 Chapter 57 of Ramallah. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 57 of Ramallah. Why Tito was safe. Tito had good reasons for saying that he was safe. In the last three months, during which he had foreseen the discovery of the Medici and conspirators as a probable event, he had had plenty of time to provide himself with resources. He had been strengthening his influence at Rome and at Milan by being the medium of secret information and indirect measures against the frate and the popular party. He had cultivated more assiduously than ever the regard of this party by showing subtle evidence that his political convictions were entirely on their side. And all the while, instead of withdrawing his agency from the Medicians, he had sought to be more actively employed and exclusively trusted by them. It was easy to him to keep up this triple game. The principle of duplicity admitted by the Medicians on their own behalf deprived them of any standard by which they could measure the trustworthiness of a colleague who had not, like themselves, hereditary interests, alliances and prejudices, which were intensely Medician. In their minds, to deceive the opposite party was fair stratagem. To deceive their own party was a baseness to which they felt no temptation. And in using Tito's facility they were not keenly awake to the fact that the absence of traditional attachments, which made him a convenient agent, was also the absence of what among themselves was the chief guarantee of mutual honour. Again, the Roman and Milanese friends of the aristocratic party, or Arabiati, who were the bitterest enemies of Savonarola, carried on a system of underhand correspondence and espionage in which the deepest hypocrisy was the best service and demanded the heaviest pay, so that to suspect an agent because he played a part strongly would have been an absurd want of logic. On the other hand, the peononi of the popular party, who had the directness that belongs to energetic conviction, were the more inclined to credit Tito with sincerity in his political adhesion to them, because he affected no religious sympathies. By virtue of these conditions the last three months had been a time of platter and success to Tito. The result he most cared for was the securing of a future position for himself at Rome or at Milan, for he had a growing determination when the favourable moment should come to quit Florence for one of those great capitals where life was easier and the rewards of talent and learning were more splendid. At present the scale dipped in favour of Milan, and if within the year he could render certain services to Duke Ludovico Sforza he had the prospect of a place at the Milanese court which outweighed the advantages of Rome. The revelation of the Medici in conspiracy then had been a subject of forethought to Tito. He had not been able to foresee the mode in which it would be brought about. The arrest of Lamberto del Antella with a tell-tale letter on his person and a bitter rancor against the Medici in his heart was an incalculable event. It was not possible in spite of the careful pretext with which his agency had been guarded that Tito should escape implication. He had never expected this in case of any wide discovery concerning the Medici in plots, but his quick mind had soon traced out the course that would secure his own safety with the fewest unpleasant concomitance. It is agreeable to keep a whole skin, but the skin still remains an organ sensitive to the atmosphere. His reckoning had not deceived him. That night before he had returned home he had secured the three results for which he most cared. He was to be freed from all proceedings against him on account of complicity with the Medicians. He was to retain his secretarieship for another year unless he previously resigned it. And lastly the price by which he had obtained these guarantees was to be kept as a state secret. The price would have been thought heavy by most men and Tito himself would rather not have paid it. He had applied himself first to win the mind of Francesco Valori, who was not only one of the ten under whom he immediately held his secretarieship, but one of the special counsel appointed to investigate the evidence of the plot. Francesco Valori, as we have seen, was the head of the Pianoni, a man with certain fine qualities that were not incompatible with violent partisanship, with an arrogant temper that alienated his friends, nor with bitter personal animosities, one of the bitterest being directed against Bernardo del Nero. To him, in a brief private interview, after obtaining a pledge of secrecy, Tito avowed his own agency for the Medicians, an agency induced by motives about which he was very frank, declaring at the same time that he had always believed their efforts futile and that he sincerely preferred the maintenance of the popular government, affected to confide to Valori as a secret his own personal dislike for Bernardo del Nero. And after this preparation came to the important statement that there was another Medician plot of which, if he obtained certain conditions from the government, he could, by a journey to Siena and into Romana, where Piero di Medici was again trying to gather forces, obtain documentary evidence to lay before the council. To this end it was essential that his character as a Medician agent should be unshaken for all Medicians, and hence the fact that he had been a source of information to the authorities must be wrapped in profound secrecy. Still, some odor of the facts might escape in spite of precaution, and before Tito could incur the unpleasant consequences of acting against his friends, he must be assured of immunity from any prosecution as a Medician, and from deprivation of office for a year to come. These propositions did not sound in the era of Francesco Valori precisely as they sound to us. Valori's mind was not intensely bent on the estimation of Tito's conduct, and it was intensely bent on procuring an extreme sentence against the five prisoners. There were sure to be immense efforts to save them, and it was to be wished on public grounds that the evidence against them should be of the strongest, so as to alarm all well-affected men at the dangers of clemency. The character of legal proceedings at that time implied that evidence was one of those desirable things which could only become at by foul means. To catch a few people and torture them into confessing everybody's guilt was one step towards justice, and it was not always easy to see the next unless a traitor turned up. Lamberto del Antella had been tortured in aid of his previous willingness to tell more than he knew. Nevertheless additional and stronger facts were desirable, especially against Bernardo del Nero, who, so far as appeared hitherto, had simply refrained from betraying the late plot after having tried in vain to discourage it, for the welfare of Florence demanded that the guilt of Bernardo del Nero should be put in the strongest light. So Francesco Bellori zealously believed, and perhaps he was not himself aware that the strength of his zeal was determined by his hatred. He decided that Tito's proposition ought to be accepted and laid it before his colleagues without disclosing Tito's name, and won them over to his opinion. Late in the day Tito was admitted to an audience of the special council, and produced a deep sensation among them by revealing another plot for ensuring the mastery of Florence to Pierro di Medici, which was to have been carried into execution in the middle of this very month of August. Documentary evidence on this subject would do more than anything else to make the right course clear. He received a commission to start for Siena by break of day, and besides this he carried away with him from the council chamber a written guarantee of his immunity and of his retention of office. Among the twenty Florentines who bent their gray vives on Tito as he stood gracefully before them, speaking of startling things with easy paraphrases, and with that apparently unaffected admission of being actuated by motive short of the highest, which is often the intensest effectation, there were several whose minds were not too entirely preoccupied to pass a new judgment on him in these new circumstances. They silently concluded that this ingenious and serviceable Greek was in future rather to be used for public needs than for private intimacy. Unprincipled men were useful, enabling those who had more scruples to keep their hands tolerably clean in a world where there was much dirty work to be done. Indeed it was not clear to respectable Florentine brains, unless they held the Frate's extravagant belief in a possible purity and loftiness to be striven for on this earth, how life was to be carried on in any department, without human instruments who it would not be becoming to kick, or to spit upon in the act of handing them their wages. Some of these very men who passed a tacit judgment on Tito were shortly to be engaged in a memorable transaction that could by no means have been carried through without the use of an unscrupulousness as decided as his. But as their own bright poet Pulci had said for them, it is one thing to love the fruits of treachery, and another to love traders. Il tradimento a molti piaci assai, ma il tradittoria non non piacimau. The same society as had a gibbet for the murderer and a gibbet for the martyr, an execrating hiss for a dastardly act and as loud a hiss for many a word of generous truthfulness or just insight, a mixed condition of things which is the sign not of a hopeless confusion, but a struggling order. For Tito himself he was not unaware that he had sunk a little in the estimate of the men who had accepted his services. He had that degree of self-contemplation which necessarily accompanies the habit of acting on well-considered reasons of whatever quality, and if he could have chosen he would have declined to see himself disapproved by men of the world. He had never meant to be disapproved, he had meant always to conduct himself so ably that if he acted in opposition to the standard of other men they should not be aware of it, and the barrier between himself and Romela had been raised by the impossibility of such concealment with her. He shrank from condemnatory judgments as from a climate to which he could not adapt himself. But things were not so plastic in the hands of cleverness as could be wished, and events had turned out inconveniently. He had really no rancor against Messer Bernardo del Nero. He had a personal liking for Lorenzo Turnebuani and Giannozzo Pucci. He had served them very ably, and in such a way that if their party had been winners he would have merited high reward. But was he to relinquish all the agreeable fruits of life because their party had failed? His proffer of a little additional proof against them would probably have no influence on their fate. In fact he felt convinced they would escape any extreme consequences. But if he had not given it his own fortunes, which made a promising fabric, would have been utterly ruined. And what motive could any man really have except his own interest? Florentines whose passions were engaged in their petty and precarious political schemes might have no self-interest separable from family pride and tenacity in old hatreds and attachments. A modern simpleton who swallowed whole one of the old systems of philosophy and took the indigestion at occasion for signs of a divine afflex, or the voice of an inward monitor, might see his interest in a form of self-conceit which he called self-rewarding virtue. Fanatics who believed in the coming scourge and renovation might see their own interest in a future palm branch and white robe. But no man of clear intellect allowed his course to be determined by such purile impulses or questionable inward fumes. Did not Pontonus, poet and philosopher of unrivaled latinity, make the finest possible oration at Naples to welcome the French king who had come to dethrone the learned orator's royal friend and patron? And still Pontonus held up his head and prospered. Men did not really care about these things except when their personal spleen was touched. It was weakness only that was despised, power of any sort carried its immunity, and no man, unless by very rare good fortune, could mount high in the world without incurring a few unpleasant necessities which laid him open to enmity, and perhaps to a little hissing when enmity wanted a pretext. It was a faint prognostic of that hissing gathered by Tito from certain indications when he was before the council, which gave his present conduct the character of an epoch to him, and made him dwell on it with argumentative vindication. It was not that he was taking a deeper step in wrongdoing, for it was not possible that he should feel any tie to the Medicians to be stronger than the tie to his father. But his conduct to his father had been hidden by successful lying. His present act did not admit of total concealment. In its very nature it was a revelation, and Tito winced under his new liability to disesteem. Well, a little patience, and in another year, or perhaps in half a year, he might turn his back on these hard eager Florentines with their futile quarrels and sinking fortunes. His brilliant success at Florence had had some ugly flaws in it. He had fallen in love with the wrong woman, and Baldessore had come back under incalculable circumstances. But as Tito galloped with a loose reign towards Sienna, he saw a future before him in which he would no longer be haunted by those mistakes. He had such money safe out of Florence already. He was in the shripeness of eight and twenty. He was conscious of well-tried skill. Could he not strip himself of the past as of rehearsal clothing, and throw away the old bundle to robe himself for the real scene? It did not enter into Tito's meditations on the future, that on issuing from the council chamber, and descending the stairs, he had brushed against a man whose face he had not stayed to recognize in the lamplight. The man was Ser Ciccone, also willing to serve the state by giving information against unsuccessful employers. End of Chapter 57 Chapter 58 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 Elliot Chapter 58 A final understanding. Tito soon returned from Sienna, but almost immediately set out on another journey, from which he did not return till the seventeenth of August. Nearly a fortnight had passed since the arrest of the accused, and still they were in prison. Still their fate was uncertain. Ramola had felt during this interval, as if all cares were suspended for her, other than watching the fluctuating possibilities concerning that fate. Sometimes they seemed strongly in favour of the prisoners, for the chances of effective interest on their behalf were heightened by delay, and an indefinite prospective delay was opened by the reluctance of all persons in authority to incur the odium attendant on any decision. On the one side, there was a loud cry that the Republic was in danger, and that lenity to the prisoners would be the signal of attack for all its enemies. On the other, there was a certainty that a sentence of death and confiscation of property passed on five citizens of distinguished name would entail the rankerous hatred of their relatives on all who were conspicuously instrumental to such a sentence. The final judgement properly lay with the Eight, who presided over the administration of criminal justice, and the sentence depended on a majority of six votes. But the Eight shrank from their honourous responsibility, and asked, in this exceptional case, to have it shared by the Senoria, or the gonfaloniere and the Eight Priors. The Senoria, in its turn, shrugged its shoulders, and proposed the appeal to the Great Council, for, according to a law passed by the earnest persuasion of Savonarola nearly three years before, whenever a citizen was condemned to death by the fatal six votes, called the set fave or six beans, beans being in more senses than one the political pulse of Florence, he had the right of appealing from that sentence to the Great Council. But in this stage of the business, the friends of the accused resisted the appeal, determined chiefly by the wish to gain delay, and, in fact, strict legality required that the sentence should have been passed prior to the appeal. Their resistance prevailed, and a middle course was taken. The sentence was referred to a large assembly convened on the seventeenth, consisting of all the higher magistracies, the smaller council, or senate of Eight, and a select number of citizens. On this day Ramola, with anxiety heightened by the possibility that, before its close, her godfather's fate might be decided, had obtained leave to see him for the second time, but only in the presence of witnesses. She had returned to the Via di Bardi in company with her cousin Brigida, still ignorant whether the council had come to any decisive issue, and when the Brigida had gone out again to wait for the momentous news, at the house of a friend belonging to one of the magistrates, that she might bring back authentic tidings as soon as they were to be had. Ramola had sunk on the first seat in the bright salon, too much agitated, too sick at heart to care about her place, or be conscious of discordance in the objects that surrounded her. She sat with her back to the door, resting her head on her hands. It seemed a long while since Mona Brigida had gone, and Ramola was expecting her return, but when the door opened, she knew it was not Mona Brigida who entered. Since she had parted from Tito on that memorable night, she had had no external proof to warrant her belief that he had won his safety by treachery. On the contrary, she had had evidence that he was still trusted by the Medicians, and was believed by them to be accomplishing certain errands of theirs in Romania, under cover of fulfilling a commission of the government. For the obscurity in which the evidence concerning the conspirators was shrouded allowed it to be understood that Tito had escaped any implication. But Ramola's suspicion was not to be dissipated. Her horror of his conduct towards Balthasari projected itself over every conception of his acts. It was as if she had seen him committing murder, and had had a diseased impression that, ever after that, his hands were covered with fresh blood. As she heard his step on the stone floor, a chill shudder passed through her. She could not turn round. She could not rise to give any greeting. He did not speak, but after an instant's pause, took a seat on the other side of the table just opposite to her. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him. But she was mute. He did not show any irritation, but said coolly, this meeting corresponds with our parting, Ramola, but I understand that it is a moment of terrible suspense. I am come, however, if you will listen to me, to bring you the relief of hope. She started and altered her position, but looked at him dubiously. It will not be unwelcome to you to hear, even though it is I who tell it, that the council is prorogued till the twenty-first. The eight have been frightened at last into passing a sentence of condemnation. But the demand has now been made, on the behalf of the condemned, for the appeal to the great council. Ramola's face lost its dubious expression. She asked eagerly, and when is it to be made? It has not yet been granted, but it may be granted. The special council is to meet again on the twenty-first, to deliberate whether the appeal should be allowed or not. In the meantime there is an interval of three days in which chances may occur in favour of the prisoners. In which interest may be used on their behalf. Ramola started from her seat. The colour had risen to her face like a visible thought, and her hands trembled. In that moment her feeling towards Tito was forgotten. Possibly, said Tito, also rising, your own intention may have anticipated what I was going to say. You are thinking of the frate. I am, said Ramola, looking at him with a surprise. Has he done anything? Is there anything to tell me? Only this. It was Mesa Francesco Valori's bitterness and violence which chiefly determined the course of things in this council to-day. Half the men who gave in their opinion against the prisoners were frightened into it, and there are numerous friends of Frageronimo, both in this special council and out of it, who are strongly opposed to the sentence of death. Piero Guicciardini, for example, who is one member of the signoria that made the stoutest resistance, and there is Giovanni Patista Ridolfi, who, pieneone as he is, will not likely forgive the death of his brother Nicolo. But how can the appeal be denied? said Ramola indignantly, when it is the law, when it was one of the chief glories of the popular government to have passed the law. They call this an exceptional case. Of course there are ingenious arguments, but there is much more of loud bluster about the danger of the Republic. But you see no opposition could prevent the assembly from being parogued, and a certain powerful influence rightly applied during the next three days might determine the wavering courage of those who desire that the appeal should be granted, and might even give a check to the headlong enmity of Francesco Valori. It happens to have come to my knowledge that the frate has so far interfered as to send a message to him in favour of Lorenzo Tornaboni. I know you can sometimes have access to the frate. It might, at all events, be worthwhile to use your privilege now. It is true," said Ramola with an air of abstraction. I cannot believe that the frate would approve denying the appeal. I heard it said by more than one person in this quarter of Palazzo, before I came away, that it would be to the everlasting discredit of Fragerolomo if he allowed a government which is almost entirely made up of his party to deny the appeal without entering his protest, when he has been boasting in his books and sermons that it was he who got the law passed. But between ourselves, with all respect for your frate's ability, Maramola, he has got into the practice of preaching that form of human sacrifices, called killing tyrants and wicked malcontents, which some of his followers are likely to think inconsistent with lenity in the present case. I know, I know, said Ramola, with a look and tone of pain, but he has driven into those excesses of speech. It used to be different. I will ask for an interview. I cannot rest without it. I trust in the greatness of his heart. She was not looking at Tito. Her eyes were bent with a vague gaze towards the ground, and she had no distinct consciousness that the words she heard came from her husband. Better lose no time, then, said Tito, with unmixed suavity, moving his cap round his hands as if he were about to put it on and depart. And now, Ramola, you will perhaps be able to see, in spite of prejudice, that my wishes were with yours in this matter. You will not regard the misfortune of my safety as an offence. Something like an electric shock passed through Ramola. It was the full consciousness of her husband's presence returning to her. She looked at him without speaking. At least, he added in a slightly harder tone, he will endeavour to base our intercourse on some other reasonings than that because an evil deed is possible, I have done it. Am I alone to be beyond the pale of your extensive charity? The feeling that had been driven back from Ramola's lips a fortnight before rose again with the gallant force of a tidal wave. She spoke with a decision which told him that she was careless of consequences. It is too late, Tito. There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once forgotten. And now I know everything. I know who that old man was. He was your father to whom you owe everything, to whom you owe more than if you had been his own child. By the side of that, it is a small thing that you broke my trust and my father's. As long as you deny the truth about that old man, there is a horror rising between us. The law that should make us one can never be obeyed. I too am a human being. I have a soul of my own that abhors your actions. Our union is a pretense, as if a perpetual lie could be a sacred marriage. Tito did not answer immediately. When he did speak, it was with a calculated caution that was stimulated by alarm. And you mean to carry out that independence by quitting me, I presume. I desire to quit you," said Ramola impetuously. And supposing I do not submit to part with what law gives me some security for retaining. You will then, of course, proclaim your reasons in the ear of all Florence. You will bring forward your mad assassin, who is doubtless ready to obey your call, and you will tell the world that you believe his testimony because he is so rational as to desire to assassinate me. You will first inform the senoria that I am a Medician conspirator, and then you will inform the Medicians that I have betrayed them, and in both cases you will offer the excellent proof that you believe me capable in general of everything bad. It will certainly be a striking position for a wife to adopt, and if on such evidence you succeed in holding me up to infamy, you will have surpassed all the heroines of the Greek drama. He paused a moment, but she stood mute. He went on with the sense of mastery. I believe you have no other grievance against me, except that I have failed in fulfilling some lofty, indefinite conditions on which you gave me your wifely affection so that by withdrawing it you have gradually reduced me to the careful supply of your wants as a fair pignone of high condition and liberal charities. I think your success in gibbeting me is not certain, but doubtless you will begin by winning the ear of Mesa Bernardo del Nero. Why do I speak of anything? cried Ramola in anguish, sinking on her chair again. It is hateful in me to be thinking of myself. She did not notice when Tito left the room, or how long it was before the door opened to admit Mona Brigida, but in that instant she started up and said, Cousin, we must go to San Marco directly. I must see my confessa, Fras Alvestro. Note one. The most recent, and in some respects the best biographer for Savonarola, Signor Villari, endeavours to show that the law of appeal ultimately enacted, being wider than the law originally contemplated by Savonarola, was a source of bitter annoyance to him, as a contrivance of the aristocratic party, for attaching to the measures of the popular government the injurious results of licence. But in taking this view, the estimable biographer lost sight of the fact that, not only in his sermons, but in a deliberately prepared book, The Compendium Revelacionum, written long after the appeal had become law, Savonarola enumerates among the benefits secured to Florence, the appeal from the six votes advocated by me for the greater security of the citizens. End of Chapter 58 Chapter 59 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 Elliott Chapter 59. Pleading The morning was in its early brightness when Ramola was again on her way to San Marco, having obtained through Fra Salvestro the evening before the promise of an interview with Fra Savonarola in the chapter house of the convent. The rigidity with which Savonarola guarded his life from all the pretexts of Colomney made such interviews very rare, and whenever they were granted, they were kept free from any appearance of mystery. For this reason, the hour chosen was one at which there were likely to be other visitors in the outer cloisters of San Marco. It was clear that the parties for and against the death of the conspirators were bent on making the fullest use of the three days interval in order to determine the popular mood. Already hand-bills were in circulation, some presenting in larger print the alternative of justice on the conspirators or ruin to the republic. Others, in equally large print, urging the observance of the law and the granting of the appeal, rang these jutting inlets of black capitals. There were lakes of smaller characters, setting forth arguments less necessary to be read, for it was in opinion entertained at the time in the first flush of triumph at the discovery of printing that there was no argument more widely convincing than question-begging phrases in large type. Ramola, however, cared especially to become acquainted with the arguments in smaller type, and though obliged to hasten forward, she looked around anxiously as she went that she might miss no opportunity of securing copies. For a long way, she saw none but such as were in the hands of eager readers or else fixed on the walls, from which in some places the spirit were tearing them down. But at last, passing behind San Giovanni with a quickened pace that she might avoid the many acquaintances who frequented the piazza, she saw Brati with a stock of hand-bills which he appeared to be exchanging for small coin with the passes by. She was too familiar with the humble life of Florence for Brati to be any stranger to her, and turning towards him she said, Have you two sorts of hand-bills, Brati? Let me have them quickly. Two sorts? Said Brati, separating the wet sheets with the slowness that tried Ramola's patience. There's a law and there's a justice. Which sort do you sell most of? Justice. Justice goes the quickest. Brati raised the price and made it two dinari, but then I bethought me the law was good wear too and had as good a right to be charged for as justice. For people set no store by cheap things and if I sold the law at one dinari I should be doing it a wrong and I'm a fair trader. Law or justice, it's all one to me. They're good wares. I got them both for nothing and I sell them at a fair profit. But you'll want more than one of a sort. No, no, here's a white cratina for the two, said Ramola, folding up the bills and hurrying away. She was soon in the outer cloisters of San Marco where Fra Savonarola was awaiting her under the cloister, but did not notice the approach of her light step. He was chatting, according to his habit, with lay visitors for under the auspices of a government friendly to the frate, the timidity about frequenting San Marco, which had followed on the first shock of excommunication, had been gradually giving way. In one of these lay visitors, she recognised a well-known satellite of Francesco Valori, named Andrea Campini, who was narrating or expounding with emphatic gesticulation, while Fra Savonarola was listening with that air of trivial curiosity, which tells that the listener cares very much about news and very little about its quality. This characteristic of her confessor, which was always repulsive to Ramola, was made exasperating to her at this moment by the certainty she gathered and pointed words which reached her ear, that Campini was relating something relative to the fate of the conspirators. She chose not to approach the group, but as soon as she saw that she had arrested Fra Savonarola's attention, she turned towards the door of the chapter house, while he, making a sign of approval, disappeared within the inner cloister. A lay brother stood ready to open the door of the chapter house for her and closed it behind her as she entered. Once more looked up by those sad frescoed figures, which had seemed to be mourning with her at the death of her brother Dino, it was inevitable that something of that scene should come back to her. But the intense occupation of her mind with the present made the remembrance less a retrospect, than an indistinct recurrence of impressions which blended themselves with her agitating fears, as if her actual anxiety were a revival of the strong yearning she had once before brought to this spot, to be repelled by marble rigidity. She gave no space for the remembrance to become more definite, for she had once opened the hand-bills, thinking she should perhaps be able to read them in the interval before Fra Girolamo appeared. But, by the time she had read to the end of the one that recommended the observance of the law, the door was opening and doubling up the papers she stood expectant. When the frater had entered, she knelt, according to the usual practice of those who saw him in private. But, as soon as he had uttered benedictory greeting, she rose and stood opposite to him at a few yards distance. Owing to his seclusion since he had been excommunicated, it should been an unusually long while since she had seen him, and the late months had visibly deepened in his face the marks of overtaxed mental activity and bozzily severities, and yet Ramola was not so conscious of this change as of another, which was less definable. Was it that the expression of serene elevation and pure human fellowship which had once moved her was no longer present in the same force, or was it that the sense of his being divided from her in her feeling about her godfather roused the slumbering sources of alienation and married her own vision? Perhaps both causes were at work. Our relations with our fellow men are most often determined by coincident currents of that sort. The inexcusable word or deed seldom comes after affection or reverence has been already enfeebled by the strain of repeated excuses. It was true that Savanarola's glance at Ramola had some of that hardness which is caused by an egotistical prepossession. He divined that the interview she had sought was to turn on the fate of the conspirators, a subject on which he had already had to quell inner voices that might become loud again when encouraged from without, seated in his cell correcting the sheets of his triumph of the cross. It was easier to repose on a resolution of neutrality. It is a question of moment doubtless on which you wish to see me, my daughter. He began in a tone which was gentle rather from self-control than from immediate inclination. I know you are not want to lay stress on small matters. Father, you know what it is before I tell you, said Ramola, forgetting everything else as soon as she began to pour forth her plea. You know what I am caring for. It is for the life of the old man I love best in the world. The thought of him has gone together with the thought of my father as long as I remembered the daylight. That is my warrant for coming to you, even if my coming should have been needless. Perhaps it is. Perhaps you have already determined that your power over the hearts of men shall be used to prevent them from denying to Florentines. A right which yourself helped to earn for them. I meddle not with the functions of the state, my daughter, said Fragerola, strongly disinclined to reopen externally a debate which he had already gone through inwardly. I have preached and laboured that I should have a good government, for a good government is needful to the perfecting of the Christian life. But I keep away my hands from particular affairs which it is the office of experienced citizens to administer. Surely, Father, Ramola broke off. She had uttered this first word almost impetuously, but she was checked by the counter-agitation of feeling herself in an attitude of remonstrance towards the man who had been the source of guidance and the act of rebelling. She was bruising her own reverence. Savonarola was too keen not to divine something of the conflict that was arresting her, too noble deliberately to assume in calm speech that self-justifying evasiveness into which she was often hurried in public by the crowding impulses of the orator. Say what is in your heart. Speak on, my daughter," he said, standing with his arms laid one upon the other and looking at her with quiet expectation. I am going to say, Father, that this matter is surely a higher moment than many about which I have heard you preach and exhort fervently. If it belonged to you to urge that men condemned for offences against the state should have the right to appeal to the great council, if, Ramola was getting eager again, if you count it a glory to have won that right for them, can it less belong to you to declare yourself against the right being denied to almost the first men who need it? I fmore closely than whether you knew beforehand that the dolphin would die or whether Pisa will be conquered. There was a subtle movement like a subdued sign of pain in Savanarola's strong lips before he began to speak. My daughter, I speak as it is given me to speak. I am not master of the times when I may become the vehicle of knowledge beyond the common lights of men. In this case, I have no illumination to give to those who are charged with the safety of the state. As to the law of appeal against the six votes, I laboured to have it passed in order that no Florentine should be subject to loss of life and goods through the private hatred of a few who might happen to be in power. But these five men who have desired to overthrow a free government and restore a corrupt tyrant have been condemned with the ascent of a large assembly of their fellow citizens. They refused at first to have their cause brought before the great council. They have lost the right to the appeal. How can- said Ramona, it is the right to appeal against condemnation and they have never been condemned till now. And forgive me, Father, it is private hatred that would deny them the appeal. It is the violence of the few that frightens others. Else, why was the assembly and if anything weighs against the observance of the law, lot this way for it, this, that you used to preach more earnlessly than all else, that there should be no place given to hatred and bloodshed because of these party strife so that private ill will should not find its opportunities in public acts. Father, you know that there is private hatred concerned here. Will it not dishonour you to have interposed on the side of mercy when there are many who hold that it is also the side of law and justice? My daughter, said Fragerolema with more visible emotion than before, there is a mercy which is weakness and even treason against the common good. The safety of Florence, which means even more than the welfare of Florentines, now demands severity. As it once demanded mercy, it is not only for a past plot that these men are condemned, but also for a plot which has not yet been executed and the devices that were leading to its execution are not put an end to. The tyrant is still gathering his forces in La Ragna and the enemies of Florence who sit in the highest places of Italy are ready to hurl any stone that will crush her. What plot, said Ramola reddening and trembling with alarmed surprise, you carry papers in your hand, I see, said Fragerolema pointing to the hand-bills. One of them will perhaps tell you that the government has had new information. Ramola hastily opened the hand-bills she had not yet read and saw that the government had now positive evidence of a second plot which was to have been carried out in this August time. To her mind, it was like reading a confirmation that Tito had won his safety by foul means. His pretence of wishing was deeper in her hand and turning to Savonarola she said with new passion Father, what safety can there be for Florence when the worst man can always escape and she went on a sudden flash of remembrance coming from the thought about her husband. Have not you yourself encouraged this deception which corrupts the life of Florence by wanting more favour to be shown to Lorenzo Todnobwani who has worn two faces of affection when my godfather has always been honest Ask all Florence who of those five men has the truest heart and there will not be many who name any other name than Bernardo Del Nero you did not interpose with Francesco Valori for the sake of one prisoner you have not then been neutral and you know that your word will be powerful I do not desire the death why do you not speak to save an old man of 75 from dying a death of ignominy to give him at least the fair chances of the law first out Dremola the impetuosity of her nature so aroused that she forgot everything but her indignation it is not that you feel bound to be neutral else why did you speak for Lorenzo Todnobwani you spoke to him because he is more friendly to San Marco my godfather feigns no friendship it is not then my godfather is to die it is as a man you have no love for when Dremola paused with cheeks glowing and with quivering lips there was dead silence as she saw Fragerola more standing motionless before her she seemed to herself to be hearing her own words over again words that in this echo of consciousness were in strange painful dissonance of the memories that made part of his presence to her the moments of silence were expanded by gathering compassion sacrilege in her passion and even in the sense that she could retract nothing of her plea that her mind could not submit itself to Savonarola's negative made it the more needful for her to satisfy those reverential memories with a sudden movement towards him she said forgive me father it is painful to me to have spoken those words yet I cannot help speaking I am little and feeble compared with you you brought me light and strength because I saw the light now I cannot see it father you yourself declare that there comes a moment when the soul must have no guide but the voice within it to tell whether the consecrated thing has sacred virtue and therefore I must speak Savonarola had that readily roused sentiment towards opposition hardly separable from a power loving and powerful nature and the great ends that cast a reflected grandeur on the means by which they are sought his sermons have much of that red flame in them and if he had been a meaner man his susceptibility might have shown itself in irritation at Ramola's accusatory freedom which was in strong contrast with the deference he habitually received from his disciples but at this moment such feelings were nullified by that hard struggle which made half the tragedy of his life the struggle of a mind possessed purity and simplicity yet caught in a tangle of egoistic demands false ideas and difficult outward conditions that made simplicity impossible keenly alive to all the suggestions of Ramola's remonstrating words he was rapidly surveying as he had done before the courses of action that were open to him and their probable results but it was a question on which arguments could seem decisive only in proportion as they were charged with feeling that his daughter is biased he looked at Ramola and said you have full pardon for your frankness my daughter you speak I know out of the fullness of your family affections but these affections must give way to the needs of the republic if those men who have a close acquaintance with the affairs of the state believe as I understand they do that the public safety requires the extreme punishment of the law to fall on the five conspirators I cannot control their opinion seeing that I stand aloof from such affairs then you desire that they should die you desire that the appeal should be denied them said Ramola feeling anew repelled by vindication which seemed to her to have the nature of a subterfuge I have said that I do not desire their death then said Ramola her indignation rising again you can be indifferent that Florentine should inflict death which you do not desire when you might have protested against it when you might have helped to hinder it urging the observance of the law which you held it good to get past father you used not to stand aloof you used not to shrink from protesting do not say that you cannot protest where the lives of men are concerned say rather you desire their death say rather you hold it good for Florentine that there shall be more blood and more hatred will the death of five Medicians put an end to parties in Florentine will the death of a noble old man like Bernardo de Nero save a city that holds such men as Dolphospinny my daughter it is enough the cause of freedom which is the cause of God's kingdom upon earth is often most injured by the enemies who carry within them the power of certain human virtues the wickedest man is often not the most insurmountable obstacle to the triumph of good then why do you say again that you do not desire my god father's death said Ramola in mingled anger and despair rather you hold it the more needful that he should die because he is the better man I cannot unravel your thoughts father I cannot hear the real voice of your judgment and conscience there was a moment's pause then Savonarola said with a keener emotion than he had yet shown be thankful my daughter if your own soul has been spared perplexity and judge not those to whom a harder lot has been given you see one ground of action in this matter I see many I have to choose that which will further the work entrusted to me the end I seek is one to which minor respects must be sacrificed the death of five men were they less guilty than these is a light matter weighed against the withstanding of the vicious tyrannies which stifle the life of Italy and foster the corruption of the church a light matter weighed against the furthering of God's kingdom upon earth the end for which I live and unwilling myself to die under any other circumstances Ramola would have been sensitive to the appeal at the beginning of Savonarola's speech but at this moment she was so utterly in antagonism with him that what he called perplexity seemed to her sophistry and doubleness and as he went on his words only fed that flame of indignation which now again lit up the memory of all his mistakes and made her trusted him seemed to have been a per-blind delusion she spoke almost with a bitterness do you then know so well what will further the coming of God's kingdom father that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy of justice of faithfulness to your own teaching has the French king then brought renovation to Italy take care father that your enemies have some reason when they say that in your visions of what will further God's kingdom you see only what will strengthen your own party and that is true said Savonarola with flashing eyes Ramola's voice had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies the cause of my party is the cause of God's kingdom I do not believe it said Savonarola her whole frame shaken with passionate repugnance God's kingdom is something wider else let me stand outside it with the beings that I love the two faces were lit up each with an opposite emotion each with an opposite certitude further words were impossible Ramola hastily covered her head and went out in silence end of chapter 59 chapter 60 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 chapter 60 of Ramola the scaffold three days later the moon that was just surmounting the buildings of the piazza in front of the old palace within the hour of midnight did not make the usual broad lights and shadows on the pavement not a hand's breadth of pavement was to be seen but only the heads of an eager struggling multitude and instead of that background of silence in which the pattering footsteps of voices the late thrumming or rapid scampering of the many night wanderers of Florence stood out in obtrusive distinctness there was the background of a roar from mingled shouts and imprecations tramplings and pushings an accidental clashing of weapons across which nothing was distinguishable but a darting shriek or the heavy dropping toll of a bell almost all who could call themselves the public of Florence were awake at that hour and either enclosed within the limits within the palace were still assembled in the council chamber all the chief magistracies the eighty members of the senate and the other select citizens who had been in hot debate through long hours of daylight and torchlight whether the appeal should be granted or whether the sentence of death should be executed on the prisoners forthwith to first stall the dangerous chances of delay and the debate had been so much like fierce quarrel that the noise from the council chamber had reached the crowd outside and been decided the senioria had remained divided four of them standing out resolutely for the appeal in spite of the strong argument that if they did not give way their houses should be sacked until Francesco Valori in a brief and furious speech made the determination of his party more ominously distinct by declaring that if the senioria would not defend the liberties of the Florentine people by executing those five perfidious citizens there would not be wanting others to stand the peril of all who opposed it the Florentine Cato triumphed when the votes were counted again the four obstinate white beings no longer appeared the whole nine were of the fatal affirmative black deciding the death of the five prisoners without delay deciding also only tacitly and with much more delay the death of Francesco Valori and now while the judicial eight were gone to the Barguello to prepare for the execution the five condemned men were being led barefoot and in irons through the midst of the council it was their friends who had contrived this would not Florentine's be moved by the visible association of such cruel ignominy with two venerable men like Bernardo Del Niro and Niccolò Rodolfi who had taken their bias long before the new order of things had come to make Medicianism retrograde with two brilliant popular young men like Tornabwani and Pucci who were called as a haunting vacancy wherever there was a meeting of chief Florentine's it was useless such pity as could be awakened now was of that hopeless sort which leads not to rescue but to a tardier action of revenge while this scene was passing upstairs Romulus stood below against one of the massive pillars in the court of the palace expecting the moment when her godfather would appear on his way to execution by the use of strong interest on this day and remain with him until the result of the council should be determined and now she was waiting with his confessor to follow the guard that would lead him to the bargello her heart was bent on clinging to the presence of the childless old man to the last moment as her father would have done and she had overpowered all remonstrances Giovanni Battista Rodolfi a discipline of savanna rola was going in bitterness to behold the death of his older brother Niccolò who had departed and now stood by her side Tito too was in the palace but Romula had not seen him since the evening of the 17th they had avoided each other and Tito only knew by inference from the report of the Frate's neutrality that her pleading had failed he was now surrounded with official and other personages both Florentine and Foran who had been awaiting the issue of the long protracted council maintaining except when he was directly addressed the subdued air and grave silence which in actual events are placing in a painful state of strife between public and private feeling when an illusion was made to his wife in relation to those events he implied that owing to the violent excitement of her mind the mere fact of his continuing to hold office under the government concern in her godfathers condemnation roused in her a diseased hostility toward him so that for her sake he felt it best not to approach her ah the old barty blood said Janini with a shrug I shall not be surprised if this business shakes her loose from the Frate as well as some others I could name it is excusable in a woman who is doubtless beautiful since she is the wife of Messer Tito said a young French envoy smiling and bowing to Tito to think that her affections must overrule the good of the state and that nobody is to be beheaded who is anybody's cousin but such a view is not to be encouraged in the male population and is much weakened by it that is true said Nicolo Machiavelli but where personal ties are strong the hostilities they raise must be taken due account of many of these halfway severities are mere hot-headed blundering the only safe blows to be inflicted on men and parties are the blows that are too heavy to be avenged Nicolo said Janini there is a clever wickedness in thy talk sometimes that makes me mistrust but all my good Domenico said Machiavelli smiling and laying his hand on the elder's shoulder Satan was a blunderer an introducer of Novita who made a stupendous failure if he had succeeded we should all have been worshipping him and his portrait would have been more flattered well, well said Janini I say not thy doctrine is not too clever for Satan I only say it is wicked enough for him I tell you said Machiavelli to stand a little farther off than their own noses ask our Frate our prophet how his universal renovation is to be brought about he will tell you first by getting a free and pure government and since it appears that this cannot be done by making all Florentines love each other it must be done by cutting off every head that happens to be obstinately in the way only if a man incurs odium by sanctioning a severity that is not thorough enough to be final he commits a blunder and something like that blunder it was an occasion on which he might have won some luster by exerting himself to maintain the appeal instead of that he has lost luster and has gained no strength before anyone else could speak there came the expected announcement that the prisoners were about to leave the council chamber and the majority of those who were present hurried towards the door intent on securing the freest passage to the Bargello in the rear of the prisoners' guard for the scene of the execution was one that drew alike those who were moved by the deepest passions and those who were moved by the coldest curiosity Tito was one of those who remained behind he had a native repugnance to sites of death and pain and five days ago whenever he had thought of this execution as a possibility he had hoped that it would not take place and that the utmost sentence would be exile his own safety demanded no more but now he felt that it would be a welcome guarantee of his security when he learned that Bernardo Del Niro's head was off the shoulders the new knowledge and new attitude towards him disclosed by Romula on the day of his return had given him a new dread of the power she possessed to make his position insecure if any act of hers only succeeded in making him an object of suspicion and odium he foresaw not only frustration but frustration under unpleasant circumstances her belief in Baldassari had clearly determined her wavering feelings against further submission and if her godfather lived she would win him to share her belief in his trouble Romula seemed more than ever an unmanageable fact in his destiny but if Bernardo Del Niro were dead the difficulties that would beset her in placing herself in opposition to her husband would probably be insurmountable to her shrinking pride therefore Tito had felt easier when he knew that the Eight had gone to the Bargello to order the instant erection of the scaffold for other men his intimates and confederates were to die besides Bernardo Del Niro but a man's own safety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands Tito felt them to be grim even in the pursuit of what was agreeable this paradoxical life forced upon him the desire of what was disagreeable but he had had other experience of this sort and as he heard through the open doorway the shuffle of many feet and the clanking of metal on the stairs he was able to answer the questions of the young French envoy without showing signs of any other feelings than that of sad resignation in the city's those sounds fell on Ramala as if her power of hearing had been exalted along with every other sensibility of her nature she needed no arm to support her she shed no tears she felt that intensity of life which seems to transcend both grief and joy in which the mind seems to itself akin to elder forces that wrought out existence before the birth of pleasure and pain since her godfather's fate had been decided the previous struggle of feeling in her had given way to an identification of herself with him in these supreme moments she was inwardly asserting for him that if he suffered the punishment of treason he did not deserve the name of traitor he was the victim to a collision between two kinds of faithfulness it was not given him to die for the noblest cause and yet he died because of his nobleness he might have been a meaner man and found it easier not to incur this guilt Rommelow is feeling the full force of that sympathy with the individual lot that is continually opposing itself to the formulae by which actions and parties are judged she was treading the way with her second father to the scaffold and nerving herself to defy ignominy by the consciousness that it was not deserved the way was fenced in by 300 armed men who had been placed as a guard by the orders of Francesco Valori for among the apparent contradictions that belonged to this event not the least striking was the alleged alarm on the one hand at the popular rage against the conspirators and the alleged alarm on the other lest there should be an attempt to rescue them in the midst of a hostile crowd when they had arrived within the court of the Bargello Rommelow was allowed to approach Bernardo with his confessor for a moment of farewell many eyes were bent on them even in that struggle of an agitated throng as the aged man forgetting that his hands were bound with irons lifted them towards the golden head that was bent towards him and then checking that movement leaned to kiss her she seized the fettered hands that were hung down again and kissed them as if they had been sacred things my poor Rommelow said Bernardo in a low voice I have only to die but thou has to live and I shall not be there to help thee yes said Rommelow hurriedly you shall help me always because I shall remember you she was taken away and conducted up the flight of steps that led to the logia surrounding the grand old court she took her place there determined to look till the moment when her godfather laid his head on the block now while the prisoners were allowed a brief interval with their confessor the spectators were pressing into court until the crowd became dense around the black scaffold and the torches fixed in iron rings the pillars through a varying startling light at one moment on passionless stone carvings at another on some pale face agitated with suppressed rage or suppressed grief the face of one among the many near relatives of the condemned who were presently to receive their dead and carry them home Rommelow's face looked like a marble image against the dark arch as she stood watching for the moment when her godfather would appear he was to suffer first and Batista Rodolfi who was by her side had promised to take her away through a door behind them when she would have seen the last look of the man who alone in all the world had shared her pitying love for her father and still in the background of her thought there was the possibility striving to be a hope that some rescue might yet come something that would keep that scaffold unstained by blood for a long while lights flickering heads swaying to and fro confused voices within the court rushing waves of sound through the entrance from without it seemed to Rommelow as if she were in the midst of a storm troubled sea carrying nothing about the storm carrying only to hold out a signal till the eyes that looked for it could seek no more suddenly there was stillness and the very tapers seemed to tremble into quiet the executioner was ready on the scaffold and Bernardo del Niro was seen ascending it with a firm slow step Rommelow made no visible movement uttered not even a suppressed sound she stood more firmly caring for his firmness she saw him pause saw the whitehead kept erect while he said in a voice distinctly audible it is but a short space of life that my fellow citizens have taken from me she perceived that he was gazing slowly round him as he spoke she felt that his eyes were resting on her and that she was stretching out her arms towards him then she saw no more till a long while after as it seemed a voice said my daughter all is peace now I can conduct you to your house she uncovered her head and saw her godfathers confess her standing by her in a room where there were other grave men talking in subdued tones I am ready she said starting up she thought all clinging was at an end for her all her strength now should be given to escape from a grasp under which she shuddered end of chapter 60 Chapter 61 of Rommelow this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information nor to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Phil Chenevere Rommelow by George Elliott Chapter 61 drifting away on the eighth day from that memorable night Rommelow was standing on the brink of the Mediterranean watching the gentle summer pulse of the sea just above what was then the little fishing village of Via Reggio again she had fled from Florence and this time no arresting voice had called her back again she wore the gray religious dress and this time in her heart sictus she did not care that it was a disguise a new rebellion had risen within her a new despair why should she care about wearing one badge more than another or about being called by her own name she despaired of finding any consistent duty belonging to that name what force was there to create for her that supremely hallowed motive which men call duty but which can have no inward constraining existence saved through some form of believing love the bonds of all strong affection were snapped in her marriage the highest bond of all she had ceased to see the mystic union which is its own guarantee of end to solubleness had seized even to see the obligation of a voluntary pledge had she not proved that the things to which she had pledged herself were impossible the impulse to set herself free had risen again with over mastering force yet the freedom could only be an exchange of calamity there is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake she has lost her crown the deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her and then forever passed her by and now Ramola's best support under that supreme woman's sorrow had slipped away from her the vision of any great purpose any end of existence which could end noble endurance and exalt the common deeds of a dusty life with divine ardures was utterly eclipsed for her now by the sense of a confusion in human things which made all effort a mere dragging at tangled threads all fellowship either for resistance or advocacy mere unfairness and exclusiveness what after all was the man who had represented for her the highest heroism the heroism not of hard self-contained endurance but of willing self-offering love what was the cause he was struggling for Ramola had lost her trust in Savanarola had lost that fervor of admiration which had made her unmindful of his aberrations and attentive only to the grand curve of his orbit and now that her keen feeling for her godfather had thrown into her antagonism with the frate she saw all the repulsive and inconsistent details in his teaching with a painful lucidity which exaggerated their proportions in the bitterness of her disappointment she said that his striving after the renovation of the church and the world was a striving after a mere name which told no more than the title of a book a name that had come to mean practically the measures that would strengthen his own position in Florence nay, often questionable deeds and words for the sake of saving his influence from suffering by his own errors and that political reform which had once made a new interest in her life seemed now to reduce itself to narrow devices for the safety of Florence in contemptible contradiction with the alternating professions of blind trust in the divine care it was inevitable that she should judge the frate unfairly on a question of individual suffering at which she looked with the eyes of personal tenderness and he with the eyes of theoretic conviction in that declaration of his that the cause of his party was the cause of God's kingdom she heard only the ring of egoism perhaps such words have rarely been uttered without that meager ring in them yet they are the implicit formula of all energetic belief and if such energetic belief pursuing a grand and remote end is often in danger of becoming a demon worship in which the votary lets his son and daughter pass through the fire with a readiness that hardly looks like sacrifice tender feeling for the nearest has its danger too and is apt to be timid and skeptical toward the larger aims without which life cannot rise into religion in this way poor Ramola was being blinded by her tears no one who has ever known what it is thus to lose faith in a fellow man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the invisible goodness unshaken with the sinking of high human trust the dignity of life sinks too we cease to believe in our own better self since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled Ramola felt even the springs of her once active pity drying up and leaving her to barren egoistic complaining had not she had her sorrows too and few had cared for her while she had cared for many she had done enough she had streven after the impossible and was weary of this stifling crowded life she longed for that repose and mere sensation which she had sometimes dreamed of in the sultry afternoons of her early girlhood when she had fancied herself floating naad-like in the waters the clear waves seemed to invite her she wished she could lie down to sleep on them and pass from sleep into death but Ramola could not directly seek death the fullness of young life in her forbade that she could only wish that death would come at the spot where she had paused there was a deep bend in the shore and a small boat with a sail was moored there in her longing to glide over the waters that were getting golden with the level sun rays she thought of a story which had been one of the things she had loved to dwell on in Boccaccio when her father fell asleep and she glided from her stool to sit on the floor and read the Decameron it was the story of that fair Costanza who in her lovelornness desired to live no longer but not having the courage to attack her young life had put herself into a boat and pushed off to sea then lying down in the boat had wrapped her mantle round her head hoping to be wrecked so that her fear would be helpless to flee from death the memory had remained a mere thought in Ramola's mind without budding into any distinct wish but now as she paused again in her walking to and fro she saw gliding black against the red gold another boat with one man in it making towards the bend where the first and smaller boat was moored walking on again she at length saw the man land pull his boat ashore and begin to unload something from it he was perhaps the owner of the smaller boat also he would be going away soon and her opportunity would be gone with him her opportunity of buying that smaller boat she had not yet admitted to herself that she meant to use it but she felt a sudden eagerness to secure the possibility of using it which disclosed the half unconscious growth of a thought into a desire is that little boat yours also she said to the fisherman who had looked up a little startled by the tall gray figure and had made a reverence to this holy sister wondering thus mysteriously what a great solitude it was his boat an old one hardly seaworthy yet worth repairing to any man who would buy it by the blessing of San Antonio whose chapel was in the village yonder his fishing had prospered and he now had a better boat which had once been Giannis who died but he had not yet sold the old one Ramola asked him how much it was worth and then while he was busy thrust the price into a little satchel standing on the ground and containing the remnant of his dinner after that she watched him furling his sail and asked him how he should set it if he wanted to go out to sea and then pacing up and down again waited to see him depart the imagination of herself gliding away in that boat on the darkening waters was growing more and more into a longing as the thought of a cool brook and sultriness becomes a painful thirst to be freed from the burden of choice when all motive was bruised to commit herself sleeping to destiny which would either bring death or else new necessities that might rouse a new life in her it was a thought that beckoned her the more because the soft evening air made her long to rest in the still solitude instead of going back to the noise and heat of the village at last the slow fisherman had gathered up all his movables and was walking away soon the gold was shrinking and getting duskier in sea and sky and there was no living thing in sight no sound but the lulling monotony of the lapping waves in this sea there was no tide that would help to carry her away if she waited for its ebb but Ramona thought the breeze from the land was rising a little she got into the boat unfurled the sail and fastened it as she had learned that first brief lesson she saw that it caught the light breeze and this was all she cared for then she loosed the boat from its moorings and tried to urge it with an oar till she was far out from the land till the sea was dark even to the west and the stars were disclosing themselves like a palpitating life over the wide heavens resting at last she threw back her cowl and taking off the kerchief underneath to find her hair she doubled them both under her head for a pillow on one of the boat's ribs the fair head was still very young and could bear a hard pillow and so she lay with a soft night air breathing on her while she glided on the water and watched the deepening quiet of the sky she was alone now she had freed herself from all claims she had freed herself even from that burden of choice which presses with heavier weight when claims have loosed their guiding hold had she found anything like the dream of her girlhood? no memories hung upon her like the weight of broken wings that could never be lifted memories of human sympathy which even in its pains leaves a thirst that the great mother has no milk to still Ramola felt orphaned in those wide spaces of sea and sky she read no message of love for her in that far-off symbolic writing of the heavens and with the great sob she wished that she might be gliding into death she drew the cowl over her head again and covered her face choosing darkness rather than the light of the stars which seemed to her like the hard light of eyes that looked at her without seeing her presently she felt that she was in the grave but not resting there searching the hands of the beloved dead beside her and trying to wake them end of chapter 61 Chapter 62 of Ramola all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 62 of Ramola about ten o'clock on the morning of the twenty-seventh of February the currents of passengers on the streets set decidedly towards San Marco it was the last morning of the Carnival and everyone knew there was a second bonfire of vanities being prepared in front of the old palace but at this hour it was evident that the center of popular interest lay elsewhere the Piazza di San Marco was filled by a multitude who showed no other movement than that which proceeded from the pressure of newcomers trying to force their way forward the front ranks were already close serried and resisted the pressure those ranks were ranged around a semicircular barrier in front of the church and within this barrier were already assembling the Dominican brethren of San Marco but the temporary wooden pulpit erected over the church door was still empty it was presently to be entered by the man whom the pope's command had banished from the pulpit of the Duomo whom the other ecclesiastics of Florence had been forbidden to consort with whom the citizens had been forbidden to hear on pain of excommunication this man had said a wicked unbelieving pope who has gained the pontifical chair by bribery is not Christ's vicar his curses are broken swords he grasps a hilt without a blade his commands are contrary to the Christian life it is lawful to disobey them nay, it is not lawful to obey them and the people still flocked to hear him as he preached in his own church in San Marco though the pope was hanging terrible threats over Florence if it did not renounce the pestilential schismatic and sent him to Rome to be converted still, as on this very morning accepted the communion from his excommunicated hands for how, if this frate had really more command over the divine lightnings than that official successor of St. Peter it was a momentous question which for the mass of citizens could never be decided by the priest, namely what was and what was not accordant with the highest spiritual law no, in such a case as this if God had chosen the frate as his prophet to rebuke the high priest who carried the mystic raiment unworthily he would attest his choice by some unmistakable sign as long as the belief in the prophet carried no threat of outward calamity but rather the confident hope of exceptional safety no sign was needed his preaching was a music they wished to go but now that belief meant an immediate blow to their commerce the shaking of their position amongst the Italian states and an interdict on their city there inevitably came the question what miracle show us, though slowly at first then faster and faster that fatal demand had been swelling in Savanorola's ear provoking a response outwardly in the declaration that at the fitting time the miracle would come not unwavering for what faith is so that if the need for miracle became urgent the work he had before him was too great for the divine power to leave it halting his faith wavered but not his speech it is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of a crowd that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday's faith hoping it will come back tomorrow it was in preparation for a scene which was really a response to some supernatural guarantee of the prophet's mission that the wooden pulpit had been erected above the church door but while the ordinary frati and black mantles were entering and arranging themselves the faces of the multitude were not yet eagerly directed toward the pulpit it was felt that Savanorola would not appear just yet and there was some interest in singling out the various monks some of them belonging to citizens and shopkeepers who made the majority of the crowd it was not till the tale of monks was complete not till they had fluttered their books had begun to chant the people said to each other that expectation rather than any spell from the accustomed whale of Salmadi was what made silence and expectations seemed to spread like a paling solemn light over the multitude of upturned faces all now directed towards the next instant the pulpit was no longer empty a figure covered from head to foot in black cowl and mantle had entered it and was kneeling with bent head and with face turned away it seemed a weary time to the eager people while the black figure knelt and the monks chanted but the stillness was not broken for the frate's audiences with heaven were yet charged with electric awe for that mixed multitude so that those who had already had a separation among the multitude each seeming to give his neighbor a momentary aspen-like touch as when men who have been watching for something in the heaven see the expected presence silently disclosing itself the frate had risen turned towards the people and partly pushed back his cowl the monotonous whale of Salmadi had ceased and to those who stood near the pulpit it was as if the sounds which had just been filling reached around him in the silence then he stretched out his hands which in their exquisite delicacies seemed transfigured from an animal organ for grasping into vehicles of sensibility to acute to need any gross contact hands that came like an appealing speech from that part of his soul which was masked by his strong passionate face written on now with deeper lines about the mouth and brow then are made by forty-four years of ordinary life in the front ranks fell on their knees and here and there a devote disciple farther off but the great majority stood firm some resisting the impulse to kneel before this excommunicated man might not a great judgment fall upon him even in this act of blessing others jarred with scorn and hatred of the ambitious deceiver who was getting up this new comedy before which nevertheless they felt themselves impotent as before the triumph of a fashion but then came the voice clear and low at first uttering the words of absolution Misery at your vestry and more fell on their knees and as it rose higher and yet clearer the erect heads became fewer and fewer till at the words benedicate vos omnipotence deus it rose then to a masculine cry as if protesting its power to bless under the clutch of the demon that wanted to stifle it it rang like a trumpet to the extremities of the piazza and under it every head was bowed after the utterance of that blessing Savonarola himself fell on his knees and hid his face in temporary exhaustion those great jets of emotion were a necessary part of his life he himself had said to the people long ago without preaching I cannot live but it was a life that shattered him in a few minutes more some had risen to their feet some had remained kneeling and all faces were intensely watching him he had taken into his hands a crystal vessel containing the consecrated host and was about to address the people you remember my children three days ago I besought you when I should hold this sacrament in my hand in the face of you all to pray fervently to the most high that if this work of mine does not come from him he will send a fire and consume me that I may vanish into the eternal darkness away from his light which I have hidden with my falsity again I besiege you to make that prayer and to make it now it was a breathless moment perhaps no man really prayed if some in a spirit of devout obedience made the effort to pray every consciousness was chiefly possessed by the sense that Savonarola was praying in a voice not loud but distinctly audible in the wide stillness Lord, if I have not wrought in sincerity of soul if my word cometh not from thee strike me in this moment with thy thunder and let the fires of thy wrath enclose me he ceased to speak and stood motionless with the consecrated mystery in his hands with eyes uplifted and a quivering excitement in his whole aspect everyone else was motionless and silent too while the sunlight which for the last quarter of an hour had here and there been piercing the greyness made fitful streaks across the convent wall causing some ostrich inspectators to start timidly but soon there was a wider parting and with a gentle quickness like a smile a stream of brightness poured itself on the crystal vase and then spread itself over Savonarola's face with mild glorification an instantaneous shout rang through the piazza behold the answer the warm radiance thrilled through Savonarola's frame and so did the shouts and the shouts and the shouts and the shouts it was his last moment of untroubled triumph and in its rapturous confidence he felt carried to a grander scheme yet to come but for an audience that would represent all Christendom in whose presence he should again be sealed as the messenger of the supreme righteousness and feel himself full charged with divine strength it was but a moment that expanded itself in that provision while the shout was still ringing in his ears he turned to the shouts and the shouts and the shouts and the shouts turned away within the church feeling the strain too great for him to tear it longer but when the fate had disappeared and the sunlight seemed no longer to have anything special in its illumination but was spreading itself impartially over all things clean and unclean there began along with the general movement of the crowd a confusion of voices in which certain strong discords and varying scales of laughter made it evident that in the previous silence and universal kneeling hostility and scorn had only submitted unwillingly to a momentary spell it seems to me the plaudits are giving way to criticism said Tito who had been watching the scene attentively from an upper logia in one of the houses opposite the church nevertheless it was a striking moment A. Messer Pietro Fra Giorlamo is a man to make one understand that there was a time when the monk's frock was a symbol of power over men's minds rather than over the keys of women's cupboards assuredly said Pietro Cennini and until I have seen proof that Fra Giorlamo has much less faith in God's judgments than the common run of men instead of having considerably more I shall not believe that he would brave heaven in this way if his soul were laden with a conscious lie End of Chapter 62