bare waUs at evening made more
sombre by the glimmer of tapers; there was the
black and grey flock of monks and secular clergy with
bent unexpectant faces; there was the occasional
tinkling of Httle beUs in the pauses of a monotonous
voice reading a sentence which had already been long
hanging up in the churches ; and at last there was the

48—2

84 BOMOLA.

extinction of the tapers, and the slow shuffling tread
of monkish feet departing in the dim silence.

Romola's ardom' on the side of the Frate was
douhly strengthened by the gleeful triumph she saw
in hard and coarse faces, and by the fear-stricken
confusion in the faces and speech of many among his
strongly attached friends. The question where the
duty of obedience ends, and the duty of resistance
begins, could in no case be an easy one ; but it was
made overwhelmingly difficult by the belief that the
Church was — not a compromise of parties to secure
a more or less approximate justice in the appropria-
tion of funds, but — a living organism instinct with
Divine power to bless and to curse. To most of the
pious Florentines, who had hitherto felt no doubt in
their adherence to the Frate, that belief was not an
embraced opinion, it was an inalienable impression,
like the concavity of the blue firmament; and the
boldness of Savonarola's written arguments that the
Excommunication, was unjust, and that, being unjust,
it was not valid, only made them tremble the more,
as a defiance cast at a mystic image, against whose
subtle immeasurable power there was neither weapon
nor defence.

But Romola, whose mind had not been allowed to
draw its early nourishment from the traditional asso-
ciations of the Christian community, in which her
father had lived a life apart, felt her relation to the
Church only through Savonarola ; his moral force

WAITING. 85

had been the only authority to which she had bowed ;
and in his excommunication she only saw the menace
of hostile vice : on one side she saw a man whose life
was devoted to the ends of public virtue and spiritual
purity, and on the other the assault of alarmed self-
ishness, headed by a lustful, greedy, lying, and
murderous old man, once called Rodrigo Borgia,
and now lifted to the pinnacle of infamy as Pope
Alexander the Sixth. The finer shades of fact which
soften the edge of such antitheses are not apt to be
seen except by neutrals, who are not distressed to
discern some folly in martyrs and some judiciousness
in the men who burn them.

But Romola required a strength that neutrality
could not give ; and this Excommunication, which
simplified and ennobled the resistant position of
Savonarola by bringing into prominence its wider
relations, seemed to come to her hke a rescue from
the threatening isolation of criticism and doubt.
The Frate was now withdrawn from that smaller
antagonism against Florentine enemies into which
he continually fell in the unchecked excitement of
the pulpit, and presented himself simply as appeal-
ing to the Christian world against a vicious exercise
of ecclesiastical power. He was a standard-bearer
leaping into the breach. Life never seems so clear
and easy as when the heart is beating faster at
the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We
feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul

86 EOMOLA.

can win ; we almost believe in our own power to
attain it. By a new current of such enthusiasm
Romola was helped through these dijBficult summer
days. She had ventured on no words to Tito that
would apprise him of her late interview Avith Baldas-
sarre, and the revelation he had made to her. What
would such agitating, difficult words win from him ?
No admission of the truth ; nothing, probably, but a
cool sarcasm about her sympathy with his assassin.
Baldassarre was evidently helpless : the thing to be
feared was, not that he should injure Tito, but that
Tito, coming upon his traces, should carry out some
new scheme for ridding himself of the injured man
who was a haunting dread to him. Romola felt that
she could do nothing decisive until she had seen
Baldassarre again, and learned the full truth about
that ''other wife" — learned whether she were the
wife to whom Tito was first bound.

The possibilities about that other wife, which
involved the worst wound to her hereditary pride,
mingled themselves as a newly embittering suspicion
with the earliest memories of her illusory love, eating
away the lingering associations of tenderness with
the past image of her husband ; and her irresistible
belief in the rest of Baldassarre's revelation made
her shrink from Tito with a horror which would
perhaps have urged some passionate speech in spite
of herself if he had not been more than usually
absent from home. Like many of the wealthier

WAITING. 87

citizens in that time of pestilence, he spent the
intervals of business chiefly in the country : the
agreeable Melema was welcome at many villas, and
since Romola had refused to leave the city, he had
no need to provide a country residence of his own.

But at last, in the later days of July, the allevia-
tion of those pubHc troubles which had absorbed her
activity and much of her thought, left Romola to a
less counteracted sense of her personal lot. The
plague had almost disappeared, and the position of
Savonarola was made more hopeful by a favourable
magistracy, who were writing urgent vindicatory
letters to Rome on his behaK, entreating the with-
drawal of the Excommunication.

Romola' s healthy and vigorous frame was under-
going the reaction of languor inevitable after con-
tinuous excitement and over-exertion ; but her mental
restlessness would not allow her to remain at home
without peremptory occupation, except dm-ing the
sultry hours. In the cool of the morning and even-
ing she walked out constantly, varying her direction
as much as possible, with the vague hope that if
Baldassarre were still alive she might encounter him.
Perhaps some illness had brought a new paralysis of
memory, and he had forgotten where she lived —
forgotten even her existence. That was her most
sanguine explanation of his non-appearance. The
explanation she felt to be most probable was, that he
had died of the Plague.

88 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER X.

THE OTHER WIFE.

The morning warmth was already beginning to be
rather oppressive to Romola, when, after a walk
along by the walls on her way from San Marco,
she turned towards the intersecting streets again at
the gate of Santa Croce.

The Borgo La Croce was so still, that she listened
to her own footsteps on the pavement in the sunny
silence, until, on approaching a bend in the street,
she saw, a few yards before her, a little child not
more than three years old, with no other clothing
than his white shirt, pause from a waddling run and
look around him. In the first moment of coming
nearer she could only see his back — a boy's back,
square and sturdy, with a cloud of reddish brown
curls above it; but in the next he turned towards
her, and she could see his dark eyes wide with tears,
and his lower lip pushed up and trembling, while his
fat brown fists clutched his shirt helplessly. The
glimpse of a tall black figure sending a shadow over
him brought his bewildered fear to a climax, and
a loud crying sob sent the big tears rolling.

THE OTHER WIFE. 89

Romola, with the ready maternal instinct which
was one hidden source of her passionate tenderness,
instantly uncovered her head, and, stooping down on
the pavement, put her arms round him, and her
cheek against his, while she spoke to him in caress-
ing tones. At first his sobs were only the louder,
but he made no effort to get away, and presently the
outburst ceased with that strange abruptness which
belongs to childish joys and griefs : his face lost
its distortion, and was fixed in an open-mouthed
gaze at Romola.

*' You have lost yourself, little one," she said,
kissing him. " Never mind ! we will find the house
again. Perhaps mamma will meet us."

She divined that he had made his escape at a
moment when the mother's eyes were turned away
from him, and thought it likely that he would soon
be followed.

** Oh, what a heavy, heavy boy ! " she said, trying
to lift him. " I cannot carry you. Come, then,
you must toddle back by my side."

The parted lips remained motionless in awed
silence, and one brown fist still clutched the shirt
with as much tenacity as ever ; but the other yielded
itself quite willingly to the wonderful white hand,
strong but soft.

"You have a mamma?" said Romola, as they
set out, looking down at the boy with a certain
yearning. But he was mute. A girl under those

90 ROMOLA.

circumstances miglit perhaps have chirped abun-
dantly ; not so this square-shouldered little man
with the big cloud of curls.

He was awake to the first sign of his whereabout,
however. At the turning by the front of San
Ambrogio he dragged Romola towards it, looking
up at her.

"Ah, that is the way home, is it?" she said,
smiling at him. He only thrust his head forward
and pulled, as an admonition that they should go
faster.

There was still another turning that he had a
decided opinion about, and then Romola found her-
self in a short street leading to open garden ground.
It was in front of a house at the end of this street
that the little fellow paused, pulHng her towards
some stone stairs. He had evidently no wish for
her to loose his hand, and she would not have been
willing to leave him without being sure that she was
delivering him to his friends. They mounted the
stairs, seeing but dimly in that sudden withdrawal
from the sunlight, till at the final landing place, an
extra stream of light came from an open doorway.
Passing through a small lobby they came to another
open door, and there Romola paused. Her approach
had not been heard.

On a low chair at the farther end of the room,
opposite the light, sat Tessa, with one hand on the
edge of the cradle, and her head hanging a little on

THE OTHEE WIEE. 91

one side, fast asleep. Near one of the windows, with
her back turned towards the door, sat Monna Lisa at
her work of preparing salad, in deaf unconsciousness.
There was only an instant for Bomola*s eyes to take
in that still scene ; for Lillo snatched his hand away
from her and ran up to his mother's side, not making
any direct effort to wake her, but only leaning his
head back against her arm, and surveying Komola
seriously from that distance.

As Lillo pushed against her Tessa opened her
eyes, and looked up in bewilderment ; but her glance
had no sooner rested on the figure at the opposite
doorway than she started up, blushed deeply, and
began to tremble a little, neither speaking nor moving
forward.

" Ah ! we have seen each other before," said
Romola, smiling, and coming forward. " I am glad
it was your little boy. He was crying in the street ;
I suppose he had run away. So we walked together
a little way, and then he knew where he was,
and brought me here. But you had not missed
him ? That is well, else you would have been
frightened."

The shock of finding that Lillo had run away
overcame eveiy other feeling in Tessa for the mo-
ment. Her colour went again, and, seizing Lillo's
arm, she ran with him to Monna Lisa, saying, with
a half sob, loud in the old woman's ear —

" Oh, Lisa, you are wicked ! Why will you stand

92 ROMOLA.

with your back to the door ? Lillo ran away ever so
far into the street."

" Holy Mother ! " said Monna Lisa, in her meek,
thick tone, letting the spoon fall from her hands.
" Where were ^jou, then ? I thought you were there,
and had your eye on him."

" But you know I go to sleep when I am rocking,"
said Tessa, in pettish remonstrance.

" Well, well, we must keep the outer door shut, or
else tie him up," said Monna Lisa, **for he'll he as
cunning as Satan before long, and that's the holy
truth. But how came he back, then ? "

This question recalled Tessa to the consciousness
of Komola's presence. Without answering, she
turned towards her, blushing and timid again, and
Monna Lisa's eyes followed her movement. The old
woman made a low reverence, and said —

"Doubtless the most noble lady brought him
back." Then, advancing a little nearer to Komola,
she added, " It's my shame for him to have been
found with only his shirt on ; but he kicked, and
wouldn't have his other clothes on this morning,
and the mother, poor thing, will never hear of his
being beaten. But what's an old woman to do with-
out a stick when the lad's legs get so strong ? Let
your nobleness look at his legs."

Lillo, conscious that his legs were in question,
pulled his shirt up a little higher, and looked down
at their olive roundness with a dispassionate and

THE OTHER WIFE. 93

curious air. Komola laughed, and stooped to give
him a caressing shake and a kiss, and this action
helped the reassurance that Tessa had already
gathered from Monna Lisa's address to Komola.
For when Naldo had heen told ahout the adventure
at the Carnival, and Tessa had asked him who the
heavenly lady that had come just when she was
wanted, and had vanished so soon, was likely to be —
whether she could be the Holy Madonna herself? —
he had answered, *' Not exactly, my Tessa; only
one of the saints," and had not chosen to say more.
So that in the dream-like combination of small expe-
rience which made up Tessa's thought, Eomola had
remained confusedly associated with the pictures in
the churches, and when she reappeared, the grateful
remembrance of her protection was slightly tinctured
with religious awe — not deeply, for Tessa's dread
was chiefly of ugly and evil beings. It seemed
unlikely that good beings would be angry and
punish her, as it was the nature of Nofri and the
devil to do. And now that Monna Lisa had spoken
freely about Lillo's legs and Komola had laughed,
Tessa was more at her ease.

*' Ninna's in the cradle," she said. *' She's pretty
too."

Komola went to look at the sleeping Ninna, and
Monna Lisa, one of the exceptionally meek deaf, who
never expect to be spoken to, returned to her salad.

*' Ah ! she is waking : she has opened her blue

94 ROMOLA.

eyes," said Komola. " You must take her up, and
I will sit down in this chair — may I ? — and nurse
Lillo. Come, LiUo ! "

She had sat down in Tito's chair, and put out her
arms towards the lad, whose eyes had followed her.
He hesitated, and, pointing his small finger at her
with a half-puzzled, half- angry feeling, said, " That's
Babbo's chair," not seeing his way out of the
difficulty if Babbo came and found Eomola in his
place.

" But Babbo is not here, and I shall go soon.
Come, let me nurse you as he does," said Eomola,
wondering to herself for the first time what sort of
Babbo he was whose wife was dressed in contadina
fashion, but had a certain daintiness about her person
that indicated idleness and plenty. Lillo consented
to be lifted up, and, finding the lap exceedingly com-
fortable, began to explore her dress and hands, to
see if there were any ornaments besides her rosary.

Tessa, who had hitherto been occupied in coaxing
Ninna out of her waking peevishness, now sat down
in her low chair, near Komola' s knee, arranging
Ninna' s tiny person to advantage, jealous that the
strange lady too seemed to notice the boy most, as
Naldo did.

" Lillo was going to be angry with me, because
I sat in Babbo's chair," said Komola, as she bent
forward to kiss Ninna' s little foot. " Will he come
soon and want it ? "

THE OTHER WIFE. 95

" AJi, no ! " said Tessa, '* you can sit in it a long
while. I shall be sorry when you go. When you
first came to take care of me at the Carnival, I
thought it was wonderful ; you came and went away
again so fast. And Naldo said, perhaps you were a
saint, and that made me tremble a little, though the
saints are very good, I know ; and you were good to
me, and now you have taken care of Lillo. Perhaps
you will always come and take care of me. That
was how Naldo did a long while ago ; he came and
took care of me when I was frightened, one San
Giovanni. I couldn't think where he came from —
he was so beautiful and good. And so are you,"
ended Tessa, looking up at Romola with devout
admiration.

"Naldo is your husband. His eyes are like
Lillo's," said Eomola, looking at the boy's darkly-
pencilled eyebrows, unusual at his age. She did not
speak interrogatively, but with a quiet certainty of
inference which was necessarily mysterious to Tessa.

" Ah ! you know him ! " she said, pausing a little
in wonder. " Perhaps you know Nofri and Peretola,
and our house on the hill, and everything. Yes, like
Lillo's; but not his hair. His hair is dark and
long — " she went on, getting rather excited. " Ah !
if you know it, ecco ! "

She had put her hand to a thin red silk cord that
hung round her neck, and drew from her bosom the
tiny old parchment Breve, the horn of red coral, and

96 EOMOLA.

a long dark curl carefully tied at one end and sus-
pended with those mystic treasures. She held them
towards Romola, away from Ninna's snatching hand.

*' It is a fresh one. I cut it lately. See how
bright it is!" she said, laying it against the white
background of Romola's fingers. *' They get dim,
and then he lets me cut another when his hair is
grown ; and I put it with the Breve, because some-
times he is away a long while, and then I think it
helps to take care of me."

A slight shiver passed through Romola as the curl
was laid across her fingers. At Tessa's first mention
of her husband as having come mysteriously she
knew not whence, a possibility had risen before
Romola that made her heart beat faster ; for to one
who is anxiously in search of a certain object the
faintest suggestions have a peculiar significance.
And when the curl was held towards her, it seemed
for an instant like a mocking phantasm of the lock
she herself had cut to wind with one of her own five
years ago. But she preserved her outward calmness,
bent not only on knowing the truth, but also on
coming to that knowledge in a way that would not
pain this poor, trusting, ignorant thing, with the
child's mind in the woman's body. "Foolish and
helpless :" yes ; so far she corresponded to Baldas-
sarre's account.

"It is a beautiful curl," she said, resisting the
impulse to withdraw her hand. " Lillo's curls will

THE OTHER WIFE. 97

be like it, perhaps, for his cheek, too, is dark. And
you never know where your husband goes to when he
leaves you?"

" No," said Tessa, putting back her treasures out
of the children's way. " But I know Messer San
Michele takes care of him, for he gave him a beautiful
coat, all made of little chains ; and if he puts that on,

nobody can kill him. And perhaps, if " Tessa

hesitated a little, under a recurrence of that original
dreamy wonder about Komola which had been ex-
pelled by chatting contact — " if you weix a saint, you
would take care of him, too, because you have taken
care of me and Lillo."

An agitated flush came over Komola' s face in the
first moment of certainty, but she had bent her cheek
against Lillo's head. The feeling that leaped out in
that flush was something like exultation at the thought
that the wife's burden might be about to slip from
her overladen shoulders ; that this little ignorant
creature might prove to be Tito's lawful wife. A
strange exultation for a proud and high-born woman
' to have been brought to ! But it seemed to Romola
as if that were the only issue that would make duty
anything else for her than an insoluble problem. Yet
she w^as not deaf to Tessa's last appealing words ;
she raised her head, and said, in her clearest
tones —

" I will always take care of you if I see you need
me. But that beautiful coat ? your husband did not

VOL. III. 49

98 KOMOLA.

wear it wlien yon were first married? Perhaps lie
used not to be so long away from you then ? "

" Ah, yes ! he was. Much — much longer. So
long, I thought he would never come back. I used
to cry. Oh, me ! I was beaten then ; a long, long
while ago at Peretola, where we had the goats and
mules."

" And how long had you been married before your
husband had that chain -coat ? " said Eomola, her
heart beating faster and faster.

Tessa looked meditative, and began to count on
her fingers, and Komola watched the fingers as if
they would tell the secret of her destiny.

" The chestnuts were ripe when we were married,'*
said Tessa, marking off her thumb and fingers again
as she spoke ; " and then again they were ripe at
Peretola before he came back, and then again, after
that, on the hill. And soon the soldiers came, and
we heard the trumpets, and then Naldo had the
coat."

" You had been married more than two years. In
which church were you married ? " said Eomola, too
entirely absorbed by one thought to put any question
that was less direct. Perhaps before the next morn-
ing she might go to her godfather and say that she
was not Tito Melema's lawful wife — that the vows
which had bound her to strive after an impossible
union had been made void beforehand.

Tessa gave a slight start at Komola's new tone of

THE OTHER WIFE. 99

inquiry, and looked up at her with a hesitating ex-
pression. Hitherto she had prattled on without con-
sciousness that she was making revelations, any more
than when she said old things over and over again to
Monna Lisa.

" Naldo said I was never to tell about that," she
said, doubtfully. " Do you think he would not be
angry if I told you ? "

"It is right that you should tell me. Tell me
everything," said Romola, looking at her with mild
authority.

If the impression from Naldo' s command had been
mudi more recent than it was, the constraining effect
of Romola' s mysterious authority would have over-
come it. But the sense that she was telling what
she had never told before made her begin with a
lowered voice.

"It was not in a church — it was at the Nativita,
when there was the fair, and all the people went
overnight to see the Madonna in the Nunziata, and
my mother was ill and couldn't go, and I took the
bunch of cocoons for her ; and then he came to me
in the church and I heard him say, * Tessa ! ' I
knew him because he had taken care of me at the San
Giovanni, and then we went into the Piazza where
the fair was, and I had some beriingozzi, for I was
hungry and he was very good to me ; and at the end
of the Piazza there was a holy father, and an altar
like what they have at the processions outside the

49—2

100 ROMOLA.

churches. So he married us, and then Naldo took
me back into the church and left me ; and I went
home, and my mother died, and Nofri began to beat
me more, and Naldo never came back. And I used
to cry, and once at the Carnival I saw him and fol-
lowed him, and he was angry, and said he would
come some time, I must wait. So I went and
waited ; but, oh ! it was a long while before he came ;
but he would have come if he could, for he was good ;
and then he took me away, because I cried and said
I could not bear to stay with Nofri. And, oh ! I
was so glad, and since then I have been always
happy, for I don't mind about the goats and mules,
because I have Lillo and Ninna now ; and Naldo is
never angry, only I think he doesn't love Ninna so
well as Lillo, and she is pretty."

Quite forgetting that she had thought her speech
rather momentous at the beginning, Tessa fell to
devouring Ninna with kisses, while Komola sat in
silence with absent eyes. It was inevitable that in
this moment she should think of the three beings
before her chiefly in their relation to her own lot, and
she was feeling the chill of disappointment that her
difficulties were not to be solved by external law.
She had relaxed her hold of Lillo, and was leaning
her cheek against her hand, seeing nothing of the
scene around her. Lillo was quick in perceiving a
change that was not agreeable to him ; he had not
yet made any return to her caresses, but he objected

THE OTHER WIFE. 101

to their withdrawal, and putting up hoth his brown
arms to pull her head towards him, he said, " Play
with me again ! "

Romola, roused from her self-absorption, clasped
the lad anew, and looked from him to Tessa, who
had now paused from her shower of kisses, and
seemed to have returned to the more placid delight of
contemplating the heavenly lady's face. That face
was undergoing a subtle change, like the gi-adual
oncoming of a warmer, softer light. Presently Romola
took her scissors from her scarsella, and cut off one of
her long wavy locks, while the three pair of wide eyes
followed her movements with kitten-like observation.

"I must go away from you now," she said, "but
I will leave this lock of hair that it may remind you
of me, because if you are ever in trouble you can
think that perhaps God vnll send me to take care
of you again. I cannot tell you where to find me,
but if I ever know that you want me, I will come to
you. Addio ! "

She had set down Lillo hurriedly, and held out
her hand to Tessa, who kissed it with a mixture of
awe and sorrow at this parting. Romola's mind
was oppressed with thoughts ; she needed to be alone
as soon as possible, but with her habitual care for the
least fortunate, she turned aside to put her hand in a
friendly way on Monna Lisa's shoulder and make her
a farewell sign. Before the old woman had finished
her deep reverence, Romola had disappeared.

102 KOMOLA.

Monna Lisa and Tessa moved towards each other
by simultaneous impulses, while the two children
stood clinging to their mother's skirts as if they, too,
felt the atmosphere of awe.

** Do you think she was a saint?'' said Tessa, in
Lisa's ear, showing her the lock.

Lisa rejected that notion very decidedly by a back-
ward movement of her fingers, and then stroking
the rippled gold, said, —

" She's a great and noble lady. I saw such in my
youth."

Komola went home and sat alone through the
sultry hours of that day with the heavy certainty
that her lot was unchanged. She was thrown back
again on the conflict between the demands of an
outward law which she recognized as a widely ramify-
ing obligation and the demands of inner moral facts
which were becoming more and more peremptory.
She had drunk in deeply the spirit of that teaching
by which Savonarola had urged her to return to her
place. She felt that the sanctity attached to all close
relations, and, therefore, pre-eminently to the closest,
was but the expression in outward law of that result
towards which all human goodness and nobleness
must spontaneously tend ; that the light abandon-
ment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because
they had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting
of social and personal virtue. What else had Tito's
crime towards Baldassarre been but that abandon-

THE 0TH3SR WIFE. 103

ment working itself out to the most hideous extreme
of falsity and ingratitude ?

And the inspiring consciousness breathed into her
by Savonarola's influence that her lot was vitally
united with the general lot had exalted even the
minor details of obligation into religion. She was
marching with a great army; she was feeling the
stress of a common life. If victims were needed,
and it was uncertain on whom the lot might fall, she
would stand ready to answer to her name. She had
stood long ; she had striven hard to fulfil the bond,
but she had seen all the conditions v/hich made the
fulfilment possible gradually forsaking her. The one
efiect of her marriage-tie seemed to be the stifling
predominance over her of a nature that she despised.
All her efforts at union had only made its impossi-
bility more palpable, and the relation had become for
her simply a degrading servitude. The law was
sacred. Yes, but rebellion might be sacred too. It
flashed upon her mind that the problem before her
was essentially the same as that which had lain
before Savonarola — the problem where the sacredness
of obedience ended and where the sacredness of rebel-
lion began. To her, as to him, there had come one
of those moments in life when the soul must dare to
act on its own warrant, not only without external law
to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not
unarmed with Divine lightnings — lightnings that
may yet fall if the warrant has been false.

104 EOMOLA.

Before the sun had gone down she had adopted a
resolve. She would ask no counsel of her godfather
or of Savonarola until she had made one determined
effort to speak freely with Tito and ohtain his con-
sent that she should live apart from him. She
desired not to leave him clandestinely again, or to
forsake Florence. She would tell him that if he
ever felt a real need of her, she would come hack to
him. Was not that the utmost faithfulness to her
bond that could he required of her ? A shuddering
anticipation came over her that he would clothe a
refusal in a sneering suggestion that she should enter
a convent as the only mode of quitting him that
would not he scandalous. He knew well that her
mind revolted from that means of escape, not only
because of her own repugnance to a narrow rule, but
because all the cherished memories of her father
forbade that she should adopt a mode of life which
was associated with his deepest griefs and his bitterest
dislike.

Tito had announced his intention of coming home
this evening. She would wait for him, and say what
she had to say at once, for it was difficult to get his
ear during the day. If he had the slightest suspicion
that personal words were coming he slipped away
with an appearance of unpremeditated ease. When
she sent for Maso to tell him that she would wait for
his master, she observed that the old man looked at
her and lingered with a mixture of hesitation and

THE OTHER WIFE. 105

wondering anxiety; but finding that she asked him
no question, he slowly turned away. Why should
she ask questions ? Perhaps Maso only knew or
guessed something of what she knew already.

It was late before Tito came. Komola had been
pacing up and down the long room which had once
been the library, with the windows open and a loose
white linen robe on instead of her usual black gar-
ment. She was glad of that change after the long
hours of heat and motionless meditation ; but the
coolness and exercise made her more intensely wake-
ful, and as sh'e went with the lamp in her hand to
open the door for Tito, he might well have been
startled by the vividness of her eyes and the expres-
sion of painful resolution which was in contrast with
her usual self-restrained quiescence before him. But
it seemed that this excitement was just what he
expected.

" Ah ! it is you, Komola. Maso is gone to bed,'*
he said, in a grave, quiet tone, interposing to close
the door for her. Then, turning round, he said, look-
ing at her more fully than he was wont, " You have
heard it all, I see."

Eomola quivered. He, then, was inclined to take
the initiative. He had been to Tessa. She led the
way through the nearest door, set dowTi her lamp,
and turned towards him again.

*' You must not think despairingly of the conse-
quences," said Tito, in a tone of soothing encourage-

106 ROMOLA.

ment, at wliich Eomola stood wondering, until he
added, " The accused have too many family ties with
all parties not to escape ; and Messer Bernardo del
Nero has other things in his favour besides his age."

Eomola started, and gave a cry as if she had been
suddenly stricken by a sharp weapon.

" What ! you did not know it ? " said Tito, putting
his hand under her arm that he might lead her to a
seat ; but she seemed to be unaware of his touch.

** Tell me," she said hastily — " tell me what it is."

" A man, whose name you may forget — Lamberto
deir Antella — who was banished, has been seized
within the territory : a letter has been found on him
of very dangerous import to the chief Mediceans, and
the scoundrel, who was once a favourite hound of
Piero de' Medici, is ready now to swear what any one
pleases against him or his friends. Some have made
their escape, but five are now in prison."

** My godfather?" said Eomola, scarcely above a
whisper, as Tito made a slight pause.

*' Yes : I grieve to say it. But along with him
there are three, at least, whose names have a com-
manding interest even among the popular party —
Niccolo Eidolfi, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, and Giannozzo
Pucci."

The tide of Eomola's feelings had been violently
turned into a new channel. In the tumult of that
moment there could be no check to the words which
came as the impulsive utterance of her long accumu-

THE OTHER WIFE. 107

lating horror. When Tito had named the men of
whom she felt certain he was the confederate, she said,
with a recoiling gesture and low-toned bitterness —

" And you — you are safe ? "

" You are certainly an amiable wife, my Komola,"
said Tito, with the coldest irony. " Yes ; I am
safe."

They turned away from each other in silence.

108 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XI.

WHY TITO WAS SAFE.

Tito had good reasons for saying that he was safe. In
the last three months, during which he had foreseen
the discovery of the Medicean conspirators as a pro-
bable event, he had had plenty of time to provide
himself with resources. He had been strengthening
his influence at Rome and at Milan, by being the
medium of secret information and indirect measures
against the Frate and the popular party; he had
cultivated more assiduously than ever the regard of
this party by showing subtle evidence that his political
convictions were entirely on their side ; and all the
while, instead of withdrawing his agency from the
Mediceans, he had sought to be more actively em-
ployed and exclusively trusted by them. It was easy
to him to keep up this triple game. The principle
of duplicity admitted by the Mediceans on their own
behalf deprived them of any standard by which they
could measure the trustworthiness of a colleague who
had not, like themselves, hereditary interests, alliances,
and prejudices, which were intensely Medicean. In

WHY TITO WAS SAFE. 109

their minds to deceive the opposite party was fair
stratagem, to deceive their own party was a baseness
to which they felt no temptation ; and in using Tito's
facile ability they were not keenly awake to the fact
that the absence of traditional attachments which
made him a convenient agent was also the absence of
what among themselves was the chief guarantee of
mutual honour. Again, the Koman and Milanese
friends of the aristocratic party, or Arrabbiati, who
were the bitterest enemies of Savonarola, carried on a
system of underhand correspondence and espionage,
in which the deepest hypocrisy was the best service,
and demanded the heaviest pay ; so that to suspect
an agent because he played a part strongly would
have been an absurd want of logic. On the other
hand, the Piagnoni of the popular party who had the
directness that belongs to energetic conviction, were
the more inclined to credit Tito with sincerity in his
political adhesion to them, because he affected no
religious sympathies.

By virtue of these conditions the last three months
had been a time of flattering success to Tito. The
result he most cared for was the securing of a future
position for himself at Eome or at Milan, for he had
a growing determination, when the favourable mo-
ment should come, to quit Florence for one of those
great capitals where life was easier, and the rewards
of talent and learning were more splendid. At pre-
sent, the scale dipped in favour of Milan; and if

110 ROMOLA.

within the year lie could render certain services to
Duke Ludovico Sforza, he had the prospect of a place
at the Milanese court, which outweighed the advan-
tages of Kome.

The revelation of the Medicean conspiracy, then,
had heen a subject of forethought to Tito; hut he
had not heen able to foresee the mode in which it
would be brought about. The arrest of Lamberto
deir Antella with a tell-tale letter on his person, and
a bitter rancour against the Medici in his heart, was
an incalculable event. It was not possible, in spite
of the careful pretexts with which his agency had been
guarded, that Tito should escape implication : he had
never expected this in case of any wide discovery
concerning the Medicean plots. But his quick mind
had soon traced out the course that would secure his
own safety with the fewest unpleasant concomitants.
It is agreeable to keep a whole skin ; but the skin
still remains an organ sensitive to the atmosphere.

His reckoning had not deceived him. That night
before he returned home, he had secured the three
results for which he most cared : he was to be freed
from all proceedings against him on account of com-
plicity with the Mediceans ; he was to retain his secre-
taryship for another year, unless he previously resigned
it ; and, lastly, the price by which he had obtained
these guarantees was to be kept as a State secret.
The price would have been thought heavy by most
men ; and Tito himself would rather not have paid it.

WHY TITO WAS SAFE. Ill

He had applied himself first to win the mind of
Francesco Valori, who was not only one of the Ten
under whom he immediately held his secretaryship,
but one of the special council appointed to investigate
the evidence of the plot. Francesco Valori, as we
have seen, was the head of the Piagnoni, a man with
certain fine qualities that were not incompatible with
violent partisanship, with an arrogant temper that
alienated his friends, nor with bitter personal animo-
sities— one of the bitterest being directed against
Bernardo del Nero. To him, in a brief private inter-
view, after obtaining a pledge of secrecy, Tito avowed
his own agency for the Mediceans — an agency induced
by motives about which he was very frank, declaring
at the same time that he had always believed their
efforts futile, and that he sincerely preferred the
maintenance of the popular government ; affected to
confide to Valori, as a secret, his own personal dislike
for Bernardo del Nero; and after this preparation,
came to the important statement that there was
another Medicean plot, of which, if he obtained cer-
tain conditions from the government, he could by a
journey to Siena, and into Romagna where Piero de'
Medici was again trying to gather forces, obtain docu-
mentary evidence to lay before the council. To this
end it was essential that his character as a Medicean
agent should be unshaken for all Mediceans, and
hence the fact that he had been a source of informa-
tion to the authorities must be wrapped in profound

112 ROMOLA.

secrecy. Still, some odour of the facts might escape
in spite of precaution, and before Tito could incur
the unpleasant consequences of acting against his
friends, he must be assured of immunity from any
prosecution as a Medicean, and from deprivation of
office for a year to come.

These propositions did not sound in the ear of
Francesco Valori precisely as they sound to us.
Yalori's mind was not intensely bent on the esti-
mation of Tito's conduct ; and it ivas intensely bent
on procuring an extreme sentence against the five
prisoners. There were sure to be immense eiforts to
save them; and it was to be wished (on public
grounds) that the evidence against them should be of
the strongest, so as to alarm all well-aifected men at
the dangers of clemency. The character of legal
proceedings at that time implied that evidence was
one of those desirable things which could only be
come at by foul means. To catch a few people and
torture them into confessing everybody's guilt was
one step towards justice ; and it was not always easy
to see the next unless a traitor turned up. Lamberto
deir Antella had been tortured in aid of his previous
willingness to tell more than he knew ; nevertheless,
additional and stronger facts were desirable, espe-
cially against Bernardo del Nero, who, so far as
appeared hitherto, had simply refrained from be-
traying the late plot after having tried in vain to
discourage it ; for the welfare of Florence demanded

WHY TITO WAS SAFE. 113

that the guilt of Bernardo del Nero should he put in
the strongest light. So Francesco Yalori zealously
believed ; and perhaps he was not himself aware that
the strength of his zeal was determined by his hatred.
He decided that Tito's proposition ought to be ac-
cepted, laid it before his colleagues without dis-
closing Tito's name, and won them over to his
opinion. Late in the day Tito was admitted to an
audience of the Special Council, and produced a deep
sensation among them by revealing another plot for
ensuring the mastery of Florence to Piero de' Medici,
which was to have been carried into execution in the
middle of this very month of August. Documentary
evidence on this subject would do more than any-
thing else to make the right course clear. He re-
ceived a commission to start for Siena by break of
day ; and, besides this, he carried away with him
from the council chamber a written guarantee of his
immunity and of his retention of office.

Among the twenty Florentines who bent their
grave eyes on Tito, as he stood gracefully before
them, speaking of startling things with easy peri-
phrasis, and with that apparently unaffected admis-
sion of being actuated by motives short of the highest,
which is often the intensest affectation, there were
several whose minds were not too entirely pre-occu-
pied for them to pass a new judgment on him in
these new circumstances ; they silently concluded
that this ingenious and serviceable Greek was in

VOL. III. 50

114 ROMOLA.

future rather to be used for public needs than for
private intimacy. Unprincipled men were useful,
enabling those who had more scruples to keep their
hands tolerably clean in a world where there was
much dirty work to be done. Indeed, it was not
clear to respectable Florentine brains, unless they
held the Frate's extravagant belief in a possible
purity and loftiness to be striven for on this earth,
how life was to be carried on in any department
without human instruments whom it would not be
unbecoming to kick or to spit upon in the act of
handing them their wages. Some of these very men
who passed a tacit judgment on Tito were shortly to
be engaged in a memorable transaction that could by
no means have been carried through without the use
of an unscrupulousness as decided as his ; but, as
their own bright Pulci had said for them, it is one
thing to love the fruits of treachery, and another
thing to love traitors.

" n tradimento a molti piace assai,
Ma il traditore a gnun non piacque mai."

The same society has had a gibbet for the murderer
and a gibbet for the martyr, an execrating hiss for a
dastardly act, and as loud a hiss for many a word of
generous truthfulness or just insight : a mixed con-
dition of things which is the sign, not of hopeless
confusion, but of struggling order.

For Tito himself, he was not unaware that he had

WHY TITO WAS SAFE. 115

sunk a little in the estimate of the men who had
accepted his services. He had that degree of self-
contemplation which necessarily accompanies the
hahit of acting on well-considered reasons, of what-
ever quality ; and if he could have chosen, he would
have decHned to see himself disapproved by men of
the world. He had never meant to be disapproved ;
he had meant always to conduct himself so ably that
if he acted in opposition to the standard of other
men they should not be aware of it ; and the barrier
between himself and Romola had been raised by the
impossibility of such concealment with her. He
shrank from condemnatory judgments as from a
climate to which he could not adapt himself. But
things were not so plastic in the hands of cleverness
as could be wished, and events had turned out incon-
veniently. He had really no rancour against Messer
Bernardo del Nero ; he had a personal liking for
Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giannozzo Pucci. He had
served them very ably, and in such a way that if their
party had been winners he would have merited high
reward; but was he to relinquish all the agreeable
fruits of Hfe because their party had failed? His
proffer of a little additional proof against them would
probably have no influence on their fate ; in fact, he
felt convinced they would escape any extreme conse-
quences ; but if he had not given it, his own fortunes,
which made a promising fabric, would have been
utterly ruined. And what motive could any man

50—2

116 ROMOLA.

really have, except his own interest? Florentines
whose passions w^ere engaged in their petty and pre-
carious political schemes might have no self-interest
separable from family pride and tenacity in old
hatreds and attachments ; a modern simpleton who
swallowed whole one of the old systems of philo-
sophy, and took the indigestion it occasioned for the
signs of a divine afflux or the voice of an inward
monitor, might see his^ interest in a form of self-
conceit which he called self-rewarding virtue ; fanatics-
who believed in the coming scourge and renovation
might see their own interest in a future palm branch
and white robe : but no man of clear intellect allowed
his course to be determined by such puerile impulses
or questionable inward fumes. Did not Pontanus^
poet and philosopher of unrivalled Latinity, make
the finest possible oration at Naples to welcome
the French king, who had come to dethrone the
learned orator's royal friend and patron ? and still
Pontanus held up his head and prospered. Men did
not really care about these things, except when their
personal spleen was touched. It was weakness only
that was despised ; power of any sort carried its.
immunity ; and no man, unless by very rare good
fortune, could mount high in the world without
incurring a few unpleasant necessities which laid him
open to enmity, and perhaps to a little hissing, when
enmity wanted a pretext.

It was a faint prognostic of that hissing, gathered

WHY TITO WAS SAFE. 117

by Tito from certain indications when lie was before
the council, which gave his present conduct the cha-
racter of an epoch to him, and made him dwell on it
with argumentative vindication. It was not that he
was taking a deeper step in wi'ong-doing, for it was
not possible that he should feel any tie to the Medi-
ceans to be stronger than the tie to his father ; but
his conduct to his father had been hidden by successful
lying : his present act did not admit of total conceal-
ment— in its very nature it was a revelation. And
Tito winced under his new liability to disesteem.

Well ! a little patience, and in another year, or
perhaps in half a year, he might turn his back on
these hard, eager Florentines, with their futile quarrels
and sinking fortunes. His brilliant success at Florence
had had some ugly flaws in it : he had fallen in love
mth the wrong woman, and Baldassarre had come
back under incalculable circumstances. But as Tito
galloped with a loose rein towards Siena, he saw a
future before him in which he would no longer be
haunted by those mistakes. He had much money
safe out of Florence already ; he was in the fresh ripe-
ness of eight-and-twenty ; he was conscious of well-
tried skill. Could he not strip himself of the past, as
of rehearsal clothing, and throw away the old bundle,
to robe himself for the real scene ?

It did not enter into Tito's meditations on the
future, that, on issuing from the council chamber and
descending the stairs, he had brushed against a man

118 ROMOLA.

whose face he had not stayed to recognize in the
lamplight. The man was Ser Ceccone — also willing
to serve the State by giving information again&t un-
successful employers.

119

CHAPTER Xn.

A PINAL UNDERSTANDING.

Tito soon returned from Siena, but almost imme-
diately set out on another journey, from which he did
not return till the seventeenth of August. Nearly a
fortnight had passed since the arrest of the accused,
and still they were in prison, still their fate was
uncertain. Romola had felt during this interval as if
all cares were suspended for her, other than watching
the fluctuating probabilities concerning that fate.
Sometimes they seemed strongly in favour of the
prisoners ; for the chances of efiective interest on their
behalf were heightened by. delay, and an indefinite
prospect of delay was opened by the reluctance of all
persons in authority to incur the odium attendant on
any decision. On the one side there was a loud cry-
that the Eepublic was in danger, and that lenity to
the prisoners would be the signal of attack for all its
enemies ; on the other, there was the certainty that a
sentence of death and confiscation of property passed
on five citizens of distinguished name, would entail
the rancorous hatred of their relatives on all who were
conspicuously instrumental to such a sentence.

120 EOMOLA.

The final judgment properly lay with the Eight,
who presided over the administration of criminal
justice ; and the sentence depended on a majority of
six votes. But the Eight shrank from their onerous
responsibility, and asked in this exceptional case to
have it shared by the Signoria (or the Gonfaloniere
and the eight Priors). The Signoria in its turn
shrugged its shoulders, and proposed the appeal to
the Great Council. For, according to a law passed
by the earnest persuasion of Savonarola nearly three
years before, whenever a citizen was condemned to
death by the fatal six votes (called the sei fave or six
beans, beans being in more senses than one the poli-
tical pulse of Florence), he had the right of appealing
from that sentence to the Great Council.

But in this stage of the business, the friends of the
accused resisted the appeal, determined chiefly by the
wish to gain delay; and, in fact, strict legality re-
quired that sentence should have been passed prior to
the appeal. Their resistance prevailed, and a middle
course was taken ; the sentence was referred to a large
assembly convened on the seventeenth, consisting of
all the higher magistracies, the smaller council or
Senate of Eighty, and a select number of citizens.

On this day Eomola, with anxiety heightened by
the possibility that before its close her godfather's
fate might be decided, had obtained leave to see him
for the second time, but only in the presence of wit-
nesses. She had returned to the Yia de' Bardi in

A FINAL UNDERSTANDING. 121

company with lier cousin Brigida, still ignorant
■whether the council had come to any decisive issue ;
and Monna Brigida had gone out again to await the
momentous news at the house of a friend belonging
to one of the magistracies, that she might bring back
authentic tidings as soon as they were to be had.

Komola had sunk on the first seat in the bright
saloon, too much agitated, too sick at heart to care
about her place, or be conscious of discordance in the
objects that surrounded her. She sat with her back
to the door, resting her head on her hands. It
seemed a long while since Monna Brigida had gone,
and Romola was expecting her return. But when
the door opened she^ knew it was not Monna Brigida
who entered.

Since she had parted from Tito on that memorable
night, she had had no external proof to warrant her
belief that he had won his safety by treachery; on the
contrary, she had had evidence that he was still trusted
by the Mediceans and was believed by them to be
accomplishing certain errands of theirs in Romagna,
under cover of fulfilling a commission of the govern-
ment. For the obscurity in which the evidence con-
cerning the conspirators was shrouded allowed it to
be understood that Tito had escaped any implication.

But Romola's suspicion was not to be dissipated :
her horror of his conduct towards Baldassarre pro-
jected itself over every conception of his acts ; it was
as if she had seen him committing a murder, and

122 ROMOLA.

had had a diseased impression ever after that his
hands were covered with fresh hlood.

As she heard his step on the stone floor, a chill
shudder passed through her; she could not turn
round, she could not rise to give any greeting. He
did not speak, hut after an instant's pause took a seat
on the other side of the tahle just opposite to her.
Then she raised her eyes and looked at him ; hut she
was mute. He did not show any irritation, hut said,
coolly —

" This meeting corresponds with our parting,
Eomola. But I understand that it is a moment of
terrihle suspense. I am come, however, if you will
listen to me, to bring you the relief of hope."

She started, and altered her position, hut looked at
him dubiously.

" It will not he unwelcome to you to hear — even
though it is I who tell it — that the council is pro-
rogued till the twenty-first. The Eight have been
frightened at last into passing a sentence of condem-
nation, but the demand has now been made on behalf
of the condemned for the Appeal to the Great Council."

Romola's face lost its dubious expression ; she
asked eagerly —

" And when is it to be made ? "

" It has not yet been granted ; but it may be
granted. The Special Council is to meet again on
the twenty-first to deliberate whether the Appeal shall
be allowed or not. In the meantime there is an

A FINAL UNDERSTANDING. 123

interval of three days, in which chances may occur
in favour of the prisoners — in which interest may be
used on their behalf."

Komola started from her seat. The colour had
risen to her face like a visible thought, and her hands
trembled. In that moment her feeling towards Tito
was forgotten.

"Possibly," said Tito, also rising, "your own
intention may have anticipated what I was going to
say. You are thinking of the Frate."

" I am," said Komola, looking at him with sur-
prise. " Has he done anything? Is there anything
to tell me?"

" Only this. It was Messer Francesco Yalori's
bitterness and violence which chiefly determined the
course of things in the council to-day. Half the men
who gave in their opinion against the prisoners were
frightened into it, and there are numerous friends of
Fra Girolamo both in this Special Council and out of
it who are strongly opposed to the sentence of death
— Piero Guicciardini, for example, who is one member
of the Signoria that made the stoutest resistance ;
and there is Giovan Battista Ridolfi, who, Piagnone
as he is, will not lightly forgive the death of his
brother Niccolo."

" But how can the Appeal be denied," said Romola,
indignantly, " when it is the law — when it was one of
the chief glories of the popular government to have
passed the law ? "

124 EOMOLA.

*' They call this an exceptional case. Of course
there are ingenious arguments, hut there is much
more of loud bluster about the danger of the Eepublic.
But, you see, no opposition could prevent the
assembly from being prorogued, and a certain powerful'
influence rightly applied during the next three days
might determine the wavering courage of those who
desire that the Appeal should be granted, and might
even give a check to the headlong enmity of Francesco
Yalori. It happens to have come to my knowledge
that the Frate has so far interfered as to send a mes-
sage to him in favour of Lorenzo Tornabuoni. I
know you can sometimes have access to the Frate :
it might at all events be w^orth while to use your pri-
vilege now."

** It is true," said Romola, with an air of abstrac-
tion. " I cannot believe that the Frate would ap-
prove denying the Appeal."

" I heard it said by more than one person in the
court of the Palazzo, before I came away, that it would
be to the everlasting discredit of Fra Girolamo if he
allowed a government which is almost entirely made
up of his party, to deny the Appeal, without entering
his protest, when he has been boasting in his books
and sermons that it was he who got the law passed.*

* The most recent, and in some respects the best, biographer of
Savonarola, Signor Villari, endeavours to show that this Law of
Appeal ultimately enacted, being wider than the law originally con-
templated by Savonarola, was a source of bitter annoyance to him,
as a contrivance of the aristocratic party for attaching to the

A FINAL UNDEKSTANDING. 125

But, between ourselves, with all respect for your
Frate's ability, my Komola, lie had got into the
practice of preaching that form of human sacrifices
called killing tyrants and wicked malcontents, which
some of his followers are likely to think inconsistent
with lenity in the present case."

" I know, I know," said Eomola, with a look and
tone of pain. " But he is driven into those excesses
of speech. It used to be different. I tvill ask for an
interview. I cannot rest without it. I trust in the
greatness of his heart."

She was not looking at Tito ; her eyes were bent
with a vague gaze towards the ground, and she had
no distinct consciousness that the words she heard
came from her husband.

"Better lose no time, then," said Tito, with
unmixed suavity, moving his cap round in his hands
as if he were about to put it on and depart. "And
now, Romola, you will perhaps be able to see, in
spite of prejudice, that my wishes go with yours in
this matter. You will not regard the misfortune of
my safety as an offence."

Something like an electric shock passed through

measures of the popular government the injurious results of licence.
But in taking this view the estimable biographer lost sight of the
fact that, not only in his sermons but in a deliberately prepared
book (the Compendium Revelationum) written long after the Appeal
had become law^, Savonarola enumerates among the benefits secured
to Florence, " the Appeal from the Six Votes, advocated by me, for
the greater security of the citizens."

126 EOMOLA.

Romola : it was the full consciousness of her husband's
presence returning to her.. She looked at him without
speaking.

*'At least," he added, in a slightly harder tone,
*' you will endeavour to base our intercourse on some
other reasoning than that because an evil deed is
possible, I have done it. Am I alone to be beyond
the pale of your extensive charity ? "

The feeling which had been driven back from
Eomola's lips a fortnight before rose again with the
gathered force of a tidal wave. She spoke with a
decision which told him that she was careless of con-
sequences.

"It is too late, Tito. There is no killing the
suspicion that deceit has once begotten. And now I
know everything. I know who that old man was :
he was your father, to whom you owe everything — to
whom you owe more than if you had been his own
child. By the side of that, it is a small thing that
you broke my trust and my father's. As long as you
deny the truth about that old man, there is a horror
rising between us : the law that should make us one
can never be obeyed. I too am a human being. I
have a soul of my own that abhors your actions.
Our union is a pretence — as if a perpetual lie could be
a sacred marriage."

Tito did not answer immediately. When he did
speak it was with a calculated caution, that was stimu-
lated by alarm.

A FINAL UNDERSTANDING. 127 ,

"And you mean to carry out that independence by
quitting me, I presume ? "

"I desire to quit you," said Romola, impetu-
ously.

" And supposing I do not submit to part with what
the law gives me some security for retaining ? You
will then, of course, proclaim your reasons in the ear
of all Florence. You will bring forward your mad
assassin, who is doubtless ready to obey your caU,
and you wiU tell the world that you belieye his testi-
mony because he is so rational as to desire to assas-
sinate me. You wiU first inform the Signoria that I
am a Medicean conspirator, and then you will inform
the Mediceans that I have betrayed them, and in both
cases you wiU offer the excellent proof that you
believe me capable in general of everything bad. It
will certainly be a striking position for a wife to
adopt. And if, on such evidence, you succeed in
holding me up to infamy, you will have surpassed all
the heroines of the Greek drama.'*

He paused a moment, but she stood mute. He
went on with the sense of mastery.

" I believe you have no other grievance against me
except that I have failed in fulfilling some lofty inde-
finite conditions on which you gave me your wifely
affection, so that, by withdrawing it, you have gradu-
ally reduced me to the careful supply of your wants
as a fair Piagnone of high condition and liberal
charities. I think your success in gibbeting me is

128 ROMOLA.

not certain. But doubtless you would begin by
winning the ear of Messer Bernardo del Nero ? "

" Why do I speak of anything ? " cried Eomola, in
anguish, sinking on her chair again. " It is hateful
in me to be thinking of myself! "

She did not notice when Tito left the room, or
know how long it was before the door opened to
admit Monna Brigida. But in that instant she
started up and said,

" Cousin, we must go to San Marco directly. I
must see my confessor, Fra Salvestro."

129

CHAPTER XIII.

PLEADING.

The morning was in its early brightness when Romola
was again on her way to San Marco, having obtained
through Fra Salvestro, the evening before, the promise
of an interview with Fra Girolamo in the chapter-
house of the convent. The rigidity with which
Savonarola guarded his life from all the pretexts of
calumny made such interviews very rare, and when-
ever they were granted, they were kept free from any
appearance of mystery. For this reason the hour
chosen was one at which there were likely to be other
visitors in the outer cloisters of San Marco.

She chose to pass through the heart of the city
that she might notice the signs of public feeling.
Every loggia, every convenient corner of the piazza,
every shop that made a rendezvous for gossips, was
astir with the excitement of gratuitous debate ; a
languishing trade tending to make political discussion
aU the more vigorous. It was clear that the parties
for and against the death of the conspirators were
bent on making the fullest use of the three days'
interval in order to determine the popular mood.

VOL. III. 51

130 ROMOLA.

Already handbills were in circulation ; some present-
ing, in large print, the alternative of justice on the
conspirators or ruin to the Eepublic ; others in equally
large print urging the observance of the law and the
granting of the Appeal. Round these jutting islets
of black capitals there were lakes of smaller charac-
ters setting forth arguments less necessary to be
read : for it was an opinion entertained at that time
(in the first flush of triumph at the discovery of
printing), that there was no argument more widely
convincing than question-begging phrases in large type.

Romola, however, cared especially to become ac-
quainted with the arguments in smaller type, and
though obliged to hasten forward she looked round
anxiously as she went that she might miss no oppor-
tunity of securing copies. For a long way she saw
none but such as were in the hands of eager readers,
or else fixed on the walls, from which in some places
the sbirri were tearing them down. But at last,
passing behind San Giovanni with a quickened pace
that she might avoid the many acquaintances who
frequented the piazza, she saw Bratti with a stock of
handbills which he appeared to be exchanging for
small coin with the passers-by. She was too familiar
with the humble life of Florence for Bratti to be any
stranger to her, sud turning towards him she said,
" Have you two sorts of handbills, Bratti ? Let me
have them quickly."

" Two sorts," said Bratti, separating the wet sheets

PLEADING. 131

witli a slowness that tried Romola's patience.
" There's ' Law/ and there's ' Justice.' "

** Which sort do you sell most of ? "

"'Justice' — 'Justice' goes the quickest, — so I
raised the price, and made it two danari. But then
I bethought me the ' Law ' was good ware too, and
had as good a right to be charged for as ' Justice ; '
for people set no store by cheap things, and if I sold
the ' Law ' at one danaro, I should be doing it a
wrong. And I'm a fair trader. ' Law,' or * Justice,'
it's all one to me ; they're good wares. I got 'em
both for nothing, and I sell 'em at a fair profit. 5ut
you'll want more than one of a sort ? "

"No, no: here's a white quattrino for the two,"
said Romola, folding up the bills and hurrying
away.

She was soon in the outer cloisters of San Marco,
where Fra Salvestro was awaiting her under the
cloister, but did not notice the approach of her light
step. He was chatting, according to his habit, with
lay visitors ; for under the auspices of a government
friendly to the Frate, the timidity about frequenting
San Marco, which had followed on the first shock of
the excommunication, had been gradually giving way.
In one of these lay visitors she recognized a well-
known satellite of Francesco Valori, named Andrea
Cambini, who was narrating or expounding with
emphatic gesticulation, while Fra Salvestro was
listening with that air of trivial curiosity which teUs

51—2

132 ROMOLA.

that the listener cares very much about news and
very little about its quality. This characteristic of
her confessor, which was always repulsive to Komola,
was made exasperating to her at this moment by the
certainty she gathered, from the disjointed words
which reached her ear, that Cambini was narrating
something relative to the fate of the conspirators.
She chose not to approach the group, but as soon as
she saw that she had arrested Fra Salvestro's atten-
tion, she turned towards the door of the chapter-house,
while he, making a sign of approval, disappeared
within the inner cloister. A lay Brother stood ready
to open the door of the chapter-house for her, and
closed it behind her as she entered.

Once more looked at by those sad frescoed figures
which had seemed to be mourning with her at the
death of her brother Dino, it was inevitable that
something of that scene should come back to her ; but
the intense occupation of her mind with the present
made the remembrance less a retrospect than an
indistinct recurrence of impressions which blended
themselves with her agitating fears, as if her actual
anxiety were a revival of the strong yearning she had
once before brought to this spot — to be repelled by
marble rigidity. She gave no space for the remem-
brance to become more definite, for she at once
opened the handbills, thinking she should perhaps
be able to read them in the interval before Fra Giro-
lamo appeared. But by the time she had read to the

PLEADING. 133

end of the one that recommended the ohservance of
the law, the door was opening, and doubling up the
papers she stood expectant.

When the Frate had entered she knelt, according
to the usual practice of those who saw him in private ;
but as soon as he had uttered a benedictory greeting
she rose and stood opposite to him at a few yards'
distance. Owing to his seclusion since he had been
excommunicated, it had been an unusually long while
since she had seen him, and the late months had
visibly deepened in his face the marks of over-taxed
mental activity and bodily severities ; and yet Romola
was not so conscious of this change as of another,
which was less definable. Was it that the expression
of serene elevation and pure human fellowship which
had once moved her was no longer present in the
same force, or was it that the sense of his being
divided from her in her feeling about her godfather
roused the slumbering sources of alienation, and
marred her own vision ? Perhaps both causes were
at work. Our relations with our fellow-men are most
often determined by coincident currents of that sort ;
the inexcusable word or deed seldom comes until
after affection or reverence has been already enfeebled
by the strain of repeated excuses.

It was true that Savonarola's glance at Romola
had some of that hardness which is caused by an
egoistic prepossession. He divined that the inter-
view she had sought was to turn on the fate of the

134 ROMOLA.

conspirators, a subject on which he had already had
to quell inner voices that might become loud again
when encouraged from without. Seated in his cell,
correcting the sheets of his Triumph of the Cross,
it was easier to repose on a resolution of neutrality.

"It is a question of moment, doubtless, on which
you wished to see me, my daughter," he began, in a
tone which was gentle rather from self-control, than
from immediate inclination. "I know you are not
wont to lay stress on small matters."

" Father, you know what it is before I tell you,"
said Komola, forgetting everything else as soon as
she began to pour forth her plea. " You know what
I am caring for — it is for the life of the old man I
love best in the world. The thought of him has
gone together with the thought of my father as long
as I remember the daylight. That is my warrant for
coming to you, even if my coming should have been
needless. Perhaps it is : perhaps you have already
determined that your power over the hearts of men
shall be used to prevent them from denying to
Florentines a right which you yourself helped to earn
for them."

" I meddle not with the functions of the State, my
daughter," said Fra Girolamo, strongly disinclined
to reopen externally a debate which he had already
gone through inwardly. " I have preached and
laboured that Florence should have a good govern-
ment, for a good government is needful to the per-

PLEADING. 135

fecting of the Christian life; but I keep away my
hands from particular affairs, which it is the office of
experienced citizens to administer."

*' Surely, father " Eomola broke off. She had

littered this first word almost impetuously, but she
was checked by the counter agitation of feeling her-
self in an attitude of remonstrance towards the man
w^ho had been the source of guidance and strength to
her. In the act of rebelling she was bruising her
own reverence.

Savonarola was too keen not to divine something
of the conflict that was arresting her — too noble,
deUberately to assume in calm speech that self-
justifying evasiveness into which he was often hurried
in public by the crowding impulses of the orator.

" Say what is in your heart ; speak on, my
daughter," he said, standing with his arms laid one
upon the other, and looking at her with quiet expec-
tation.

" I was going fo say, father, that this matter is
surely of higher moment than many about which I
have heard you preach and exhort fervidly. If it
belonged to you to urge that men condemned for
offences against the State should have the right to
appeal to the Great Council — if — " Komola was
getting eager again — " if you count it a glory to
have won that right for them, can it less belong to
you to declare yourself against the right being denied
to almost the first men who need it? Surely that

136 ROMOLA.

touches the Christian life more closely than whether
you knew beforehand that the Dauphin would die, or
whether Pisa will be conquered."

There was a subtle movement, like a subdued sign
of pain, in Savonarola's strong lips, before he began
to speak.

" My daughter, I speak as it is given me to speak
— I am not master of the times when I may become
the vehicle of knowledge beyond the common lights
of men. In this case I have no illumination beyond
what wisdom may give to those who are charged
with the safety of the State. As to the law of
Appeal against the Six Votes, I laboured to have it
passed in order that no Florentine should be subject
to loss of life and goods through the private hatred
of a few who might happen to be in power ; but these
live men, who have desired to overthrow a free
government and restore a corrupt tyrant, have been
condemned with the assent of a large assembly of
their fellow-citizens. They refused at first to have
their cause brought before the Great Council. They
have lost the right to the appeal."

" How can they have lost it ? " said Bomola. " It
is the right to appeal against condemnation, and they
have never been condemned till now; and, forgive
me, father, it is private hatred that would deny them
the appeal ; it is the violence of the few that frightens
others; else why was the assembly divided again
directly, after it had seemed to agree ? And if any-

PLEADING. 137

thing weighs against the observance of the law, let
this weigh /or it — this, that you used to preach more
earnestly than all else, that there should be no place
given to hatred and bloodshed because of these party
strifes, so that private ill-will should not find its
opportunities in public acts. Father, you know that
there is private hatred concerned here : will it not
dishonour you not to have interposed on the side of
mercy, when there are many who hold that it is also
the side of law and justice ? "

" My daughter," said Fra Girolamo, with more
visible emotion than before, "there is a mercy which
is weakness, and even treason against the common
good. The safety of Florence, which means even
more than the welfare of Florentines, now demands
severity, as it once demanded mercy. It is not only
for a past plot that these men are condemned, but
also for a plot which has not yet been executed ; and
the devices that were leading to its execution are not
put an end to : the tyrant is still gathering his forces
in Eomagna, and the enemies of Florence, that sit in
the highest places of Italy, are ready to hurl any stone
that will crush her."

" What plot ? " said Romola, reddening, and trem-
bling with alarmed surprise.

" You carry papers in your hand, I see," said Fra
Girolamo, pointing to the handbills. " One of them
will, perhaps, tell you that the government has had
new information."

138 ROMOLA.

Romola hastily opened tlie handbill she had not yet
read, and saw that the government had now positive
evidence of a second plot, which was to have been
carried out in this August time. To her mind it was
like reading a confirmation that Tito had won his
safety by foul means; his pretence of wishing that
the Frate should exert himself on behalf of the con-
demned only helped the wretched conviction. She
crushed up the paper in her hand, and, turning to
Savonarola, she said, with new passion, " Father,
what safety can there be for Florence when the worst
man can always escape ? And," she went on, a sud-
den flash of remembrance coming from the thought
about her husband, " have not you yourself en-
couraged this deception which corrupts the life of
Florence, by wanting more favour to be shown to
Lorenzo Tornabuoni, who has worn two faces, and
flattered you with a show of afiection, when my god-
father has always been honest? Ask all Florence
who of those five men has the truest heart, and there
will not be many who will name any other name than
Bernardo del Nero. You did interpose with Francesco
Valori for the sake of one prisoner : you have not
then been neutral ; and you know that your word will
be powerful."

*' I do not desire the death of Bernardo," said
Savonarola, colouring deeply. " It would be enough
if he were sent out of the city."

" Then why do you not speak to save an old man

PLEADING. 139

of seventy-five from dying a death of ignominy — to
give him at least the fair chances of the law ? " bm-st
out Romola, the impetuosity of her nature so roused
that she forgot everything but her indignation. "It
is not that you feel bound to be neutral ; else why
did you speak for Lorenzo Tornabuoni ? You spoke
for him because he is more friendly to San Marco ;
my godfather feigns no friendship. It is not, then,
as a Medicean that my godfather is to die ; it is as
a man you have no love for ! "

When Romola paused, with cheeks glowing, and
with quivering lips, there was dead silence. As she
saw Fra Girolamo standing motionless before her,
she seemed to herself to be hearing her own words
over again ; words that seemed in this echo of con-
sciousness to be in strange, painful dissonance with
the memories that made part of his presence to her.
The moments of silence were expanded by gathering
compunction and self-doubt. She had committed
sacrilege in her passion. And even the sense that
she could retract nothing of her plea, that her mind
could not submit itself to Savonarola's negative, made
it the more needful to her to satisfy those reverential
memories. With a sudden movement towards him,
she said,

"Forgive me, father; it is pain to me to have
spoken those words — yet I cannot help speaking. I
am little and feeble compared with you ; you brought
me light and strength. But I submitted because I

140 ROMOLA.

felt the proffered strength — because I saw the light.
Now I cannot see it. Father, you yourself declare that
there comes a moment when the soul must have no guide
hut the voice within it, to tell whether the consecrated
thing has sacred virtue. And therefore I must speak.'*
Savonarola had that readily roused resentment
towards opposition, hardly separable from a power-
loving and powerful nature, accustomed to seek great
ends that cast a reflected grandeur on the means
by which they are sought. His sermons have much
of that red flame in them. And if he had been a
meaner man his susceptibility might have shown
itself in irritation at Komola's accusatory freedom,
which was in strong contrast with the deference he
habitually received from his disciples. But at this
moment such feelings were nullified by that hard
struggle which made half the tragedy of his life — the
struggle of a mind possessed by a never-silent hunger
after purity and simplicity, yet caught in a tangle
of egoistic demands, false ideas, and difficult out-
ward conditions, that made simplicity impossible.
Keenly alive to all the suggestions of Eomola's
remonstrating words, he was rapidly surveying, as he
had done before, the courses of action that were
open to him, and their probable results. But it was
a question on which arguments could seem decisive
only in proportion as they were charged with feeling,
and he had received no impulse that could alter his
bias. He looked at Komola and said —

PLEADING. ' 141

*'You have full pardon for your frankness, my
daughter. You speak, I know, out of the fulness of
your family affections. But these affections must
give way to the needs of the Kepublic. If those men,
who have a close acquaintance with the affairs of
the State, believe, as I understand they do, that the
public safety requires the extreme punishment of
the law to fall on those five conspirators, I cannot
control their opinion, seeing that I stand aloof from
such affairs."

" Then you desire that they should die ? You
desire that the Appeal should be denied them ? "
said Romola, feeling anew repelled by a "vindica-
tion w^hich seemed to her to have the nature of a
subterfuge.

*' I have said that I do not desire then- death."

*' Then," said Romola, her indignation rising
again, "you can be indifferent that Florentines should
inflict death which you do not desire, when you
might have protested against it — when you might
have helped to hinder it, by urging the observance
of a law which you held it good to get passed.
Father, you used not to stand aloof: you used not
to shrink from protesting. Do not say you cannot
protest where the lives of men are concerned; say
rather, you desire their death. Say rather, you hold
it good for Florence that there shall be more blood
and more hatred. Will the death of five Mediceans
put an end to parties in Florence ? Will the death

142 ROMOLA.

of a noble old man like Bernardo del Nero save a
city that holds such men as Dolfo Spini ? "

" My daughter, it is enough. The cause of free-
dom, which is the cause of God's kingdom upon
earth, is often most injured by the enemies who
carry within them the power of certain human virtues.
The wickedest man is often not the most insurmount-
able obstacle to the triumph of good."

" Then why do you say again, that you do not
desire my godfather's death ? " said Komola, in
mingled anger and despair. "Eather, you hold it
the more needful he should die because he is the
better man. I cannot unravel your thoughts, father ;
I cannot hear the real voice of your judgment and
conscience."

There was a moment's pause. Then Savonarola
said, with keener emotion than he had yet shown,

" Be thankful, my daughter, if your own soul has
been spared perplexity ; and judge not those to whom
a harder lot has been given. You see one ground
of action in this matter. I see many. I have to
choose that which will further the work entrusted
to me. The end I seek is one to which minor
respects must be sacrificed. The death of five men
— were they less guilty than these — is a light matter
weighed against the withstanding of the vicious
tyrannies which stifle the life of Italy, and foster
the corruption of the Church ; a light matter weighed
against the furthering of God's kingdom upon earth,

PLEADING. 143

the end for which I live and am willing myself to
die."

Under any other circumstances, Komola would
have been sensitive to the appeal at the beginning of
Savonarola's speech ; but at this moment she was so
utterly in antagonism with him, that what he called
perplexity seemed to her sophistry and doubleness ;
and as he went on, his words only fed that flame of
indignation, which now again, more fully than ever
before, lit up the memory of all his mistakes, and
made her trust in him seem to have been a purblind
delusion. She spoke almost with bitterness.

" Do you, then, know so well what will further the
coming of God's kingdom, father, that you will dare
to despise the plea of mercy — of justice — of faith-
fulness to your own teaching ? Has the French
king, then, brought renovation to Italy ? Take care,
father, lest your enemies have some reason when they
say, that in your visions of what will further God's
kingdom you see only what will strengthen your own
party."

" And that is true ! " said Savonarola, with flashing
eyes. Komola's voice had seemed to him in that
moment the voice of his enemies. " The cause of
my party is the cause of God's kingdom."

''I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole
frame shaken with passionate* repugnance. " God's
kingdom is something wider — else, let me stand
outside it with the beings that I love."

144 ROMOLA.

The two faces were lit up, eacli with an opposite
emotion, each with an opposite certitude. Further
words were impossible. Eomola hastily covered her
head and went out in silence.

145

CHAPTER XIV,

THESCAFFOLD.

Three days later the moon tliat was just surmounting
the buildings of the piazza in front of the Old Palace
within the hour of midnight, did not make the usual
broad lights and shadows on the pavement. Not a
hand's breadth of pavement was to be seen, but only
the heads of an eager struggling multitude. And
instead of that background of silence in which the
pattering footsteps and buzzing voices, the lute-
thrumming or rapid scampering of the many night
wanderers of Florence stood out in obtrusive distinct-
ness, there was the background of a roar from mingled
shouts and imprecations, tramplings and pushings,
and accidental clashing of w^eapons, across w'hich
nothing was distinguishable but a darting shriek, or
the hesLYy dropping toll of a bell.

Almost all who could call themselves the public of
Florence were awake at that hour, and either enclosed
within the limits of that piazza, or struggling to
enter it. Within the palace were still assembled in
the council chamber all the chief magistracies, the
eighty members of the senate, and the other select

VOL. III. 52

146 ROMOLA.

citizens who had been in hot debate through long
hours of dayhght and torchHght whether the Appeal
should be granted or wiiether the sentence of death
should be executed on the prisoners forthwith, to
forestall the dangerous chances of delay. And the
debate had been so much like fierce quarrel that the
noise from the council chamber had reached the crowd
outside. Only within the last hour had the question
been decided : the Signoria had remained divided,
four of them standing out resolutely for the Appeal
in spite of the strong argument that if they did not
give way their houses should be sacked, until Fran-
cesco Yalori, in brief and furious speech, made the
determination of his party more ominously distinct
by declaring that if the Signoria would not defend the
liberties of the Florentine people by executing those
five perfidious citizens, there would not be wanting
others who would take that cause in hand to the
peril of all who opposed it. The Florentine Cato
triumphed. When the votes were counted again,
the four obstinate white beans no longer appeared ;
the whole nine were of the fatal affirmative black,
deciding the death of the five prisoners without delay
— deciding also, only tacitly and with much more
delay, the death of Francesco Valori.

And now, while the judicial Eight were gone to
the Bargello to prepare for the execution, the five
condemned men were being led barefoot and in irons
through the midst of the council. It was their friends

THE SCAFEOLD. 147

who had contrived this : would not Florentines be
moved by the visible association of such cruel igno-
miny mth two venerable men like Bernardo del Nero
and Niccolo Ridolfi, who had taken their bias long
before the new order of things had come to make
Mediceanism retrograde — with two brilliant popular
young men like Tornabuoni and Pucci, whose absence
would be felt as a haunting vacancy wherever there
was a meeting of chief Florentines ? It was useless :
such pity as could be awakened now was of that
hopeless sort which leads not to rescue, but to the
tardier action of revenge.

While this scene was passing upstairs Romola
stood below against one of the massive pillars in the
court of the palace, expecting the moment when her
godfather would appear, on his way to execution.
By the use of strong interest she had gained per-
mission to visit him in the evening of this day, and
remain with him until the result of the council should
be determined. And now she was waiting mth his
confessor to follow the guard that would lead him to
the Bargello. Her heart was bent on clinging to the
presence of the childless old man to the last moment^
as her father would have done ; and she had over-
powered all remonstrances. Giovan Battista Ridolfi,
a disciple of Savonarola, who was going in bitterness
to behold the death of his elder brother Niccolo, had
promised that she should be guarded, and now stood
by her side.

52—2

148 ROMOLA.

Tito, too, was in the palace ; but Eomola liad not
seen him. Since the evening of the seventeenth they
had avoided each other, and Tito only knew by
inference from the report of the Frate's neutrality
that her pleading had failed. He was now sur-
rounded with official and other personages, both
Florentine and foreign, who had been awaiting the
issue of the long-protracted council, maintaining,
except when he was directly addressed, the subdued
air and grave silence of a man whom actual events
are placing in a painful state of strife between public
and private feeling. When an allusion was made to
his wife in relation to those events, he implied that,
owing to the violent excitement of her mind, the
mere fact of his continuing to hold office under a
government concerned in her godfather's condemna-
tion, roused in her a diseased hostility towards him ;
so that for her sake he felt it best not to approach
her.

"Ah, the old Bardi blood! " said Cennini, with a
shrug. " I shall not be surprised if this business
shakes her loose from the Frate, as well as some
others I could name."

"It is excusable in a woman, who is doubtless
beautiful, since she is the wife of Messer Tito," said
a young French envoy, smiling and bowing to Tito,
" to think that her affections must overrule the good
of the State, and that nobody is to be beheaded who
is anybody's cousin; but such a view is not to be

THE SCArrOLD. 149

encouraged in the male population. It seems to me
your Florentine polity is much weakened, by it."

" That is true," said Niccolo Macchiavelli ; " but
where personal ties are strong, the hostilities they
raise must be taken due account of. Many of these
halfway severities are mere hotheaded blundering.
The only safe blows to be inflicted on men and parties
are the blows that are too heavy to be avenged."

" Niccolo," said Cennini, " there is a clever wicked-
ness in thy talk sometimes that makes me mistrust
thy pleasant young face as if it were a mask of
Satan."

" Not at all, my good Domenico," said Macchia-
velli, smiling, and laying his hand on the elder's
shoulder. " Satan was a blunderer, an introducer of
novita, who made a stupendous failure. If he had
succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him,
and his portrait would have been more flattered."

*' Well, well," said Cennini, "I say not thy
doctrine is not too clever for Satan : I only say it is
wicked enough for him."

*' I tell you," said Macchiavelli, "my doctrine is
the doctrine of all men who seek an end a little
farther off than their own noses. Ask our Frate, our
prophet, how his universal renovation is to be brought
about : he will tell you, first, by getting a free and
pure government; and since it appears that cannot
be done by making all Florentines love each other, it
must be done by cutting off every head that happens

150 ROMOLA.

to be obstinately in the way. Only if a man incurs
odium by sanctioning a severity that is not thorough
enough to be final, he commits a blunder. And
something like that blunder, I suspect, the Frate has
committed. It was an occasion on which he might
have won some lustre by exerting himself to maintain
the Appeal ; instead of that, he has lost lustre, and
has gained no strength."

Before any one else could speak, there came the
expected announcement that the prisoners were about
to leave the council chamber ; and the majority of
those who were present hurried towards the door,
intent on securing the freest passage to the Bargello
in the rear of the prisoners' guard ; for the scene of
the execution was one that drew alike those who were
moved by the deepest passions and those who were
moved by the coldest curiosity.

Tito was one of those who remained behind. He
had a native repugnance to sights of death and pain,
and five days ago whenever he had thought of this
execution as a possibility he had hoped that it would
not take place, and that the utmost sentence would
be exile: his own safety demanded no more. But
now he felt that it would be a welcome guarantee of
his security when he had learned that Bernardo del
Nero's head was off the shoulders. The new know-
ledge and new attitude towards him disclosed by
Eomola on the day of his return, had given him a
new dread of the power she possessed to make his

THE SCAFFOLD. 151

position insecure. If any act of hers only succeeded
in making him an object of suspicion and odium, he
foresaw not only frustration, but frustration under
unpleasant circumstances. Her belief in Baldassarre
had clearly determined her wavering feelings against
further submission, and if her godfather lived, she
would win him to share her belief without much
trouble. Romola seemed more than ever an un-
manageable fact in his destiny. But if Bernardo del
Nero were dead, the difficulties that would beset her
in placing herself in opposition to her husband would
probably be insurmountable to her shrinking pride.
Therefore Tito had felt easier when he knew that the
Eight had gone to the Bargello to order the instant
erection of the scaffold. Four other men — his inti-
mates and confederates — were to die, besides Bernardo
del Nero. But a man's own safety is a god that
sometimes makes very grim demands. Tito felt
them to be grim : even in the pursuit of what was
agreeable, this paradoxical life forced upon him the
desire for what was disagreeable. But he had had
other experience of this sort, and as he heard through
the open doorway the shuffle of many feet and the
clanking of metal on the stairs, he was able to answer
the questions of the young French envoy without
showing signs of any other feeling than that of sad
resignation to State necessities.

Those sounds fell on Romola as if her power of
hearing had been exalted along with every other

152 EOMOLA.

sensibility of lier nature. She needed no arm to
support her ; she shed no tears. She felt that inten-
sity of life which seems to transcend both grief and
joy — in which the mind seems to itself akin to elder
forces that wrought out existence before the birth of
pleasure and pain. Since her godfather's fate had
been decided, the previous struggle of feeling in her
had given way to an identification of herself with
him in these supreme moments : she was inwardly
asserting for him that, if he suffered the punishment
of treason, he did not deserve the name of traitor;
he was the victim to a collision between two kinds of
faithfulness. It was not given to him to die for the
noblest cause, and yet he died because of his noble-
ness. He might have been a meaner man and found
it easier not to incur this guilt. Eomola was feeling
the full force of that sympathy with the individual lot
that is continually opposing itself to the formulaa by
which actions and parties are judged. She was
treading the way with her second father to the
scaffold, and nerving herself to defy ignominy by the
consciousness that it was not deserved.

The way was fenced in by three hundred armed
men, who had been placed as a guard by the orders
of Francesco Valori, for among the apparent contra-
dictions that belonged to this event, not the least
striking was the alleged alarm on the one hand at the
popular rage against the conspirators, and the alleged
alarm on the other lest there should be an attempt to

THE SCAFFOLD. 153

rescue tliem in the midst of a hostile crowd. When
they had arrived within the court of the Bargello,
Komola was allowed to approach Bernardo with his
confessor for a moment of farewell. Many eyes were
bent on them even in that struggle of an agitated
throng, as the aged man, forgetting that his hands
were bound with irons, lifted them towards the golden
head that was bent towards him, and then, checking
that movement, leaned to kiss her. She seized the
fettered hands that were hung down again, and kissed
them as if they had been sacred things.

'* My poor Komola," said Bernardo, in a low voice,
*' I have only to die, but thou hast to live — and I
shall not be there to help thee."

"Yes," said Bomola, hurriedly, "you tvill help
me — always — -because I shall remember you."

She was taken away and conducted up the flight of
steps that led to the loggia surrounding the grand
old court. She took her place there, determined to
look till the moment when her godfather laid his
head on the block. Now while the prisoners were
allowed a brief interval with their confessor, the
spectators were pressing into the court until the
crowd became dense around the black scaffold, and
the torches fixed in iron rings against the pillars
threw a varying startling light at one moment on
passionless stone carvings, at another on some pale
face agitated with suppressed rage or suppressed grief
— the face of one among the many near relatives of

154 ROMOLA.

the condemned, who were presently to receive their
dead and carry them honie.

Eomola's face looked like a marhle image against
the dark arch as she stood watching for the moment
when her godfather would appear at the foot of the
scaffold. He was to suffer first, and Battista Ridolfi,
who was by her side, had promised to take her away
through a door behind them when she should have
seen the last look of the man who alone in all the
world had shared her pitying love for her father.
And still, in the background of her thought, there
was the possibility striving to be a hope, that some
rescue might yet come, something that would keep
that scaffold unstained by blood.

For a long while there was constant movement,
lights flickering, heads swaying to and fro, confused
voices within the court, rushing waves of sound
through the entrance from without. It seemed to
Eomola as if she were in the midst of a storm-
troubled sea, caring nothing about the storm, but
only about holding out a signal till the eyes that
looked for it could seek it no more.

Suddenly there was stillness, and the very tapers
seemed to tremble into quiet. The executioner was
ready on the scaffold, and Bernardo del Nero was
seen ascending it with a slow firm step. Romola
made no visible movement, uttered not even a sup-
pressed sound : she stood more firmly, caring for his
firmness. She saw him pause, saw the white head

THE SCAFFOLD. 155

kept erect, while lie said, in a voice distinctly
audible,

"It is but a short space of life that my fellow-
citizens have taken from me."

She perceived that he was gazing slowly round him
as he spoke. She felt that his eyes were resting on
her, and that she was stretching out her arms to^^ards
him. Then she saw no more till — a long while after,
as it seemed — a voice said, "My daughter, all is peace
now. I can conduct you to your house."

She uncovered her head and saw her godfather's
confessor standing by her, in a room where there w^ere
other grave men talking in subdued tones.

" I am ready," she said, starting up. " Let us
lose no time."

She thought all clinging was at an end for her : all
her strength now should be given to escape from a
grasp under w^hich she shuddered.

156 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XV.

DRIFTING AWAY.

On the eighth day from that memorahle night Romola
was standing on the brink of the Mediterranean, ,
watching the gentle summer pulse of the sea just
above what was then the little fishing village of
Viareggio.

Again she had fled from Florence, and this time no
arresting voice had called her back. Again she wore
the grey religious dress ; and this time, in her heart-
sickness, she did not care that it was a disguise. A
new rebellion had risen within her, a new despair.
Why should she care about wearing one badge more
than another, or about being called by her own name ?
She despaired of finding any consistent duty belong-
ing to that name. What force was there to create
for her that supremely hallowed motive which men call
duty, but which can have no inward constraining
existence save through some form of believing love ?

The bonds of all strong affection were snapped. In
her marriage, the highest bond of all, she had ceased
to see the mystic union which is its own guarantee of

DRIFTING AWAY. 157

indissolubleness, had ceased even to see the obligation
of a voluntary pledge : had she not proved that the
things to which she had pledged herself were im-
possible ? The impulse to set herself free had risen
again with overmastering force ; yet the freedom could
only be an exchange of calamity. There is no com-
pensation for the woman who feels that the chief
relation of her life has been no more than a mistake.
She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human
blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then
for ever passed her by.

And now Komftla's best support under that supreme
woman's sorrow had slipped away from her. The
vision of any great purpose, any end of existence
which could ennoble endurance and exalt the common
deeds of a dusty life with divine ardours, was utterly
eclipsed for her now by the sense of a confusion in
human things which made all effort a mere dragging
at tangled threads ; all fellowship, either for resist-
ance or advocacy, mere unfairness and exclusiveness.
What, after all, was the man who had represented
for her the highest heroism : the heroism not of hard,
self-contained endurance, but of willing, self-offering
love ? What was the cause he was struggling for ?
"Komola had lost her trust in Savonarola, had lost
that fervour of admiration which had made her
unmindful of his aberrations, and attentive only to
the grand curve of his orbit. And now that her
keen feeling for her godfather had thrown her into

158 ROMOLA.

antagonism with the Frate, she saw all the repulsive
and inconsistent details in his teaching with a painful
lucidity which exaggerated their proportions. In
the bitterness of her disappointment she said that
his striving after the renovation of the Church and
the world was a striving after a mere name which
told no more than the title of a book : a name that
had come to mean practically the measures that would
strengthen his own position in Florence ; nay, often
questionable deeds and words, for the sake of saving
his influence from suffering by his own errors. And
that political reform which had ofice made a new
interest in her life seemed now to reduce itself to
narrow devices for the safety of Florence, in con-
temptible contradiction with the alternating profes-
sions of blind trust in the Divine care.

It w^as inevitable that she should judge the Frate
unfairly on a question of individual suffering, at
which she looked with the eyes of personal tender-
ness, and he with the eyes of theoretic conviction.
In that declaration of his, that the cause of his
party was the cause of God's kingdom, she heard
only the ring of egoism. Perhaps such words have
rarely been uttered without that meaner ring in
them ; yet they are the implicit formula of all'
energetic belief. _And if such energetic belief, pur-
suing a grand and remote end, is often in danger
of becoming a demon -worship, in which the votary
lets his son and daughter pass through the fire with

DKIFTING AWAY. 159

a readiness that hardly looks like sacrifice ; tender
fellow-feeling for the nearest has its danger too, and
is apt to be timid and sceptical towards the larger
aims without which life cannot rise into religion.
In this way poor Komola was being bhnded by her
tears.

No one who has ever known what it is thus to
lose faith in a fellow man whom he has profoundly
loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock
can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness un-
shaken. With the sinking of high human trust,
the dignity of life sinks too ; we cease to believe in
our own better self, since that also is part of the
common nature which is degraded in our thought;
and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled.
Bomola felt even the springs of her once active pity
drying up, and leaving her to barren egoistic com-
plaining. Had not she had her sorrows too ? And
few had cared for her, while she had cared for many.
She had done enough; she had striven after the
impossible, and was weary of this stifling crowded
life. She longed for that repose in mere sensation
which she had sometimes dreamed of in the sultrj*
afternoons of her early girlhood, when she had
fancied herself floating nai'ad-Hke in the waters.

The clear waves seemed to invite her : she mshed
she could lie dowTi to sleep on them and pass from
sleep into death. But Romola could not directly
seek death; the fulness of young life in her for-

160 KOMOLA.

bade that. She could only wish that death would
come.

At the spot where she had paused there was a
deep bend in the shore, and a small boat with a sail
was moored there. In her longing to glide over the
waters that were getting golden with the level sun-
rays, she thought of a story which had been one of
the things she had loved to dwell on in Boccaccio,
when her father fell asleep and she glided from her
stool to sit on the floor and read the Decamerone,
It was the story of that fair Gostanza who in her
love-lornness desired to live no longer, but not having
the courage to attack her young life, had put herself
into a boat and pushed oif to sea ; then, lying down
in the boat, had wrapped her mantle round her head,
hoping to be wrecked, so that her fear would be
helpless to flee from death. The memory had
remained a mere thought in Eomola's mind, without
budding into any distinct wish ; but now, as she
paused again in her walking to and fro, she saw
gliding black against the red gold another boat with
one man in it, making towards the bend where the
first and smaller boat was moored. Walking on
again, she at length saw the man land, pull his boat
ashore, and begin to unlade something from it. He
was perhaps the owner of the smaller boat also : he
would be going away soon, and her opportunity would
be gone with him — her opportunity of buying that
smaller boat. She had not yet admitted to herself

DRIFTING AWAY. 161

that she meant to use it, but she felt a sudden eager-
ness to secure the possibility of using it, which dis-
closed the half-unconscious growth of a thought into
a desire.

" Is that little boat yours also ? " she said to the
fisherman, who had looked up, a little stai*tled by the
tall grey figure, and had made a reverence to this holy
Sister wandering thus mysteriously in the evening
solitude.

It was his boat; an old one, hardly sea-worthy,
yet worth repairing to any man who would buy it.
By the blessing of San Antonio, whose chapel was in
the village yonder, his fishing had prospered, and
he had now a better boat, which had once been
Gianni's who died. But he had not yet sold the
old one. Romola asked him how much it was worth,
and then, while he was busy, thrust the price into a
little satchel lying on the ground and containing the
remnant of his dinner. After that, she watched him
furling his sail and asked him how he should set it
if he wanted to go out to sea, and then, pacing up
and down again, waited to see him depart.

The imagination of herself gliding away in that
boat on the darkening waters was gi*owing more and
more into a longing, as the thought of a cool brook in
sultriness becomes a painful thirst. To be freed
from the bm-den of choice when all motive was
bruised, to commit herself, sleeping, to destiny which
would either bring death or else new necessities that

VOL. III. 53

162 ROMOLA.

might rouse a new life in her ! — it was a thought that
beckoned her the more because the soft evening air
made her long to rest in the still solitude, instead of
going back to the noise and heat of the village.

At last the slow fisherman had gathered up all his
moveables and was walking away. Soon the gold was
shrinking and getting duskier in sea and sky, and
there was no living thing in sight, no sound but the
lulling monotony of the lapping waves. In this sea
there was no tide that would help to carry her away
if she waited for its ebb ; but Romola thought the
breeze from the land was rising a little. She got
into the boat, unfurled the sail, and fastened it as
she had learned in that first brief lesson. She saw
that it caught the light breeze, and this was all she
cared for. Then she loosed the boat from its moor-
ings, and tried to urge it with an oar, till she was far
out from the land, till the sea was dark even to the
west, and the stars were disclosing themselves Hke a
palpitating life over the wide heavens. Resting at
last, she threw back her cowl, and, taking off the
kerchief underneath, which confined her hair, she
doubled them both under her head for a pillow on
one of the boat's ribs. The fair head was still very
young and could bear a hard pillow.

And so she lay, with the soft night air breathing
on her while she glided on the waters and watched
the deepening quiet of the sky. She was alone now :
she had freed herself from all claims, she had freed

DRIFTING AWAY. 163

herself even from that hurden of choice which presses
with heavier and heavier weight when claims have
loosed their guiding hold.

Had she found anything like the dream of her
girlhood ? No. Memories hung upon her like the
weight of broken wings that could never be lifted —
memories of human sympathy which even in its pains
leaves a thirst that the Great Mother has no milk to
still. Komola felt orphaned in those wide spaces of
sea and sky. She read no message of love for her
in that far-off symbolic writing of the heavens, and
with a great sob she wished that she might be gliding
into death.

She drew the cowl over her head again and covered
her face, choosing darkness rather than the light of
the stars, which seemed to her like the hard light of
eyes that looked at her without seeing her. Pre-
sently she felt that she was in the grave, but not
resting there : she was touching the hands of the
beloved dead beside her, and trying to wake them.

53—2

164 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BENEDICTION.

About ten o'clock on the morning of the twenty-
seventh of Fehruary the currents of passengers along
the Florentine streets set decidedly towards San
Marco. It was the last morning of the Carnival,
and every one knew there was a second Bonfire of
Vanities heing prepared in front of the Old Palace ;
but at this hour it was evident that the centre of
popular interest lay elsewhere.

The Piazza di San Marco was filled by a multitude
who showed no other movement than that which pro-
ceeded from the pressure of new comers trying to
force their way forward from all the openings ; but
the front ranks were already close-serried and resisted
the pressure. Those ranks were ranged around a
semicircular barrier in front of the church, and within
this barrier were already assembling the Dominican
Brethren of San Marco.

But the temporary wooden pulpit erected over the
church door was still empty. It was presently to be
entered by the man whom the Pope's command had

THE BENEDICTION. 165.

banished from the pulpit of the Duomo, whom the
other ecclesiastics of Florence had been forbidden to
consort with, whom the citizens had been forbidden
to hear on pain of excommunication. This man had
said, " A wicked, unbelieving Pope who has gained
the pontifical chair by bribery is not Christ's Vicar.
His curses are broken swords : he grasps a hilt with-
out a blade. His commands are contrary to the
Christian life : it is lawful to disobey them — nay,
it is not laicful to obey them.'' And the people still
flocked to hear him as he preached in his own
church of San Marco, though the Pope was hanging
terrible threats over Florence if it did not renounce
the pestilential schismatic and send him to Rome
to be " converted " — still, as on this very morning,
accepted the communion from his excommunicated
hands. For how if this Frate had really more com-
mand over the Divine lightnings than that official
successor of Saint Peter ? It was a momentous ques-
tion, which for the mass of citizens could never be
decided by the Frate's ultimate test, namely, what
was and what was not accordant with the highest
spiritual law. No : in such a case as this, if God
had chosen the Frate as his prophet to rebuke the
High Priest who carried the mystic raiment un-
worthily, he would attest his choice by some unmis-
takable sign. As long as the belief in the Prophet
carried no threat of outward calamity, but rather the
confident hope of exceptional safety, no sign was

166 KOMOLA.

needed : his preacliing was a music to whicli the
people felt themselves marching along the way they
wished to go ; but now that belief meant an imme-
diate blow to their commerce, the shaking of their
position among the Italian States, and an interdict on
their city, there inevitably came the question, " What
miracle showest thou ? " Slowly at first, then faster
and faster, that fatal demand had been swelling in
Savonarola's ear, provoking a response, outwardly in
the declaration that at the fitting time the miracle
would come ; inwardly in the faith — not unwavering,
for what faith is so ? — that if the need for miracle
became urgent, the work he had before him was too
great for the Divine power to leave it halting. His
faith wavered, but not his speech : it is the lot of
every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of
the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yes-
terday's faith, hoping it will come back to-morrow.

It was in preparation for a scene wiiich was really
a response to the popular impatience for some super-
natural guarantee of the Prophet's mission, that the
wooden pulpit had been erected above the church
door. But while the ordinary Frati in black mantles
were entering and arranging themselves, the faces of
the multitude were not yet eagerly directed towards
the pulpit : it was felt that Savonarola would not
appear just yet, and there was some interest in
singling out the various monks, some of them belong-
ing to high Florentine families, many of them having

THE BENEDICTION. 167

fathers, brothers, or cousins among the artisans and
shopkeepers who made the majority of the crowd.
It was not till the tale of monks was complete, not
till they had fluttered their books and had begun
to chant, that people said to each other, " Fra Giro-
lamo must be coming now."

That expectation rather than any spell fi'om the
accustomed wail of psalmody was what made silence
and expectation seem to spread like a paling solemn
light over the multitude of upturned faces, all now
directed towards the empty pulpit.

The next instant the pulpit was no longer empty.
A figure covered from head to foot in black cowl and
mantle had entered it, and was kneeling with bent
head and with face turned away. It seemed a weary-
time to the eager people while the black figure knelt
and the monks chanted. But the stillness was not
broken, for the Frate's audiences with Heaven were
yet charged mth electric awe for that mixed multitude,
so that those who had already the will to stone him
felt their arms unnerved.

At last there was a \ibration among the multitude,
each seeming to give his neighbour a momentary
aspen-like touch, as when men who have been watch-
ing for something in the heavens see the expected
presence silently disclosing itself. The Frate had
risen, turned towards the people, and partly pushed
back his cowl. The monotonous wail of psalmody
had ceased, and to those who stood near the pulpit,

168 ROMOLA.

it was as if the sounds wliicli had just heen filling
their ears had suddenly merged themselves in the
force of Savonarola's flashing glance, as he looked
round him in the silence. Then he stretched out his
hands, which, in their exquisite delicacy, seemed
transfigured from an animal organ for grasping into
vehicles of sensibility too acute to need any gross
contact : hands that came like an appealing speech
from that part of his soul which was masked by his
strong passionate face, written on now with deeper
lines about the mouth and brow than are made by
forty- four years of ordinary life.

At the first stretching out of the hands some of the
crowd in the front ranks fell on their knees, and here
and there a devout disciple farther off; but the great
majority stood firm, some resisting the impulse to
kneel before this excommunicated man (might not a
great judgment fall upon him even in this act of
blessing?) — others jarred with scorn and hatred of
the ambitious deceiver who was getting up this new
comedy, before which, nevertheless, they felt them-
selves impotent, as before the triumph of a fashion.

But then came the voice, clear and low at first,
uttering the words of absolution — ^'Misereatur vestri"
— and more fell on their knees; and as it rose higher
and yet clearer, the erect heads became fewer and
fewer, till, at the words " Benedicat vos omnipotens
Deus," it rose to a masculine cry, as if protesting its
power to bless under the clutch of a demon that

THE BENEDICTION. 169

wanted to stifle it : it rang like a trumpet to the ex-
tremities of the Piazza, and under it every head was
bowed.

After the utterance of that blessing, Savonarola
himself fell on his knees and hid his face in tem-
porary exhaustion. Those great jets of emotion were
a necessary part of his life : he himself had said to
the people long ago, *' Without preaching I cannot
live." But it was a life that shattered him.

In a few minutes more, some had risen to their
feet, but a larger number remained kneeling, and all
faces were intently watching him. He had taken
into his hands a crystal vessel, containing the con-
secrated Host, and was about to address the people.

" You remember, my children, three days ago I
besought you, when I should hold this Sacrament
in my hand in the face of you all, to pray fervently
to the Most High that if this work of mine does not
come from Him, He will send a fire and consume me,
that I may vanish into the eternal darkness away
from His light which I have hidden with my falsity.
Again I beseech you to make that prayer, and to
make it noivJ''

It was a breathless moment : perhaps no man really
prayed, if some in a spirit of devout obedience made
the effort to pray. Every consciousness was chiefly
possessed by the sense that Savonarola was praying,
in a voice not loud but distinctly audible in the wide
stillness.

170 EOMOLA.

" Lord, if I have not wrought in sincerity of soul,
if my word cometh not from Thee, strike me in this
moment with Thy thunder, and let the fires of Thy
wrath enclose me."

He ceased to speak, and stood motionless, with the
consecrated Mystery in his hand, with eyes uplifted
and a quivering excitement in his whole aspect.
Every one else was motionless and silent too, while
the sunlight, which for the last quarter of an horn-
had here and there been piercing the grejTiess, made
fitful streaks across the convent wall, causing some
awe-stricken spectators to start timidly. But soon
there was a wider parting, and with a gentle
quickness, like a smile, a stream of brightness
poured itself on the crystal vase, and then spread
itself over Savonarola's face with mild glorifi-
cation.

An instantaneous shout rang through the Piazza,.
*' Behold the answer ! "

The warm radiance thrilled through Savonarola's
frame, and so did the shout. It was his last moment
of untroubled triumph, and in its rapturous confidence
he felt carried to a grander scene yet to come, before
an audience that Avould represent all Christendom, in
whose presence he should again be sealed as the mes-
senger of the supreme righteousness, and feel himself
full charged with Divine strength. It was but a
moment that expanded itself in that prevision. While
the shout was still ringing in his ears he turned away

THE BENEDICTION. 171

within the church, feeling the strain too great for
him to bear it longer.

But when the Frate had disappeared, and the sun-
light seemed no longer to have anything special in its
illumination, but was spreading itself impartially over
all things clean and unclean, there began, along with
the general movement of the crowd, a confusion of
voices in which certain strong discords and varying
scales of laughter made it evident that, in the previous
silence and universal kneeling, hostility and scorn
had only submitted unwillingly to a momentary
spell.

"It seems to me the plaudits are giving way to
criticism," said Tito, who had been watching the
scene attentively from an upper loggia in one of the
houses opposite the church. " Nevertheless it was a
striking moment, eh, Messer Pietro ? Fra Girolamo
is a man to make one understand that there was a
time when the monk's frock was a symbol of power
over men's minds rather than over the keys of women's
cupboards."

•' Assuredly," said Pietro Cennini. " And until I
have seen proof that Fra Girolamo has much less
faith in God's judgments than the common run of
men, instead of having considerably more, I shall not
believe that he would brave heaven in this way if his
soul were laden with a conscious lie."

172 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XVII.

RIPENING SCHEMES.

A MONTH after that Carnival, one morning near the
end of March, Tito descended the marble steps of
the Old Palace, bound on a pregnant errand to San
Marco. For some reason, he did not choose to take
the direct road, which was but a slightly bent line
from the Old Palace ; he chose rather to make a
circuit by the Piazza di Santa Croce, where the
people would be pouring out of the church after the
early sermon.

It was in the grand church of Santa Croce that the
daily Lenten sermon had of late had the largest
audience. For Savonarola's voice had ceased to be
heard even in his own church of San Marco, a hostile
Signoria having imposed silence on him in obedience
to a new letter from the Pope, threatening the citj^
with an immediate interdict if this ''wretched worm"
and *' monstrous idol " were not forbidden to preach,
and sent to demand pardon at Rome. And next to
hearing Fra Girolamo himself, the most exciting
Lenten occupation was to hear him argued against

EIPENING SCHEMES. 173

and vilified. This excitement was to be had in Santa
Croce, where the Franciscan appointed to preach the
Quaresimal sermons had offered to clench his argu-
ments by walking through the fire with Fra Girolamo.
Had not that schismatical Dominican said, that his
prophetic doctrine would be proved by a miracle at
the fitting time ? Here, then, was the fitting time.
Let Savonarola walk through the fire, and if he came
out unhurt, the Divine origin of his doctrine would
be demonstrated ; but if the fire consumed him, his
falsity would be manifest ; and that he might have
no excuse for evading the test, the Franciscan
declared himself willing to be a victim to this high
logic, and to be burned for the sake of securing the
necessary minor premiss.

Savonarola, according to his habit, had taken no
notice of these pulpit attacks. But it happened that
the zealous preacher of Santa Croce was no other
than the Fra Francesco di Puglia, who at Prato the
year before had been engaged in a like challenge with
Savonarola's fervent follower Fra Domenico, but had
been called home by his superiors while the heat was
simply oratorical. Honest Fra Domenico, then, who
was preaching Lenten sermons to the women in the
Via del Cocomero, no sooner heard of this new chal-
lenge, than he took up the gauntlet for his master and
declared himself ready to walk through the fire with
Fra Francesco. Already the people were beginning
to take a strong interest in what seemed to them

174 ROMOLA.

a short and easy method of argument (for those who
were to be convinced), when Savonarola, keenly alive
to the dangers that lay in the mere discussion of the
case, commanded Fra Domenico to withdraw his
acceptance of the challenge and secede from the
affair. The Franciscan declared himself content : he
had not directed his challenge to any subaltern, but
to Fra Girolamo himself.

After that, the popular interest in the Lenten ser-
mons had flagged a little. But this morning, when
Tito entered the Piazza di Santa Croce, he found, as
he expected, that the people were pouring from the
church in large numbers. Instead of dispersing,
many of them concentrated themselves towards a
particular spot near the entrance of the Franciscan
monastery, and Tito took the same direction, thread-
ing the crowd with a careless and leisurely air, but
keeping careful watch on that monastic entrance, as
if he expected some object of interest to issue from it.

It was no such expectation that occupied the
crowd. The object they were caring about was
already visible to them in the shape of a large
placard, afl&xed by order of the Signoria, and covered
with very legible official handwriting. But curiosity
was somewhat baulked by the fact that the manu-
script was chiefly in Latin, and though nearly every
man knew beforehand approximately what the placard
contained, he had an appetite for more exact know-
ledge, which gave him an irritating sense of his

RIPENING SCHEMES. 175

neighbour's ignorance in not being able to interpret
the learned tongue. For that aural acquaintance
with Latin phrases which the unlearned might pick
up from pulpit quotations constantly interpreted by
the preacher could help them little when they saw
written Latin ; the spelling even of the modern
language being in an unorganized and scrambling
condition for the mass of people who could read and
write,* and the majority of those assembled nearest
to the placard were not in the dangerous predicament
of possessing that little knowledge.

"It's the Frate's doctrines that he's to prove by
being burned," said that large public character Goro,
who happened to be among the foremost gazers.
" The Signoria has taken it in hand, and the writing
is to let us know. It's what the Padre has been
telling us about in his sermon."

"Nay, Goro," said a sleek shopkeeper, compas-
sionately, "thou hast got thy legs into twisted hose
there. The Frate has to prove his doctrines by not
being burned : he is to walk through the fire, and
come out on the other side sound and whole."

" Yes, yes," said a young sculptor, who wore his
white-streaked cap and tunic mth a jaunty air.
" But Fra Girolamo objects to walking through the
fire. Being sound and whole already, he sees no

* The old diarists throw in their consonants with a regard rather
to quantity than position, well typified by the Bagnolo Braghiello
(Agnolo Gabriello) of Boccaccio's Ferondo.

176 ROMOLA.

reason why lie should walk through the fire to come
out in just the same condition. He leaves such odds
and ends of work to Fra Domenico."

" Then I say he flinches like a coward," said Goro,
in a wheezy treble. *' Suifocation ! that was what he
did at the Carnival. He had us all in the Piazza to
see the lightning strike him, and nothing came of it.'*

" Stop that bleating," said a tall shoemaker, who
had stepped in to hear part of the sermon, with
bunches of slippers hanging over his shoulders. " It
seems to me, friend, that you are about as wise as a
calf mth water on its brain. The Frate will flinch
from nothing : he'll say nothing beforehand, perhaps,
but when the moment comes he'll walk through the
fire without asking any grey-frock to keep him
company. But I would give a shoestring to know
what this Latin all is."

" There's so much of it," said the shopkeeper,
"else I'm pretty good at guessing. Is there no
scholar to be seen ? " he added, with a slight ex-
pression of disgust.

There was a general turning of heads, which caused
the talkers to descry Tito approaching in their rear.

"Here is one," said the young sculptor, smiling
and raising his cap.

" It is the secretary of the Ten : he is going to the
convent, doubtless ; make way for him," said the
shopkeeper, also dofiing, though that mark of respect
was rarely sho\\Ti by Florentines except to the highest

RIPENING SCHEMES. 177

officials. The exceptional reverence was really exacted
by the splendour and grace of Tito's appearance,
which made his black mantle, with its gold fibula,
look like a regal robe, and his ordinary black velvet
cap like an entirely exceptional head-dress. The
hardening of his cheeks and mouth, which was the
chief change in his face since he came to Florence,
seemed to a superficial glance only to give his beauty
a more masculine character. He raised his own cap
immediately and said,

*' Thanks, my friend, I merely wished, as you did,
to see what is at the foot of this placard — ah, it is as
I expected. I had been informed that the govern-
ment permits any one who will to subscribe his name
as a candidate to enter the fire — which is an act of
liberality worthy of the magnificent Signoria — re-
serving of course the right to make a selection. And
doubtless many believers will be eager to subscribe
their names. For what is it to enter the fire, to one
whose faith is firm ? A man is afraid of the fire,
because he believes it will burn him ; but if he
believes the contrary ? " — here Tito lifted his shoulders
and made an oratorical pause — " for which reason I
have never been one to disbelieve the Frate, when he
has said that he would enter the fire to prove his
doctrine. For in his place, if you believed the fire
would not burn you, which of you, my friends, would
not enter it as readily as you would walk along the
dry bed of the Mugnone ? "

VOL. III. 54

178 KOMOLA.

As Tito looked round him during this appeal, there
was a change in some of his audience very much like
the change in an eager dog when he is invited to
smell something pungent. Since the question of
burning was becoming practical, it was not every one
who would rashly commit himself to any general
view of the relation between faith and fire. The scene
might have been too much for a gravity less under
command than Tito's,

" Then, Messer Segretario," said the young
sculptor, " it seems to me Era Francesco is the
greater hero, for he offers to enter the fire for
the truth, though he is sure the fire mil burn
him."

" I do not deny it," said Tito, blandly. " But
if it turns out that Fra Francesco is mistaken, he
will have been burned for the wrong side, and the
Church has never reckoned such as martyrs. We
must suspend our judgment until the trial has really
taken place."

"It is true, Messer Segretario," said the shop-
keeper, with subdued impatience. "But will you
favour us by interpreting the Latin ? "

"Assuredly," said Tito. "It does but express
the conclusions or doctrines which the Frate specially
teaches, and which the trial by fire is to prove true
or false. They are doubtless familiar to you. First,
that Florence "

" Let us have the Latin bit by bit, and then tell

RIPENING SCHEMES. 179

US what it means," said the shoemaker, who had
been a frequent hearer of Fra Girolamo.

" Willingly," said Tito, smiling. " You will then
judge if I give you the right meaning."

" Yes, yes ; that's fair," said Goro.

^^ Ecclesia Del indiget renovatione, that is, the
Church of God needs purifying or regenerating."

" It is true," said several voices at once.

" That means, the priests ought to lead better
lives; there needs no miracle to prove that. That's
what the Frate has always been saying," said the
shoemaker.

*' Flagellahitur" Tito went on. " That is, it will
be scourged. Renovahitur : it will be purified.
Florentia qiioque post flagella renovahitur et prospe-
rahitur: Florence also, after the scourging, shall be
purified and shall prosper."

" That means, we are to get Pisa again," said the
shopkeeper.

" And get the wool from England as we used to do,
I should hope," said an elderly man, in an old-
fashioned berretta, who had been silent till now.
*' There's been scourging enough with the sinking of
the trade."

At this moment, a tall personage, surmounted by a
red feather, issued from the door of the convent, and
exchanged an indifi'erent glance with Tito ; who,
tossing his becchetto carelessly over his left shoulder,
turned to his reading again, while the bystanders,

54—2

180 ROMOLA.

with more timidity than respect, shrank to make a
passage for Messer Dolfo Spini.

** Infideles convertentur ad Christum,^' Tito went
on. " That is, the infidels shall he converted to
Christ."

" Those are the Turks and the Moors. Well, I've
nothing to say against that/' said the shopkeeper,
dispassionately.

" H(sc autem omnia ei'unt temporihus nostris — and
all these things shall happen in our times."

"Why, what use would they be, else?" said
Goro.

*' Excommunicatio nn/per lata contra Reverendum
Patrem nostrum Fratrem Hieronymum nidla est —
the excommunication lately pronounced against our
reverend father, Fra Girolamo, is null. Non ohser*
vantes earn non peccant — those who disregard it are
not committing a sin."

" I shall know better what to say to that when we
have had the Trial by Fire," said the shopkeeper.

" Which doubtless will clear up everything," said
Tito. " That is all the Latin — all the conclusions
that are to be proved true or false by the trial. The
rest you can perceive is simply a proclamation of the
Signoria in good Tuscan, calling on such as are eager
to walk through the fire, to come to the Palazzo and
subscribe their names. Can I serve you further?
If not "

Tito, as he turned away, raised his cap and bent

RIPENING SCHEMES. 181

slightly, with so easy an air that the movement
seemed a natural prompting of deference.

He quickened his pace as he left the Piazza, and
after two or three turnings he paused in a quiet
street before a door at which he gave a light and
peculiar knock. It was opened by a young woman
whom he chucked under the chin as he asked her if
the Padrone was within, and he then passed, without
further ceremony, through another door which stood
ajar on his right hand. It admitted him into a
handsome but untidy room, where Dolfo Spini sat
playing with a fine stag-hound which alternately
snuffed at a basket of pups and licked his hands with
that affectionate disregard of her master's morals
sometimes held to be one of the most agreeable
attributes of her sex. He just looked up as Tito
entered, but continued his play, simply from that
disposition to persistence in some irrelevant action,
by which slow-witted sensual people seem to be
continually counteracting their own purposes. Tito
was patient.

" A handsome hracca that," he said quietly, stand-
ing with his thumbs in his belt. Presently he
added, in that cool liquid tone which seemed mild,
but compelled attention, " When you have finished
such caresses as cannot possibly be deferred, my
Dolfo, we will talk of business, if you please. My
time, which I could wish to be eternity at your
service, is not entirely my own this morning."

182 ROMOLA.

" Down, Mischief, down ! " said Spini, with sudden
roughness. ^' Malediction ! " he added, still more
gruffly, pushing the dog aside ; then, starting from
his seat, he stood close to Tito, and put a hand on
his shoulder as he spoke.

'^ I hope your sharp wits see all the ins and outs
of this business, my fine necromancer, for it seems
to me no clearer than the bottom of a sack."

" What is your difficulty, my cavalier ? "

'' These accursed Frati Minori at Santa Croce.
They are drawing back now. Fra Francesco himself
seems afraid of sticking to his challenge; talks of
the Prophet being likely to use magic to get up a
false miracle — thinks he might be dragged into the
fire and burned, and the Prophet might come out
whole by magic, and the Church be none the better.
And then, after all our talking, there's not so much
as a blessed lay brother who will offer himself to pair
with that pious sheep Fra Domenico."

" It is the peculiar stupidity of the tonsured skull
that prevents them from seeing of how little conse-
quence it is whether they are burned or not," said
Tito. '* Have you sworn well to them that they shall
be in no danger of entering the fire ? "

"No," said Spini, looking puzzled; "because one
of them will be obliged to go in with^,Fra Domenico,
who thinks it a thousand years till the faggots are
ready."

" Not at all. Fra Domenico himself is not likely

RIPENING SCHEMES. 183

to go in. I have told you before, my Dolfo, only
your powerful mind is not to be impressed without
more repetition than suffices for the vulgar — I have
told you that now you have got the Signoria to take
up this affair and prevent it from being hushed up by
Fra Girolamo, nothing is necessary but that on a
given day the fuel should be prepared in the Piazza,
and the people got together with the expectation of
seeing something prodigious. If, after that, the
Prophet quits the Piazza without any appearance of a
miracle on his side, he is ruined with the people :
they will be ready to pelt him out of the city, the
Signoria will find it easy to banish him from the
territory, and his Holiness may do as he likes with
him. Therefore, my Alcibiades, swear to the Fran-
ciscans that their grey frocks shall not come within
singeing distance of the fire."

Spini rubbed the back of his head with one hand,
and tapped his sword against his leg with the other,
to stimulate his power of seeing these intangible
combinations.

" But," he said presently, looking up again,
" unless we fall on him in the Piazza, when the
people are in a rage, and make an end of him and his
lies then and there, Yalori and the Salviati and the
Albizzi will take up arms and raise a fight for him.
I know that was talked of when there was the
hubbub on Ascension Sunday. And the people may
turn round again : there may be a story raised

184 ROMOLA.

of the French king coming again, or some other
cursed chance in the hypocrite's favour. The city
will never he safe till he's out of it."

" He will he out of it before long, without your
giving yourself any further trouble than this little
comedy of the Trial by Fire. The wine and the
sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help
them, as your Florentine sages would say. You
will have the satisfaction of delivering your city from
an incubus by an able stratagem, instead of risking
blunders with sword-thrusts."

** But suppose he did get magic and the devil to
help him, and walk through the fire after all ? " said
Spini, with a grimace intended to hide a certain
shyness in trenching on this speculative ground.
*^ How do you know there's nothing in those things ?
Plenty of scholars believe in them, and this Frate is-
bad enough for anything."

" Oh, of course there are such things," said Tito,
with a shrug ; ^' but I have particular reasons for
knowing that the Frate is not on such terms with
the devil as can give him any confidence in this
affair. The only magic he relies on is his own
ability."

"x^bility!" said Spini. *' Do you call it ability
to be setting Florence at loggerheads with the Pope
and all the powers of Italy — all to keep beckoning
at the French king who never comes ? You may
call him able, but I call him a hypocrite, who wants

RIPENING SCHE^IES. 185

to be master of everybody, and get himself made
Pope."

"You judge with your usual penetration, my
captain, but our opinions do not clash. The Frate,
wanting to be master, and to carry out his projects
against the Pope, requires the lever of a foreign
power, and requires Florence as a fulcrum. I used
to think him a narrow-minded bigot, but now I
think him a shrewd ambitious man who knows what
he is aiming at, and directs his aim as skilfully as
you direct a ball when you are playing at maglio.^'

"Yes, yes," said Spini, cordially, "I can aim a
ball."

" It is true," said Tito, with bland gravity ; " and
I should not have troubled you with my trivial remark
on the Frate's ability, but that you may see how
this will heighten the credit of your success against
him at Eome and at Milan, which is sure to serve
you in good stead when the city comes to change its
policy."

"Well, thou art a good little demon, and shalt
have good pay," said Spini, patronizingly; where-
upon he thought it only natural that the useful
Greek adventurer should smile \nth gratification as
be said, —

" Of course, any advantage to me depends entirely
on your "

" We shall have our supper at my palace to-night,"
interrupted Spini, with a significant nod and an affec-

186 ROMOLA.

tionate pat on Tito's shoulder, "and I shall expound
the new scheme to them all."

" Pardon, my magnificent patron," said Tito ; " the
scheme has been the same from the first — it has
never varied except in your memory. Are you sure
you have fast hold of it now ? "

Spini rehearsed.

*' One thing more," he said, as Tito was hastening
away. " There is that sharp-nosed notary, Ser
Ceccone ; he has been handy of late. Tell me, you
who can see a man wink when you're behind him, do
you think I may go on making use of him ? "

Tito dared not say " no." He knew his compa-
nion too well to trust him with advice when all
Spini' s vanity and self-interest were not engaged in
concealing the adviser.

"Doubtless," he answered, promptly. "I have
nothing to say against Ceccone."

That suggestion of the notary's intimate access to
Spini caused Tito a passing twinge, interrupting his
amused satisfaction in the success with which he
made a tool of the man who fancied himself a patron.
For he had been rather afraid of Ser Ceccone. Tito's
nature made him peculiarly alive to circumstances
that might be turned to his disadvantage; his
memory was much haunted by such possibilities,
stimulating him to contrivances by which he might
ward them off. And it was not likely that he should
forget that October morning more than a year ago.

KIPENING SCHEMES. 187

when Eomola had appeared suddenly before him at
the door of Nello's shop, and had compelled him to
declare his certainty that Fra Girolamo was not going
outside the gates. The fact that Ser Ceccone had
been a witness of that scene, together with Tito's
perception that for some reason or other he was an
object of dislike to the notary, had received a new
importance from the recent turn of events. Eor after
having been implicated in the Medicean plots, and^
found it advisable in consequence to retire into the
country for some time, Ser Ceccone had of late, since
his reappearance in the city, attached himself to the
Arrabbiati, and cultivated the patronage of Dolfo
Spini. Now that captain of the Compagnacci was
much given, when in the company of intimates, to
confidential narrative about his own doings, and if
Ser Ceccone's powers of combination were sharpened
by enmity, he might gather some knowledge which
he could use against Tito with very unpleasant
results.

It would be pitiable to be baulked in well-conducted
schemes by an insignificant notary ; to be lamed by
the sting of an insect whom he had offended una-
wares. *'But," Tito said to himself, "the man's
dislike to me can be nothing deeper than the ill-
humour of a dinnerless dog ; I shall conquer it if I
can make him prosperous." And he had been very
glad of an opportunity which had presented itself of
providing the notary with a temporary post as an

188 KOMOLA.

extra cancelliere or registering secretary under the
Ten, believing that with this sop and the expectation
of more, the waspish cur must be quite cured of the
dis]30sition to bite him.

But perfect scheming demands omniscience, and
the notary's envy had been stimulated into hatred
by causes of which Tito knew nothing. That evening
when Tito, returning from his critical audience with
the Special Council, had brushed by Ser Ceccone on
the stairs, the notary, who had only just returned
from Pistoja, and learned the arrest of the conspira-
tors, was bound on an errand which bore a humble
resemblance to Tito's. He also, without gi^^ng up a
show of popular zeal, had been putting in the Medi-
cean lottery. He also had been privy to the unexe-
cuted plot, and was willing to tell what he knew, but
knew much less to tell. He also would have been
willing to go on treacherous errands, but a more
eligible agent had forestalled him. His propositions
were received coldly ; the council, he was told, was
already in possession of the needed information, and
since he had been thus busy in sedition, it Avould be
well for him to retire out of the way of mischief,
otherwise the government might be obliged to take
note of him. Ser Ceccone wanted no evidence to
make him attribute his failure to Tito, and his spite
was the more bitter because the nature of the case
compelled him to hold his peace about it. Nor was
this the whole of his grudge against the flourishing

RIPENING SCHEMES. 189

Melema. On issuing from his hiding-place, and
attaching himself to the Arrabbiati, he had earned
some pay as one of the spies who reported informa-
tion on Florentine affairs to the Milanese court ; but
his pay had been small, notwithstanding his pains
to write full letters, and he had lately been apprised
that his news was seldom more than a late and
imperfect edition of what was known already. Now
Ser Ceccone had no positive knowledge that Tito had
an underhand connection with the Arrabbiati and the
Court of Milan, but he had a suspicion of which he
chewed the cud with as strong a sense of flavour as if
it had been a certainty.

This fine-grown vigorous hatred could swallow the
feeble opiate of Tito's favours, and be as lively as
ever after it. Why should Ser Ceccone like Melema
any the better for doing him favours ? Doubtless
the suave secretary had his own ends to serve ; and
what right had he to the superior position which
made it possible for him to show favour ? But since
he had tuned his voice to flattery, Ser Ceccone would
pitch his in the same key, and it remained to be
seen who would win at the game of outwitting.

To have a mind well oiled with that sort of argu-
ment which prevents any claim from grasping it,
seems eminently convenient sometimes ; only the oil
becomes objectionable when we find it anointing other
minds on which we want to establish a hold.

Tito, however, not being quite omniscient, felt now

190 EOMOLA.

no more than a passing twinge of uneasiness at the
suggestion of Ser Ceccone's power to hurt him. It
was only for a little while that he cared greatly ahout
keeping clear of suspicions and hostility. He was
now playing his final game in Florence, and the skill
he was conscious of apj lying gave him a pleasure in
it even apart from the expected winnings. The
errand on which he was bent to San Marco was a
stroke in which he felt so much confidence that he
had already given notice to the Ten of his desire to
resign his office at an indefinite period within the
next month or two, and had obtained permission to
make that resignation suddenly, if his affairs needed
it, with the understanding that Niccolo Macchiavelli
was to be his provisional substitute, if not his suc-
cessor. He was acting on hypothetic grounds, but
this was the sort of action that had the keenest
interest for his diplomatic mind. From a combina-
tion of general knowledge concerning Savonarola's
purposes with diligently observed details he had
framed a conjecture which he was about to verify by
this visit to San Marco. If he proved to be right,
his game would be won, and he might soon turn his
back on Florence. He looked eagerly towards that
consummation, for many circumstances besides his
own weariness of the place told him that it was
time for him to be gone.

191

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PEOPHET IN HIS CELL.

Tito's visit to San Marco had been announced before-
hand, and he was at once conducted by Fra Niccolo,
Savonarola's secretary, up the spiral staircase into the
long corridors lined with cells — corridors where Fra
Angelico's frescoes, delicate as the rainbow on the
melting cloud, startled the unaccustomed eye here and
there, as if they had been sudden reflections cast from
an ethereal world, where the Madonna sat crowned in
her radiant glory, and the divine infant looked forth
with perpetual promise.

It was an hour of relaxation in the monastery, and
most of the cells were empty. The light through the
narrow windows looked in on nothing but bare walls,
and the hard pallet, and the crucifix. And even
behind that door at the end of a long corridor, in the
inner cell opening from an ante-chamber where the
Prior usually sat at his desk or received private
visitors, the high jet of light fell on only one more
object that looked quite as common a monastic sight

192 ROMOLA.

as the bare walls and hard pallet. It was but the
back of a figure in the long white Dominican tunic
and scapulary, kneeling with bowed head before a
crucifix. It might have been any ordinary Fra Giro-
lamo, who had nothing worse to confess than thinking
of wrong things when he was singing in coro, or
feeling a spiteful joy when Fra Benedetto dropped
the ink over his own miniatures in the breviary he
was illuminating — who had no higher thought than
that of climbing safely into paradise up the narrow
ladder of prayer, fasting, and obedience. But under
this particular white tunic there was a heart beating
with a consciousness inconceivable to the average
monk, and perhaps hard to be conceived by any man
who has not arrived at self-knowledge through a
tumultuous inner life : a consciousness in which irre-
vocable errors and lapses from veracity were so
entwined with noble purposes and sincere beliefs, in
which self-justifying expediency was so inwoven with
the tissue of a great work which the whole being
seemed as unable to abandon as the body was unable
to abandon glowing and trembling before the objects
of hope and fear, that it was perhaps impossible,
whatever course might be adopted, for the conscience
to find perfect repose.

Savonarola was not only in the attitude of prayer,
there were Latin words of prayer on his lips ; and yet
he was not praying. He had entered his cell, had
fallen on his knees, and burst into words of suppli-

THE PROPHET IN HIS CELL. 193

cation, seeking in this way for an influx of calmness
which would be a warrant to him that the resolutions
urged on him by crowding thoughts and passions were
not wresting him away from the Divine support ; but
the previsions and impulses which had been at work
within him for the last hour were too imperious ; and
while he pressed his hands against his face, and while
his lips were uttering audibly, " Cor mundum crea in
me," his mind was still filled with the images of the
snare his enemies had prepared for him, was still busy
with the arguments by which he could justify himself
against their taunts and accusations.

And it was not only against his opponents that
Savonarola had to defend himself. This morning he
had had new proof that his friends and followers were
as much inclined to urge on the Trial by Fire as his
enemies ; desiring and tacitly expecting that he him-
self would at last accept the challenge and evoke the
long-expected miracle which was to dissipate doubt
and triumph over mahgnity. Had he not said that
God would declare himself at the fitting time ? And
to the understanding of plain Florentines, eager to
get party questions settled, it seemed that no time
could be more fitting than this. Certainly, if Fra
Domenico walked through the fire unhurt, that
would be a miracle, and the faith and ardour of that
good brother were felt to be a cheering augury ; but
Savonarola was acutely conscious that the secret long-
ing of his followers to see him accept the challenge

VOL. III. 6^

194 EOMOLA.

had not been dissipated by any reasons lie had given
for his refusal.

Yet it was impossible to him to satisfy them ; and
with bitter distress he saw now that it v/as impossible
for him any longer to resist the prosecution of the
trial in Fra Domenico's case. Not that Savonarola
had uttered and written a falsity when he declared his
belief in a future supernatural attestation of his work ;
but his mind was so constituted that while it was
easy for him to believe in a miracle which, being
distant and undefined, was screened behind the strong
reasons he saw for its occurrence, and yet easier for
him to have a belief in inward miracles such as his
own prophetic inspiration and divinely-wrought intui-
tions ; it was at the same time insurmountably difficult
to him to believe in the probability of a miracle which,
like this of being carried unhurt through the fire,
pressed in all its details on his imagination and in-
volved a demand not only for belief but for exceptional
action.

Savonarola's nature was one of those in which
opposing tendencies co-exist in almost equal strength :
the passionate sensibility which, impatient of definite
thought, floods every idea with emotion and tends
towards contemplative ecstasy, alternated in him with
a keen perception of outward facts and a vigorous
practical judgment of men and things. And in this
case of the Trial by Fire, the latter characteristics
were stimulated into unusual activity by an acute

THE PROPHET IN HIS CELL. 195

physical sensitiveness which gives overpowering force
to the conception of pain and destruction as a neces-
sary sequence of facts which have aheady heen ex-
perienced as causes of pain. The readiness vnih.
which men will consent to touch red-hot iron with a
wet finger is not to be measured by their theoretic
acceptance of the impossibility that the iron will bum
them : practical belief depends on what is most
strongly represented in the mind at a given moment.
And with the Frate's constitution, when the Trial by
Fire was urged on his imagination as an immediate
demand, it was impossible for him to ,beKeve that he
or any other man could walk through the flames
unhurt — impossible for him to believe that even if
he resolved to offer himself, he would not shrink at
the last moment.

But the Florentines were not likely to make these
fine distinctions. To the common run of mankind it
has always seemed a proof of mental vigour to find
moral questions easy, and judge conduct according to
concise alteratives. And nothing was likely to seem
plainer than that a man who at one time declared
that Grod would not leave him without the guarantee
of a miracle, and yet drew back when it was proposed
to test his declaration, had said what he did not
believe. Were not Fra Domenico and Fra Mariano,
and scores of Piagnoni besides, ready to enter the
fire ? What was the cause of their superior courage,
if it was not their superior faith ? Savonarola could

55 — 2

196 ROMOLA.

not have explained his conduct satisfactorily to his
friends, even if he had been able to explain it
thoroughly to himself. And he was not. Our naked
feelings make haste to clothe themselves in propo-
sitions which lie at hand among our store of opinions,
and to give a true account of what passes within us
something else is necessary besides sincerity, even
when sincerity is unmixed. In these very moments,
when Savonarola was kneeling in audible prayer, he
had ceased to hear the words on his lips. They were
drowned by argumentative voices within him that
shaped their reasons more and more for an outward
audience.

" To appeal to heaven for a miracle by a rash
acceptance of a challenge, which is a mere snare
prepared for me by ignoble foes, would be a tempting
of Grod, and the appeal would not be responded to.
Let the Pope's legate come, let the ambassadors of all
the great Powers come and promise that the calling
of a General Council and the reform of the Church
shall hang on the miracle, and I will enter the flames,
trusting that God will not withhold His seal from
that great work. Until then I reserve myself for
higher duties which are directly laid upon me : it is
not permitted to me to leap from the chariot for the
sake of wrestling with every loud vaunter. But Fra
Domenico's invincible zeal to enter into the trial
may be the sign of a Divine vocation, may be a pledge
that the miracle "

THE PROPHET IN HIS CELL. 197

But no ! when Savonarola brought his mind close
to the threatened scene in the Piazza, and imagined a
human body entering the fire, his belief recoiled again.
It was not an event that his imagination could simply
see : he felt it with shuddering vibrations to the ex-
tremities of his sensitive fingers. The miracle could
not be. Nay, the trial itself was not to happen : he
was warranted in doing all in his power to hinder it.
The fuel might be got ready in the Piazza, the people
might be assembled, the preparatory formalities might
be gone through : all this was perhaps inevitable now,
and he could no longer resist it without bringing
dishonour on — himself? Yes, and therefore on the
cause of G-od. But it was not really intended that
the Franciscan should enter the fire, and while he
hung back there would be the means of preventing
Era Domenico's entrance. At the very worst, if Fra
Domenico were compelled to enter, he should carry
the consecrated Host with him, and with that Mystery
in his hand, there might be a warrant for expecting
that the ordinary effects of fire would be stayed; or,
more probably, this demand would be resisted, and
might thus be a final obstacle to the trial.

But these intentions could not be avowed : he
must appear frankly to await the trial, and to trust
in its issue. That dissidence between inward reality
and outward seeming was not the Christian simplicity
after which he had striven through years of his youth
and prime, and which he had preached as a chief

198 ROMOLA.

fruit of the Divine life. In the stress and heat of
the day, with cheeks hurning, with shouts ringing in
the ears, w^ho is so blest as to remember the yearnings
he had in the cool and silent morning, and Imow that
he has not belied them ?

" 0 God, it is for the sake of the people — because
they are blind — because their faith depends on me.
If I put on sackcloth and cast myself among the
ashes, who will take up the standard and head the
battle ? Have I not been led by a way which I
knew not to the work that Hes before me ? "

The conflict was one that could not end, and in
the effort at prayerful pleading the uneasy mind laved
its smart continually in thoughts of the greatness of
that task which there was no man else to fulfil if he
forsook it. It was not a thing of every day that a
man should be inspired with the vision and the daring
that made a sacred rebel.

Even the words of prayer had died away. He
continued to kneel, but his mind was filled with the
images of results to be felt through all Europe ; and
the sense of immediate difficulties was being lost in
the glow of that vision, when the knocking at the
door announced the expected visit.

Savonarola drew on his mantle before he left his
cell, as was his custom when he received visitors ;
and with that immediate response to any appeal from
without which belongs to a power-loving nature ac-
customed to make its power felt by speech, he met

THE PliOPHET IN HIS CELL. 199

Tito with a glance as self-possessed and strong as if
he had risen from resolution instead of conflict.

Tito did not kneel, but simply made a greeting of
profound deference, v/hich Savonarola received quietly
without any sacerdotal words, and then desiring him
to be seated, said at once,

** Your business is something of weight, my son,
that could not be conveyed through others ? "

*' Assuredly, father, else I should not have pre-
sumed to ask it. I will not trespass on your time by
any proem. I gathered from a remark of Messer
Domenico Mazzinghi that you might be glad to make
use of the next special courier who is sent to France
with despatches from the Ten. I must intreat you
to pardon me if I have been too officious ; but inas-
much as Messer Domenico is at this moment away at
his villa, I wished to apprise you that a courier carry-
ing important letters is about to depart for Lyons at
daybreak to-morrow."

The muscles of Fra Girolamo's face were eminently
under command, as must be the case with all men
whose personality is powerful, and in dehberate speech
he was habitually cautious, confiding his intentions to
none without necessity. But under any strong mental
stimulus, his eyes were liable to a dilation and added
brilliancy that no strength of \\dll could control. H
looked stieadily at Tito, and did not answer imme-
diately, as if he had to consider whether the informa-
tion he had just heard met any purpose of his.

200 EOMOLA.

Tito, whose glance never seemed observant, but
rarely let anything escape it, had expected precisely
that dilation and flash of Savonarola's eyes which he
had noted on other occasions. He saw it, and then
immediately busied himself in adjusting his gold
fibula, which had got wrong ; seeming to imply that
he awaited an answer patiently.

The fact was that Savonarola had expected to
receive this intimation from Domenico Mazzinghi,
one of the Ten, an ardent disciple of his whom he had
already employed to write a private letter to the Flo-
rentine ambassador in France, to prepare the way for
a letter to the French king himself in Savonarola's
handwriting, which now lay ready in the desk at his
side. It was a letter calling on the king to assist in
summoning a General Council, that might reform the
abuses of the Church, and begin by deposing Pope
Alexander, who was not rightfully Pope, being a
vicious unbeliever, elected by corruption and govern-
ing by simony.

This fact was not what Tito knew, but what his
hypothetic talent, constructing from subtle indica-
tions, had led him to guess and hope.

"It is true, my son," said Savonarola quietly.
** It is true I have letters which I would gladly send
by safe conveyance under cover to our ambassador.
Our community of San Marco, as you know, has
affairs in France, being, amongst other things,
responsible for a debt to that singularly wise and

THE PKOPHET IN HIS CELL. 201

experienced Frencliman, Signer Philippe de Comines,
on the library of the Medici, which we purchased ;
but I apprehend that Domenico Mazzinghi himself
may return to the city before evening, and I should
gain more time for preparation of the letters if I
waited to deposit them in his hands."

" Assuredly, reverend father, that might be better
on all grounds except one, namely, that if anything
occurred to hinder Messer Domenico's return, the
despatch of the letters would require either that I
should come to San Marco again at a late hour, or
that you should send them to me by your secretary ;
and I am aware that you wish to guard against the
false inferences which might be dratvn from a too
frequent communication between yourself and any
officer of the government." In. throwing out this
difficulty Tito felt that the more unwillingness the
Frate showed to trust him, the more certain he would
be of his conjecture.

Savonarola was silent ; but while he kept his
mouth firm, a slight glow rose in his face with
the suppressed excitement that was growing within
him. It would be a critical moment — that in which
he delivered the letter out of his own hands.

"It is most probable that Messer Domenico will
return in time," said Tito, affecting to consider the
Frate' s determination settled, and rising from his
chair as he spoke. " With your permission, I will
take my leave, father, not to trespass on your time

202 ROMOLA.

when my errand is done; but as I may not be
favoured with another interview, I venture to confide
to you — what is not yet known to others, except to the
magnificent Ten — that I contemplate resigning my
secretaryship, and leaving Florence shortly. Am I
presuming too much on your interest in stating what
relates chiefly to myself? "

" Speak on, my son," said the Frate ; " I desire to
know your prospects."

" I find, then, that I have mistaken my real voca-
tion in forsaking the career of pure letters, for which I
was brought up. The politics of Florence, father, are
worthy to occupy the greatest mind — to occupy yours
— when a man is in a position to execute his own
ideas ; but when, like me, he can only hope to b'e the
mere instrument ©f changing schemes, he requires
to be animated by the minor attachments of a born
Florentine : also, my wife's unhappy alienation from
a Florentine residence since the painful events of
August naturally influences me. I wish to join
her."

Savonarola inclined his head approvingly.

" I intend, then, soon to leave Florence, to visit
the chief courts of Europe, and to widen my acquaint-
ance with the men of letters in the various univer-
sities. I shaU go first to the court of Hungary,
where scholars are eminently welcome ; and I shall
probably start in a week or ten days. I have not
concealed from you, father, that I am no religious

THE PROPHET IN HIS CELL. 203

enthusiast ; I have not my mfe's ardour ; but
religious enthusiasm, as I conceive, is not necessary
in order to appreciate the grandeur and justice of
your views concerning the government of nations and
the Church. And if you condescend to intrust me
with any commission that will further the relations
you wish to establish, I shall feel honoured. May I
now take my leave ? "

*' Stay, my son. When you depart from Florence
I will send a letter to your wife, of whose spiritual
welfare I would fain be assured, for she left me in
anger. As for the letters to France, such as I have
ready "

Savonarola rose and turned to his desk as he spoke.
He took from it a letter on which Tito could see, but
not read, an address in the Frate's own minute and
exquisite handwriting, still to be seen covering the
margins of his Bibles. He took a large sheet of
paper, enclosed the letter, and sealed it.

" Pardon me, father," said Tito, before Savonarola
had time to speak, " unless it were your decided wish,
I would rather not incur the responsibility of carry-
ing away the letter. Messer Domenico Mazzinghi
will doubtless return, or, if not, Fra Niccolo can con-
vey it to me at the second hour of the evening, when
I shall place the other despatches in the courier's
hands."

" At present, my son," said the Frate, waiving that
point, "I wish you to address this packet to our

204 ROMOLA.

ambassador in your own handwriting, which is pre-
ferable to my secretary's."

Tito sat down to write the address while the Frate
stood by him with folded arms, the glow mounting in
his cheek, and his lip at last quivering. Tito rose
and was about to move away, when Savonarola said
abruptly,

*' Take it, my son. There is no use in waiting.
It does not please me that Fra Niccolo should have
needless errands to the Palazzo."

As Tito took the letter, Savonarola stood in
suppressed excitement that forbade further speech.
There seems to be a subtle emanation from pas-
sionate natures like his, making their mental states
tell immediately on others; when they are absent-
minded and inwardly excited there is silence in
the air.

Tito made a deep reverence and went out with the
letter under his mantle.

The letter was duly delivered to the courier and
carried out of Florence. But before that happened
another messenger, privately employed by Tito, had
conveyed information in cipher, which was carried by
a series of relays to armed agents of Ludovico Sforza,
Duke of Milan, on the watch for the very purpose
of intercepting despatches on the borders of the
Milanese territoiy.

205

CHAPTER XIX.

THE TKIAL BY FIRE.

Little more than a week after, on the seventh of
April, the great Piazza della Signoria presented a
stranger spectacle even than the famous Bonfire of
Vanities. And a greater multitude had assembled to
see it than had ever before tried to find place for
themselves in the wide Piazza, even on the day of
San Giovanni.

It was near midday, and since the early morning
there had been a gradual swarming of the people
at every coign of vantage or disadvantage offered by
the fa9ades and roofs of the houses, and such spaces
of the pavement as were free to the public. Men
were seated on iron rods that made a sharp angle
with the rising wall, were clutching slim pillars with
arms and legs, were astride on the necks of the
rough statuary that here and there surmounted the
entrances of the grander houses, were finding a
palm's breadth of seat on a bit of architrave, and
a footing on the rough projections of the rustic stone-

206 KOMOLA.

work, while they clutched the strong iron rings or
staples driven into the walls beside them.

For they were come to see a Miracle : cramped
limbs and abraded flesh seemed slight inconveniences
with that prospect close at hand. It is the ordinary
lot of mankind to hear of miracles, and more or less
believe in them ; but now the Florentines were going
to see one. At the very least they would see half a
miracle ; for if the monk did not come whole out
of the fire, they would see him enter it, and infer that
he was burned in the middle.

There could be no reasonable doubt, it seemed,
that the fire would be kindled, and that the monks
would enter it. For there, before their eyes, was the
long platform, eight feet broad, and twenty yards
long, with a grove of fuel heaped up terribly, great
branches of dry oak as a foundation, crackling thorns
above, and well-anointed tow and rags, known to
make fine flames in Florentine illuminations. The
platform began at the comer of the marble terrace in
front of the old palace, close to Marzocco, the stone
lion, whose aged visage looked frowningly along the
grove of fuel that stretched obliquely across the
Piazza.

Besides that, there were three large bodies of
armed men : five hundred hired soldiers of the
Signoria stationed before the palace, five hundred
Compagnacci under Dolfo Spini, far off on the
opposite side of the Piazza, and three hundred

THE TRIAL BY FIRE. 207

armed citizens of another sort, under Marco Sal-
viati, Savonarola's friend, in front of Orgagna's
Loggia, where the Franciscans and Dominicans were
to be placed with their champions.

Here had been much expense of money and labour,
and high dignities were concerned. There could be
no reasonable doubt that something great was about
to happen ; and it would certainly be a great thing if
the two monks were simply burned, for in that case
too God would have spoken, and said very plainty
that Fra Girolamo was not his prophet.

And there was not much longer to wait, for it was
now near midday. Half the monks were aheady at
their post, and that half of the Loggia that lies
towards the Palace was already filled with gi*ey
mantles ; but the other half, divided off by boards,
was still empty of everything except a small altar.
The Franciscans had entered and taken their places
in silence. But now, at the other side of the Piazza
was heard loud chanting from two hundred voices,
and there was general satisfaction, if not in the
chanting, at least in the evidence that the Domini-
cans were come. That loud chanting repetition of
the prayer, " Let God arise, and let his enemies be
scattered," was unpleasantly suggestive to some im-
partial ears of a desire to vaunt confidence and excite
dismay ; and so was the flame-coloured velvet cope in
which Fra Domenico was arrayed as he headed the
procession, cross in hand, his simple mind really

208 ROMOLA.

exalted with faith, and with the genuine intention to
enter the flames for the glory of God and Fra Giro-
lamo. Behind him came Savonarola in the white
vestment of a priest, carrying in his hands a vessel
containing the consecrated Host. He, too, was
chanting loudly, he too looked firm and confident,
and as all eyes were turned eagerly on him, either in
anxiety, curiosity or malignity, from the moment
when he entered the Piazza till he mounted the steps
of the Loggia and deposited the Sacrament on the
altar, there was an intensifying flash and energy in
his countenance responding to that scrutiny.

We are so made, almost all of us, that the false
seeming which we have thought of with painful
shrinking when beforehand in our solitude it has
urged itself on us as a necessity, will possess our
muscles and move our lips as if nothing but that
were easy when once we have come under the
stimulus of expectant eyes and ears. And the
strength of that stimulus to Savonarola can hardly
be measured by the experience of ordinary lives.
Perhaps no man has ever had a mighty influence
over his fellows without having the innate need to
dominate, and this need usually becomes the more
imperious in proportion as the complications of life
make self inseparable from a purpose which is not
selfish. In this way it came to pass that on the day
of the Trial by Fire, the doubleness which is the
pressing temptation in every public career, whether

THE TRIAL BY FIRE. 209

of priest, orator, or statesman, was more strongly
defined in Savonarola's consciousness as the acting of
a part, than at any other period in his life. He was
struggling not against impending martyrdom, but
against impending ruin.

Therefore he looked and acted as if he were
thoroughly confident, when all the while foreboding
was pressing with leaden weight on his heart, not
only because of the probable issues of this trial, but
because of another event already passed — an event
which was spreading a sunny satisfaction through the
mind of a man who was looking down at the passion-
worn prophet from a window of the Old Palace.
It was a common turning-point towards which those
widely sundered lives had been converging, that two
evenings ago the news had come that the Florentine
courier of the Ten had been arrested and robbed of all
his despatches, so that Savonarola's letter was already
in the hands of the Duke of Milan, and would soon be
in the hands of the Pope, not only heightening rage,
but giving a new justification to extreme measures.
There w^as no malignity in Tito Melema's satisfac-
tion : it was the mild self-gratulation of a man who
has w^on a game that has employed hypothetic skill,
not a game that has stirred the muscles and heated
the blood. Of course that bundle of desires and
contrivances called human nature, when moulded
into the form of a plain-featured Frate Predicatore,
more or less of an impostor, could not be a pathetic

VOL. III. 56

210 ROMOLA.

object to a brilliant-minded scholar wbo understood
everything. Yet this tonsured Girolamo with the
high nose and large under lip was an immensely
clever Frate, mixing with his absurd superstitions or
fabrications very remarkable notions about govern-
ment : no babbler, but a man who could keep his
secrets. Tito had no more spite against him than
against Saint Dominic. On the contrary, Fra Giro-
lamo's existence had been highly convenient to Tito
Melema, furnishing him with that round of the
ladder from which he was about to leap on to a new
and smooth footing very much to his heart's content.
And everything now was in forward preparation for
that leap : let one more sun rise and set, and Tito
hoped to quit Florence. He had been so industrious
that he felt at full leisure to amuse himself mth
to-day's comedy, which the thick-headed Dolfo Spini
could never have brought about but for him.

Not yet did the loud chanting cease, but rather
swelled to a deafening roar, being taken up in all
parts of the Piazza by the Piagnoni, who carried
their little red crosses as a badge and, most of them,
chanted the prayer for the confusion of God's enemies
with the expectation of an answer to be given through
the medium of a more signal personage than Fra
Domenico. This good Frate in his flame-coloured
cope was now kneeling before the little altar on w4iich
the Sacrament was deposited, awaiting his summons.

On the Franciscan side of the Loggia there was no

THE TRIAL BY TIRE. 211

chanting and no flame-colour : only silence and grey-
ness. But there was this counterbalancing difference,
that the Franciscans had two champions : a certain
Fra Giuliano was to pair with Fra Domenico, while
the original champion, Fra Francesco, confined his
challenge to Savonarola.

" Surely," thought the men perched uneasily on
rods and pillars, ''all must be ready now. This
chanting might stop, and we should see better when
the Frati are moving towards the platform."

But the Frati were not to be seen moving yet.
Pale Franciscan faces were looking uneasily over the
boarding at that flame-coloured cope. It had an evil
look and might be enchanted, so that a false miracle
would be wrought by magic. Your monk may come
whole out of the fire, and yet it may be the work of
the de\il.

And now there was passing to and fro between the
Loggia and the marble terrace of the Palazzo, and
the roar of chanting became a little quieter, for every
one at a distance w^as beginning to watch more eagerly.
But it soon appeared that the new movement was not
a beginning, but an obstacle to beginning. The dig-
nified Florentines appointed to preside over this affair
as moderators on each side, went in and out of the
Palace, and there was much debate with the Francis-
cans. But at last it was clear that Fra Domenico,
conspicuous in his flame -colour, was being fetched
towards the Palace. Probably the fire had already

212 ROMOLA.

been kindled — it was difficult to see at a distance —
and the miracle was going to begin.

Not at all. The flame-coloured cope disappeared
within the Palace ; then another Dominican was fetched
away; and for a long while everything went on as
before — the tiresome chanting, which was not mira-
culous, and Fra Girolamo in his white vestment
standing just in the same place. But at last some-
thing happened : Fra Domenico was seen coming out
of the Palace again, and returning to his brethren.
He had changed all his clothes with a brother monk,
but he was guarded on each flank by a Franciscan,
lest coming into the vicinity of Savonarola he should
be enchanted again.

" Ah, then," thought the distant spectators, a little
less conscious of cramped limbs and hunger, ''Fra
Domenico is not going to enter the fire. It is Fra
Girolamo who ofiers himself after all. We shall see
him move presently, and if he comes out of the flames
we shall have a fine view of him ! "

But Fra Girolamo did not move, except with the
ordinary action accompanying speech. The speech
was bold and firm, perhaps somewhat ironically re-
monstrant, like that of Elijah to the priests of Baal,
demanding the cessation of these trivial delays. But
speech is the most irritating kind of argument for
those who are out of hearing, cramped in the limbs,
and empty in the stomach. And what need was there
for speech ? If the miracle did not begin, it could be

THE TRIAL BY FIRE. 213

no one's fault but Fra Girolamo's, who might put an
end to all difficulties by offering himself now the fire
was ready, as he had been forward enough to do when
there was no fuel in sight.

More movement to and fro, more discussion ; and
the afternoon seemed to be slipping away all the
faster because the clouds had gathered, and changed
the light on everything, and sent a chill through the
spectators, hungry in mind and body.

Noio it was the crucifix which Fra Domenico
wanted to carry into the fire and must not be allowed
to profane in that manner. After some little resist-
ance Savonarola gave way to this objection, and thus
had the advantage of making one more concession ;
but he immediately placed in Fra Domenico's hands
the vessel containing the consecrated Host. The
idea that the presence of the sacred Mystery might
in the worst extremity avert the ordinary effects of
fire hovered in his mind as a possibility ; but the
issue on which he counted was of a more positive
kind. In taking up the Host he said quietly, as if
he were only doing what had been presupposed from
the first,

" Since they are not willing that you should enter
"svith the crucifix, my brother, enter simply with the
Sacrament."

New horror in the Franciscans ; new firmness in
Savonarola. " It was impious presumption to carry
the Sacrament into the fire : if it were burned the

214 BOMOLA.

scandal would be great in the minds of the weak and
ignorant." "Not at all : even if it were burned, the
Accidents only would be consumed, the Substance
would remain." Here was a question that might be
argued till set of sun and remain as elastic as ever ;
and no one could propose settHng it by proceeding to
the trial, since it was essentially a preliminary ques-
tion. It was only necessary that both sides should
remain firm — that the Franciscans should persist in
not permitting the Host to be carried into the fire,
and that Fra Domenico should persist in refusing to
enter without it.

Meanwhile the clouds were getting darker, the air
chiUer. Even the chanting was missed now it had
given way to inaudible argument ; and the confused
sounds of talk from all points of the Piazza, showing
that expectation was everywhere relaxing, contributed
to the irritating presentiment that nothing decisive
would be done. Here and there a dropping shout
was heard ; then, more frequent shouts in a rising
scale of scorn.

"Light the fire and drive them in!" "Let us
have a smell of roast — we want our dinner ! "
" Come, Prophet, let us know whether anything is
to happen before the twenty-four hours ai-e over ! "
" Yes, yes, what's your last vision ? " " Oh, he's got
a dozen in his inside ; they're the small change for a
miracle ! " " Ola, Frate, where are you ? Never
mind wasting the fuel ! "

THE TRIAL BY FIRE. 215

Still the same movement to and fro between the
Loggia and the Palace ; still the same debate, slow
and unintelligible to the multitude as the colloquies
of insects that touch antennae to no other apparent
effect than that of going and coming. But an inter-
pretation was not long wanting to unheard debates in
which Fra Girolamo was constantly a speaker : it was
he who was hindering the trial; everybody was
appealing to him now, and he was hanging back.

Soon the shouts ceased to be distinguishable, and
were lost in an uproar not simply of voices, but of
clashing metal and trampling feet. The suggestions
of the irritated people had stimulated old impulses in
Dolfo Spini and his band of Compagnacci ; it seemed
an opportunity not to be lost for putting an end to
Florentine difficulties by getting possession of the
arch-hypocrite's person ; and there was a vigorous
rush of the armed men towards the Loggia, thrusting
the people aside, or driving them on to the file of
soldiery stationed in front of the palace. At this
movement, everything was suspended both with
monks and embaiTassed magistrates except the palpi-
tating watch to see what would come of the struggle.

But the Loggia was well guarded by the band
under the brave Salviati ; the soldiers of the Signoria
assisted in the repulse ; and the trampling and rushing
were all backward again towards the Tetto de' Pisani,
when the blackness of the heavens seemed to intensify-
in this moment of utter confusion, and the rain,

216 ROMOLA.

which had already been felt in scattered drops, began
to fall with rapidly growing violence, wetting the fuel,
and running in streams off the platform, wetting the
weary hungry people to the skin, and driving every
man's disgust and rage inwards to ferment there in
the damp darkness.

Everybody knew now that the Trial by Fire was not
to happen. The Signoria was doubtless glad of the
rain, as an obvious reason, better than any pretext,
for declaring that both parties might go home. It
was the issue which Savonarola had expected and
desired ; yet it would be an ill description of what
he felt to say that he was glad. As that rain fell,
and plashed on the edge of the Loggia, and sent
spray over the altar and all garments and faces, the
Frate knew that the demand for him or his to enter
the fire was at an end. But he knew too, with a
certainty as irresistible as the damp chill that had
taken possession of his frame, that the design of his
enemies was fulfilled, and that his honour was not
saved. He knew that he should have to make his
way to San Marco again through the enraged crowd,
and that the hearts of many friends who would once
have defended him with their lives would now be
turned against him.

When the rain had ceased he asked for a guard
from the Signoria, and it was given him. Had he
said that he was willing to die for the work of his life ?
Yes, and he had not spoken falsely. But to die in

THE TRIAL BY FIRE. 217

dishonour — held up to scorn as a hypocrite and a false
prophet ? *' 0 God ! that is not martyrdom ! It is
the blotting out of a life that has been a protest
against wrong. Let me die because of the worth that
is in me, not because of my weakness."

The rain had ceased, and the light from the break-
ing clouds fell on Savonarola as he left the Loggia
in the midst of his guard, walking, as he had come,
with the Sacrament in his hand. But there seemed
no glory in the light that fell on him now, no smile
of heaven : it was only that light which shines on,
patiently and impartially, justifying or condemning
by simply showing all things in the slow history of
their ripening. He heard no blessing, no tones of
pity, but only taunts and threats. He knew this
was but a foretaste of coming bitterness; yet his
courage mounted under all moral attack, and he
showed no sign of dismay.

" Well parried, Frate ! " said Tito, as Savonarola
descended the steps of the Loggia. " But I fear
your career at Florence is ended. What say you, my
Niccolo?"

'* It is a pity his falsehoods were not all of a wise
sort," said Macchiavelli, with a melancholy shrug.
*' With the times so much on his side as they are
about church affairs, he might have done something
great."

218 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XX.

A MASQUE OF THE FURIES.

The next day was Palm Sunday, or Olive Sunday, as
it was chiefly called in the olive-growing Yaldarno ;
and the morning sun shone with a more delicious
clearness for the yesterday's rain. Once more Savo-
narola mounted the pulpit in San Marco, and saw a
flock around him whose faith in him was still un-
shaken ; • and this morning in calm and sad sincerity
he declared himself ready to die : in the front of all
visions he saw his own doom. Once more he uttered
the benediction, and saw the faces of men and women
lifted towards him in venerating love. Then he
descended the steps of the pulpit and turned away
from that sight for ever.

For before the sun had set Florence was in an
uproar. The passions which had been roused the
day before had been smouldering through that quiet
morning, and had now burst out again with a fury
not unassisted by design, and not without o£S.cial
connivance. The uproar had begun at the Duomo
in an attempt of some Compagnacci to hinder the

A MASQUE OF THE FURIES. 219

evening sermon, which the Piagnoni had assembled
to hear. But no sooner had men's blood mounted
and the distm-bances had become an affray than the
cry arose, " To San Marco ! the fire to San Marco ! '*

And long before the daylight had died, both the
church and convent were being besieged by an enraged
and continually increasing multitude. Not without
resistance. For the monks, long conscious of growing
hostility without, had arms within their walls, and
some of them fought as vigorously in their long white
tunics as if they had been Knights Templai-s. Even
the command of Savonarola could not prevail against
the impulse to self-defence in arms that were still
muscular under the Dominican serge. There were
laymen too who had not chosen to depart, and some
of them fought fiercely : there was firing from the
high altar close by the great crucifix, there was
pouring of stones and hot embers from the convent
roof, there was close fighting with swords in the
cloisters. Notwithstanding the force of the assailants,
the attack lasted till deep night.

The demonstrations of the Government had all
been against the convent ; eai-ly in the attack guards
had been sent, not to disperse the assailants, but to
command all within the convent to lay down their
arms, all laymen to depart fi-om it, and Savonarola
himself to quit the Florentine territory within twelve
hours. Had Savonarola quitted the convent then, he
could hardly have escaped being torn to pieces ; he

220 ROMOLA.

was willing to go, but his friends hindered him. It
was felt to be a great risk even for some laymen of
high name to depart by the garden wall, but among
those who had chosen to do so was Francesco Yalori,
who hoped to raise rescue from without.

And now when it was deep night — when the
struggle could hardly have lasted much longer, and
the Compagnacci might soon have carried their swords
into the library, where Savonarola was praying with
the Brethren who had either not taken up arms
or had laid them down at his command — there
came a second body of guards, commissioned by
the Signoria to demand the persons of Fra Girolamo
and his two coadjutors, Fra Domenico and Fra
Salvestro.

Loud was the roar of triumphant hate when the
light of lanterns showed the Frate issuing from the
door of the convent with a guard who promised him
no other safety than that of the prison. The struggle
now was, who should get first in the stream that
rushed up the narrow street to see the Prophet
carried back in ignominy to the Piazza where he had
braved it yesterday — who should be in the best place
for reaching his ear with insult, nay, if possible,
for smiting him and kicking him. This was not
difficult for some of the armed Compagnacci who
were not prevented from mixing themselves with the
guards.

When Savonarola felt himself dragged and pushed

A MASQUE OF THE FURIES. 221

along in the midst of that hooting multitude ; when
lanterns were lifted to show him deriding faces ; when
he felt himself spat upon, smitten and kicked mth
grossest words of insult, it seemed to him that the
worst bitterness of life was past. If men judged
him guilty, and were bent on having his blood, it
was only death that awaited him. But the worst
drop of bitterness can never be wrung on to our lips
from without : the lowest depth of resignation is not
to be found in martpdom ; it is only to be found
when we have covered our heads in silence and felt,
" I am not worthy to be a martyr : the truth shall
prosper, but not by me."

But that brief imperfect triumph of insulting the
Frate, who had soon disappeared under the doorway
of the Old Palace, was only like the taste of blood
to the tiger. Were there not the houses of the
hypocrite's friends to be sacked ? Already one half
of the armed multitude, too much in the rear to
share greatly in the siege of the convent, had been
employed in the more profitable work of attacking
rich houses, not mth planless desire for plunder,
but with that discriminating selection of such as
belonged to chief Piagnoni, which showed that the
riot was under guidance, and that the rabble with
clubs and staves was well officered by sword-girt
Compagnacci. Was there not — next criminal after
the Frate — the ambitious Francesco Valori, suspected
of wanting with the Frate 's help to make himself a

222 ROMOLA.

Doge or Gonfaloniere for life ? And the grey-liaired
man who, eight months ago, had lifted his arm and
his voice in such ferocious demand for justice on five
of his fellow- citizens, only escaped from San Marco
to experience what others called justice — to see his
house surrounded by an angry, greedy multitude, to
see his wife shot dead with an arrow, and to be him-
self murdered, as he was on his way to answer a
summons to the Palazzo, by the swords of men
named Kidolfi and Tornabuoni.

In this way that Masque of the Furies, called
Kiot, was played on in Florence through the hours
of night and early morning.

But the chief director was not visible : he had his
reasons for issuing his orders from a private retreat,
being of rather too high a name to let his red feather
be seen waving amongst all the work that was to be
done before the dawn. The retreat was the same
house and the same room in a quiet street between
Santa Croce and San Marco, where we have seen Tito
paying a secret visit to Dolfo Spini. Here the captain
of the Compagnacci sat through this memorable
night, receiving visitors who came and went, and
went and came, some of them in the guise of armed
Compagnacci, others dressed obscurely and without
visible arms. There was abundant wine on the table,
with drinking cups for chance comers ; and though
Spini was on his guard against excessive drinking, he
took enough from time to time to heighten the excite-

A MASQUE OF THE FURIES. 223

ment produced by tlie news that was being brought
to him continually.

Among the obscurely dressed visitors Ser Ceccone
was one of the most frequent, and as the hours
advanced towards the morning twilight he had re-
mained as Spini's constant companion, together with
Francesco Cei, who was then in rather careless hiding
in Florence, expecting to have his banishment re-
voked when the Frate's fall had been accomplished.

The tapers had burnt themselves into low shapeless
masses, and holes in the shutters were just marked
by a sombre outward Hght, when Spini, who had
started from his seat and walked up and down with
an angry flush on his face at some talk that had been
going forward with those two unmilitary companions,
burst out —

" The devil spit him ! he shall pay for it, though.
Ha, ha ! the claws shall be down on him when
he little thinks of them. So he was to be the
great man after all ! He's been pretending to chuck
everything towards my cap, as if I were a blind
beggarman, and all the while he's been winking and
filling his own scarsella. I should like to hang skins
about him and set my hounds on him ! And he's
got that fine ruby of mine, I was fool enough to give
him yesterday. Malediction ! And he was laughing
at me in his sleeve two years ago, and spoiling the
best plan that ever was laid. I was a fool for trusting
myself with a rascal who had long-twisted con-

224 EOMOLA.

trivances that nobody could see to tlie end of but
himself."

" A Greek, too, who dropped into Florence with
gems packed about him," said Francesco Cei, who
had a slight smile of amusement on his face at Spini's
fuming. *' You did not choose your confidant very
wisely, my Dolfo."

"He's a cursed deal cleverer than you, Francesco,
and handsomer too," said Spini, turning on his asso-
ciate with a general desire to worry anything that
presented itself.

" I humbly conceive," said Ser Ceccone, " that
Messer Francesco's poetic genius will outweigh "

** Yes, yes, rub your hands ! I hate that notary's
trick of yours," interrupted Spini, whose patronage
consisted largely in this sort of frankness. " But
there comes Taddeo, or somebody : now's the time !
What news, eh ? " he went on, as two Compagnacci
entered with heated looks.

"Bad!" said one. "The people had made up
their minds they were going to have the sacking of
Soderini's house, and now they've been baulked we
shall have them turning on us, if we don't take care.
I suspect there are some Mediceans buzzing about
among them, and we msiy see them attacking your
palace over the bridge before long, unless we can find
a bait for them another way."

"I have it!" said Spini, and seizing Taddeo by
the belt he drew him aside to give him directions.

A MASQUE OF THE FURIES. 225

while the other went on telling Cei how the Signoria
had interfered about Soderini's house.

'' Ecco ! " exclaimed Spini, presently, gi"sdng
Taddeo a slight push towards the door. " Go and
make quick work."

VOL. III.

57

226 EOMOLA.

CHAPTER XXI.

WAITING BY THE EIVER.

About the time when the two Compagnacci went
on their errand, there was another man who, on the
opposite side of the Arno, was also going out into
the chill grey twilight. His errand, apparently,
could have no relation to theirs ; he was making his
way to the hrink of the river at a spot which, though
within the city walls, was overlooked by no dwellings,
and which only seemed the more shrouded and lonely
for the warehouses and granaries which at some
little distance backward turned their shoulders to
the river. There was a sloping width of long grass
and rushes made all the more dank by broad gutters
which here and there emptied themselves into the
Arno.

The gutters and the loneliness were the attraction
that drew this man to come and sit down among the
grass, and bend over the waters that ran swiftly in
the channelled slope at his side. For he had once
had a large piece of bread brought to him by one of
those friendly runlets, and more than once a raw
carrot and apple parings. It was worth while to

WAITING BY THE RIVER. 227

wait for such chances in a place where there was no
one to see, and often in his restless wakefulness he
came to watch here before daybreak; it might save
him for one day the need of that silent begging which
consisted in sitting on a church step or by the way-
side out beyond the Porta San Frediano.

For Baldassarre hated begging so much that he
would perhaps have chosen to die rather than make
even that silent appeal, but for one reason that made
him desii-e to Hve. It was no longer a hope ; it was
only that possibility which clings to every idea that
has taken complete possession of the mind : the
sort of possibility that makes a woman watch on a
headland for the ship which held something dear,
though all her neighbours are certain that the
ship was a wreck long years ago. After he had
come out of the convent hospital, where the monks
of San Miniato had taken care of him as long as he
was helpless ; after he had watched in vain for the
Wife who was to help him, and had begun to think
that she was dead 'of the pestilence that seemed to
fill all the space since the night he parted from her,
he had been unable to conceive any way in which
sacred vengeance could satisfy itself through his arm.
His knife was gone, and he was too feeble in body to
win another by work, too feeble in mind, even if he
had had the knife, to contrive that it should serve
its one purpose. He was a shattered, bewildered,
lonely old man ; yet he desired to live : he waited

57—2

228 ROMOLA.

for something of which he had no distinct vision —
something dim, formless — that startled him, and
made strong pulsations within him, like that unknown
thing which we look for when we start from sleep,
though no voice or touch has waked us. Baldassarre
desired to live ; and therefore he crept out in the
grey light, and seated himself in the long grass,
and watched the waters that had a faint promise in
them.

Meanwhile the Compagnacci were busy at their
work. The formidable bands of armed men, left to
do their will with very little interference from an
embarrassed if not conniving Signoria, had parted
into two masses, but both were soon making their
way by different roads towards the Arno. The
smaller mass was making for the Ponte Kubaconte,
the larger for the Ponte Yecchio; but in both the
same words had passed from mouth to mouth as a
signal, and almost every man of the multitude knew
that he was going to the Via de' Bardi to sack a house
there. If he knew no other reason, could he demand
a better ?

The armed Compagnacci knew something more,
for a brief word of command flies quickly, and the
leaders of the two streams of rabble had a perfect
understanding that they would meet before a certain
house a little towards the eastern end of the Via
de' Bardi, where the master would probably be in bed,
and be surprised in his morning sleep.

WAITING BY THE RIVER. 229

But the master of that house was neither sleeping
nor in hed ; he had not been in bed that night.
For Tito's anxiety to quit Florence had been stimu-
lated by the events of the previous day : investigations
would follow in which appeals might be made to him
delaying his departure ; and in all delay he had an
uneasy sense that there was danger. Falsehood had
prospered and waxed strong ; but it had nourished
the twin life, Fear. He no longer wore his armour,
he was no longer afraid of Baldassarre ; but from the
corpse of that dead fear a spirit had risen — the
undying habit of fear. He felt he should not be
safe till he was out of this fierce, turbid Florence ;
and now he was ready to go. Maso was to deliver
up his house to the new tenant; his horses and
mules were awaiting him in San Gallo ; Tessa and
the children had been lodged for the night in the
Borgo outside the gate, and would be dressed in
readiness to mount the mules and join him. He
descended the stone steps into the court-yard, he
passed through the great doorway, not the same
Tito, but nearly as krilliant as on the day when he
had first entered that house and made the mistake
of falling in love with Romola. The mistake was
remedied now : the old life was cast oif, and was soon
to be far behind him.

He turned with rapid steps towards the Piazza dei
Mozzi, intending to pass over the Ponte Rubaconte ;
but as he went along certain sounds came upon his

230 ROMOLA.

ears that made him turn round and walk yet more
quickly in the opposite direction. Was the mob
coming into Oltrarno? It v/as a vexation, for he
would have preferred the more private road. He
must now go by the Ponte Vecchio ; and unpleasant
sensations made him draw his mantle close round
him, and walk at his utmost speed. There was no
one to see him in that grey twilight. But, before he
reached the end of the Via de' Bardi, like sounds fell
on his ear again, and this time they were much
louder and nearer. Could he have been deceived
before? The mob must be coming over the Ponte
A^ecchio. Again he turned, from an impulse of fear
that was stronger than reflection ; but it w^as only to
be assured that the mob was actually entering the
street from the opposite end. He chose not to go
back to his house : after all, they would not attack
Mm. Still, he had some valuables about him ; and
all things except reason and order are possible with
a mob. But necessity does the work of courage. He
went on towards the Ponte Vecchio, the rush, and the
trampling, and the confused voices getting so loud
before him that he had ceased to hear them behind.

For he had reached the end of the street, and the
crowd pouring from the bridge met him at the turning
and hemmed in his way. He had not time to wonder
at a sudden shout before he felt himself surrounded,
not, in the first instance, by an unarmed rabble, but
by armed Compagnacci ; the next sensation was that

WAITING BY THE RIVER. 231

his cap fell off, and that he was thrust violently for-
ward amongst the rabble, along the narrow passage
of the bridge. Then he distinguished the shouts,
" Piagnone ! Medicean ! Piagnone ! Throw him over
the bridge ! "

His mantle was being torn off him with strong
pulls that would have throttled him if the fibula had
not given way. Then his scarsella was snatched at ;
but aU the while he was being hustled and dragged ;
and the snatch failed — his scarsella still hung at his
side. Shouting, yelling, half-motiveless execration
rang stunningly in his ears, spreading even amongst
those who had not yet seen him, and only knew there
was a man to be reviled. Tito's horrible dread was
that he should be struck down or trampled on before
he reached the open arches that surmount the centre
of the bridge. There was one hope for him, that
they might throw him over before they had wounded
him or beaten the strength out of him; and his
whole soul was absorbed in that one hope and its
obverse terror.

Yes — they were at the arches. In that moment
Tito, with bloodless face and eyes dilated, had one
of the self-preserving inspirations that come in ex-
tremity. With a sudden desperate effort he mastered
the clasp of his belt, and flung belt and scarsella
forward towards a yard of clear space against the
parapet, crying in a ringing voice, —

" There are diamonds ! there is gold ! "

232 ROMOLA.

In the instant the hold on him was relaxed, and
there was a rush towards the scar sella. He threw
himself on the parapet with a desperate leap, and the
next moment plunged — plunged with a great plash
into the dark river far below.

It was his chance of salvation ; and it was a good
chance. His life had been saved once before by his
fine swimming, and as he rose to the surface again
after his long dive he had a sense of deliverance.
He struck out with all the energy of his strong prime,
and the current helped him. If he could only swim
beyond the Ponte alia Carrara he might land in a
remote part of the city, and even yet reach San Gallo.
Life ,was still before him. And the idiot mob, shout-
ing and bellowing on the bridge there, would think
he was drowned.

They did think so. Peering over the parapet along
the dark stream, tjaey could not see afar off the
moving blackness of the floating hair, and the velvet
tunic-sleeves.

It was only from the other way that a pale olive
face could be seen looking white above the dark
water : a face not easy even for the indifferent to
forget, with its square forehead, the long low arch of
the eyebrows, and the long lustrous agate-like eyes.
Onward the face went on the dark current, with
inflated quivering nostrils, with the blue veins dis-
tended on the temples. One bridge was passed — the
bridge of Santa Trinity. Should he risk landing

WAITING BY THE RIVER. 233

now rather than trust to his strength ? No. He
heard, or fancied he heard, yells and cries pursuing
Mm. Terror pressed him most from the side of his
fellow-men : he was less afraid of indefinite chances,
and he swam on, panting and straining. He was not
so fresh as he would have been if he had passed the
night in sleep.

Yet the next bridge — the last bridge — was passed.
He was conscious of it ; but in that tumult of his
blood, he could only feel vaguely that he was safe and
might land. But where ? The current was having
its way with him : he hardly knew where he was :
exhaustion was bringing on the dreamy state that
precedes unconsciousness.

But now there were eyes that discerned him — aged
eyes, strong for the distance. Baldassarre, looking
up blankly from the search in the runlet that brought
him nothing, had seen a white object coming along
the broader stream. Could that be any fortunate
chance for him ? He looked and looked till the object
gathered form : then he leaned forward T^ith a start
as he sat among the rank green stems, and his eyes
seemed to be filled with a new light. Yet he only
watched — motionless. Something was being brought
to him.

The next instant a man's body was cast violently
on the grass two yards fi*om him, and he started for-
ward like a panther, clutching the velvet tunic as he fell
forward on the body and flashed a look in the man's face.

234 ROMOLA.

Dead — was lie dead ? The eyes were rigid. But
no, it could not be — justice had brought him. Men
looked dead sometimes, and yet the life came back
into them. Baldassarre did not feel feeble in that
moment. He knew just what he could do. He got
his large fingers within the neck of the tunic and held
them there, kneeling on one knee beside the body and
watching the face. There was a fierce hope in his
heart, but it was mixed with trembling. In his eyes
there was only fierceness : all the slow-burning
remnant of life within him seemed to have leaped
into flame.

Rigid — rigid still. Those eyes with the half-fallen
lids were locked against vengeance. Could it be that
he was dead ? There was nothing to measure the
time : it seemed long enough for hope to freeze into
despair.

Surely at last the eyelids were quivering : the eyes
were no longer rigid. There was a vibrating light in
them — they opened wide.

*' Ah, yes ! You see me — you know me ! "

Tito knew him ; but he did not know whether it
was life or death that had brought him into the pre-
sence of his injured father. It might be death — and
death might mean this chill gloom with the face of
the hideous past hanging over him for ever.

But now Baldassarre's only dread was, lest the
young limbs should escape him. He pressed his
knuckles against the round throat, and knelt upon

WAITING BY THE RIVER. 235

the chest with all the force of his aged frame. Let
death come now !

Again he kept his watch on the face. And when
the eyes were rigid again, he dared not trust them.
He would never loose his hold till some one came
and found them. Justice would send some witness,
and then he, Baldassarre, would declare that he had
killed this traitor, to whom he had once been a father.
They would perhaps believe him now, and then he
would be content with the struggle of justice on earth
— then he would desire to die with his hold on this
body, and follow the traitor to hell that he might
clutch him there.

And so he knelt, and so he pressed his knuckles
against the round throat, without trusting to the
seeming death, till the light got strong, and he could
kneel no longer. Then he sat on the body, still
clutching the neck of the tunic. But the hours went
on, and no witness came. No eyes descried afar off
the two human bodies among the tall grass by the
river-side. Florence was busy with greater affairs,
and the preparation of a deeper tragedy.

Not long after those two bodies were lying in the
grass, Savonarola was being tortured, and crying out
in his agony, " I will confess ! "

It was not until the sun was westward that a waggon
drawn by a mild grey ox came to the edge of the
grassy margin, and as the man who led it was leaning
to gather up the round stones that lay heaped in

236 ROMOLA.

readiness to be carried away, lie detected some startling
object in the grass. The aged man had fallen forward,
and his dead clutch was on the garment of the other.
It was not possible to separate them : nay, it was
better to put them into the waggon and carry them as
they were into the great Piazza, that notice might be
given to the Eight.

As the waggon entered the frequented streets there
was a growing crowd escorting it with its strange
burden. No one knew the bodies for a long while,
for the aged face had fallen forward, half hiding the
younger. But before they had been moved out of
sight, they had been recognized.

"I know that old man," Piero di Cosimo had
testified. "I painted his likeness once. He is the
prisoner who clutched Melema on the steps of the
Duomo."

" He is perhaps the same old man who appeared at
supper in my gardens," said Bernardo Rucellai, one
of the Eight. " I had forgotten him — I thought he
had died in prison. But there is no knomng the
truth now."

Who shall put his finger on the work of justice,
and say, *' It is there ? " Justice is like the kingdom
of God — it is not without us as a fact, it is within us
as a great yearning.

237

CHAPTER XXII.

ROMOLA'S WAKING.

RoMOLA in her boat passed from dreaming into long
deep sleep, and then again from deep sleep into busy
dreaming, till at last she felt herself stretching out
her arms in the court of the Bargello, where the
flickering flames of the tapers seemed to get stronger
and stronger till the dark scene was blotted out with
light. Her eyes opened, and she saw it was the light
of morning. Her boat was lying still in a little
creek ; on her right hand lay the speckless sapphire-
blue of the Mediterranean ; on her left one of those
scenes which were and still are repeated again and
again, like a sweet rhythm, on the shores of that
loveliest sea.

In a deep curve of the mountains lay a breadth of
green land, curtained by gentle tree-shadowed slopes
leaning towards the rocky heights. Up these slopes
might be seen here and there, gleaming between the
tree-tops, a pathway leading to a little irregular mass
of building that seemed to have clambered in a hasty
way up the mountain-side, and taken a difScult stand

238 ROMOLA.

there for the sake of showing the tall belfrj as a sight
of beauty to the scattered and clustered houses of the
village below. The rays of the newly-risen sun fell
obliquely on the westward horn of this crescent-
shaped nook: all else lay in dewy shadow. No
sound came across the stillness ; the very waters
seemed to have curved themselves there for rest.

The delicious sun-rays fell on Romola and thrilled
her gently like a caress. She lay motionless, hardly
watching the scene ; rather, feeling simply the pre-
sence of peace and beauty. While we are still in our
youth there can always come, in our early waking,
moments when mere passive existence is itself a
Lethe, when the exquisiteness of subtle indefinite
sensation creates a bliss \N^ich is without memory and
without desire. As the soft warmth penetrated
Romola's young limbs, as her eyes rested on this
sequestered luxuriance, it seemed that the agitating
past had glided away like that dark scene in the
Bargello, and that the afternoon dreams of her girl-
hood had really come back to her. For a minute or
two the oblivion was untroubled ; she did not even
think that she could rest here for ever, she only felt
that she rested. Then she became distinctly con-
scious that she was lying in the boat which had been
bearing her over the waters all through the night.
Instead of bringing her to death, it had been the
gently lulling cradle of a new life. And in spite of
her evening despair she was glad that the morning

ROMOLA'S WAKING. 239

had come to her again : glad to think that she was
resting in the familiar sunlight rather than in the
unknown regions of death. Could she not rest here ?
No sound from Florence would reach her. Already
oblivion was troubled ; from behind the golden haze
were piercing domes and towers and walls, parted
by a river and enclosed by the green hills.

She rose from her reclining posture and sat up in
the boat, willing, if she could, to resist the rush of
thoughts that urged themselves along with the con-
jecture how far the boat had carried her. Why need
she mind ? This was a sheltered nook where there
were simple villagers who would not harm her. For
a little while, at least, she might rest and resolve on
nothing. Presently she would go and get some
bread and milk, and then she would nestle in the
green quiet, and feel that there w^as a pause in her
life. She turned to watch the crescent-shaped valley,
that she might get back the soothing sense of peace
and beauty which she had felt in her first waking.

She had not been in this attitude of contemplation
more than a few minutes when across the stillness
there came a piercing cry ; not a brief cry, but con-
tinuous and more and more intense. Romola felt
sure it was the cry of a little child in distress that no
one came to help. She started up and put one foot
on the side of the boat ready to leap on to the beach ;
but she paused there and listened : the mother of the
child must be near, the cry must soon cease. But it

240 ROMOLA.

went on, and drew Romola so irresistibly, seeming
the more piteous to her for the sense of peace which
had preceded it, that she jumped on to the beach and
walked many paces before she knew what direction
she would take. The cry, she thought, came from
some rough garden growth many yards on her right
hand, where she saw a half-ruined hovel. She
climbed over a low broken stone fence, and made her
way across patches of weedy green crops and ripe but
neglected corn. The cry grew plainer, and, convinced
that she was right, she hastened towards the hovel ;
but even in that hurried walk she felt an oppressive
change in the air as she left the sea behind. Was
there some taint lurking amongst the green luxuriance
that had seemed such an inviting shelter from the heat
of the coming day? She could see the opening into the
hovel now, and the cry was darting through her like
a pain. The next moment her foot was within the
doorway, but the sight she beheld in the sombre hght
arrested her with a shock of awe and horror. On
the straw, with which the floor was scattered, lay
three dead bodies, one of a tall man, one of a girl
about eight years old, and one of a young woman
whose long black hair was being clutched and pulled
by a living child — the child that was sending forth
the piercing cry. Romola's experience in the haunts
of death and disease made thought and action prompt:
she lifted the little living child, and in trying to
soothe it on her bosom, still bent to look at the bodies

romola's waking. 241

and see if they were really dead. The strongly
marked type of race in their features and their
peculiar garb made her conjecture that they were
Spanish or Portuguese Jews, who had perhaps been
put ashore and abandoned there by rapacious sailors,
to whom their property remained as a prey. Such
things were happening continually to Jews compelled
to abandon their homes by the Inquisition : the
cruelty of greed thrust them from the sea, and the
cruelty of superstition thrust them back to it.

"But, surely," thought Romola, "I shall find some
woman in the village whose mother's heart will not
let her refuse to tend this helpless child — if the real
mother is indeed dead."

This doubt remained, because while the man and
girl looked emaciated and also showed signs of having
been long dead, the woman seemed to have been har-
dier, and had not quite lost the robustness of her
form. Romola, kneeling, was about to lay her hand
on the heart ; but as she lifted the piece of yellow
woollen drapery that lay across the bosom, she saw
the purple spots which marked the familiar pesti-
lence. Then it struck her that if the villagers knew
of this, she might have more difficulty than she had
expected in getting help from them; they would
perhaps shrink from her with that child in her arms.
But she had money to offer them, and they would not
refuse to give her some goats' milk in exchange for it.

She set out at once towards the village, her mind
VOL. IIT. 58

242 ROMOLA.

filled now with the effort to soothe the little dark
creature, and with wondering how she should win
some woman to be good to it. She could not help
hoping a little in a certain awe she had observed her-
self to inspire, when she appeared, unknown and
unexpected, in her religious dress. As she passed
across a breadth of cultivated ground, she noticed,
with wonder, that little patches of corn mingled
with the other crops had been left to over-ripeness
■untouched by the sickle, and that golden apples and
dark figs lay rotting on the weedy ground. There
were grassy spaces within sight, but no cow, or
sheep, or goat. The stillness began to have some-
thing fearful in it to Romola; she hurried along
towards the thickest cluster of houses, where there
would be the most life to appeal to on behalf of the
helpless life she carried in her arms. But she had
picked up two figs, and bit little pieces from the
sweet pulp to still the child with.

She entered between two lines of dwellings. It
was time that villagers should have been stirring
long ago, but not a soul was in sight. The air
was becoming more and more oppressive, laden, it
seemed, w^ith some horrible impurity. There was a
door open ; she looked in, and saw grim emptiness.
Another open door ; and through that she saw a man
lying dead with all his garments on, his head lying
athwart a spade handle, and an earthenware cruse in
his hand, as if he had fallen suddenly.

romola's waking. 243

Romola felt horror taking possession of her. Was
she in a village of the unburied dead? She wanted
to listen if there were any faint sound, but the child
cried out afresh when she ceased to feed it, and the
cry filled her ears. At last she saw a figure crawl-
ing slowly out of a house, and soon sinking back in
a sitting posture against the wall. She hastened
towards the figure ; it was a young woman in fevered
anguish, and she, too, held a pitcher in her hand
As Romola approached her she did not start; the
one need was too absorbing for any other idea to
impress itself on her.

" Water! get. me water!" she said, with a moan-
ing utterance.

Romola stooped to take the pitcher, and said gently
in her ear, " You shall have water ; can you point
towards the well ? "

The hand w^as lifted towards the more distant end
of the little street, and Romola set off at once with as
much speed as she could use under the difficulty of
carrying the pitcher as well as feeding the child.
But the little one was getting more content as the
morsels of sweet pulp were repeated, and ceased to
distress her with its cry, so that she could give a less
distracted attention to the objects around her.

The well lay twenty yards or more beyond the
end of the street, and as Romola was approaching it
her eyes were directed to the opposite green slope
immediately below the church. High up, on a patch

58—2

244 ROMOLA.

of grass between the trees, she had descried a cow
and a couple of goats., and she tried to trace a hne of
path that would lead her close to that cheering sight,
when once she had done her errand to the well.
Occupied in this way, she was not aware that she
was very near the well, and that some one approach-
ing it on the other side had fixed a pair of astonished
eyes upon her.

Romola certainly presented a sight which, at that
moment and in that place, could hardly have been
seen without some pausing and palpitation. With
her gaze fixed intently on the distant slope, the long
lines of her thick grey garment giving a gliding cha-
racter to her rapid walk, her hair rolling backward
and illuminated on the left side by the sun-rays, the
little olive baby on her right arm now looking out
with jet black eyes, she might w^ell startle that youth
of fifteen, accustomed to swing the censer in the pre-
sence of a Madonna less fair and marvellous than
this.

" She carries a pitcher in her hand — to fetch water
for the sick. It is the Holy Mother, come to take
care of the people who have the pestilence."

It w^as a sight of awe : she would, perhaps, be
angry with those who fetched water for themselves
t only. The youth flung down his vessel in terror,
and Romola, aware now of some one near her, saw
the black and white figure fly as if for dear life
towards the slope she had just been contemplating.

ROMOLA'S WAKING. 245

But remembering the parched sufferer, she half filled
her pitcher quickly and hastened back.

Entering the house to look for a small cup, she
saw salt meat and meal ; there were no signs of want
in the dwellino;. With nimble movement she seated
baby on the ground, and lifted a cup of water
to the sufferer, who drank eagerly and then closed
her eyes and leaned her head backward, seeming to
give herself up to the sense of relief. Presently
she opened her eyes, and, looking at Romola, said
languidly, —

" Who are you?"

" I came over the sea," said Romola. " I only
came this morning. Are all the people dead in these
houses?"

" I think they are all ill now — all that are not dead.
My father and my sister lie dead upstairs, and there
is no one to bury them : and soon I shall die."

" Not so, I hope," said Romola. " I am come to
take care of you. I am used to the pestilence ; I am
not afraid. But there must be some left who are not
ill. I saw a youth running towards the mountain
when I went to the well."

" I cannot tell. W hen the pestilence came, a great
many people went away, and drove off the cows and
goats. Give me more water ! "

Romola, suspecting that if she followed the direc-
tion of the youth's flight, she should find some men
and women who were still healthy and able, deter-

246 ROMOLA.

mined to seek them out at once, that she might at
least win them to take care of the child, and leave
her free to come hack and see how many living
needed help, and how many dead needed burial.
She trusted to her powers of persuasion to conquer
the aid of the timorous, when once she knew what
w^as to be done.

Promising the sick woman to come back to her,
she lifted the dark bantling again, and set off towards
the slope. She felt no burthen of choice on her now,
no longing for death. She was thinking how she
would go to the other sufferers, as she had gone to
that fevered woman.

But, with the child on her arm, it was not so easy to
her as usual to walk up a slope, and it seemed a long
while before the winding path took her near the cow
and the goats. She was beginning herself to feel
faint from heat, hunger, and thirst, and as she reached
a double turning, she paused to consider whether she
would not wait near the cow, w^hich some one was
likely to come and milk soon, rather than toil up to
the church before she had taken any rest. Raising
her eyes to measure the steep distance, she saw
peeping between the boughs, not more than five
yards off, a broad round face, watching her atten-
tively, and low.er down the black skirt of a priest's
garment, and a hand grasping a bucket. She stood
mutely observing, and the face, too, remained motion-
less. Romola had often witnessed the overpowering

romola's waking. 247

force of dread in cases of pestilence, and she was
cautious.

Raising her voice in a tone of gentle pleading, she
said, " I came over the sea. I am hungry, and so
is the child. Will you not give us some milk ? "

Romola had divined part of the truth, but she had
not divined that preoccupation of the priest's mind
which charged her Avords with a strange significance.
Only a little while ago, the young acolyte had brought
word to the Padre that he had seen the Holy Mother
with the Babe, fetching water for the sick : she w^as
as tall as the cypresses, and had a light about her
head, and she looked up at the church. The pie-
vano* had not listened with entire belief : he had been
more than fifty years in the w^orld without having
any vision of the Madonna, and he thought the boy
might have misinterpreted the unexpected appearance
of a villager. But he had been made uneasy, and
before venturing to come down and milk his cow, he
had repeated many aves. The pievano's conscience
tormented him a little : he trembled at the pestilence,
but he also trembled at the thought of the mild-faced
Mother, conscious that that Invisible Mercy might
demand something more of him than prayers and
" Hails." In this state of mind — unable to banish
the image the boy had raised of the Mother with the
glory about her tending the sick — the pievano had
come down to milk his cow, and had suddenly caught

* Parish priest.

248 ROMOLA.

sight of Romola pausing at the parted way. Her
pleading words, with their strange refinement of tone
and accent, instead of being explanatory, had a pre-
ternatural sound for him. Yet he did not quite
believe he saw the Holy Mother : he was in a state
of alarmed hesitation. If anything miraculous were
happening, he felt there was no strong presumption
that the miracle would be in his favour. He dared
not run away; he dared not advance.

^' Come down," said Romola, after a pause. " Do
not fear. Fear rather to deny food to the hungry
when they ask you."

A moment after the boughs were parted, and the
complete figure of a thick-set priest, with a broad,
harmless face, his black frock much worn and soiled,
stood, bucket in hand, looking at her timidly, and
still keeping aloof as he took the path towards the
cow in silence.

Romola followed him and watched him without
speaking again, as he seated himself against the
tethered cow, and, when he had nervously drawn
some milk, gave it to her in a brass cup he carried
with him in the bucket. As Romola put the cup to
the lips of the eager child, and afterwards drank some
milk herself, the Padre observed her from his wooden
stool with a timidity that changed its character a
little. He recognized the Hebrew baby, he was
certain that he had a substantial woman before him;,
but there was still somethino; strani^e and unaccount-

ROMOLA'S WAKING. 249

able in Romola's presence in this spot, and the Padre
had a presentiment that things were going to change
with him. Moreover^ that Hebrew baby was terribly
associated with the dread of pestilence.

Nevertheless, when Romola smiled at the little one
sucking its own milky lips, and stretched out the
brass cup again, saying, " Give us more, good father,"
he obeyed less nervously than before.

Romola, on her side, was not unobservant; and
when the second supply of milk had been drunk, she
looked down at the round-headed man, and said with
mild decision,

"And now tell me, father, how this pestilence
came, and why you let your people die without the
sacraments, and lie unburied. For I am come over
the sea to help those who are left alive — and you,
too, will help them now."

He told her the story of the pestilence : and while
he was telling it, the youth, who had fled before, had
come peeping and advancing gradually, till at last
he stood and watched the scene from behind a neigh-
bouring bush.

Three families of Jews, twenty souls in all, had
been put ashore many weeks ago, some of them
already ill of the pestilence. The villagers, said the
priest, had of course refused to give shelter to the
miscreants, otherwise than in a distant hovel, and
under heaps of straw. But when the strangers had
died of the plague, and some of the people had thrown

250 ROMOLA.

the bodies into the sea, the sea had brought them
back again in a great storm, and everybody was
smitten with terror. A grave was dug, and the
bodies were buried ; but then the pestilence attacked
the Christians, and the greater number of the vil-
lagers w^ent away over the mountain, driving away
their few cattle, and carrying provisions. The priest
had not fled; he had stayed and prayed for the
people, and he had prevailed on the youth Jacopo to
stay with him ; but he confessed that a mortal terror
of the plague had taken hold of him, and he had not
dared to go down into the valley.

" You will fear no longer, father," said Romola, in
a tone of encouraging authority ; " you will come
down with me, and we will see who is living, and we
will look for the dead to bury them. I have walked
about for months where the pestilence was, and see, I
am strong. Jacopo will come with us," she added,
motioning to the peeping lad, who came slowly from
behind his defensive bush, as if invisible threads were
dragging him.

"Come, Jacopo," said Romola again, smiling at
him, " you will carry the child for me. " See ! your
arms are strong, and I am tired."

That was a dreadful proposal to Jacopo, and to the
priest also ; but they were both under a peculiar in-
fluence forcing them to obey. The suspicion that
Romola was a supernatural form was dissipated, but
their minds were filled instead with the more efiective

romola's waking. 251

sense that she was a human being whom God had
sent over the sea to command them.

" Now we will carry down the milk," said Romola,
" and see if any one wants it."

So they went all together down the slope, and that
morning the sufferers saw help come to them in
their despair. There were hardly more than a score
alive in the whole valley ; but all of these were com-
forted, most were saved, and the dead were buried.

In this way days, weeks, and months passed with
Romola till the men were digging and sowing again,
till the women smiled at her as they carried their
great vases on their heads to the well, and the
Hebrew baby was a tottering tumbling Christian,
Benedetto by name, having been baptized in the
church on the mountain side. But by that time she
herself was suffering from the fatigue and languor
that must come after a continuous strain on mind and
body. She had taken for her dwelling one of the
houses abandoned by their owners, standing a little
aloof from the village street; and here on a thick
heap of clean straw — a delicious bed for those who do
not dream of down — she felt glad to lie still through
most of the daylight hours, taken care of along with
the little Benedetto by a woman whom the pestilence
had widowed.

Every day the Padre and Jacopo and the small
flock of surviving villagers paid their visit to this
cottage to see the blessed Lady, and to bring her of

252 EOMOLA.

their best as an offering — honey, fresh cakes, eggs,
and polenta. It was a sight they could none of them
forget, a sight they all told of in their old age — how
the sweet and sainted lady with her fair face, her
golden hair, and her brown eyes that had a blessing
in them, lay weary with her labours after she had
been sent over the sea to help them in their extremity,
and how the queer little black Benedetto used to
crawl about the straw by her side and want every-
thing that was brought to her, and she always gave
him a bit of what she took, and told them if they
loved her they must be good to Benedetto.

Many legends were afterwards told in that valley
about the blessed Lady who came over the sea, but
they were legends by which all who heard might
know that in times gone by a woman had done beau-
tiful loving deeds there, rescuing those who were
ready to perish.

253

CHAPTER XXIII.

HOMEWARD.

In those silent wintry hours when Romola lay resting
from her weariness, her mind, travelling back over the
past, and gazing across the undefined distance of the
future, saw all objects from a new position. Her
experience since the moment of her waking in the
boat had come to her with as strong an effect as that
of the fresh seal on the dissolving wax. She had
felt herself without bonds, without motive ; sinking
in mere egoistic complaining that life could bring her
no content ; feeling a right to say, " I am tired of
life; I want to die." That thought had sobbed
within her as she fell asleep, but from the moment
after her waking when the cry had drawn her, she
had not even reflected, as she used to do in Florence,
that she was glad to live because she could lighten
sorrow — she had simply lived, with so energetic an
impulse to share the life around her, to answer the
call of need and do the work which cried aloud to be
done, that the reasons for living, enduring, labouring,
never took the form of argument.

254 KOMOLA.

The experience was like a new baptism to Romola.
In Florence the simpler relations of the human being
to his fellow-men had been complicated for her with
all the special ties of marriage, the State, and religious
discipleship, and when these had disappointed her
trust the shock seemed to have shaken her aloof from
life and stunned her sympathy. But now she said,
"It was mere baseness in me to desire death. If
everything else is doubtful, this suffering that I can
help is certain ; if the glory of the cross is an illusion,
the sorrow is only the truer. While the strength is
in my arm I will stretch it out to the fainting ; while
the light visits my eyes they shall seek the forsaken."

And then the past arose with a fresh appeal to her.
Her work in this green valley was done, and the
emotions that were disengaged from the people im-
mediately around her rushed back into the old deep
channels of use and affection. That rare possibility
of self-contemplation which comes in any complete
severance from our wonted life made her judge her-
self as she had never done before : the compunction
which is inseparable from a sympathetic nature
keenly alive to the possible experience of others,
began to stir in her with growing force. She ques-
tioned the justness of her own conclusions, of her
own deeds : she had been rash, arrogant, always dis-
satisfied that others were not good enough, while she
herself had not been true to what her soul had
once recognized as the best. She began to condemn

HOMEWARD. 255

her flight : after all, it had been cowardly self-care ;
the grounds on which Savonarola had once taken her
back were truer, deeper than the grounds she had
had for her second flight. How could she feel the
needs of others and not feel above all the needs of
the nearest?

But then came reaction against such self-reproach.
The memory of her life with Tito, of the conditions
which made their real union impossible, while their
external union imposed a set of false duties on her
which were essentially the concealment and sanction-
ing of what her mind revolted from, told her that
flight had been her only resource. All minds,
except such as are delivered from doubt by dulness
of sensibility, must be subject to this recurring
conflict where the many-twisted conditions of life
have forbidden the fulfilment of a bond. For in
strictness there is no replacing of relations : the
presence of the new does not nullify the failure
and breach of the old. Life has lost its perfection :
it has been maimed; and until the wounds are
quite scarred, conscience continually casts backward
doubting glances.

Romola shrank with dread from the renewal of her
proximity to Tito, and yet she was uneasy that she
had put herself out of reach of knowing what was
his fate — uneasy that the moment might yet come
when he would be in misery and need her. There
was still a thread of pain within her, testifying to

256 EOMOLA.

those words of Fra Girolamo, that she could not
cease to be a wife. Could anything utterly cease for
her that had once mingled itself with the current of
her heart's blood ?

Florence, and all her life there, had come back to
her like hunger ; her feelings could not go wandering
after the possible and the vague : their living fibre
was fed with the memory of familiar things. And
the thoup'ht that she had divided herself from them
for ever became more and more importunate in these
hours that were unfilled with action. What if Fra
Girolamo had been wrong? What if the life of
Florence was a web of inconsistencies ? Was she,
then, something higher, that she should shake the
dust from off* her feet, and say, " This world is not
good enough for me ? " If she had been really
higher, she would not so easily have lost all her
trust.

Her indignant grief for her godfather had no
longer complete possession of her, and her sense of
debt to Savonarola was recovering predominance.
Nothing that had come, or was to come, could do
away with the fact that there had been a great inspi-
ration in him which had waked a new life in her.
Who, in all her experience, could demand the same
gratitude from her as he ? His errors — might they
not bring calamities ?

She could not rest. She hardly knew whether it
was her strength returning with the budding leaves

HOMEWARD. 257

that made her active again, or whether it was her
eager longing to get nearer Florence. She did not
imagine herself daring to enter Florence, but the
desire to be near enough to learn what was hap-
pening there urged itself with a strength that
excluded all other purposes.

And one March morning the people in the valley
were gathered together to see the blessed Lady
depart. Jacopo had fetched a mule for her, and was
going with her over the mountains. The Padre, too,
was going with her to the nearest town, that lie
might help her in learning the safest way by which
she might get to Pistoja. Her store of trinkets and
money, untouched in this valley, was abundant for
her needs.

If Romola had been less drawn by the longing
that was taking her away, it would have been a hard
moment for her when she walked alonor the villaofe
street for the last time, while the Padre and Jacopo,
with the mule, were awaiting her near the well. Her
steps w^ere hindered by the wailing people, who knelt
and kissed her hands, then clung to her skirts and
kissed the grey folds, crying, " Ah, why will you go,
when the good season is beginning and the crops will
be plentiful ? Why will you go ? "

" Do not be sorry," said Romola, " you are well
now, and I shall remember you. I must go and see
if my own people want me."

" Ah, yes, if they have the pestilence ! "

VOL. III. 59

258 ROMOLA.

" Look at us again, Madonna ! "

" Yes, yes, we will be good to tlie little Bene-
detto!"

At last Romola mounted her mule, but a vigorous
screaming from Benedetto as be saw her turn from
him in this new position, was an excuse for all the
people to follow her and insist that he must ride on
the mule's neck to the foot of the slope.

The parting must come at last, but as Romola
turned continually before she passed out of sight,
she saw the little flock lincrerinff to catch the last
waving of her hand.

259

CHAPTER XXIV.

MEETING AGAIN.

On the fourteenth of April Romola was once more
within the walls of Florence. Unable to rest at
Pistoja, where contradictory reports reached her
about the Trial by Fire, she had gone on to Prato ;
and was beginning to think that she should be drawn
on to Florence in spite of dread, when she encoun-
tered that monk of San Spirito who had been her
godfather's confessor. From him she learned the
full story of Savonarola's arrest, and of her hus-
band's death. This Angustinian monk had been
in the stream, of people who had followed the
waggon with its awful burthen into the Piazza, and
he could tell her what was generally known in
Florence — that Tito had escaped from an assaulting
mob by leaping into the Arno, but had been mur-
dered on the bank by an old man who had long had
an enmity against him. But Romola understood the
catastrophe as no one else did. Of Savonarola the
monk told her, in that tone of unfavourable prejudice
which was usual in the Black Brethren (Frati Neri)
towards the brother who showed white under his

59—2

260 ROMOLA.

black, that he had confessed himself a deceiver of
the people.

Romola paused no longer. That evening she was
in Florence, sitting in agitated silence under the
exclamations of joy and wailing, mingled with
exuberant narrative, which were poured into her
ears by Monna Brigida, who had retrograded to
false hair in Romola's absence, but now drew it off
again and declared she would not mind being grey,
if her dear child would stay with her.

Komola was too deeply moved by the main events
which she had known before coming to Florence, to
be wrought upon by the doubtful gossiping details
added in Brigida's narrative. The tragedy of her
husband's death, of Fra Girolamo's confession of
duplicity under the coercion of torture, left her
hardly any power of apprehending minor circum-
stances. All the mental activity she could exert
under that load of awe-stricken grief, was absorbed
by two purposes which must supersede every other ;
to try and see Savonarola, and to learn what had
become of Tessa and the children.

" Tell me, cousin," she said abruptly, when Monna
Brigida's tongue had run quite away from troubles
into projects of Romola's living with her, " has any-
thing been seen or said since Tito's death of a young
woman with two little children ?"

Brigida started, rounded her eyes, and lifted up
her hands.

MEETING AGAIN. 261

*' Cristo ! no. What ! was he so bad as that, my
poor child? Ah, then, that was why you went
away, and left me word only that you went of your
own free will. Well, well; if I'd known that,
I shouldn't have thought you so strange and flighty.
For I did say to myself, though I didn't tell anybody
else, * What was she to go away from her husband
for, leaving him to mischief, only because they cut
poor Bernardo's head off? She's got her father's
temper,' I said, 'that's what it is.' Well, well; never
scold me, child : Bardo was fierce, you can't deny it.
But if you had only told me the truth, that there was
a young hussey and children, I should have under-
stood it all. Anything seen or said of her ? No ;
and the less the better. They say enough of ill
about him without that. But since that was the
reason you went "

" No, dear cousin," said Romola, interrupting her
earnestly, "pray do not talk so. I wish above all
things to find that young woman and her children,
and to take care of them. They are quite helpless.
Say nothing against it ; that is the thing I shall do
first of all."

" Well," said Monna Brigida, shrugging her
shoulders and lowering her voice with an air of puzzled
discomfiture, " if that's being a Piagnone, I've been
taking peas for paternosters. Why, Fra Girolamo
said as good as that widows ought not to marry
again. Step in at the door and it's a sin and a

262 ROMOLA.

shame, it seems; but come down the chimney and
you're welcome. Two children — Santiddio!"

" Cousin, the poor thing has done no conscious
wrong : she is ignorant of everything. I will tell
you — but not now."

Early the next morning Romola's steps were
directed to the house beyond San Ambrogio where
she had once found Tessa; but it was as she had
feared : Tessa was gone. Romola conjectured that
Tito had sent her away beforehand to some spot
where he had intended to join her, for she did not
believe that he would willingly part with those
children. It was a painful conjecture, because, if
Tessa were out of Florence, there was hardly a
chance of finding .her, and Romola pictured the
childish creature waiting and waiting at some way-
side spot in wondering helpless misery. Those who
lived near could tell her nothing except that old deaf
Lisa had gone away a week ago with her goods, but
no one knew where Tessa had gone. Romola saw
no further active search open to her ; for she had no
knowledge that could serve as a starting-point for
inquiry, and not only her innate reserve but a more
noble sensitiveness made her shrink from assuming
an attitude of generosity in the eyes of others by
publishing Tessa's relation to Tito along with her
own desire to find her. Many days passed in
anxious inaction. Even under strong solicitation
from other thoughts Romola found her heart palpi-

MEETING AGAIN. 263

tating if she caught sight of a pair of round brown
legs, or of a short woman in the contadina dress.

She never for a moment told herself that it was
heroism or exalted charity in her to seek these
beings; she needed something that she was bound
specially to care for ; she yearned to clasp the
children and to make them love her. This at least
would be some sweet result, for others as well as
herself, from all her past sorrow. It appeared there
was much property of Tito's to which she had a
claim ; but she distrusted the cleanness of that
money, and she had determined to make it all over
to the State, except so much as was equal to the
price of her father's library. This would be enough
for the modest support of Tessa and the children.
But Monna Brigida threw such planning into the
background by clamorously insisting that Romola
must live with her and never forsake her till she had
seen her safe in paradise — else why had she per-
suaded her to turn Pia^none? — and if Romola
wanted to rear other people's children, she, Monna
Brigida, must rear them too. Only they must be
found first.

Romola felt the full force of that innuendo. But
strong feeling unsatisfied is never without its super-
stition, either of hope or despair. Roraola's w^as the
superstition of hope : somehow she was to find that
mother and the children. And at last another direc-
tion for active inquiry suggested itself. She learned

264 ROMOLA.

that Tito had provided horses and mules to await
him in San Gallo ; he was therefore going to leave
Florence by the gate of San Gallo, and she deter-
mined, though without much confidence in the issue,
to try and ascertain from the gate-keepers if they
had observed any one corresponding to the descrip-
tion of Tessa, with her children, to have passed the
gates before the morning of the ninth of April.
Walking along the Via San Gallo, and looking
watchfully about her through her long widow's veil,
lest she should miss any object that might aid her,
she descried Bratti chaffering -with a customer. That
roaming man, she thought, might aid her : she would
not mind talking of Tessa to him. But as she put
aside her veil and crossed the street towards him,
she saw something hanging from the corner of his
basket which made her heart leap with a much
stronger hope.

^'Bratti, my friend,*' she said abruptly, "where did
you get that necklace ? "

"Your servant, madonna," said Bratti, looking
round at her very deliberately, his mind not being
subject to surprise. " It's a necklace w^orth money,
but I shall get little by it, for my heart's too tender
for a trader's ; I have promised to keep it in pledge."

" Pray tell me w^here you got it : — from a little
woman named Tessa, is it not true ? "

" Ah ! if you know her," said Bratti, " and would
redeem it of me at a small profit, and give it her

MEETING AGAIN. 265

again, you'd be doing a charity, for she cried at
parting with it — you'd have thought she was running
into a brook. It's a small profit I'll charge you.
You shall have it for a florin, for I don't like to be
hard-hearted."

" Where is she ? " said Romola, giving him the
money, and unclasping the necklace from the basket
in joyful agitation.

" Outside the gate there, at the other end of the
Borgo, at old Sibilla Manetti's : anybody will tell you
which is the house."

Romola went alon^: with winfjed feet, blessincr that
incident of the Carnival which had made her learn
by heart the appearance of this necklace. Soon she
was at the house she sought. The young woman
and the children were in the inner room — were to
have been fetched away a fortnight ago and more
— had no money, only their clothes, to pay a poor
widow with for their food and lodging. But since

madonna knew them Romola waited to hear no

more, but opened the door.

Tessa was seated on the low bed : her crying had
passed into tearless sobs, and she was looking with
sad blank eyes at the two children, who were play-
ing in an opposite corner — Lillo covering his head
with his skirt and roaring at Ninna to frighten her,
then peeping out again to see how she bore it. The
door was a little behind Tessa, and she did not turn
round when it opened, thinking it was only the old

266 ROMOLA.

woman : expectation was no longer alive. Komola
had thrown aside her veil and paused a moment,
holdincr the necklace in s\g\\t Then she said, in
that pure voice tliat used to cheer her father, —

« Tessa ! "

Tessa started to her feet and looked round.

" See," said Romola, clasping the beads on Tessa's
neck, " God has sent me to you again."

The poor thing screamed and sobbed, and clung to
the arms that fastened the necklace. She could not
speak. The two children came from their corner,
laid hold of their mother's skirts, and looked up with
wide eyes at Romola.

That day they all went home to Monna Brigida's,
in the Borgo degli Albizzi. Romola had made known
to Tessa by gentle degrees, that Naldo could never
come to her again ; not because he was cruel, but
because he was dead.

" But be comforted, my Tessa," said Romola. " I
am come to take care of you always. And we have
got Lillo and Ninna."

Monna Brigida's mouth twitched in the struggle
between her awe of Romola and the desire to speak
unseasonably.

"Let be, for the present," she thought; "but it
seems to me a thousand years till I tell this little
contadina, who seems not to know how many fingers,
she's got on her hand, who Romola is. And I will
tell her some day, else she'll never know her place.

MEETING AGAIN. 267

It's all very well for Romola ; nobody will call their
souls their own when she's by; but if I'm to have
this puss-faced minx living in my house, she must be
humble to me."

However, Monna Brigida wanted to give the
children too many sweets for their supper, and con-
fessed to Romola, the last thing before going to bed,
that it would be a shame not to take care of such
cherubs.

" But you must give up to me a little, Romola,
about their eating, and those things. For you have
never had a baby, and I had twins, only they died as
soon as they were born."

268 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XXY.

THE CONFESSION.

When Romola brought home Tessa and the children,
April was already near its close, and the other great
anxiety on her mind had been wrought to its highest
pitch by the publication in print of Fra Girolamo's
Trial, or rather of the confessions drawn from him
by the sixteen Florentine citizens commissioned to
interrogate him. The appearance of this document,
issued by order of the Signoria, had called forth such
strong expressions of public suspicion and discontent,
that severe measures were immediately taken for
recalling it. Of course there were copies acci-
dentally mislaid, and a second edition, not by order
of the Signoria, was soon in the hands of eager
readers.

Romola, who began to despair of ever speaking
with Fra Girolamo, read this evidence again and
again, desiring to judge it by some clearer light than
the contradictory impressions that were taking the
form of assertions in the mouths of both partisans
and enemies.

THE CONFESSION. 269

In the more devout followers of Savonarola his
want of constancy under torture, and his retractation
of prophetic claims, had produced a consternation
too profound to be at once displaced as it ultimately
was by the suspicion, which soon grew into a posi-
tive datum, that any reported words of his, which
were in inexplicable contradiction to their faith in
him, had not come from the lips of the prophet, but
from the falsifying pen of Ser Ceccone, that notary
of evil repute, who had made the digest of the
examination. But there were obvious facts that at
once threw discredit on the printed document Was
not the list of sixteen examiners half made up of the
prophet's bitterest enemies ? Was not the notorious
Dolfo Spini one of the new Eight prematurely
elected, in order to load the dice against a man
whose ruin had been determined on by the party
in power ? It was but a murder with slow formali-
ties that was being transacted in the Old Palace.
The Signoria had resolved to drive a good bargain
with the Pope and the Duke of Milan, by extin-
guishing the man who was as great a molestation
to vicious citizens and greedy foreign tyrants as to
a corrupt clergy. The Frate had been doomed
beforehand, and the only question that was pre-
tended to exist now was, whether the Republic, in
return for a permission to lay a tax on ecclesiastical
property, should deliver him alive into the hands
of the Pope, or whether the Pope should further

270 BOMOLA.

concede to the Republic what its dignity demanded
— the privilege of hanging and burning its own pro-
phet on its own piazza.

Whoj under such circumstances, would give full
credit to this so-called confession ? If the Frate had
denied his prophetic gift, the denial had only been
wrenched from him by the agony of torture — agony
that, in his sensitive frame, must quickly produce
raving. What if these wicked examiners declared
that he had only had the torture of the rope and
pulley thrice, and only on one day, and that his
confessions had been made when he was under no
bodily coercion— was that to be believed ? He had
been tortured much more ; he had been tortured in
proportion to the distress his confessions had created
in the hearts of those who loved him.

Other friends of Savonarola, who were less ardent
partizans, did not doubt the substantial genuineness
of the confession, however it might have been
coloured by the transpositions and additions of the
notary ; but they argued indignantly that there was
nothing which could warrant a condemnation to
death, or even to grave punishment. It must be
clear to all impartial men that if this examination
represented the only evidence against the Frate, he
would die, not .for any crime, but because he had
made himself inconvenient to the Pope, to the rapa-
cious Italian States that wanted to dismember their
Tuscan neighbour, and to those unworthy citizens

THE CONEESSION. 271

who sought to gratify their private ambition in oppo-
sition to the common weal.

Not a shadow of political crime had been proved
against him. Not one stain had been detected on
his private conduct : his fellow monks, including one
who had formerly been his secretary for several
years, and who, with more than the average culture
of his companions, had a disposition to criticize
Fra Girolamo's rule as Prior, bore testimony, even
after the shock of his retractation, to an unimpeach-
able purity and consistency in his life, which had
commanded their unsuspecting veneration. The
Pope himself had not been able to raise a charge
of heresy against the Frate, except on the ground
of disobedience to a mandate, and disregard of the
sentence of excommunication. It was difficult to
justify that breach of discipline by argument, but
there was a moral insurgence in the minds of grave
men against the Court of Rome, which tended to
confound the theoretic distinction between the Church
and churchmen, and to lighten the scandal of dis-
obedience.

Men of ordinary morality and public spirit felt
that the triumph of the Frate's enemies was really
the triumph of gross licence. And keen Florentines
like Soderhii and Piero Guicciardini may well have
had an angry smile on their lips at a severity which
dispensed with all law in order to hang and burn
a man in whom the seductions of a public career

272 ROMOLA.

liad warped the strictness of his veracity ; may well
have remarked that if the Frate had mixed a much
deeper fraud with a zeal and ability less inconvenient
to high personages, the fraud would have been re-
garded as an excellent oil for ecclesiastical and
political wheels.

Nevertheless such shrewd men were forced to
admit that, however poor a figure the Florentine
government made in its clumsy pretence of a judicial
warrant for w^hat had in fact been predetermined as
an act of policy, the measures of the Pope against
Savonarola were necessary measures of self-defence.
Not to try and rid himself of a man who wanted to
stir up the Powers of Europe to summon a General
Council and depose him, w^ould have been adding
ineptitude to iniquity. There was no denying that
towards Alexander the Sixth Savonarola was a
rebel, and, what was much more, a dangerous rebel.
Florence had heard him say, and had well under-
stood what he meant, that he would not ohey the
devil. It was inevitably a life and death struggle
between the Frate and the Pope ; but it was less
inevitable that Florence should make itself the
Pope's executioner.

Roraola's ears were filled in this way with the
suggestions of ^ faith still ardent under its wounds,
and the suggestions of worldly discernment, judging
things according to a very moderate standard of
what is possible to human nature. She could be

THE CONFESSION. 273

satisfied with neither. She brouorht to her lonff
meditations over that printed document many pain-
ful observations, registered more or less consciously
through the years of her discipleship, which whis-
pered a presentiment that Savonarola's retractation
of his prophetic claims was not merely a spasmodic
effort to escape from torture. But, on the other
hand, her soul cried out for some explanation of his
lapses which would make it still possible for her
to believe that the main striving of his life had been
pure and grand. The recent memory of the selfish
discontent which had come over her like a blight-
ing wind along with the loss of her trust in the man
who had been for her an incarnation of the highest
motives, had produced a reaction which is known to
many as a sort of faith that has sprung up to them
out of the very depths of their despair. It was
impossible, she said now, that the negative disbeliev-
incp thoughts which had made her soul arid of all
good, could be founded in the truth of things :
impossible that it had not been a living spirit, and
no hollow pretence, which had once breathed in
the Frate's words, and kindled a new life in her.
Whatever falsehood there had been in him, had
been a fall and not a purpose; a gradual entangle-
ment in which he struggled, not a contrivance
encouraged by success.

Looking at the printed confessions she saw many
sentences which bore the stamp of bungling fabrica-

YOL. III. 60

274 KOMOLA.

tion : they had that emphasis and repetition in self-
accusation which none but very low hypocrites use to
their fellow men. But the fact that these sentences
were in striking opposition, not only to the character*
of Savonarola, but also to the general tone of the
confessions, strengthened the impression that the rest
of the text represented in the main what had really
fallen from his lips. Hardly a word was dishonour-
able to him except what turned on his prophetic
annunciations. He was unvarying in his statement
of the ends he had pursued for Florence, the Church,
and the world ; and, apart from the mixture of falsity
in that claim to special inspiration by which he
sought to gain hold of men's minds, there was no
admission of having used unworthy means. Even
in this confession, and w^ithout expurgation of the
notary's malign phrases. Era Girolamo shone forth as
a man who had sought his own glory indeed, but
sought it by labouring for the very highest end — the
moral welfare of men — not by vague exhortations,
but by striving to turn beliefs into energies that
would work in all the details of life.

*^ Everything that I have done," said one memo-
rable passage, which may perhaps have had its
erasures and interpolations, " I have done with the
design of being for ever famous in the present and
in future ages; and that I might win credit in
Florence ; and that nothing of great import should
be done without my sanction. And when I had

THE CONFESSION. . 275

thus established my position in Florence, I had it in
my mind to do great things in Italy and beyond
Italy, by means of those chief personages with whom
I had contracted friendship and consulted on high
matters, such as this of the General Council. And
in proportion as my first efforts succeeded, I should
have adopted further measures. Above all, w^hen the
General Council had once been brought about, I
intended to rouse the princes of Christendom, and
especially those beyond the borders of Italy, to
subdue the infidels. It was not much in my thoughts
to get myself made a Cardinal or Pope ; for when I
should have achieved the work I had in view, I
should, without being Pope, have been the first man
in the world in the authority I should have possessed,
and the reverence that would have been paid me. If
I had been made Pope, I would not have refused the
office: but it seemed to me that to be the head of
that w^ork was a greater thing than to be Pope,
because a man without virtue may be Pope ; but such
a work as 1 contejnplated demanded a man of excellent
virtues J^

That blending of ambition with belief in the supre-
macy of goodness made no new tone to Romola, who
had been used to hear it in the voice that rang
through the Duomo. It was the habit of Savona-
rola's mind to conceive great things, and to feel that
he was the man to do them. Iniquity should be
brought low ; the cause of justice, purity, and love

60—2

276 ROMOLA.

should triumph ; and it should triumph by his voice,
by his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic
contemplation, doubtless, the sense of self melted in
the sense of the unspeakable, and in that part of his
experience lay the elements of genuine self-abase-
ment; but in the presence of his fellow-men for whom
he was to act, pre-eminence seemed a necessary con-
dition of his life.

And perhaps this confession, even when it de-
scribed a doubleness that was conscious and deliberate,
really implied no more than that wavering of belief
concerning his own impressions and motives which
most human beings who have not a stupid inflexi-
bility of self-confidence must be liable to under a
marked change of external conditions? In a life
where the experience was so tumultuously mixed as
it must have been in the Frate's, what a possibility
was opened for a change of self-judgment, when,
instead of eyes that venerated and knees that knelt,
instead of a great work on its way to accomplishment,
and in its prosperity stamping the agent as a chosen
instrument, there came the hooting and the spitting
and the curses of the crowd ; and then the hard faces
of enemies made judges ; and then the horrible
torture, and with the torture the irrepressible cry,
" It is true, what you would have me say: let me go:
do not torture me again : yes, yes, I am guilty.
O God ! Thy stroke has reached me I "

As Romola thought of the anguish that must have

THE CONFESSION. 277

followed the confession — whether, in the subsequent
solitude of the prison, conscience retracted or con-
firmed the self-taxinc: words — that ancj^uish seemed to
be pressing on her own heart and urging the slow
bitter tears. Eveiy vulgar self-ignorant person in
Florence w^as glibly pronouncing on this man's
demerits, and he was knowing a depth of sorrow
which can only be known to the soul that has loved
and sought the most perfect thing, and beholds itself
fallen.

She had not then seen — what she saw afterwards —
the evidence of the Frate's mental state after he had
had thus to lay his mouth in the dust. As the days
went by, the reports of new unpublished examina-
tions, eliciting no change of confessions, ceased ;
Savonarola was left alone in his prison and allowed
pen and ink for a while, that, if he liked, he might
use his poor bruised and strained right arm to write
with. He wrote ; but what he wrote was no vindica-
tion of his innocence, no protest against the proceed-
ings used towards him : it was a continued colloquy
with that divine purity with which he sought com-
plete reunion ; it was the outpouring of self-abase-
ment; it was one long cry for inward renovation.
No lingering echoes of the old vehement self-assertion,
" Look at my work, for it is good, and those who set
their faces against it are the children of the devil ! "
The voice of Sadness tells him, " God placed thee in
the midst of the people even as if thou hadst been

278 ROMOLA.

one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught
others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast
cured others : and thou thyself hast been still diseased.
Thy heart was lifted up at the beauty of thy own
deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom
and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing.
.... After so many benefits with which God has
honoured thee, thou art fallen into the depths of the
sea ; and after so many gifts bestowed on thee, thou,
by thy pride and vain -glory, hast scandalized all the
world." And when Hope speaks and argues that the
divine love has not forsaken him, it says nothing now
of a great work to be done, but only says, " Thou
art not forsaken, else why is thy heart bowed in
penitence ? That too is a gift."

There is no jot of worthy evidence that from the
time of his imprisonment to the supreme moment,
Savonarola thought or spoke of himself as a martyr.
The idea of martyrdom had been to him a passion
dividing the dream of the future with the triumph
of beholding his work achieved. And now, in place
of both, had come a resignation which he called
by no glorifying name.

But therefore he may the more fitly be called
a martyr by his fellow men to all time. For power
rose against him not because of his sins, but because
of his greatness — not because he sought to deceive
the world, but because he sought to make it noble.
And through that greatness of his he endured a double

THE CONTESSION. 279

agony: not only the reviling, and the torture, and
the death-throe, but the agony' of sinking from the
vision of glorious achievement into that deep shadow
where he could only say, " I count as nothing : dark-
ness encompasses me: yet the light I saw was the
true light."

280 ROMOLA.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE LAST SILENCE.

RoMOLA had seemed to hear, as if they had been
a cry, the words repeated to her by many lips —
the words uttered by Savonarola when he took leave
of those brethren of San Marco who had come to
witness his signature of the confession : " Pray for
me, for God has withdrawn from me the spirit of
prophecy."

Those words had shaken her with new doubts as
to the mode in which he looked back at the past
in moments of complete self-possession. And the
doubts were strengthened by more piteous things
still, which soon reached her ears.

The nineteenth of May had come, and by that
day's sunshine there had entered into Florence the
two Papal Commissaries, charged with the comple-
tion of Savonarola's trial. They entered amid the
acclamations of the people, calling for the death
of the Frate. For now the popular cry was, "It
is the Frate's deception that has brought on all
our misfortunes ; let him be burned, and all things
right will be done, and our evils will cease."

THE LAST SILENCE. 281

The next day it is well certified that there was
fresh and fresh torture of the shattered sensitive
frame ; and now, at the first threat and first sight
of the horrible implements, Savonarola, in convulsed
agitation, fell on his knees, and in brief, passionate
words, retracted his confession, declared that he had
spoken falsely in denying his prophetic gift, and
that if he suffered, he would suffer for the truth —
" The things that I have spoken, I had them from
God."

But not the less the torture was laid upon him, and
when he was under it he was asked why he had
uttered those retracting words. Men were not
demons in those days, and yet nothing but confes-
sions of guilt were held a reason for release from
torture. The answer came : " I said it that I might
seem good ; tear me no more, I will tell you the truth."

There were Florentine assessors at this new trial,
and those words of two-fold retractation had soon
spread. They filled Romola with dismayed un-
certainty.

"But" — it flashed across her — "there will come
a moment when he may speak. When there is no
dread hanging over him but the dread of falsehood,
when they have brought him into the presence of
death, when he is lifted above the people, and looks
on them for the last time, they cannot hinder him
from speaking a last decisive word. I will be there."

Three days after, on the 23rd of May, 1498, there

282 EOMOLA.

was again a long narrow platform stretching across
the great piazza, from the Palazzo Yecchio towards
the Tetta de' Pisani. But there was no grove of fuel
as before : instead of that, there was one great heap
of fuel placed on the circular area which made the
termination of the long narrow platform. And above
this heap of fuel rose a gibbet with three halters on
it ; a gibbet which, having two arms, still looked so
much like a cross as to make some beholders uncom-
fortable, though one arm had been truncated to avoid
the resemblance.

On the marble terrace of the Palazzo were three
tribunals ; one near the door for the Bishop, who was
to perform the ceremony of degradation of Fra Giro-
lamo and the two brethren who were to suffer as his
followers and accomplices ; another for the Papal
Commissaries, who were to pronounce them heretics
and schismatics, and deliver them over to the secular
arm ; and a third, close to Marzocco, at the corner of
the terrace where the platform began, for the Gon-
faloniere and the Eight who were to pronounce the
sentence of death.

Again the piazza was thronged with expectant
faces : again there was to be a great fire kindled.
In the majority of the crowd that pressed around the
gibbet the expectation was that of ferocious hatred, or
of mere hard curiosity to behold a barbarous sight.
But there were still many spectators on the wide
pavement, on the roofs, and at the windows, who, in

THE LAST SILENCE^ 283

the midst of their bitter grief and their own en-
durance of insult as hypocritical Piagnoni, were not
without a lingering hope, even at this eleventh hour,
that God would interpose, by some sign, to manifest
their beloved prophet as His servant. And there were
yet more who looked forward with trembling eager-
ness, as Romola did, to that final moment when
Savonarola might say, " O people, I was innocent of
deceit."

Romola was at a window on the north side of the
piazza, far away fi.*om the marble terrace where the
tribunak stood; and near her, also looking on in
painful doubt concerning the man who had won his
early reverence, was a young Florentine of two-and-
twenty, named Jacopo Nardi, afterwards to deserve
honour as one of the very few who, feeling Fra
Girolamo's eminence, have written about him with
the simple desire to be veracious. He had said to
Romola, with respectful gentleness, when he saw the
struggle in her between her shuddering horror of the
scene and her yearning to witness what might happen
in the last moment,

" Madonna, there is no need for you to look at
these cruel things. I will tell you when he comes
out of the Palazzo. Trust to me ; I know what you
would see,"

Romola covered her face, but the hootings that
seemed to make the hideous scene still visible could
not be shut out. At last her arm was touched, and

284 ROMOLA.

she heard the words, "He comes." She looked
towards the Palace, and could see Savonarola led out
in his Dominican garb ; could see him standing before
the Bishop, and being stripped of the black mantle,
the white scapulary and long white tunic, till he stood
in a close woollen under-tunic, that told of no sacred
office, no rank. He had been degraded, and cut off
from the Church Militant.

The baser part of the multitude delight in degra-
dations, apart from any hatred ; it is the satire they
best understand. There was a fresh hoot of triumph
as the three degraded Brethren passed on to the
tribunal of the Papal Commissaries, who were to
pronounce them schismatics and heretics. Did not
the prophet look like a schismatic and heretic now ?
It is easy to believe in the damnable state of a man
who stands stripped and degraded.

Then the third tribunal was passed — that of the
Florentine officials who were to pronounce sentence,
and amongst whom, even at her distance, Romola
could discern the odious figure of Dolfo Spini, indued
in the grave black lucco, as one of the Eight.

Then the three figures, in their close white raiment,
trod their way along the platform, amidst yells and
grating tones of insult.

" Cover your eyes, madonna," said Jacopo Nardi ;
" Fra Girolamo will be the last."

It was not long before she had to uncover them
asain. Savonarola was there. He was not far off

THE LAST SILENCE. 285

her now. He had mounted the steps ; she could see
him look round on the multitude.

But in the same moment expectation died, and she
only saw what he was seeing — torches waving to
kindle the fuel beneath his dead body, faces glaring
with a yet worse light ; she only heard what lie was
hearing — gross jests, taunts, and curses.

The moment was past. Her face was covered
again, and she only knew that Savonarola's voice had
passed into eternal silence.

286 KOMOLA,

EPILOGMJE,

On the evening of the twenty-second of May, 1509,
five persons, of whose history we have known some-
thing, were seated in a handsome upper room opening
on to a loggia which, at its right-hand corner, looked
all along the Borgo Pinti, and over the city gate
towards Fiesole, and the solemn heights beyond it.

At one end of the room was an archway opening
into a narrow inner room, hardly more than a recess,
where the light fell from above on a small altar
covered with fair white linen. Over the altar was
a picture, discernible at the distance where the little
party sat only as the small full-length portrait of
a Dominican Brother. For it was shaded from the
light above by overhanging branches and wreaths of
flowers, and the fresh tapers below it were unlit.
But it seemed that the decoration of the altar and its
recess were not complete. For part of the floor was
strewn with a confusion of flowers and green boughs,
and among them sat a dehcate blue-eyed girl of
thirteen, tossing her long light-brown hair out of
her eyes, as she made selections for the wreaths she

EPILOGUE. 287

was weaving, or looked up at her mother's work in
the same kind, and told her how to do it 'with a little
air of instruction.

!For that mother was not very clever at weaving
flowers or at any other work. Tessa's fingers had
not become more adroit with the years — only very
much fatter. She got on slowly and turned her
head about a good deal, and asked Ninna's opinion
with much deference ; for Tessa never ceased to be
astonished at the wisdom of her children. She still
wore her contadina gown : it was only broader than
the old one; and there was the silver pin in her
rough curly brown air, and round her neck the
memorable necklace, with a red cord under it, that
ended mysteriously in her bosom. Her rounded face
wore even a more perfect look of childish content
than in her younger days : everybody was so good
in the world, Tessa thought ; even Monna Brigida
never found fault with her now, and did little else
than sleep, which was an amiable practice in every-
body, and one that Tessa hked for herself.

Monna Brigida was asleep at this moment, in a
straight-backed arm-chair, a couple of yards off.
Her hair, parting backward under her black hood,
had that soft whiteness which is not like snow or
anything else, but is simply the lovely whiteness
of aged hair. Her chin had sunk on her bosom,
and her hands rested on the elbow of her chair.
She had not been weaving flowers or doing any-

288 HOMOLA.

thing else: she had only been looking on as usual,
and as usual had fallen asleep.

The other two figures were seated farther off, at
the wide doorway that opened on to the loggia.
Lillo sat on the ground with his back against the
angle of the door-post, and his long legs stretched
out, while he held a large book open on his knee
and occasionally made a dash with his hand at
an inquisitive fly, with an air of interest stronger
than that excited by the finely-printed copy of
Petrarch which he kept open at one place, as if he
were learning something by heart.

Romola sat nearly opposite Lillo, but she was not
observing him. Her hands were crossed on her lap
and her eyes were fixed absently on the distant
mountains : she was evidently unconscious of any-
thing around her. An eager life had left its marks
upon her: the finely moulded cheek had sunk a
little, the golden crown was less massive ; but there
was a placidity in Romola's face which had never
belonged to it in youth. It is but once that we can
know our worst sorrows, and Romola had known
them while life was new.

Absorbed in this way, she was not at first aware
that Lillo had ceased to look at his book, and was
watching her with a slightly impatient air, which
meant that he wanted to talk to her, but was not quite
sure whether she would like that entertainment just
now. But persevering looks make themselves felt

EPILOGUE. 289

at last. Romola did presently turn away her eyes
from the distance and meet Lillo's impatient dark
gaze with a brighter and brighter smile. He shuffled
along the floor, still keeping the book on his lap,
till he got close to her and lodged his chin on her
knee.

" What is it, Lillo?" said Romola, pulling his hair
back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but
his features were turning out to be more massive and
less regular than his father's. The blood of the
Tuscan peasant was in his veins.

"Mamma Romola, what am I to be?" he said,
well contented that there was a prospect of talking
till it would be too late to con " Spirto gentil " any
longer.

" What should you like to be, Lillo ? You might
be a scholar. My father was a scholar, you know,
and taught me a great deal. That is the reason why
1 can teach you."

"Yes," said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. " But he is.
old and blind in the picture. Did he get a great
deal of glory ? "

"Not much, Lillo. The world was not always
very kind to him, and he saw meaner men than
himself put into higher places, because they could
flatter and say what was false. And. then his dear
son thought it right to leave him and become a
monk; and after that, my father, being blind and
lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have

VOL. III. 61

290 ROMOLA.

made his learning of greater use to men, so that he
might still have lived in his works after he was m
his grave,"

" I should not like that sort of life," said Lillo.
" I should like to be something that would make me
a great man, and very happy besides — something
that would not hinder me from having a good deal of
pleasure."

" That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor
sort of happiness that could ever come by caring
very much about our own narrow pleasures. We
can only have the highest happiness, such as goes
along with being a great man, by having wide
thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world
as well as ourselves ; and this sort of happiness often
brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell
it from pain by its being what we would choose
before everything else, because our souls see it is
good. There are so many things wrong and difficult
in the world, that no man can be great — he can
hardly keep himself from wickedness — unless he
gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards,
and gets strength to endure what is hard and pain-
ful. My father had the greatness that belongs to
integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather
than falsehood. _ And there was Fra Girolamo — ^you
know why I keep to-morrow sacred: he had the
greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling
against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men

EPILOGUE. 291

to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so,
my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know
the best things God has put within reach of men, you
must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on
what will happen to you because of it. And remem-
ber, if you were to choose something lower, and
make it the rule of your life tovseek your own plea-
sure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity
might come just the same ; and it would be calamity
falling on a base mind, which is the one form of
sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well
make a man say, — * It would have been better for
me if I had never been born.' I will tell you some-
thing, Lillo."

Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's
cheeks between her hands, and his young eyes were
meeting hers,

" There was a man to whom I was very near, so
that I could see a great deal of his life, who made
almost every one fond of him, for he was young, and
clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were
gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him,
he never thought of doing anything cruel or base.
But because he tried to slip away from everything
that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so
much as his own safety, he came at last to commit
some of the basest deeds — such as make men infa-
mous. He denied his father, and left him to misery;
he betrayed every trust that was reposed in him.

292 EOMOI-A.

that he might keep himself safe and get rich and
prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him."

Again Romola paused. Her voice was unsteady,
and Lillo was looking up at her with awed wonder.

" Another time, my Lillo — I will tell you another
time. See, there are our old Piero di Cosimo and
Nello coming up th© Borgo Pinti, bringing us their
flowers. Let us go and wave our hands to them,
that they may know we see them."

" How queer old Piero is," said Lillo, as they
stood at the corner of the loggia, watching the
advancing figures. "He abuses you for dressing
the altar, and thinking so much of Fra Girolamo,
and yet he brings you the flowers."

" Never mind," said Romola. " There are many
good people who did not love Fra Girolamo. Per-
haps I should never have learned to love him if he
had not helped me when I was in great need."

THE END.

London: Smith, Elder and Co., Little Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey, E.G.

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