 Chapter 50 of Ramola. Another figure easily recognized by us, a figure not clad in black, but in the old red, green and white, was approaching the piazza that morning to see the carnival. She came from an opposite point, for Tessa no longer lived on the hill of San Giorgio, after what had happened there, with Baldissare, Tito had thought it best for that and other reasons to find her a new home, but still in a quiet, airy quarter, in a house bordering on the wide garden grounds north of Porta Santa Croce. Tessa was not come out sightseeing without special leave. Tito had been with her the evening before, and she had kept back the entreaty, which she felt to be swelling her heart and throat until she saw him in a state of radiant ease, with one arm round the sturdy Lilo, and the other resting gently on her own shoulder, as she tried to make the tiny Nina steady on her legs. She was sure then that the weariness with which he had come in, and flung himself into his chair, had quite melted away from his brow and lips. Tessa had not been slow at learning a few small stratagems by which she might avoid vexing Naldo, and yet have a little of her own way. She could read nothing else, but she had learned to read a good deal in her husband's face. And certainly the charm of that bright, gentle, humored Tito, who woke up under the Lorgia del Cherchie, on a linten morning five years before, not having yet given any hostages to deceit, never returned so nearly as in the person of Naldo, seated in that straight-backed, carved-armed chair which he had provided for his comfort when he came to see Tessa and the children. Tito himself was surprised at the growing sense of relief which he felt in these moments. No guile was needed towards Tessa. He was too ignorant and too innocent to suspect him of anything. And the little voices calling him Babo were very sweet in his ears for the short while that he had heard them. When he thought of leaving Florence he never thought of leaving Tessa and the little ones behind. He was very fond of these round-cheeked, wide-eyed human things that clung about him and knew no evil of him. And wherever affection can spring it is like the green leaf and the blossom. Pure and breathing purity, whatever soil it may grow in. Poor Ramola, with all her self-sacrificing effort, was really helping to harden Tito's nature by chilling it with a positive dislike which had beforehand seemed impossible in him. But Tessa kept open the fountains of kindness. Nina is very good without me now. Began Tessa, feeling her request rising very high in her throat and letting Nina seat herself on the floor. I can leave her with Mona Lisa any time. And if she is in the cradle and cries, Lilo is as sensible as can be. He goes and thumps Mona Lisa. Lilo, whose great dark eyes looked all the darker because his curls were of a light brown like his mother's, jumped off Babbo's knee and went forthwith to attest his intelligence by thumping Mona Lisa, who was shaking her head slowly over her spending at the other end of the room. A wonderful boy, said Tito, laughing. Isn't he, said Tessa, eagerly, getting a little closer to him? And I might go and see the carnival tomorrow just for an hour or two mightn't I? Oh, you wicked pigeon, said Tito, pinching her cheek. Those are your longings, are they? What have you to do with carnivals, now you are an old woman with two children? But old women like to see things, said Tessa, her lower lip hanging a little. Mona Lisa said she should like to go, only she's so deaf she can't hear what is behind her, and she thinks we couldn't take care of both the children. No indeed, Tessa, said Tito, looking very grave. You must not think of taking the children into the crowded streets, else I shall be angry. But I have never been into the Piazza without leave, said Tessa, in a frightened pleading tone, since the holy Saturday and I think Norfrey is dead. For you know the poor Madre died, and I shall never forget the carnival I saw once. It was so pretty, all roses, and a king and queen under them, and singing. I liked it better than the San Giovanni. But there's nothing like that now, my Tessa. They are going to make a bonfire in the Piazza, that's all. But I cannot let you go out by yourself in the evening. Oh, no, no, I don't want to go in the evening. I only want to go and see the procession by daylight. There will be a procession, is it not true? Yes, after a sort, said Tito, as lively as a flight of cranes. You must not expect roses and glittering kings and queens, my Tessa. However, I suppose any string of people to be called a procession will please your blue eyes. And there's a thing they have raised in the Piazza del Signori for the bonfire. You may like to see that. But come home early, and look like a grave little old woman, and if you see any men with feathers and swords, keep out of their way, they are very fierce, and like to cut old women's heads off. Santa Madonna, where do they come from? Ah, you are laughing. It is not so bad. But I will keep away from them, only, Tessa went on in a whisper, putting her lips near Naldo's ear. If I might take Lilo with me, he is very sensible. But who will fump Mona Lisa then if she doesn't hear? Said Tito, finding it difficult not to laugh, but thinking it necessary to look serious. No, Tessa, you could not take care of Lilo if you got into a crowd, and he's too heavy for you to carry him. It is true, said Tessa rather sadly, and he likes to run away, I forgot that. Then I will go alone, but now look at Nina. You have not looked at her enough. Nina was a blue-eyed thing at the tottering tumbling age. A fair solid, which, like a loaded dye, found its base with a constancy that warranted prediction. Tessa went to snatch her up, and when Babo was paying due attention to the recent teeth and other marvels, she said in a whisper, And shall I buy some confetti for the children? Tito drew some small coins from his scarcella, and poured them into her palm. That will buy no end, said Tessa, delighted that this abundance. I shall not mind going without Lilo so much if I bring him something. So Tessa set out in the morning toward the great Piazza where the bonfire was to be. She did not think the February breeze cold enough to demand further covering than her green woolen dress. A mantle would have been oppressive, for it would have hidden a new necklace and a new clasp, mounted with silver, the only ornamental presence Tito had ever made her. Tessa did not think at all of showing her figure, for no one had ever told her it was pretty, but she was quite sure that her necklace and clasp were of the prettiest sort ever worn by the richest contadena, and she arranged a white hood over her head so that the front of her necklace might be well displayed. These ornaments she considered must inspire respect for her as the wife of someone who could afford to buy them. She tripped along very cheerily in the February sunshine, thinking much of the purchases for the little ones, with which she was to fill her small basket, and not thinking at all of anyone who might be observing her, yet her descent from her upper story into the street had been watched, and she was being kept in sight as she walked by a person who had often waited in vain to see if it were not Tessa who lived in that house to which he had more than once dogged Tito. Baldassare was carrying a package of yarn. He was constantly employed in that way as a means of earning his scanty bread, and keeping the sacred fire of vengeance alive, and he had come out of his way this morning, as he had often done before, that he might pass by the house to which he had followed Tito in the evening. His long imprisonment had so intensified his timid suspicion and his belief in some diabolic fortune-favoring Tito that he had not dared to pursue him except under cover of a crowd or of the darkness. He felt, with instinctive horror, that if Tito's eyes fell upon him, he should again be held up to obliquy, again be dragged away his weapon would be taken from him, and he should be cast helpless into a prison cell. His fierce purpose had become as stealthy as a serpent's, which depends for its prey on one dart of the fang. Just as was weak and unfriended, and he could not hear again the voice that peeled the promise of vengeance in the Duomo. He had been there again and again, but that voice, too, had apparently been stifled by cunning, strong-armed wickedness. For a long time Baldassare's ruling thought was to ascertain whether Tito still wore the armor, for now at last his fainting hope would have been contented with a successful stab on this side the grave, but he would never risk his precious knife again. It was a weary time he had had to wait for the chance of answering this question by touching Tito's back in the press of the street. Since then the knowledge that the sharp steel was useless and that he had no hope but in some new device had fallen with ledden weight on his enfeebled mind. A dim vision of winning one of those two wives to aid him came before him continually and continually slid away. The wife who had lived on the hill was no longer there. If he could find her again he might grasp some thread of a project and work his way to more clearness. And this morning he had succeeded. He was quite certain now where this wife lived. And as he walked bent a little under his burden of yarn, yet keeping the green and white figure in sight his mind was dwelling upon her and her circumstances as feeble eyes dwell on lines and colors, trying to interpret them into consistent significance. Tessa had to pass through various long streets without seeing any other sign of the carnival than unusual groups of the country people in their best garments and that disposition in everybody to chat and loiter which marks the early hours of a holiday before the spectacle has begun. Presently in her disappointed search for remarkable objects, her eyes fell on a man with a peddler's basket before him who seemed to be selling nothing but little red crosses to all the passengers. A little red cross would be pretty to hang up over her bed. It would also help to keep off harm and would perhaps make Nina stronger. Tessa went to the other side of the street that she might ask the peddler the price of the crosses, fearing that they would cost a little too much for her to spare from her purchase of sweets. The peddler's back had been turned towards her hither too, but when she came near him she recognized an old acquaintance of the Mercado, Brati Feraveci, and accustomed to feel that she was to avoid old acquaintances she turned away again and passed to the other side of the street. Brati's eye was too well-practiced in looking out at the corner after possible customers for her movements to have escaped him, and she was presently arrested by a tap on the arm from one of the red crosses. "'Young woman,' said Brati, as she unwillingly turned her head, "'you come from some Costello a good way off, it seems to me. Else you'd never think about walking about this blessed carnival without a red cross in your hand. Santa Madonna, for white cratrini, is a small price to pay for your soul. Price's rise in purgatory let me tell you. Oh, I should like one,' said Tessa hastily, but I couldn't spare for white cratrini." Brati headed first regarded Tessa too abstractly as a mere customer to look at her with any scrutiny, but when she began to speak, he exclaimed, by the head of San Giovanni, it must be the little Tessa, and looking as fresh as a ripe apple. What, you've done none the worse than for running away from Father Norfrey? You were in the right of it, for he goes on crutches now, and a crabbed fellow with crutches is dangerous. He can reach across the house and beat a woman as he sits. "'I'm married,' said Tessa, rather demurely, remembering and all those command that she should behave with gravity, and my husband takes great care of me. Ah, then you've fallen on your feet. Norfrey said you were good for nothing vermin, but what, then? And ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down. I always said you did well to run away, and it isn't often Brati's in the wrong. Well, and so you've got a husband and plenty of money? Then you'll never think much of giving for white cratrini for a red cross. I get no profit, but what with the famine and the new religion? All other merchandise has gone down. You live in the country where the chestnuts are plenty, eh? You've never wanted for polenta, I can see.' "'No, I've never wanted anything,' said Tessa, still on her guard. Then you can afford to buy a cross. I got a Padre to bless them, and you get blessing and all for fork trini. It isn't for profit. I hardly get a Donaro by the whole lot, but then there are holy wares, and it's getting harder and harder work to see your way to paradise. The very carnival is like holy week, and the least you can do to keep the devil from getting the upper hand is to buy a cross. God guard you. Think what the devil's tooth is. You've seen him biting the man in San Giovanni, I should hope.' Tessa felt much teased and frightened. "'Oh, Brati,' she said with a discomposed face, I want to buy a great many confetti. I've got little Lilo and Nina at home, and nice colored sweet things cost a great deal, and they will not like the cross so well, though I know it would be good to have it.' "'Come then,' said Brati, fond of laying up a store of merits by imagining possible extortions, and then heroically renouncing them, since you're an old acquaintance, you shall have it for two quatrini. It's making you a present of the cross to say nothing of the blessing.' Tessa was reaching out her two quatrini with trembling hesitation. "'When Brati said abruptly, stop a bit, where do you live?' "'Oh, a long way off,' she answered, almost automatically, being preoccupied with her quatrini, beyond San Ambrodio, in the via piccola, at the top of the house where the wood is stacked below. "'Very good,' said Brati in a patronizing tone. "'Then I'll let you have the cross on trust and call for the money. So you live inside the gates? Well I shall be passing.' "'No, no,' said Tessa, frightened, lest Naldo should be angry at this revival of an old acquaintance, I can spare the money, take it now. "'No,' said Brati resolutely. "'I'm not a hard-hearted peddler. I'll call and see if you've got any rags, and you shall make a bargain.' "'See, here's the cross, and here's Pipo's shop not far behind you. You can go and fill your basket, and I must go and get mine empty.' "'Adi-o, Picina!' Brati went on his way, and Tessa, stimulated to change her money into confetti before further accident, went into Pipo's shop a little fluttered by the thought that she had led Brati no more about her than her husband would approve. There were certainly more dangers in coming to see the carnival than in staying home, and she would have felt this more strongly if she had known that the wicked old man who had wanted to kill her husband on the hill was still keeping her in sight, but she had not noticed the man with the burden on his back. The consciousness of having a small basketful of things to make the children glad dispersed her anxiety, and as she entered the via the Librage her face had its visual expression of childlike content, and now she thought there was really a procession coming, for she saw white robes and a banner, and her heart began to palpitate with expectation. She stood a little aside, but in that narrow street there was the pleasure of being obliged to look very close. The banner was pretty. It was the holy mother with the babe whose love for her Tessa had believed in more and more since she had had her babies, and the figures in white had not only green wreaths on their heads, but little red crosses by their side, which caused her some satisfaction since she also had her red cross. Certainly they looked as beautiful as the angels on the clouds, and to Tessa's mind they too had a background of cloud like everything else that came to her life. How and whence did they come? She did not mind much about knowing, but one thing surprised her as newer than wreaths and crosses, it was that some of the white figures carried baskets between them. What could the baskets be for? But now they were very near, and to her astonishment they wheeled aside and came straight up to her. She trembled as she would have done if St. Michael in the picture had shaken his head at her, and was conscious of nothing but terrified wonder, till she saw close to her a round boyish face lower than her own, and heard a treble boy saying, Sister, you carry the anathema about you, yield it up to the blessed Jesu, and he will adorn you with the gems of his grace. Tessa was only more frightened, understanding nothing. Her first conjecture settled on her basket of sweets. They wanted that, these alarming angels. Oh, dear, dear, she looked down at it. No, sister, said a taller youth, pointing to her necklace and the clasp of her belt. It is those vanities that are the anathema take off that necklace and unclasp that belt, that they may be burned in the holy bonfire of vanities and save you from burning. It is the truth, my sister, said a still, taller youth, evidently the archangel of this band. Listen to these voices speaking the divine message. You already carry your right cross. Let that be your only adornment. Yield up your necklace and belt, and you shall obtain grace. This was too much. Tessa, overcome with awe, dare not say no, but she was equally unable to render up her beloved necklace and clasp. Her pouting lips were quivering. The tears rushed to her eyes, and a great drop fell. For a moment she seized to see anything. She felt nothing but confused terror and misery. Suddenly a gentle hand was laid on her arm and a soft, wonderful voice as if the holy Madonna were speaking said, do not be afraid, no one shall harm you. Tessa looked up and saw a lady in black with a young heavenly face and loving hazel eyes. She had never seen anyone like this lady before and under other circumstances might have had awe-struck thoughts about her, but now everything else was overcome by the sense that loving protection was near her. The tears only fell the faster, relieving her swelling heart, as she looked up at the heavenly face and putting her hand to her necklace said sobbingly, I can't give them to be burnt. My husband, he bought them for me, and they are so pretty, and Nina, I wish I'd never come. Do not ask her for them, said Ramola, speaking to the white-robed boys in a tone of mild authority. It answers no good end for people to give up such things against their will. That is not what Fra Girolamo approves. He would have such things given up freely. Madonna, Ramola's word, was not to be resisted, and the white train moved on. They even moved with haste, as if some new object had caught their eyes, and Tessa felt with bliss that they were gone and that her necklace in clasp were still with her. Oh, I will go back to the house, she said, still agitated, I will go nowhere else, but if I should meet them again and you not be there, she added, expecting everything from this heavenly lady. Stay a little, said Ramola. Come with me under this doorway, and we will hide the necklace in clasp, and then you will be in no danger. She led Tessa under the archway and said, now can we find room for your necklace and belt in your basket? Ah, your basket is full of crisp things that will break. Let us be careful and lay the heavy necklace under them. It was like a change in a dream to Tessa, the escape from nightmare into floating safety and joy, to find herself taken care of by this lady, so lovely and powerful and gentle. She let Ramola unfasten her necklace in clasp, while she herself did nothing but look up at the face that bent over her. They are sweets for Lilo and Nina, she said, as Ramola carefully lifted up the light parcels in the basket and placed at the ornaments below them. Those are your children, said Ramola, smiling, and you would rather go home to them than see any more of the carnival? Else you have not for to go to the Piazza del Signore, and there you would see the pile for the great bonfire. No, oh no, said Tessa, equally, I shall never like bonfires again, I will go back. You live at some Costello, doubtless, said Ramola, not waiting for an answer. Towards which gate do you go? Towards Porta Santa Croce. Come then, said Ramola, taken her by the hand and leading her to the corner of a street nearly opposite. If you go down there, she said, pausing, you will soon be in a straight road, and I must leave you now because someone else expects me. You will not be frightened, your pretty things are quite safe now, adio. Adio Madonna, said Tessa, almost in a whisper, not knowing what else it would be right to say. And in an incident the heavenly lady was gone, Tessa turned to catch a last glimpse, but she only saw the tall gliding figure vanish round the projecting stonework, so she went on her way in wonder, longing to be once more safely housed with Mona Lisa undesirous of carnivals for evermore. Baldisserie had kept Tessa in sight till the moment of her parting with Ramola, then he went away with this bundle of yarn. It seemed to him that he had discerned a clue which might guide him if he could only grasp the necessary details firmly enough. He had seen the two wives together and the sight had brought to his conceptions that vividness which had been wanting before. His power of imagining facts needed to be reinforced continually by the senses. The tall wife was the noble and rightful wife. She had the blood in her that would be readily kindled to resentment. She would know what scholarship was and how it might lie locked in by the obstructions of the stricken body like a treasure buried by earthquake. She could believe him. She would be inclined to believe him if he proved to her that her husband was unfaithful. Women cared about that. They would take vengeance for that. If this wife of Tito's loved him, she would have a sense of injury which Baldissari's mind dwelt on with keen longing as if it would be the strength of another will added to his own, the strength of another mind to form devices. Both these wives had been kind to Baldissari and their acts towards him, being bound up with the very image of them, had not vanished from his memory, yet the thought of their pain could not present itself to him as a check. To him it seemed that pain was the order of the world for all except the hard and the base. If any were innocent, if any were noble, where could the utmost gladless lie for them? Where it lay for him in unconquerable hatred and triumphant vengeance. But he must be cautious. He must watch this wife in the via debaude and learn more of her for even here frustration was possible. There was no power for him now, but in patience. End of chapter 50. Chapter 51 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 Elliot. Chapter 51 Mona Brigida's Conversion When Ramola said that someone else expected her, she meant her cousin Brigida, but she was far from suspecting how much that good kinswoman was in need of her. Returning together towards the piazza, they had described the company of youths coming to a stand before Tessa. And when Ramola, having approached near enough to see the simple little Contadine's distress, said, Wait for me a moment, cousin. Mona Brigida said hastily, Ah, I will not go on. Come for me to Bonnie's shop, I shall go back there. The truth was, Mona Brigida had a consciousness on the one hand of certain vanities carried on her person, and on the other of a growing alarm, lest the Pianoni should be right in holding that rouge and false hair and pearl embroidery in damage to the soul. Their serious view of things filled the air like an odour. Nothing seemed to have exactly the same flavour as it used to have. And there was the dear child Ramola in her youth and beauty, leading a life that was uncomfortably suggestive of rigorous demands on women. A widow at fifty-five, whose satisfaction has been largely drawn from what she thinks of her own person, and what she believes others think of it, requires a great fund of imagination to keep her spirit buoyant. And Mona Brigida had begun to have frequent struggles at her toilet. If her soul would prosper better without them, was it really worthwhile to put on the rouge and the braids? But when she lifted up the hand mirror and saw a shallow face with baggy cheeks and crow's feet that were not to be dissimulated by any simpering of the lips, when she parted her grey hair and let it lie in simple Pianoone fashion round her face, her courage failed. Mona Bertha would certainly burst out laughing at her and call her an old hag, and as Mona Bertha was really only fifty-two, she had a superiority which would make the observation cutting. Every woman who was not a Pianoone would give a shrug at the sight of her, and the men would accost her as if she were their grandmother. Whereas at fifty-five, a woman was not so very old. She only required making up a little. So the rouge and the braids and the embroidered Bertha went on again, and Mona Bertha was satisfied with the accosted effect. As for her neck, if she covered it up, people might suppose it was too old to show, and on the contrary, with the necklaces round it, it looked better than Mona Bertha's. This very day when she was preparing for the Pianoone carnival, such a struggle had occurred, and the conflicting fears and the longings which caused the struggle caused her to turn back and seek refuge in the drugist's shop rather than encounter the collectives of the Anathema when Ramola was knocked by her side. But Mona Brigida was not quite rapid enough in her retreat. She had been described even before she turned away by the white-robed boys in the rear of those who wheeled round towards Tessa, and the willingness with which Tessa was given up was perhaps slightly due to the fact that part of the troupe had already accosted a personaged carrying more markedly upon her the dangerous weight of the Anathema. It happened that several of this troupe were at the youngest age taken into peculiar training, and a small fellow of ten, his olive wreath resting above cherubic cheeks and wide brown eyes, his imagination really possessed with a hovering oar to existence as something in which great consequences impended on being good or bad. His longings, nevertheless, running in the direction of mastery and mischief was the first to reach Mona Brigida and place himself across her path. She felt angry and looked for an open door, but there was not one at hand, and by attempting to escape now she would only make things worse. But it was not the cherubic-faced young one who first addressed her. It was a youth of fifteen who held one-hand love a wide basket. "'Venourable mother,' he began, "'the blessed Jesus commands you to give up the Anathema, which you carry upon you, that cap embroidered with pearls, those jewels that fasten up your false hair, let them be given up and sold for the poor, and cast the hair itself away from you as a lie that is only fit for burning. Doubtless, too, you have other jewels under your silk mantle.' "'Yes, lady,' said the youth at the other-handle, who had many of Fragiloramo's phrases by heart, "'they are too heavy for you. They are heavier than a millstone and are waiting you for perdition. Will you adorn yourself with the hunger of the poor and be proud to carry God's curse upon your head?' "'In truth you are old, Buonadonna,' said the cherubic boy in a sweet soprano. You look very ugly with the red on your cheeks and that black glistening hair and those fine things. It is only Satan who can like to see you. Your angel is sorry. He wants you to rub away the red.' The little fellow smatched a soft silk scarf from the basket and held it toward Monabrigida that she might use it as her guardian angel desired. Her anger and mortification were fast giving way to spiritual alarm. Monaberta and that cloud of witnesses, highly dressed society in general, were not looking at her, and she was surrounded by young monitors whose white robes and wreaths and red courses and dreadful candour had something awful in their unusualness. Her Franciscan confessor, Fra Cristoforo of Santa Croce, was not at hand to reinforce her distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was helplessly possessed and shaken by a vague sense that her supreme warning was coming to her. Unvisited by the least suggestion of any other course that was open to her, she took the scarf that was held out and rubbed her cheeks with trembling submissiveness. "'It is well, Madonna,' said the second youth. "'It is a holy beginning, and when you have taken those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly grace will descend on it.' The infusion of mischief was getting stronger and putting his hand to one of the dueled pins that fastened her braids to the Beretta. He drew it out. The heavy black plate fell down over Monabrigida's face and dragged the rest of the headgear forward. It was a new reason for not hesitating. She put up her hands hastily, undid the other fastenings, and flung down into the basket of doom her beloved crimson velvet Beretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed pearls, and stood an unruged woman, with grey hair pushed backward from a face where certain deep lines of age had triumphed over Embonpoint. But the Beretta was not allowed to lie in the basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it, and held it up pitilessly with the false-haired dangling. See, venerable mother, said the toly youth, what ugly lies you have delivered yourself from! And now you look like the blessed St. Anna, the mother of the Holy Virgin. Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, and never showing herself in the world again, were rushing through Monabrigida's mind. There was nothing possible for her, but to take care of her soul. Of course, there were spectators laughing. She had no need to look round to assure herself of that. Well, it would perhaps be better to be forced to think more of a paradise. But at the thought that the dear, accustomed world was no longer in her choice, there gathered some of those hard tears which just moistened elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a large, rough hand holding a red cross which was suddenly thrust before her over the shoulders of the boys, while a strong, guttural voice said, Only for quatrini Madonna, blessing and all, buy it, you'll find a comfort in it now your wig's gone. There, what are we sinners doing all our lives, making soup in a basket and getting nothing but the scum for our stomachs? Better buy a blessing Madonna, only for quatrini, the profit is not so much as the smell of a denaro, and it goes to the poor. Monabrigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was proceeding to the further submission of reaching money from her embroidered scarcella, at present hidden by her silk mantle, when the group round her, which she had not yet entertained the idea of escaping, opened before a figure as welcome as any angel loosing prison-bolts. Bromola, look at me, said Monabrigida, in a piteous tone, putting out both her hands. The white troupe was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that it zeal about the headgear had been super abundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings. Dear cousin, don't be distressed, said Bromola, smitten with pity, yet hardly able to help smiling at the sudden apparition of her kinswoman, in a genuine, natural guise, strangely contrasted with all memories of her. She took the black drapery from her own head, and threw it over Monabrigida's. There, she went on soothingly, no one will remark you now. We will turn down the Via del Palagio, and go straight to our house. They hastened away, Monabrigida grasping Mona's hand tightly, as if to get a stronger assurance of her being actually there. Ah! My Bromola! My dear child! said the short fat woman, hurrying with frequent steps to keep pace with the majestic young figure beside her. What an old scarecrow I am! I must be good. I mean to be good. Yes, yes, buy a cross! said the guttural voice, while the rough hand was thrust once more before Monabrigida, for Brati was not to be abashed by Ramola's presence into renouncing a probable customer, and had quietly followed up their retreat. Only for Catrini, blessing and all, and if there was any profit it would all go to the poor. Monabrigida would have been compelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submissive mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest Ramola's remonstrance, and with the other reached out a grosso, worth many white crotchini, saying in an intriguing tone, Take it, good man, and be gone! You're in the right Madonna, said Brati, taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into her hand. I'll not offer you change, for I might as well rob you of a mass. What? You've scorched a little, but you'll come off the easier. Better fall from the window than the roof. A good Easter and a good year to you." Well, Ramola cried Monabrigida pathetically, as Brati left them. If I'm to be a pignone, it's no matter how I look. Dear cousin, said Ramola, smiling at her affectionately, you don't know how much better you look than you ever did before. I see now how good-natured your face is, like yourself. That red and finery seem to thrust themselves forward, and hide expression. Ask Alpiero, or any other painter, if he would not rather paint your portrait now than before. I think all lines of the human face have something either touching, or grand, unless they seem to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple? Yes. When one gets to be sixty, Maramola, said Brigida, relapsing a little. But I'm only fifty-five, and Monaberta, and everybody, but it's no use. I will be good, like you, your mother. If she'd been alive, would have been as old as I am. We were cousins together. One must either die, or get old. But it doesn't matter about being old, if one's a pignone. End of Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two of Ramola. The incidents of that carnival day seemed to Ramola to carry no other personal consequences to her than the new care of supporting her poor cousin Brigida in her fluctuating resignation to age in gray hairs. But they introduced a lent in time in which she was kept at a high pitch of mental excitement and active effort. Bernardo del Niro had been elected, gone felonieri, by great exertions, the Medicián party had so far triumphed, and that triumph had deepened Ramola's presentiment of some secretly prepared scheme likely to ripen either into success or betrayal during these two months of her godfather's authority. Every morning the dim daybreak as it peered into her room seemed to be that haunting fear coming back to her. Every morning the fear went with her as she passed through the streets on her way to the early sermon in the Duomo. But there she gradually lost the sense of its chill presence as men lose the dread of death in the clash of battle. In the Duomo she felt herself sharing in a passionate conflict which had wider relations than any enclosed within the walls of Florence. For Savonarola was preaching, preaching the last course of Lenten sermons he was ever allowed to finish in the Duomo. He knew that excommunication was imminent, and he had reached the point of defying it. He held up the condition of the church in the terrible mirror of his unflinching speech which called things by their right names and dealt in no polite paraphrases. He proclaimed with heightening confidence the advent of renovation, of a moment when there would be a general revolt against corruption. As to his own destiny, he seemed to have a double in alternating provision. Sometimes he saw himself taking a glorious part in that revolt, sending forth a voice that would be heard through all Christendom, and making the dead body of the church tremble into new life as the body of Lazarus trembled when the divine voice pierced the sepulcher. Sometimes he saw no prospect for himself but persecution and martyrdom. This life for him was only a vigil, and only after death would come the dawn. The position was one which must have had its impressiveness, for all minds that were not of the dullest order, even if they were inclined, as Machiavelli was, to interpret the freight's character by a key that presupposed in aloftiness. To Ramola, whose kindred ardor gave her a firm belief and savanna role as genuine greatness of purpose, the crisis was as stirring as if it had been part of her personal lot. It blunted self as an exalting memory with all her daily labours, and those labours were calling not only for difficult perseverance but for new courage. Famine had never yet taken its flight from Florence, and all distress, by its long continuance, was getting harder to bear. Disease was spreading in the crowded city, and the plague was expected. As Ramola walked, often in weariness among the sick, the hungry and the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than her pity. By the belief in a heroism struggling for sublime ends, towards which the daily action of her pity could only tend feebly, as the dues that freshen the weedy ground today tend to prepare an unseen harvest in the years to come. But that mighty music, which stirred her in the duomo, was not without its jarring notes. Since those first days of glowing hope, when the freight, seeing the near triumph of good in the reform of the Republic and the coming of the French Deliverer, had preached peace, charity, and oblivion of political differences, there had been a marked change of conditions. Political intrigue had been too obstinate to allow of the desired oblivion. The belief in the French Deliverer, who had turned his back on his high mission, seemed to have wrought harm, and hostility, both on a petty and on a grand scale, was attacking the profit with new weapons and new determination. It followed that the spirit of contention and self-vindication pierced more and more conspicuously in his sermons, that he was urged to meet the popular demands not only by increased insistence and detailed concerning visions and private revelations, but by a tone of defiant confidence against objectors. And from having denounced the desire for the miraculous and declared that miracles had no relation to true faith, he had come to assert that at the right moment the divine power would attest the truth of his prophetic preachings by a miracle. And continually in the rapid transitions of excited feeling, as the vision of triumphant good receded behind the actual predominance of evil, the threats of coming vengeance against vicious tyrants and corrupt priests gathered some impetus from personal exasperation, as well as from indignant zeal. In the career of a great public orator who yields himself to the inspiration of the moment, that conflict of selfish and unselfish emotion, which in most event is hidden in the chamber of the soul, is brought into terrible evidence, the language of the inner voices is written out in letters of fire. But if the tones of exasperation jarred on Romula, there was often another member of Fra Giroloma's audience to whom they were the only thrilling tones, like the vibration of deep bass notes to the death. Baldissari had found out that the wonderful freight was preaching again, and as often as he could, he went to hear the Lenten sermon that he might drink in the threats of a voice which seemed like a power on the side of justice. He went the more because he had seen that Romula went too, for he was waiting and watching for a time when not only outward circumstances, but his own very mental state would mark the right moment for seeking an interview with her. Twice Romula had caught sight of his face in the Duomo, once when its dark glance was fixed on hers. She wished not to see it again, and yet she looked for it as men look for the reappearance of a portent. But any revelation that might be yet to come about this old man was a subordinate fear now. It referred, she thought, only to the past, and her anxiety was almost absorbed by the present. Yet the stirring Lenten passed by. April, the second and final month of her godfather's supreme authority, was near its close, and nothing had occurred to fulfill her presentiment. In the public mind, too, there had been fears and rumours had spread from home of a menacing activity on the part of Piero D'Amici, but in a few days the suspected Bernardo would go out of power. Romula was trying to gather some courage from the review of her futile fears. Then on the twenty-seventh, as she was walking out of her usual errands of mercy in the afternoon, she was met by a messenger from Camilla Ruccelli, chief among the Feminine Seers of Florence, desiring her presence forthwith on matters of the highest moment. Romula who shrank with unconquerable repulsion from the shrill volubility of those illuminated women, and had just now a special repugnance towards Camilla because of a report that she had announced revelations hostile to Bernardo Del Niro, was it first inclined to send back her flat refusal? Camilla's message might refer to public affairs, and Romula's immediate prompting was to close her ears against knowledge that might only make her mental burden heavier. But it had become so thoroughly her habit to reject her impulsive choice, and to obey passively the guidance of outward claims that reproving herself for allowing her presentiments to make her cowardly and selfish, she ended by compliance and went straight to Camilla. She found the nervous gray-haired woman in a chamber arranged as much as possible like a convent cell. The thin fingers clutching Romula as she sat, and the eager voice addressing her at first in a loud whisper, caused her a physical shrinking that made it difficult for her to keep her seat. Camilla had a vision to communicate, a vision in which it had been revealed to her by Romula's angel that Romula knew certain secrets concerning her godfather, Bernardo Del Niro, which if disclosed might save the Republic from peril. Her voice rose louder and higher as she narrated her vision, and ended by exhorting Romula to obey the command of her angel and separate herself from the enemy of God. Romula's impetuosity was that of a mass of nature, and except in moments when she was deeply stirred, her manner was calm and self-controlled. She had a constitutional disgust for the shallow excitability of women like Camilla, whose faculty seemed all wrought up into fantasies, leaving nothing for emotion and thought. The exhortation was not yet ended when she started up and attempted to wrench her arm from Camilla's tightening grasp. It was of no use. The prophetess held her hold like a crab, and only incited to more eager exhortation by Romula's resistance was carried beyond her own intention into a shrill statement of other visions which were to corroborate this. Christ himself had appeared to her and ordered her to send his commands to certain citizens in office that they should throw Bernardo Del Niro from the window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Fragero Lomo himself knew of it, and had not dared this time to say that the vision was not of divine authority. And since then, said Camilla in her excited treble, straining upward with wild eyes towards Romula's face, the blessed infant has come to me and laid a wafer of sweetness on my tongue in token of his pleasure that I had done his will. Let me go! said Romula in a deep voice of anger. God grant you are mad, else you are detestably wicked. The violence of her effort to be free was too strong for Camilla now. She wrenched away her arm and rushed out of the room, not pausing till she had hardly gone far along the street and found herself close to the church of the Badia. She had but to pass behind the curtain under the old stone arch and she would find a sanctuary shut in from the noise and hurry of the street, where all objects and all uses suggest the thought of an eternal peace subsisting in the mists of turmoil. She turned in and sinking down on the step of the altar in front of Filipino lippies, serene virgin appearing to St. Bernard. She waited in hope that the inward tumult which agitated her would by and by subside. The thought which pressed on her the most acutely was that Camilla could allege Savina role as countenance of her wicked folly. Romula did not for a moment believe that he had sanctioned the throwing of Bernardo Del Niro from the window as a divine suggestion. She felt certain that there was falsehood or mistake in that allegation. Savonarola had become more and more severe in his views of resistance to malcontents. But the ideas of strict law and order were fundamental to all his political teaching. Still, since he knew the possibly fatal effects of visions like Camillas, since he had remarked distrust of such spirit-seeing women and kept aloof from them as much as possible, why, with his readiness to denounce wrong from the pulpit, did he not publicly denounce these pretended revelations which brought new darkness instead of light across the conception of a supreme will? Why? The answer came with painful clearness. He was fettered inwardly by the consciousness that such revelations were not, in their basis, distinctly separable from his own visions. He was fettered outwardly by the foreseeing consequence of raising a cry against himself even among the members of his own party, as one who would suppress all divine inspiration of which he himself was not the vehicle. He or his confidential and supplementary seer of visions, fra salvestre, Ramola kneeling with buried face on the altar-step, was enduring one of those sickening moments when the enthusiasm which had come to her as the only energy strong enough to make her life worthy seemed to be inevitably bound up with vain dreams and willful eye-shotting. Her mind rushed back with a new attraction towards the strong, worldly sense, the dignified prudence, the un-theoretic virtues of her godfather, who was to be treated as a sort of a gag because he held that a more restricted form of government was better than the Great Council, and because he would not pretend to forget old ties to the banished family. But with this last thought rose the presentiment of some plot to restore the Medici, and then again she felt that the popular party was half justified in its fierce suspicion. Again she felt that to keep the government of Florence pure and to keep out a vicious rule was a sacred cause. The freight was right there and had carried her understanding irrevocably with him. But at this moment the assent of her understanding went alone. It was given unwillingly. Her heart was recoiling from a right ally to so much narrowness, a right apparently entailing that hard systematic judgment of men which measures them by a sense and denials quite superficial to the manhood within them. Her affection and respect were clinging with new tenacity to her godfather, and with him to those memories of her father, which were in the same opposition to the division of men into sheep and goats by the easy mark of some political or religious symbol. After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas. It remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world's struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope. If Ramola's intellect had been less capable of discerning the complexities in human things, all the early loving associations of her life would have forbidden her to accept implicitly the denuncinatory elusiveness of Savonarola. She had simply felt that his mind had suggested deeper and more efficacious truth to her than any other, and the large breathing room she found in his grand view of human duties had made her patient towards that part of his teaching which she could not absorb, so long as its practical effect came into collision with no strong force in her. But now a sudden insurrection of feeling had brought about that collision. Her indignation, once roused by Camilla's visions, could not pause there, but ran like an illuminating fire over all the kindred facts in Savonarola's teaching. And for the moment she felt what was true in the scornful sarcasms she heard continually flung against him, more keenly than she felt what was false. But it was an illumination that made all life look ghastly to her, where were the beings to whom she could cling, with whom she could work and endure, with the beliefs that she was working for the right. On the side from which moral energy came lay a fanaticism from which she was shrinking of newly started repulsion. On the side to which she was drawn by affection and memory there was the presentiment of some secret plotting which her judgment told her would not be unfairly called crime. And still, surmounting every other thought, was the dread inspired by Tito's hints. Lest that presentiment should be converted into knowledge, in such a way that she would be drawn by irreconcilable claims. Commness would not come even on the altar steps. It would not come from looking at the serene picture where the saint, writing in the rocky solitude, was being visited by faces with celestial peace in them. And Ramola was in the hard press of human difficulties. And that rocky solitude was too far off. She rose from her knees that she might hasten to her sick people in the courtyard, and by some immediate, beneficial action revived that sense of worth and life which at this moment was unfed by any wider faith. But when she turned round she found herself face to face with a man who was standing only two yards off her. The man was Baldasari. Chapter 53 I would speak with you, said Baldasari, as Ramola looked at him, in silent expectation. It was plain that he had followed her, and had been waiting for her. She was going at last to know the secret about him. Yes, she said, with the same sort of submission, that she might have shown under an imposed penance. But you wish to go where no one can hear us. Where he will not come upon us, said Baldasari, turning and glancing behind him timidly. Out, in the air, away from the streets! I sometimes go to San Miniatu at this hour, said Ramola. If you like, I will go now, and you can follow me. It is far, but we can be solitary there. He nodded assent, and Ramola set out. To some women it might have seemed an alarming risk, to go to a comparatively solitary spot with a man who had some of the outward signs of that madness which Tito attributed to him. But Ramola was not giving to personal fears, and she was glad of the distance that interposed some delay before another blow fell on her. The afternoon was far advanced, and the sun was already low in the west when she paused on some rough ground in the shadow of the Cyprus Trunks, and looked round for Baldasari. He was not far off, but when he reached her, he was glad to sink down on an edge of stony earth. His thick-sed frame had no longer the sturdy vigor which belonged to it, when he first appeared with the rope round him in the Dormo, and, under the transient tremor caused by the exertion of walking up the hill, his eyes seemed to have a more helpless vagueness. "'The hill is steep,' said Ramola, with a compassionate gentleness, seating herself by him, and I fear you have been weakened by want.' He turned his head and fixed his eyes on her in silence. Unable, now the moment of speech was come, to seize the words that would convey the thought he wanted to utter, and she remained as motionless as she could, lest he should suppose her impatient. He looked like nothing higher than a common-bred, neglected old man, but she was used now to be very near to such people, and to think a great deal about their troubles. Gradually his glance gathered a more definite expression, and at last he said with an abrupt emphasis, "'Ah! you would have been my daughter!' The swift flush came in Ramola's face, and went back again as swiftly, leaving her with white lips a little apart, like a marble image of horror. For her mind the revelation was made. She defined the facts that lay behind that single word, and in the first moment there could be no check to the impulsive belief, which sprang from her keen experience of Tito's nature. The sensitive response of her face was a stimulus to Balthasari. For the first time his words had wrought their right effect. He went on with gathering eagerness and firmness, laying his hand on her arm. "'You are a woman of proud blood. Is it not true? You go to hear the preacher. You hate baseness, baseness that smiles and triumphs. You hate your husband.' "'Oh, God! Were you really his father?' said Ramola in a low voice, too entirely possessed by the images of the past to take any note of Balthasari's question. Or was it, as he said, did you take him when he was little? "'Ah! You believe me. You know what he is,' said Balthasari exultantly, tightening the pressure on her arm, as if the contact gave him power. "'You will help me?' "'Yes,' said Ramola, not interpreting the words as he meant them. She laid her palm gently on the rough hand that grasped her arm, and the tears came to her eyes as she looked at him. "'Oh! It is piteous. Tell me. You were a great scholar. You taught him? How is it?' She broke off. Tito's allegation of this man's madness had come across her. And where were the signs of even the past refinement? But she had the self-command not to move her hand. She sat perfectly still, waiting to listen with new caution. "'It is gone. It is all gone,' said Balthasari, and they would not believe me, because he lied, and said I was mad, and they had me dragged to prison, and I am old. My mind will not come back, and the world is against me.' He paused a moment, and his eyes sank as if he were under a wave of despondency. Then he looked up at her again, and said with renewed eagerness, "'But you are not against me. He made you love him, and he has been false to you, and you hate him. Yes, he made me love him. He was beautiful and gentle, and I was a lonely man. I took him when they were beating him. He slept in my bosom when he was little. And I watched as he grew, and gave him all my knowledge, and everything that was mine, I meant to be his. I had many things—money, and books, and gems. He had my gems. He sold them. And he left me in slavery. He never came to seek me, and when I came back poor and in misery, he denied me. He said I was a madman. He told us his father was dead—was drowned,' said Ramallah faintly. "'Surely he must have believed it then. Ugh! He could not have been so base then.' A vision had risen of what Tito was to her in those first days, when she thought no more of wrong in him than a child thinks of poison in flowers. The yearning regret that lay in that memory brought some relief from the tension of horror. With one great sob, the tears rushed forth. "'Ah! You are young, and the tears come easily,' said Balsasari, with some impatience. "'But tears are no good.' They only put out the fire within, and it is the fire that works. Tears will hinder us. Listen to me!' Ramallah turned towards him with a slight start. Again, the possibility of his madness had darted through her mind, and checked the rush of belief. If, after all, this man were only a mad assassin. But her deep belief in this story still lay behind, and it was more in sympathy than in fear that she avoided the risk of painting him by any show of doubt. "'Tell me,' she said, as gently as she could. "'How did you lose your memory? Your scholarship?' I was ill. I can't tell how long. It was a blank. I remember nothing. Only at last I was sitting in the sun among the stones. And everything else was darkness. And slowly, and by a degree, I felt something besides that, a longing for something I did not know what, that never came. And when I was in the ship on the waters, I began to know what I longed for. It was for the boy to come back. It was to find all my thoughts again, for I was locked away outside them all. And I am outside now. I feel nothing but a wall and darkness. Balthasar had become dreamy again, and sank into silence, resting his head between his hands. And again Ramola's belief in him had submerged all cautioning doubts. The pity with which she dwelt on his words seemed like the revival of an old pang. Had she not daily seen how her father missed Dino, and the future he had dreamed of in that sun? It all came back once, Balthasar I went on presently. I was master of everything. I saw all the world again, and my gems, and my books. And I thought I had him in my power. And I went back to expose him where the lights were and the trees. And he lied again, and said I was mad, and they dragged me away to prison. Pidness is strong, and he wears armour. The fierceness had flashed up again. He spoke with his former intensity, and again he grasped Ramola's arm. But you will help me. He has been false to you too. He has another wife, and she has children. He makes her believe he is her husband, and she is a foolish, helpless thing. I will show you where she lives. The first shock that passed through Ramola was visibly one of anger. The woman's sense of indignity was inevitably foremost. Balthasar I instinctively felt her sympathy with him. You hate him, he went on. Is it not true? There is no love between you. I know that. I know women can hate. And you have proud blood. You hate falseness, and you can love revenge. Ramola sat paralyzed by the shock of conflicting feelings. She was not conscious of the grasp that was bruising her tender arm. You shall contrive it, said Balthasar I presently in an eager whisper. I have learned by heart that you are his rightful wife. You are a noble woman. You go to hear the preacher of vengeance. You will help justice. But you will think for me, my mind goes, everything goes sometimes. All but the fire. The fire is God. It is justice. It will not die. You believe that? Is it not true? If they will not hang him for robbing me, you will take away his armour. You will make him go without it. And I will stab him. I have a knife, and my arm is still strong enough. He put his hand onto his tunic, and reached out the hidden knife, feeling the edge abstractedly, as if he needed the sensation to keep alive his ideas. It seemed to Ramola that every fresh hour of her life were to become more difficult than the last. Her judgment was too vigorous and rapid for her to fall into the mistake of using futile deprecatory words to a man in Balthasar's state of mind. She chose not to answer his last speech. She would win time for his excitement to allay itself by asking something else that she cared to know. She spoke rather tremulously. You say she is foolish and helpless, that other wife, and believes him to be her real husband. Perhaps he is. Perhaps he married her before he married me. I cannot tell, said Balthasar, pausing in that action of feeling the knife and looking bewildered. I can remember no more. I only know where she lives. You shall see her. I will take you, but not now, he added hurriedly. He may be there. The night is coming on. It is true, said Ramola, starting up with a sudden consciousness that the sun had set, and the hills were darkening. But you will come and take me when— In the morning, said Balthasar, dreaming that she, too, wanted to hurry her revenge. Come to me, then, where you came to me to-day, in the church. I will be there at ten. And if you are not there, I will go again towards midday. Can you remember? Midday, said Balthasar, only midday, the same place, and midday. And after that, he added rising and grasping her arm again, with his left hand, while holding the knife in his right. We will have our revenge. He shall feel the sharp edge of justice. The world is against me, but you will help me. I would help you in other ways, said Ramola, making a first timid effort to dispel his illusion about her. I fear you are in want. You have to labour and get little. I should like to bring you comforts, and make you feel again that there is someone who cares for you. Talk no more about that, said Balthasar effiously. I will have nothing else. Help me to ring one drop of vengeance on this side of the grave. I have nothing but my knife. It is sharp, but there is a moment after the thrust when men see the face of death, and it shall be my face that he will see. He loosed his hold, and sat down again in a sitting posture. Ramola felt helpless. She must defer all intentions till the morrow. Midday, then, she said in a distinct voice. Yes, he answered, with an air of exhaustion. Go! I will rest here. She hastened away, turning at the last spot whence he was likely to be in sight. She saw him seated still. End of chapter 53. CHAPTER 54 OF RAMOLA This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. RAMOLA by George Elliott. CHAPTER 54 THE EVENING AND THE MORNING Ramola had a purpose in her mind as she was hastening away. A purpose which had been growing through the afternoon hours like a side stream rising higher and higher along with the main current. It was less a resolve than a necessity of her feeling. As of the darkening streets, and not caring to call for Mazel's slow escort, she hurried across the bridge where the river showed itself black before the distant dying red, and took the most direct way to the old palace. She might encounter her husband there. No matter. She could not weigh probabilities. She must discharge her heart. She did not know what she passed in the pillared court or up the wide stairs. She only knew that she asked an usher for the gonfaloniere, giving her name and begging to be shown into a private room. She was not left long alone with the frescoed figures and the newly lit tapers. Soon the door opened, and Bernardo del Nero entered, still carrying his white-haired erect above its silk-luco. Ramola, my child, what is this? He said in a tone of anxious surprise as he closed the door. He had uncovered her head, and went towards him without speaking. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and held her a little away from him, that he might see her better. Her face was haggard from fatigue and long agitation. Her hair had rolled down in disorder. But there was an excitement in her eyes that seemed to have triumphed over the bodily consciousness. What has he done, to Bernardo abruptly? Tell me everything, child. Throw away pride. I am your father. It is not about myself. Nothing about myself, said Ramola hastily. Dearest Godfather, it is about you. I have heard things. Some I cannot tell you. But you are in danger in the palace. You are in danger everywhere. There are fanatical men who would harm you. And there are traitors. Nobody, if you trust, you will be betrayed. But Bernardo smiled. Have you worked yourself up into this agitation, my poor child? He said, raising his hand to her head, and patting it gently. To tell such old truth is that to an old man like me. Oh, no. No, they are not old truths, that I mean, said Ramola, pressing her clasped hands painfully together, as if that action could help her to suppress what must not be told. They are fresh things that I know, but cannot tell. Dearest Godfather, you know that I am not foolish. I would not come to you without reason. Is it too late to warn you against anyone, everyone who seems to be working on your side? Is it too late to say, go to your villa and keep away in the country when these three more days of office are over? Oh, God, perhaps it is too late. And if any harm comes to you, it will be as if I had done it. The last words had best from Ramola involuntarily, a long stifled feeling had found Spasmodic utterance. But she herself was startled and arrested. I mean, she added hesitatingly, I know nothing positive. I only know what fills me with fears. A poor child, said Bernardo, looking at her with quiet penetration for a moment or two. Then he said, go, Ramola, go home and rest. These fears may be only big, ugly shadows of something very little and harmless. Even traitors must see their interest in betraying. The rats will run where they smell the cheese, and there is no knowing yet which way the scent will come. He paused and turned away his eyes from her, with an air of abstraction, till, with a slow shrug, he added, As for warnings, there of no use to me, child. I enter into no plots, but I never forsake my colours. If I march abreast with obstinate men who will rush on guns and pikes, I must share the consequences. Let us say no more about that. I have not many years left at the bottom of my sack for them to rob me of. Go, child, go home and rest. He put his hand on her head again caressing me, and she could not help clinging to his arm and pressing her brow against his shoulder. Her godfather's caress seemed the last thing that was left to her out of that young filial life, which now looked so happy to her, even in its troubles, for they were troubles untainted by anything hateful. Is silence best, Myromola? said the old man. Yes, now, but I cannot tell whether it always will be, she answered, hesitatingly, raising her head with an appealing look. Well, you have a father's ear while I'm above ground. He lifted the black drapery and folded it round her head, adding, and a father's home, remember that? Then, opening the door, he said, There, hasten away, you are like a black ghost, you will be safe enough. When Ramola fell asleep that night, she slept deep. Agitation had reached its limits. She must gather strength before she could suffer more, and in spite of rigid habit, she slept on far by sunrise. When she awoke, it was to the sound of guns. Piero de Medici, with thirteen hundred men at his back, was before the gate that looks towards Rome. So much Ramola learned from Marzo, with many circumstantial additions of dubious quality. A countryman had come in and alarmed the senoria before it was light, else the city would have been taken by surprise. His master was not in the house, having been summoned to the palazzo long ago. She sent out the old man again that he might gather news, while she went up to the lodger from time to time, to try and discern any signs of the dreaded entrance having been made, or of its having been effectively repelled. Marzo brought her word that the great piazza was full of armed men, and that many of the chief citizens suspected as friends of the Medici had been summoned to the palace and detained there. Some of the people seemed not to mind whether Piero got in or not, and some said the senoria itself had invited him. But however that might be, they were giving him an ugly welcome, and the soldiers from Pisa were coming against him. In her memory of those morning hours there were not many things that Ramola could distinguish as actual external experiences, standing markedly out above the tumultuous waves of retrospect and anticipation. She knew that she had really walked to the Badia by the appointed time, in spite of street alarms. She knew that she had waited there in vain. And the scene she had witnessed when she came out of the church, and stood waiting on the steps while the doors were being closed behind her, for the afternoon interval, always came back to her like her remembered waking. There was a change in the faces and tones of the people, armed and unarmed, who were pausing or hurrying along the streets. The guns were firing again, but the sound only provoked laughter. She soon knew the cause of the change. Piero de Medici and his horsemen had turned their backs on Florence, and were galloping as fast as they could along the Siena Road. She learned this from the substantial shopkeeping Pianoone, who had not yet laid down his pike. It is true, he added, with a certain bitterness in his emphasis. Piero is gone, but there are those left behind who are in the secret of his coming. We all know that. And if the new Signoria does its duty, we shall soon know who they are. The words darted through Ramola like a sharp spasm, but the evil they foreshadowed was not yet close upon her. And as she entered her home again, her most pressing anxiety was the possibility that she had lost sight for a long while of Beltisserie. END OF CHAPTER 54 The lengthening sunny days went on without bringing either Ramola most desired or what she most dreaded. They brought no sign from Beltisserie, and in spite of special watch on the part of the government, no revelation of the suspected conspiracy. But they bought other things which touched her closely, and bridged the phantom-crowded space of anxiety with active sympathy in immediate trial. They brought the spitting plague and the excommunication of Savonarola. Both of these events tended to arrest her incipient alienation from the frate, and to rivet again her attachment to the man who had opened to her the new life of duty, and who seemed now to be worsted in the fight for principle against provloglacy. For Ramola could not carry from day to day into the abodes of pestilence and misery the sublime excitement of the gladness that, since such anguish existed, she too existed to make some of the anguish less bitter, without remembering what she owed this transcendent moral life to Frageroloma. She could not witness the silence and the excommunication of a man who's distinguishing from the great mass of the clergy lay, not in any herritical belief, not in his superstitions, but in the energy with which he sought to make the Christian life a reality, without feeling herself drawn strongly to his side. Far on in the hot days of June the excommunication, for some weeks arrived from Rome, was solemnly published in the Duomo. Ramola went to witness the scene that the resistance it inspired might invigorate what sympathy with Savonarola, which was one source of her strength. It was in a memorable contrast with the scene she had been accustomed to witness there. Instead of upturned citizen faces filling the vast arena under the morning light, the youngest rising amphitheater-wise towards the walls and making a garland of hope around the memories of age, instead of the mighty voices thrilling all hearts with the sense of great things, visible and invisible, to be struggling for, they were the bare walls at evening made more sombre by the glimmer of tapers, they were the black and gray flocks of monks and secular clergy with bent, unexpected faces, there was the tingling of little bells in the pauses of a monotonous voice reading a sentence which had already been long hanging up in the churches, and at last there was an extinction of tapers and the slow shuffling tread of monkish feet departing in the dim silence. Savonarola's arger on the side of the frate was doubly strengthened by the gleeful triumph she saw in the hardened coarse faces, and by the fear-stricken confusion in the face and speech of many of his strongly attached friends. The question, where the duty of obedience ends and the duty of resistance begins, could in no case be an easy one, but it was made overwhelmingly difficult by the belief that the church was not a compromise of parties to secure a more or less approximate justice in the appropriation of funds, but a living organism instinct with divine powers to bless and to curse. To most of the pious Florentines, who had hitherto felt no doubt in their adherence to the frate, that belief in the divine potency of the church was not an embraced opinion, it was an inalienable impression, like the concavity of the blue firmament and the boldness of Savonarola's written arguments that the excommunication was unjust, and that, being unjust, it was not valid, only made them tremble the more. As a defiance cast at a mystic image against those subtle immeasurable power there was neither weapon nor defense. But Ramola, whose mind had not been allowed to draw its early nourishment from the traditional associations of the Christian community in which her father had lived a life apart, felt her relation to the church only through Savonarola. His moral force had been the only authority to which she had bowed, and in his excommunication she only saw the menace of hostile vice. On one side she saw a man whose life was devoted to the ends of public virtue and spiritual purity, and on the other the assault of alarmed selfishness, headed by a lustful, greedy, lying and murderous old man, once called Rodrigo Borgia, now lifted to the pinnacle of infamy as Pope Alexander VI. The finer shades of fact, which soften the edge of such antithesis, are not apt to be seen except by neutrals, who are not distressed to discern some folly in martyrs and some justiciousness in the men who burnt them. But Ramola required a strength that neutrality could not give, and this excommunication, which simplified and ennobled the resistance position by Savonarola by bringing into prominence its wider relations, seemed to come to her like a rescue from the threatening isolation of criticism and doubt. The frate was now withdrawn from that smaller antagonism against Florentine enemies into which he continually fell in the unchecked excitement of the pulpit, and presented himself simply as appealing to the Christian world against a vicious exercise of ecclesiastical power. He was a standard bearer leaping into the breach. Life never seemed so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt, then, what is the highest prize the soul can win. We almost believe in our own power to attain it. By a new current of such enthusiasm, Ramola was helped through these difficult summer days. She adventured on no words to Tito that would apprise him of her late interview with Baldissari and the revelation he had made to her. What would such agitating, difficult words win from him? No admission of the truth, nothing, probably, but a cool sarcasm about her sympathy with his assassin. Baldissari was evidently helpless. The thing to be feared was not that he should injure Tito, but that Tito, coming upon his traces, should carry out some new scheme for ridding himself of the injured man, who was a haunting dread to him. Ramola felt that she could do nothing decisive until she had seen Baldissari again, and learned the full truth about that other wife, learned whether she were the wife to whom Tito was first bound. The possibilities about that other wife, which involved the worst wound to her hereditary pride, mingled themselves as a newly embittered suspicion with the early memories of her hallucinary love, eating away at her lingering associations of tenderness with the past image of her husband, and her resistible belief in the rest of Baldissari's revelations made her shrink from Tito with a horror which would perhaps have urged some passionate speech in spite of herself if he had not been more than usually absent from home. Like many of the wealthier citizens in that time of pestilence, he spent the intervals of business chiefly in the country. The Rehabil Malima was welcome at many villas, and since Ramola had refused to leave the city, he had no need to provide a country residence of his own. But at last, in the later days of July, the alleviation of those public troubles which had absorbed her activity, and much of her thought, left Ramola to a less counteractive sense of her personal lot. The plague had almost disappeared, and the position of Savarnola was made more hopeful by the favorable magistracy, who were writing urgent vindicatory letters to Rome on his behalf in treating the withdrawal of the excommunication. Ramola's healthy and vigorous frame was undergoing the reaction of languor inevitable after continuous excitement and overexertion, but her mental restlessness would not allow her to remain at home, without preemptory occupation, except during the sultry hours. In the cool of the morning and evening she walked out constantly, varying her direction as much as possible, with the vague hope that if Baldisari was still alive she might encounter him. Perhaps some illness had brought new paralysis of memory, and he had forgotten where she lived, forgotten even her existence. That was her most sanguine explanation of his non-appearance. The explanation she felt to be most probable was that he had died of the plague. The morning warmth was already beginning to be rather oppressive to Ramola, when, after a walk along by the walls, on her way from San Marco, she turned towards the intersecting streets again at the gate of Santa Croce. The borgo la Croce was so still that she listened to her own footsteps on the pavement in the sunny silence, until, unapproaching a bend in the street, she saw a few yards before her, a little child not more than three years old, with no other clothing than his white shirt, paws from a waddling run and look around him. In the first moment of coming nearer, she could only see his back, a boy's back, square and sturdy, with a cloud of reddish-brown cars above it, but in the next he turned towards her, and she could see his dark eyes wide with tears, and his lower lip pushed up and trembling, while his fat brown fists clutched his shirt helplessly. The glimpse of a tall black figure sending a shadow over him brought his bewildered fear to a climax, and a loud crying sob sent the big tears rolling. Ramola, with the ready-maternal instinct, which was one hidden source of her passionate tenderness, instantly uncovered her head and stooped down on the pavement, putting her arms around him and her cheeks against his, while she spoke to him in caressing tones. At first his sobs were only the louder, but he made no effort to get away, and presently the outburst ceased with that strange abruptness which belongs to childish joys and griefs. His face lost its distortion, and was fixed in open-mouthed gaze at Ramola. "'You have lost yourself, little one,' she said, kissing him. "'Never mind. We will find the house again. Perhaps Mama will meet us.' She divined that he had made his escape, at a moment when the mother's eyes were turned away from him, and thought it likely that he would soon be followed. "'Oh! What a heavy, heavy boy!' she said, trying to lift him. "'I cannot carry you. Come, then. You must toddle back by my side.' The parted lips remained motionless in awed silence, and one brown fist still clutched the shirt with as much tenacity as ever. But the other yielded itself quite willingly to the wonderful white hand, strong but soft. "'You have a Mama,' said Ramola, as they set out, looking down at the boy with a certain yearning, but he was mute. A girl under those circumstances might have perhaps chirped abundantly. Not so this square-shouldered little man with the big cloud of curls. He was awake to the first sign of his whereabouts, however. At the turning by the front of Sant'Ambrogio he dragged Ramola towards it, looking up at her. "'Ah! That is the way home, is it?' she said, smiling at him. He only thrust his head forward and pulled, as an admonition, that they should go faster. There was still another turning that he had a decided opinion about, and then Ramola found herself in a short street, leading to open garden-ground. It was in front of a house at the end of this street that the little fellow paused, pulling her towards some stone stairs. He had evidently no wish for her to lose his hand, and she would not have been willing to leave him without being sure that she was delivering him to his friends. They mounted the stairs, seeing but dimly that sudden withdrawal from the sunlight till at the final landing-place an extra stream of light came from an open doorway. Looking through a small lobby, they came to another open door, and there Ramola paused. Her approach had not been heard. On a lower chair at the farther end of the room, opposite the light, sat Tessa, with one hand on the edge of the cradle, and her head hanging a little on one side, fast asleep. Near one of the windows, with her back turned towards the door, sat Monalisa at her work of preparing salad, in deaf unconsciousness. There was only an instant for Ramola's eyes to take in the still scene, for Lilo snatched his hand away from her and ran up to his mother's side, not making a direct effort to wake her, but only leaning his head back against her arm, and surveying Ramola seriously from that distance. As Lilo pushed against her, Tessa opened her eyes and looked up in bewilderment, but her glance had no sooner rested on the figure at the opposite doorway than she started up, blushed deeply, and began to tremble a little, neither speaking nor moving forward. Ah! we have seen each other before," said Ramola, smiling and coming forward. I am glad it was your little boy. He was crying in the street. I suppose he had run away. So we walked together a little way, and then he knew where he was, and brought me here, but you had not missed him. That is well, else he would have been frightened. The shock of finding that Lilo had run away overcame every other feeling in Tessa for the moment. Her colour went again, and, seizing Lilo's arm, she ran with him to Monlisa, saying with a half sob, loud in the old woman's ear, Ah! Lilo, you are wicked! Why will you stand with your back to the door? Lilo ran away ever so far into the street! Holy mother! said Monlisa, in her meek, thick tone, letting the spoon fall from her hands. Where were you then? I thought you were there and had your eye on him. But you know I go to sleep when I am rocking, said Tessa in petish remonstrance. Well, we must keep the outer door shut, or else tie him up, said Monlisa, for he'll be as cunning as Satan before long, and that's the holy truth. But how came he back then? This question recalled Tessa to the consciousness of Ramola's presence. Without answering, she turned towards her, blushing and timid again, and Monlisa's eyes followed her movement. The old woman made a low reverence, and said, doubtless the most noble lady brought him back. Then, advancing little nearer to Ramola, she added, it's my shame for him to have been found only with his shirt on, but he kicked and wouldn't have his other clothes on this morning. And the mother, poor thing, will never hear of his being beaten. But what's an old woman to do without a stick when the lad's legs get so strong? Let your nobleness look at his legs. Lillo, conscious that his legs were in question, pulled his shirt up a little higher, and looked down at their olive roundness with a dispassionate and curious air. Ramola laughed, and stooped to give him a caressing shake and a kiss, and this action helped the reassurance that Tessa had already gathered from Monlisa's address to Ramola. For when Nalda had been told about the adventure at the carnival, and Tessa had asked him who the heavenly lady that had come just when she was wanted, and had vanished so soon was likely to be, whether she could be the holy Madonna herself, he had answered, not exactly, my Tessa, only one of the saints, and had not chosen to say more. So that in the dreamlike combination of small experience, which made up Tessa's thought, Ramola had remained confusedly associated with the pictures in the churches, and when she reappeared, the grateful remembrance of her protection, was slightly tinctured with religious awe, not deeply, for Tessa's dread was chiefly of ugly and evil beings. It seemed unlikely that good beings would be angry and punish her, as it was the nature of nofri in the devil to do. And now that Monlisa had spoken freely about Lillo's legs, and Ramola had laughed, Tessa was more at her ease. "'Nina's in the cradle,' she said. "'She's pretty, too.' Ramola went to look at the sleeping Nina, and Monlisa, one of the exceptionally meek devs, who never expects to be spoken to, returned to her salad. "'Ah, she is waking. She has opened her blue eyes,' said Ramola. "'You must take her up, and I will sit down in this chair. May I? And nurse Lillo. Come, Lillo.' She sat down in Tito's chair, and put out her arms towards the lad, whose eyes had followed her. He hesitated, and pointing his small fingers at her with a half-puzzled, half-angry feeling, said, "'That's Babbo's chair,' not seeing his way out of the difficulty if Babbo came and found Ramola in his place. "'But Babbo is not here. And I shall go soon.' "'Come, let me nurse you as he does,' said Ramola, wondering to herself for the first time what sort of a Babbo he was, whose wife was dressed in Contadina fashion, but had a certain daintiness about her person that indicated idleness and plenty. Lillo consented to be lifted up, and finding the lap exceedingly comfortable began to explore her dress and hands to see if there were any ornaments beside the rosary. Tessa, who had hitherto been occupied in coaxing Nina out of her waking peevishness, now sat down in her low chair, near Ramola's knee, arranging Nina's tiny person to advantage, jealous that the strange lady, too, seemed to notice the boy most, as Naldo did. "'Lillo is going to be angry with me because I sat in Babbo's chair,' said Ramola as she bent forward to kiss Nina's little foot. "'Will he come soon and want it?' "'Ah, no,' said Tessa. "'You can sit in it a long while. I shall be sorry when you go. When you first came to take care of me at the carnival, I thought it was wonderful you came and went away again so fast.' And Naldo said, "'Perhaps you were a saint, and that made me tremble a little, though the saints are very good, I know. And you are good to me, and now you have taken care of Lillo. Perhaps you will always come and take care of me.' That was how Naldo did a long while ago. He came and took care of me when I was frightened once on Giovanni. I couldn't think where he came from. He was so beautiful and good, and so are you,' ended Tessa, looking up at Ramola with devout admiration. "'Naldo is your husband. His eyes are like Lillo's,' said Ramola, looking up at the boy's darkly penciled eyebrows, unusual at his age. She did not speak interrogatively, but with a quiet certainty of inference, which was necessarily mysterious to Tessa. "'Ah, you know him,' she said, pausing a little in wonder. "'Perhaps you know Nofrian, Peritola, and her house on the hill, and everything. Yes, like Lillo's, but not his hair. His hair is dark and long,' she went on, getting rather excited. "'Ah, if you know it, eco.' She had put her hand to a thin red silk cord that hung round her neck, and drew from her bosom the tiny old parchment brevet, the horn of red coral, and a long dark curl carefully tied at one end, and suspended with those mystic treasures. She held them towards Ramola, away from Nina's snatching hand. "'It is a fresh one. I cut it lately. See how bright it is,' she said, laying it against the white background of Ramola's fingers. "'They get dim, and then he lets me cut another, when his hair is grown. And I put it with the brevet, because sometimes he is away a long while. And then I think it helps to take care of me.' A slight shiver passed through Ramola, as the curl was laid across her fingers. At Tessa's first mention of her husband as having come mysteriously, she knew not whence. A possibility had risen before Ramola, that made her heart beat faster. Four to one, who is anxiously in search of a certain object, the faintest suggestions have a peculiar significance. And when the curl was held towards her, it seemed for an instant like a mocking phantasm of the lock she herself had cut to wind with one of her own five years ago. But she preserved her outward calmness, bent not only on knowing the truth, but also on coming to that knowledge in a way that would not pain this poor, trusting, ignorant thing, with the child's mind in the woman's body. Foolish and helpless! Yes, so far she corresponded to Balthazar's account. "'It is a beautiful curl,' she said, resisting the impulse to withdraw her hand. "'Leno's curls will be like it, perhaps, for his cheek, too, is dark. "'And you never know where your husband goes to, when he leaves you?' "'No,' said Tessa, putting back her treasures out of the children's way. "'But I know Mesa Sanmigaeli takes care of him, for he gave him a beautiful coat, all made of little chains. And if he puts that on, nobody can kill him, and perhaps if—' Tessa hesitated a little, under a recurrence of that original dreamy wonder about Ramola, which had been expelled by chatting contact. "'If you were a saint, you would take care of him, too, because you have taken care of me and Lilo.'" An agitated flush came over Ramola's face in the first moment of certainty, but she had bent her cheek against Lilo's head. The feeling that leapt out in that flush was something like exultation at the thought that the wife's burden might be about to slip from her overlaid in shoulders, that this little ignorant creature might prove to be Tito's lawful wife. A strange exultation for a proud and high-born woman to have been brought to. But it seemed to Ramola as if that were the only issue that would make duty anything else for her than an insoluble problem. Yet she was not deaf to Tessa's last appealing words. She raised her head and said in her clearest tones, "'I will always take care of you, if I see you need me.' But that beautiful coat—your husband did not wear it when he was first married. Perhaps he used not to be so long away from you then. Ah, yes, he was, much, much longer, so long. I thought he would never come back. I used to cry, oh, me. I was beaten then, a long, long while ago at Peritola, where we had the goats and the mules. And how long had you been married, before your husband had that chain coat?" said Ramola, her heart beating faster and faster. Tessa looked meditative, and began to count on her fingers, and Ramola watched the fingers as if they would tell the secret of her destiny. "'The chestnuts were ripe when we were married,' said Tessa, marking off her thumb and fingers again as she spoke. And then again they were ripe at Peritola before he came back, and then again, after that, on the hill. And soon the soldiers came, and we heard the trumpets, and then Naldo had the coat. You had been married more than two years. In which church were you married?' said Ramola, too entirely absorbed by one thought to put any question that was less direct. Perhaps before the next morning she might go to her godfather and say that she was not Tito Malema's lawful wife, that the vows which had bound her to strive after an impossible union had been made void beforehand. Tessa gave a slight start at Ramola's new tone of inquiry, and looked up at her with a hesitating expression. Here the two she had prattled on without consciousness that she was making revelations, any more than when she said all things over and over again to Mona Lisa. Naldo said I was never to tell about that, she said doubtfully. Do you think he would not be angry if I told you? It is right that you should tell me—tell me everything, said Ramola, looking at her with mild authority. If the impression from Naldo's command had been much more recent than it was, the constraining effect of Ramola's mysterious authority would have overcome it, but the sense that she was telling what she had never told before made her begin with a lowered voice. It was not in a church, it was at the Nativita, when there was a fair and all the people went overnight to see the Madonna in the Nunciata, and my mother was ill and couldn't go, and I took the bunch of cocoons for her. And then he came to me in the church, and I heard him say, Essa! I knew him, because he had taken care of me at the San Giovanni, and then we went into the piazza, where the fair was, and I had some Berlingrozi, for I was hungry, and he was very good to me. And at the end of the piazza there was a holy father and an altar, like what they have at the processions outside the churches. So he married us, and then Naldo took me back into the church, and left me, and I went home, and my mother died, and Nalfi began to beat me more, and Naldo never came back. And I used to cry, and once at the carnival I saw him and followed him, and he was angry, and he said he would come sometime, I must wait, so I went and waited, but it was a long while before he came, but he would come if he could, but he was good, and then he took me away because I cried and said I could not bear to stay with Nalfi, and I was so glad, and since then I have been always happy, for I don't mind about the goats and the mules, because I have Lilo and Nina now, and Naldo is never angry, only I think he doesn't love Nina so well as Lilo, and she is pretty. Quite forgetting that she had thought her speech rather momentous at the beginning, Tessa felt a devouring Nina with kisses, while Ramola sat in silence with absent eyes. It was inevitable that in this moment she should think of the three beings before her chiefly in their relation to her own lot, and she was feeling the chill of disappointment that her difficulties were not to be solved by external law. She had relaxed her hold of Lilo and was leaning her cheek against her hand, seeing nothing of the scene around her. Lilo was quick in perceiving a change that was not agreeable to him. He had not yet made any return to her caresses, but he objected to their withdrawal and putting up both his brown arms to pull her head towards him. He said, Play with me again! Ramola roused from her self-absorption, clasped the lad anew, and looked from him to Tessa, who had now paused from her shower of kisses, and seemed to have returned to the more placid delight of contemplating the heavenly lady's face. That face was undergoing a subtle change, like the gradual oncoming of a warmer, softer light. Presently, Ramola took her scissors from her scarcella, and cut off one of her long, wavy locks, while the three pair of wide eyes followed her movements with kitten-like observation. I must go away from you now, she said, but I will leave this lock of hair that it may remind you of me. Because if you are ever in trouble, you can think that perhaps God will send me to take care of you again. I cannot tell you where to find me, but if I ever know that you want me, I will come to you. Adieu. She had set down Lilo horridly, and held out her hand to Tessa, who kissed it with a mixture of awe and sorrow at this parting. Ramola's mind was oppressed with thoughts. She needed to be alone as soon as possible, but with her habitual care for the least fortunate, she turned aside to put her hand in a friendly way, on Monalisa's shoulder, and make her a farewell sign. Before the old woman had finished her deep reverence, Ramola had disappeared. Monalisa and Tessa moved towards each other by simultaneous impulse, while the two children stood clinging to their mother's skirts, as if they too felt the atmosphere of awe. Do you think she was a saint? said Tessa in Liza's ear, showing her the lock. Liza rejected that notion very decidedly by a backward movement of her fingers, and then stroking the rippled gold said, She's a great and noble lady. I saw such in my youth. Ramola went home and sat alone through the sultry hours of that day, with the heavy certainty that her lot was unchanged. She was thrown back again on the conflict between the demands of an outward law, which she recognized as a widely ramifying obligation, and the demands of inner moral facts, which were becoming more and more peremptory. She had drunk in deeply the spirit of that teaching by which Savanarola had urged her to return to her place. She felt that the sanctity attached to all close relations, and therefore preeminently to the closest, was but the expression in outward law of that result towards which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend, that the light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because they had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting of social and personal virtue. What else had Tito's crime towards Balthasari been, but that abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity and ingratitude? And the inspiring consciousness breathed into her by Savanarola's influence, that her lot was vitally united with the general lot, had exalted even the minor details of obligation into religion. She was marching with a great army. She was feeling the stress of a common life. If victims were needed, and it was uncertain on whom the lot might fall, she would stand ready to answer to her name. She had stood long. She had striven hard to fulfil the bond, but she had seen all the conditions which made the fulfilment possible gradually forsaking her. The one effect of her marriage tie seemed to be the stifling predominance over her of a nature that she despised. All her efforts at union had only made its impossibility more palpable, and the relation had become for her simply a degrading servitude. The law was sacred, yes, but rebellion might be sacred too. It flashed upon her mind that the problem before her was essentially the same as that which had lain before Savanarola. The problem where the sacredness of obedience ended and where the sacredness of rebellion began. To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with divine lightnings, lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. Before the sun had gone down, she had adopted a resolve. She would ask no counsel of her godfather or of Savanarola until she had made one determined effort to speak freely with Tito and obtain his consent that she should live apart from him. She desired not to leave him clandestinely again, or to forsake Florence. She would tell him that if he ever felt a real need for her, she would come back to him. Was not that the utmost faithfulness to her bond that could be required of her? A shuddering anticipation came over her that he would clothe the refusal in a sneering suggestion that she should enter a convent, as the only mode of quitting him that would not be scandalous. He knew well that her mind revolted from that means of escape, not only because of her own repugnance to a narrow rule, but because all the cherished memories of her father forbade that she should adopt a mode of life which was associated with his deepest griefs and his bitterest dislike. Tito had announced his intention of coming home this evening. She would wait for him, and say what she had to say at once, for it was difficult to get his ear during the day. If he had the slightest suspicion that personal words were coming, he slipped away with an appearance of unpremeditated ease. When she sent for Marzo to tell him that she would wait for his master, she observed that the old man looked at her and lingered with a mixture of hesitation and wondering anxiety. But finding that she asked him no question, he slowly turned away. Why should she ask questions? Perhaps Marzo only knew or guessed something of what she knew already. It was late before Tito came. Ramola had been pacing up and down the long room which had once been the library, with the windows open, and a loose white linen robe on instead of her usual black garment. She was glad of that change after the long hours of heat and motionless meditation. But the coolness and exercise made her more intensely wakeful, and as she went with the lamp in her hand to open the door for Tito, he might well have been startled by the vividness of her eyes, and the expression of painful resolution, which was in contrast with her usual self-restrained quiescence before him. But it seemed that this excitement was just what he expected. Ah! It is you, Ramola. Marzo has gone to bed. He said in a grave, quiet tone, interposing to close the door for her. Then, turning round, he said, looking at her more fully than he was wont. You have heard it all, I see." Ramola quivered. He then was inclined to take the initiative. He had been to Tessa. She led the way through the nearest door, set down her lamp, and turned towards him again. You must not think despairingly of the consequences," said Tito in a tone of soothing encouragement, at which Ramola stood, wondering until he added, the accused have too many family ties with all parties, not to escape, and Messo Bernardo del Nero has other things in his favour besides his age. Ramola started and gave a cry, as if she had been suddenly stricken by a sharp weapon. What! You did not know it," said Tito, putting his hand under her arm, that he might lead her to a seat, but she seemed to be unaware of his touch. Tell me," she said hastily, tell me what it is. A man whose name you may forget, Lamberto de Lantena, who was banished, has been seized within the territory. A letter has been found on him of very dangerous import to the chief Medicians, and the scoundrel who was once a favourite hound of Piero de Medici is ready now to swear what anyone pleases against him or his friends. Some have made their escape, but five are now in prison. My Godfather! said Ramola scarcely above a whisper, as Tito made a slight pause. Yes, I grieve to say it, but along with him there are three at least whose names have a commanding interest, even among the popular party. Nicono Rodolfi, Lorenzo Tornaboni, and Johnotso Pucci. The tide of Ramola's feelings had been violently turned into a new channel. In the tumult of that moment there could be no check to the words which came as the impulsive utterance of her long accumulating horror. When Tito had named the men of whom she felt certain he was the confederate, she said with a recoiling gesture and low-toned bitterness. And you! you are safe! You are certainly an amiable wife, Maramola, said Tito with the coldest irony. Yes, I am safe. They turned away from each other in silence. End of chapter 56