 63 A month after that carnival, one morning near the end of March, Tito descended at the marble steps of the old palace, bound on a pregnant errant to son 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 to 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 a flay-tad at the loudest audience. For sovereign older's voice it ceased to be heard, even in his own church of son Marco, a hostile senioria, having imposed silence on him in obedience to a new letter from the pope, threatening the city with an immediate interdictive, this wim and monstrous idol were not forbidden to preach and sent to demand pardon at Rome. And next to hearing Friar Tirolamo himself, the most exciting Lenten occupation was to hear him argued against and vilified. This excitement was to be heard in Santa Croce, where the Franciscan appointed to preach the co-arrest some more sermons had offered declentious arguments by walking through the fire with Friar Tirolamo. Had not thatch this medical Dominican said that his prophetic doctrine would be proved by a miracle at the fitting time, here then was the fitting time, let Sauronola 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 premise. Sauronola, according to his habit, had taken he notice of these pulpit attacks, but it happened that the zealous preach of Santa Croce was no other than the Friar Francisco de Bulia, who at Prato the year before had been engaged in a like challenge with Sauronola's fervent follower Friar Domenical, but had been called home by his superiors while the heat was simply oratorical. Honest Friar Domenical, then, he was preaching Lenten sermons to the women in the Viedal Cocomero, no sooner heard of this new challenge, than he took up the gauntlet for his master, and declared himself ready to walk through the fire with Friar Francisco. Already the people were beginning to take a strong interest in what seemed to them a short and easy method of argument. For those who were to be convinced, when Sauronola keenly alive to the dangers that lay in the mere discussion of the case, commanded Friar Domenical 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 Friar Gerolamo himself. After that, the popular interest in the Lenten sermons had flaked a little. But this morning, when Tito entered the piazza de 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, threading the crowd with the chalice 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 affixed by order of the senoria, and covered with very legible official handwriting. But curiosity was somewhat balked by the fact that the manuscript was chiefly in Latin. And though nearly every man knew beforehand approximately what the placard contained, he had an appetite for more exact knowledge, which gave him an irritating sense of his neighbor's ignorance, and not being able to interpret the learned tongue. For that oral acquaintance with Latin phrases which the unearned 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 massive people who could read and write. Note, the old diarists throw in their consonants with a regard rather to quantity than position. Well typified by the Aranyolio Brajiello, Agnolo Gabriolo, of Acaccio's Aferrondo. While the majority of those assembled nearest to the placard were not in the dangerous predicament of possessing that little knowledge. That's the Friday's doctrines that used to prove by being burned, said that large public character Goro, who happened to be among the foremost gazes. The senoria has taken it in hand, and the writing has to let us know, it's what the Padre has been telling us about in his sermon. Nay, Goro, said a sleek shopkeeper, compassionately, thou hast got thy legs into twisted hose there. The Friday has to prove his doctrines by not being burned. He has 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 striked cap and turned it with a jaunty air. But Fragero Lamo objects to walking through the fire, being sound and whole already, he sees no reason why he should walk through the fire to come out in just the same condition. He leaves such odds and ends of work to Fragero Manicor. And I say he flinches like a coward, said Goro in a wheezy treble, suffocation, 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 bleeding, 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 with water on its brain. The frare table flinched from nothing. He'll say nothing beforehand, perhaps, but when the moment comes he'll walk through the fire without asking any gray 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 expression of disgust. There was a general turning of heads, which caused the talkers to describe 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's going to the convent, doubtless. Make way for him, said the shopkeeper, also doffing, though that mark of respect was rarely shown by Florentines, except to the highest officials. The exceptional reverence was really exacted by the splendor and grace of Tito's appearance, which made his black mantle with its gold fibula, looked like a regal robe, and his ordinary black velvet cap, like an entirely exceptional head of tress. The hardening of his cheeks and mouth, which was the chief change in his face since he came to Florence, seemed to his superficial clients 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 government permits anyone who will to subscribe his name as a candidate to enter the fire, which is an act of liberality worthy of the magnificent seniority, reserving, 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? 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 fratte, 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 Munoni. 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 everyone who would rashly commit himself to any general view on the relation between faith and fire. The scene might have been too much for a gravity less under command than Tito's. Then, Mrs. Segretario, said the young sculptor, It seems to me Fr. Francesco is the greater hero, for he offers to enter the fire for the truth, though he is sure the fire will burn him. I do not deny it, said Tito blandly, but if it turns out that Fr. Francesco is mistaken, he will have been burned for the wrong side, and the church has never reckoned such victims to be martyrs. We must suspend our judgment until the trial has really taken place. It is true, Mrs. Segretario, said the shopkeeper with subdued impatience, but will you favour us by interpreting the Latin? Surely, said Tito. It does but express the conclusions or doctrines which the frate especially teaches, and which the trial by fire is to prove true or false. They are doubtless familiar to you. First, that Florence, let us save the Latin bit by bit, and then tell us what it means, said the shoemaker, who had been a frequent hero of Fr. Girolamo. Willingly, said Tito, smiling, you will then judge if I give you the right meaning. Yes, yes, that's fair, said Coro. Ecclesia dei indigeterra innovazione, 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, they need no miracle to prove that. That's what the frate has always been saying, said the shoemaker. Vragilabiter, Tito went on, that is, it will be scourged. Renovarbiter, it will be purified. Florencia coque post fragilam renovarbiter et prosperarbiter. Florence also, after the scourging, shall be purified and shall prosper. That means we ought to get pizza again, said the shoemaker. And get the wool from England, as we used to do, I should hope, said an elderly man in an old-fashioned barretta who had been silent till now, that has 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 in indifferent glance with Tito, who, tossing his bicchetto over his left shoulder, turned to his reading again, while the bystanders, with more timidity than respect, shrank to make a passage for Mesa Dolfo Spini. Envedales convertentor ad Cristo, Tito went on, that is, the infidels shall be converted to Christ. Those are the Turks and the Moors, we're alive, nothing to say against that, said the shopkeeper dispassionately. Haik au tim omnia erint temporibus nostris, and all these things shall happen in our times. Why, what use would they be else, said Guru? The excommunication, lately pronounced against our Reverend Father, Friatira Lamo, is null. Non nobzivrantes am 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 senioria in good Tuscan, calling on such as our 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 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 patronne was within, and he then passed without further ceremony through another door which stood a jar on his right hand. It admitted him into a handsome but untidy room, where Dolpo Spini sat playing with a fine stag hand, 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 seemed to be continually counteracting their own purposes. Tito was patient. A handsome braker, that, he said, quietly, standing 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 by Dolpo, 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. Down, mischief down, said Spini, with sudden roughness, malediction, he said, 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 you're shut, witsie, 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 fratti minori at Santa Croce. They're drawing back now. For our 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 himself 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 friar domenical. It is the peculiar stupidity of the taunch at Skull that prevents them from seeing of how little consequence 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 Spenny, looking puzzled, because one of them will be obliged to go in with friar domenical, who thinks that a thousand years till the faggots are ready. Not at all. Friar domenical himself is not likely to go in. I have told you before, my dull folk, only your powerful mind is not to be impressed without more repetition and sufficers for the vulgar. I have told you that now you have got the senoria to take up this affair and prevent it from being hashed up by friar domenical. 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 senoria will find it easy to banish him from the territory, and his holiness may do as he likes with him. Therefore my ulcerbiades swear to the franciscans that their gray frocks shall not come within singeing distance of the fire. Spenny 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, for lorry and the salviati and the albice will take up arms and raise a fight for him. I know that was talked of when there was the hubbub on a cinch and sundae, and the people may turn round again. There may be a story raised of the French king coming again or some other cursed chance in the hypocrites' favour. The city will never be safe till he's out of it. He will be out of it before long, without you all 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 to walk through the fire after all, said Spenny with a grimace intended to hide a certain shyness and trenching on the speculative ground. How do you know there's nothing in those things? Plenty of scholars believe in them, and this frat 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 frat 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. Ability, said Spenny. 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. He wants 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 frat, who 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 skillfully as you direct a ball when you are playing at Mahlio. Yes, yes, said Spenny accordingly, 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 frat's ability, but that you may see how this will heighten the credit of your success against him at Roman at Milan, which is sure to serve you in good stead when the city comes to change its policy. Well, though art a good little demon and shalt have good pay, said Spenny patronizingly, whereupon he thought it only natural that the useful Greek adventurer should smile with gratification, as he said, of course any advantage to me depends entirely on your... We should have our supper at my palace tonight, interrupted Spenny, with a significant nod and an affectionate 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? Spenny rehearsed. One thing more, he said, as Tito was hastening away, there is that sharp-nosed notary, Sir Shikone, he has been handy of late. Tell me, you who can see a man wink when you are behind him, do you think I may go on making use of him? Tito did not say no. He knew his companion too well to trust him with advice when all Spenny's vanity and self-interest were not engaged in concealing the advisor. Doubtless, he answered promptly. I have nothing to say against Shikone. That suggestion of the notary's intimate access to Spenny 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 Sir Shikone. 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, when Ramola had appeared suddenly before him at the door of Nero's shop and had compelled him to declare his certainty that Friar Jirulama was not going outside the gates. The fact that Sir Shikone 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. For after having been implicated in the Medician plots, and having found it advisable on consequence to retire into the country for some time, Sir Shikone had off late, since his reappearance in the city attached himself to the Arabiati and cultivated the patronage of Dolpho Spini. Now that captain of the Kompanyaki was much given when in the company of intimates to confidential narrative about his own doings and if Sir Shikone'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 bought in well conducted schemes by an insignificant notary to be blamed by the sting of an insect whom he had offended unawares. 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 extra kanchiliere or registering secretary under the ten. Believing that with this SOP and the expectation of more the waspish kerb must be quite cured of the disposition to bait 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 Sir Shikoni on the stairs, the notary who had only just returned from Pistoia and learned the arrest of the conspirators was bound on an errand which bore a humble resemblance to Tito's. He also, without giving up a show of popular zeal, had been putting in the Medici and Lottery. He also had been privy to the unexecuted 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 would be well for him to retire out of the way of Mischtof. Otherwise the government might be obliged to take note of him. Sir Shikoni 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 piece about it nor was this the hold of his grudge against the flourishing Melema. On issuing from his hiding place and attaching himself to the Arabachi he had earned some pay as one of the spies who reported information 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 addition of what was known already. Now Sir Shikoni had no positive knowledge that Tito had an underhand connection with the Arabachi 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 growing vigorous hatred could swallow the feeble opiate of Tito's favours and be as lively as ever after it. Why should Sir Shikoni 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 Sir Shikoni 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 argument which prevents any claim from grasping it seems eminently convenient sometimes only the oil becomes objectionable when we find it anointing other minds in which we want to establish a hold. Tito however, not being quite omniscient felt now no more than a passing twinge of uneasiness at the suggestion of Sir Shikoni's power to hurt him. It was only for a little while that he cared greatly about keeping clear of suspicions and hostility. He was now playing his final game in Florence and the skill he was conscious of applying 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 Nicola Machiavelli was to be his provisional substitute if not his successor. He was acting on hypothetical grounds but this was the sort of action that had the keenest interest for his diplomatic mind from a combination of general knowledge concerning Savrenola'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. End of Chapter 63 Recording by Felicity Campbell Whanganui Book 1 for me.com New Zealand Chapter 64 of Ramola This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Ramola by George Eliot Chapter 64 The Prophet in His Cell Tito's visit to San Marco had been announced beforehand and he was at once conducted by Fra Nikolo Savrenola'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 anti-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 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 the crucifix It might have been any ordinary Fra Tirolamo who had nothing worse to confess than thinking of wrong things when he was singing in coro or feeling a spiteful joy when Fra Pena Tito dropped the ink over his own miniatures in the bravery 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 fight 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 irrevocable errors and lapses from veracity were so entwined with noble purposes and sincere beliefs in which self-justifying expediency was so enwoven 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 Savra Nol 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 supplication 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 resting him away from the divine support but the provisions 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 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 Savra Nol 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 himself would at last accept the challenge and evoke the long-expected miracle which was to dissipate it out and triumph over malignity 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 Fraa Domenico walked through the fire unhurt that would be a miracle and the faith and ardour of that could rather were felt to be a cheering augury but Savra Nol was acutely conscious that the secret longing of his followers to see him accept the challenge had not been dissipated by any reasons he had given for his refusal yet it was impossible to him to satisfy them and with bitter distress he saw now that it was impossible for him any longer to resist the prosecution of the trial in Fraa Domenico's case not that Savra Nol 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 intuitions 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 involved a demand not only for belief but for exceptional action Savra Nol's nature was one of those in which opposing tendencies coexist in almost equal strength the passionate sensibility which, impatient of definite thought floods every idea with emotion and attends 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 physical sensitiveness which gives overpowering force to the conception of pain and destruction as a necessary sequence of facts which have already been causes of pain in our experience the promptitude with 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 burn them practical belief depends on what is most strongly represented in the mind at a given moment and with the Faraday's constitution when the trial by fire was urged on his imagination as an immediate demand it was impossible for him to believe 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 vigor to find moral questions easy and judge conduct according to concise alternatives and nothing was likely to seem planer than that a man who at one time declared that God 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 Pianooni besides ready to enter the fire what was the cause of their superior courage if it was not their superior faith Sara Nola could 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 propositions 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 Sara Nola 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 attempting of God and the appeal would not be responded to let the Pope's leg it 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 a 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 resting with every loud vaunter but Fraa Domenico's invincible zeal to enter into the trial may be the sign of a divine vocation may be a pledge that the miracle but no when Sara Nola 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 a shuddering vibrations to the extremities of his sensitive fingers the miracle could not be nay, the trial itself is 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 God 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 Fraa Domenico's entrance at the very worst if Fraa 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 at the Christian's simplification after which he had striven through years of his youth into prime and which he had preached as a chief fruit of the divine life in the stress and heat of the day with cheeks burning with shouts ringing in the airs who is so blessed as to remember the yearnings he had in the cool and silent morning and know that he has not belied them oh 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 lies before me the conflict was one that could not end and in the effort at prayerful pleading the uneasy mind laved at smart continually in thoughts of the greatness of that task that was to fulfill 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 then the knocking at the door announced the expected visit Sauronola drew on his mantle when 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 accustomed to make its power felt by speech he met Tito with a glance as a 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 difference which Sauronola received quietly without any saccadotal 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 presumed to ask it I will not trespass on your time by any problem I gathered from a remark that Mr. Domenico Mazzini that you might be glad to make use of the next special courier who dispatches from the tin I must entreat you to pardon me if I have been too officious but in as much as Mr. Domenico is at this moment away at his villa I wished to apprise you that a courier carrying important letters is about to depart for Lyon at daybreak tomorrow the muscles of Fragira Lamo's face were eminently under command as must be the case with all men whose personality is powerful and in deliberate speech he was habitually cautious confiding his intentions to none without necessity but under any strong mental stimulus his eyes were liable to a dilatation and added brilliancy that no strength of will could control he looked steadily at Tito and did not answer immediately as if he had to consider whether the information he had just heard met any purpose of his glance never seemed observant but rarely let anything escape it had expected precisely that dilatation and flash of Savranola'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 and answered patiently the fact was that Savranola had expected to receive this intimation from the Manico Mazzini one of the ten an ardent disciple of his whom he had already employed to write a private letter to the Florentine ambassador in France to prepare the way for a letter to the French king himself in Savranola'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 governing by simony this fact was not what Tito knew but what his constructive talent guided by subtle indications had led him to guess and hope it is true my son said Savranola quietly it is true I have letters which I would gladly send to cover to our ambassador our community of San Marcol as you know has affairs in France being amongst other things responsible for a debt to that singularly wise and experienced Frenchman Senor Philippe de Commine on the library of the Medici which we purchased but I apprehend that Manico Mazzini himself may return to the city before evening and I should gain more time for his 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 Mr. de Manico's return that a spatch of the letters would require either that I should come to San Marcol 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 drawn 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 friate showed to trust him the more certain he would be of his conjecture Savra Nola 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 he had a critical moment that in which he delivered the letter out of his own hands it is most probable that Mr. de Manico will return in time said Tito, effecting to consider the friate'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 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 secretary ship and leaving Florence shortly am I presuming too much on your interest in stating what relates deeply to myself? Speak on, my son, said the friate I desire to know your prospects I find then that I have mistaken my real vocation 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 be the mere instrument of 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 Savinola inclined his head approvingly I intend then, soon to leave Florence to visit the chief courts of Europe and to widen my acquaintance with the men of letters in the various universities I shall 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 enthusiast I have not my wife'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 entrust me with any commission that will further 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 feign be assured for she left me in anger as for the letters to France such as I have read Savinola rose and to turn 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 Savinola had time to speak unless it were your decided wish I would rather not incur the responsibility of carrying away the letter message to Menneco Mazzini for doubtless return or if not, Franicolo can convey it to me at the second hour of the evening when I shall place the other dispatches in the curious hands at present my son said the frate waving that point I wish you to address this packet to our ambassador in your own handwriting which is preferable to my secretaries Tito sat down to write the address while the frate stood by him with bolded arms the glow mounting in his cheek the sip at last took quivering Tito rose and was about to move away when Savinola said abruptly take it my son there is no use in waiting it does not please me that Franicolo should have needless errands to the Velazzo as Tito took the letter Savinola stood in suppressed excitement that forbade further speech there seems to be a subtle emanation from passion at natures like his 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 reference 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 conveyed by a series of relays to armed agents of Ludovico Sforza Duke of Milan on the watch for the very purpose of intercepting the dispatches on the borders of the Milanese territory End of Chapter 64 Recording by Felicity Campbell Whanganui Book1forme.com New Zealand Chapter 65 of Romula This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by David Goldfarb Romula by George Elliott Chapter 65 The Trial by Fire Little more than a week after on the 7th 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 coin a vantage or disadvantage offered by the facades 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 a 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 stonework 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 flash seemed slight inconveniences with that prospect close at hand it is the ordinary lot of mankind to hear of miracles and more or less to 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 toe and rags known to make fine flames in Florentine illuminations the platform began at the corner 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 senioria stationed before the palace five hundred compagnacci under Dolpho Spini far off on the opposite side of the piazza and three hundred armed citizens of another sort under Marco Salviate, Savonrola's friend in front of Orgaña'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 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 plainly that Fragerolama was not his prophet and there was not much longer to wait for it was now near midday half the monks were already at their post and that half of the loggia that lies towards the palace was already filled with grey 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 Dominicans were come that loud chanting repetition of the prayer let God arise and let his enemies be scattered was unpleasantly suggestive to some impartial ears of a desire to vaunt confidence and excite dismay and so was the flame-coloured velvet cope in which Frodomenica was arrayed as he headed the procession, cross in hand his simple mind really exalted with faith and with the genuine intention to enter the flames for the glory of God and Fragerolama 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 loja 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 before hand in our solitude it has urged itself on us as a necessity we'll 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 of priest or ator 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 despotches 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 was no malignity in Tito Malema's satisfaction it was the mild self-gratulation of a man who has won a game that has employed a hypothetical 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 molded into the form of a plane featured Frate Predicatore more or less of an imposter could not be a pathetic object to a brilliant-minded scholar who understood everything yet this tonsured Girolamo with the high nose and large underlip was an immensely clever Frate mixing with his absurd superstitions or fabrications very remarkable notions about government no babbler who could keep his secrets Tito had no more spite against him than against Saint Dominic on the contrary Girolamo's existence had been highly convenient to Tito Malema furnishing him with that round of the latter 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 with today's comedy which the thick-headed Dolpho 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 Pignoni who carried their little red crosses as a badge and most of them chanted the prayer for the confusion of God's enemies and the frustration of an answer to be given through the medium of a more signal personage than Fra Domenico this good frate in his flame-coloured coat was now kneeling before the little altar on which the sacrament was deposited awaiting his summons on the Franciscan side of the loger there was no chanting and no flame colour only silence and greyness but there was this counterbalancing difference that the Franciscans had two champions and Fra Giuliana was to pair with Fra Domenico while the original champion Fra Francesco confined his challenge to Savonarola surely thought the men perched uneasily on the rods and pillars all must be ready now this chanting might stop and we should see better when the frate are moving towards the platform but the frate were not to be seen moving yet pale Franciscan faces were looking uneasily over the boarding at that flame-coloured cope 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 devil and now there was passing to and fro between the lodger and the marble terrace of the palazzo and the roar of chanting became a little quieter for everyone at a distance was beginning to watch more eagerly but it soon appeared that the new movement was not a beginning the dignified 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 Franciscans 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 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 miraculous and Fra Girolamo in his white vestment standing just in the same place but at last something 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 offers 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 but the speech was somewhat ironically remonstrant 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 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 now 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 resistance 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 with 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 scandal would be great in the minds of the weakened 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 settling it by proceeding to the trial since it was essentially a preliminary question 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 chiller 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 24 hours are 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 hola frate where are you never mind wasting the fuel still the same movement to and fro between the loger and the palace still the same debate and unintelligible to the multitude as the colloquies of insects that touch antennas to no other apparent effect than that of going and coming but an interpretation was not long wanting to unheard debates in which Fragerolama 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 questions of the irritated people had stimulated old impulses in Dolfo Spini and his band of Compañacci it seemed an opportunity not to be lost for putting an end to Florentine difficulties by getting possession of the arch-hippocrates person and there was a vigorous rush of the armed men towards the loger thrusting the people aside or driving them on to the file of soldiers stationed in front of the palace at this movement everything was suspended both with monks and embarrassed magistrates except the palpitating watch to see what would come of the struggle but the loger 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 Teto de Pisani when the blackness of the heavens seemed to intensify in this moment of utter confusion and the rain 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 loger and sent spray over the altar and all garments and faces the Frate knew that the demand for him 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 honor 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 had 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 dishonor held up to scorn as a hypocrite and a false prophet oh 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 breaking clouds fell on Savonarola as he left the loge 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 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 loge but I fear your career at Florence has ended what say you, my Nicolo? it is a pity his falsehoods were not all of a wise sort said Machiavelli with a melancholy shrug with the times so much on his side as they are about church affairs he might have done something great by David Goldfarb Romola by George Eliot Chapter 66 A Mask of the Furies The next day was Palm Sunday or Olive Sunday as it was chiefly called in the olive-growing Valdarno and the morning sun shone with a more delicious clearness for the yesterday's rain once Morse of Onarola mounted the pulpit in San Marco and saw a flock around him whose faith in him was still unshaken and this morning in calm and sad sincerity he declared himself ready to die in 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 forever for before the sun had set Florence was in an uproar the passions which had been roused the day before had been smoldering through that quiet morning and had now burst out again with a fury not unassisted by design and not without official connivance the uproar had begun at the Duomo in an attempt of some compagnacci to hinder the evening sermon which the Pignoni had assembled to hear but now sooner had men's blood mounted and the disturbances 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' Templars even the command of Savonarola could not prevail against the impulse to self-defense 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 early in the attack guards had been sent for not to disperse the assailants but to command all within the convent lay down their arms all laymen to depart from 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 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 Valori 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 preying 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 senioria to demand the persons of Fragerolamo and his two co-agitors Fra Domenico and Fra Salvestro loud was the roar of triumph and 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 along in the midst of that hooting multitude when lanterns were lifted to show him deriding faces when he felt himself spit upon, smitten, and kicked with 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 run unto our lips from without the lowest depth of resignation is not to be found in martyrdom 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 hypocrites 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 with planless desire for plunder but with that discriminating selection of such as belonged to chief Pignoni 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 Valore suspected of wanting with the frate's help to make himself a doge or gonfalonier for life and the gray haired 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 himself murdered as he was on his way to answer a summons to the Palazzo by the swords of men named Ridolfi and Tornabuone in this way that mask of the furies called riot 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 Dolpho 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 excitement produced by the news that was being brought to him continually among the obscurely dressed visitors Sir Ciacone was one of the most frequent and as the hours advanced towards the morning twilight he had remained as Spini's constant companion together with Francesco Cay who was then in rather careless hiding in Florence expecting to have his banishment revoked when the frate's fall had been accomplished the tapers had burned themselves into low shapeless masses and holes in the shutters were just marked by a somber outward light 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 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 scarcella 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 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 contrivances that nobody could see to the end of but himself a Greek too who dropped into Florence with gems packed about him said Francesco K. who had a slight smile of amusement on his face at Spini's fuming you did not choose your confident fairy wisely, my dolfo he's a cursed deal cleverer than you, Francesco and handsomer too, said Spini, turning on his associate with a general desire to worry anything that presented itself I humbly conceive, said Sir Ciccone, unless a 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 oh, but there comes Tadeo or somebody, now's the time what news, eh? he went on as Tuccompagnacci entered with heated looks bad, said one, the people have made up their minds they were going to have the sacking of Sodorini's house and now they have been balked we shall have them turning on us if we don't take care I suspect there are some mediciens buzzing about among them and we may 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 Tadeo by the belt he drew him aside to give him directions, while the other went on telling Kay how the senoria had interfered about Sodorini's house Echo exclaimed Spini presently, giving Tadeo a slight push towards the door go and make quick work End of chapter 66 Chapter 67 of Romola About the time when the Tuccompagnacci 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 never been done. In no relation to theirs, he was making his way to the brink 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 on the channeled 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 pairings. It was worthwhile to 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 by the wayside out beyond the Porta San Frediano. For Baldassare 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 desire to live. 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 Miniatto 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 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. Valdesare desired to live, and therefore he crept out in the gray 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, senioria, 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 Rubaconte, the larger for the Ponte Vecchio, 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. But the master of that house was neither sleeping nor in bed, he had not been in bed that night, for Tito's anxiety to quit Florence had been stimulated 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 Baldissare, 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. Masa was to deliver up his house to the new tenant. His horses and mules were waiting him in Sangallo. 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 courtyard, he passed through the great doorway, not the same Tito, but nearly as brilliant 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 off and was soon to be far behind him. He turned with rapid steps towards the piazza De Mozzi, intending to pass over the Ponte Rubicante, but as he went along certain sounds came upon his ears that made him turn round and walk yet more quickly in the opposite direction. Was the mob coming into Ultrano? It was 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 Vecchio. Again he turned from an impulse of fear that was stronger than reflection, but it was 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 him. 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 his cap fell off, and that he was thrust violently forward amongst the rabble along the narrow passage of the bridge. Then he distinguished the shouts, Pignone! Medician! Pignone! 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 scarcella was snatched at, but all the while he was being hustled and dragged, and the snatch failed, his scarcella still hung at his side. Shouting, yelling, half-motivous 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 at Cermont the center 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 extremity. With a sudden desperate effort he mastered the clasp of his belt, and flung belt and scarcella forward towards a yard of clear space against the parapet, crying in a ringing voice. There are diamonds! There is gold! In the instant the hold on him was relaxed, and there was a rush towards the scarcella. He threw himself on the parapet with a desperate leap, and in 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 alla Carrara he might land in a remote part of the city, and even yet reach Sangallo. Life was still before him, and the idiot mob shouting and bellowing on the bridge there would think he was drowned. They did think so. Peering over the parapet along the dark stream they could not see afar off the moving blackness of the floating hair on 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 distended on the temples. One bridge was passed, the bridge of Santa Trinita. Should he risk landing now, rather than trust to his strength? No. He heard, or fancied he heard, yells and cries pursuing him. 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 the 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. Valdesare, looking up blankly from the search in the run-loop 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 with a start as he sat among the ranked 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 from him, and he started forward like a panther, clutching the velvet tunic as he fell forward on the body and flashed a look in the man's face. Dead? Was he 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. Valdesare 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 presence 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 forever. But now Valdesare's only dread was, lest the young limbs should escape him. He pressed his knuckles against the round throat and knelt upon 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 lose his hold till someone came and found them. Justice would send some witness, and then he, Valdesare, 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 described afar off the two human bodies among the tall grass by the riverside. Florence was busy with greater affairs on the preparation of a deeper tragedy. Not long after those two bodies were lying on 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 wagon drawn by a mild gray 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 readiness to be carried away, he 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. May it was better to put them into the wagon and carry them as they were into the great piazza that notice might be given to the eight. As the wagon 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 Malema on the steps of the Duomo. He is perhaps the same old man who appeared at supper in my gardens, said Bernardo Ruccioli, one of the eight. I had forgotten him. I thought he had died in prison, but there is no knowing the truth now. He 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. CHAPTER 68 ROMALA'S WAKING Romala 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 core to the bargello, where the flickering flames of the taper 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 treetops, a pathway, leaning to a little irregular mass of building that seemed to have clambered in a hasty way up the mountainside, and taken a difficult stand there for the sake of showing the tall belfry 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 Romala and thrilled her gently like a caress. She lay motionless, hardly watching the scene, rather, feeling simply the presence 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 leafy, when the exquisite-ness of subtle, indefinite sensation creates a bliss which is without memory and without desire. As the soft warmth penetrated Romala's young limbs, as her eyes rested on the 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 girlhood 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 forever. She only felt that she rested. Then she became distinctly conscious 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 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 set up in the boat, willing, if she could, to resist the rush of thoughts that urged themselves along with the conjecture 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 was 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 continuous, and more and more intense. Romula 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 onto the beach, but she paused there and listened. The mother of the child must be near. The cry must soon cease. But it went on, and drew Romula so irresistibly, seeming the more piteous to her for the sense of peace which had preceded it, that she jumped onto 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 among the green luxurients 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 somber light 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. Romulo'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 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 Romulo, 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 hardier and had not quite lost the robustness of her form. Romulo, 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 pestilence. 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 goat's milk in exchange for it. She set out at once towards the village, her mind 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 herself to inspire, when she appeared, unknown and unexpected in her religious stress. 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 overripeness, untouched by the sickle, and that golden apples and dark figs lay rotting on the weedy earth. There were grassy spaces within sight, but no cow or sheep or goat. The stillness began to have something fearful in it to Romulo. 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, with 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 a thwart-a-spade handle, and an earthenware cruise in his hand, as if he had fallen suddenly. Romulo 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 crawling 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 Romulo 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 moaning utterance. Romulo stooped to take the pitcher and sat gently in her ear. You shall have water. Can you point towards the well? The hand was lifted towards the more distant end of the little street, and Romulo 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 Romulo was approaching it her eyes were directed to the opposite green slope immediately below the church. High up on a patch of grass between the trees she had described a cow and a couple of goats, and she tried to trace a line of path that would lead her close to that cheering site 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 someone approaching it on the other side had fixed a pair of astonished eyes upon her. Romulo certainly presented a site 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 character 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 well startle that youth of fifteen, accustomed to swing the censor in the presence 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 was a sight of awe. She would perhaps be angry with those who fetched water for themselves only. The youth flung down his vessel in terror, and Romulo, aware now of someone near her, saw the black and white figure fly as if for dear life towards the slope she had just been contemplating. 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 dwelling. 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 Romulo said languidly, Who are you? I came over the sea, said Romulo. 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 Romulo. 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. When the pestilence came a great many people went away and drove off the cows and goats. Give me more water. Romulo, suspecting that if she followed the direction of the youth's flight she should find some men and women who were still healthy and able, determined 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 back 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 was 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 burden 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, which someone 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 attentively, and lower down the black skirt of a priest's garment, and a hand grasping a bucket, she stood mutely observing, and the face, too, remained motionless. Romala had often witnessed the overpowering 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? Romala had divined part of the truth, but she had not divined that preoccupation of the priest's mind, which charged her words 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 was as tall as the cypresses, and had a light about her head, and she looked up at the church. The Pievano, parish priest, had not listened with entire belief. He had been more than fifty years in the world 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 avais. 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 sight of Romala pausing at the parted way. Completing words with their strange refinement of tone and accent, instead of being explanatory, had a preternatural 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 Romala 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. Romala 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 Romala 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 recognised the Hebrew baby, he was certain that he had a substantial woman before him, but there was still something strange and unaccountable in Romala'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 Romala 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. Romala on her side was not unabservant, 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 neighbouring 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 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 villagers went 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 Romula, 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 Romula 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 influence forcing them to obey. The suspicion that Romula was a supernatural form was dissipated, but their minds were filled instead with the more effective 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 Romula, and see if anyone 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 comforted. Most were saved, and the dead were buried. In this way days, weeks, and months passed with Romula, till the men were digging and sewing 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 mountainside. 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 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 everything 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 beautiful loving deeds there, rescuing those who were ready to perish.