a f i :!!i)!i;! m mm iiiiini ■iini!!; Ill; III ■-llliiijyijiiipiipiiiiiiiili iiiiyii imii-liiiHimi } i Hnl i 1 ill i iiyiiliijiji Hii: i m ^E ELI iiiiijll iilliPiiillP'Piiliiii)!!} itijitinijiiiii iiii I liliiili! IP! 11 i Mi IhJiI nil «lii;L ^ ROMOLA «5 fe,:£ RO M O L A BY GEORGE ELIOT An Historically Illustrated Edition Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by DR. GUIDO BIAGI Librarian of the Laurentian Library, Florence With One Hundred and Sixty Engravings of Scenes and Characters, selected by the Editor In Two Volumes — Volume Two CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1906 Copyright A. C. McClubg & Co. 1906 Published October 13, 1906 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. A / ^••^•/..&o. /f^6 CONTENTS BOOK II (continuetl) Chapter Page XII. A Revelation 1 XIII. Baldassarre Makes an Acquaintance . 15 XIV. No Place for Repentance 26 XV. What Florence was Thinking of . , 42 XVI. Ariadne Discrowns herself .... 47 XVII. The Tabernacle Unlocked Gl XVIII. The Black Marks become Magical . 67 XIX. A Supper in the Rucellai Gardens . 76 XX. An Arresting Voice 98 XXI. Coming Back 109 BOOK ni XXII. RoMOLA IN her Place 113 XXIII. The Unseen Madonna 123 XXIV. The Visible Madonna 132 XXV. At the Barber's Shop 140 XXVI. By A Street. Lamp 152 XXVn. Check 163 XXVIII. Counter-check 168 XXIX. The Pyramid of Vanities 176 XXX. Tessa Abroad and at Home .... 184 XXXT. Monna Brigida's Conversion . . . . 108 XXXII. A Prophetess 205 vi CONTENTS Chaptkr Page XXXIII. On San Miniato 214 XXXIV. The Evkning and the Morning . . . 221 XXXV. Waiting 226 XXXVI. The Other Wife 231 XXXVII. Why Tito was Safe 246 XXXVIII. A Final Understanding 254 XXXIX. Pleading 261 XL. The Scaffold 273 XLI. Drifting away 282 XLn. The Benediction 288 XLIII. Ripening Schemes 295 XLIV. The Prophet in his Cell 310 XLV. The Trial by Fire 321 XLVI. A Masque of the Furies 831 XLVII. Waiting by the River 337 XLVIII. Romola's Waking 346 XLIX. Homeward 358 L. Meeting again 363 LI. The Confession 370 LII. The Last Silence 379 Epilogue 384 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Volume II Page The entry of Charles VIII in Florence. From the paint- ing by G. Bezzuoli in the Modern Art Gallery Frontispiece The procession on Corpus Christi Day at the beginning of the eighteenth centuiy. From the engraving by G. Zocchi 6 The door of the Chapter House in the outer cloister of the Convent of St. Mark 10 Portrait of Fra Girolamo Savonarola l6 The front of the Duomo. From one of the missals of the Duomo preserved in the Laurentian Libraiy ... 20 A view of the Duomo. From Firenze illustrala, by F. L. del Migliore^ one of the books studied by G. Eliot in the Magliabechian Library 26 Portrait bust of Marsilio Ficino. From the contem- porary bust in the Duomo by Andrea Ferrucci . . 32 Savonarola preaching in the Duomo. From an old manuscript S6 Portrait of Piero de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo il Magnifico. From the portrait by Botticelli in the Ufizi Gallery 40 Portrait of Bernardo Dovizi. From the painting by Raphael in the Pitti Gallery 46 The Ponte a Rubaconte. From an old engraving . . 52 A view of the Ponte a Rubaconte and of the hill over the river at the beginning of the eighteenth century. From the engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi .... b6 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Tlic faun by Michelangelo^ now in the Bargello . . 60 The Medici Palace in the Via Larga. From an engrav- ing in Firenze illustrala, by F. L. del Migliore, one of the books studied by G. Eliot in the Maglia- bechian Library 66 The entry of Charles VIII into Florence, with a view of the Medici Palace. From a painting by Fran- cesco Granacci (1477-1543) in the Crespi Collec- tion in Milan 70 Portrait bust of Charles VIII of France. From a con- temporary bronze bust in the Bargello 76 Portrait of Charles VIII of France. From the drawing by Cristoforo dell' Altissimo (1554-1605) in the Ufizi Gallery 82 Savonarola preaching. From a marble statue by Enrico Pazzi in Palazzo Vecchio 86 Portrait of Ludovico Sforza. From the woodcut in Antonio Campo, Isloria di Cremona 92 The Via dell' Oriuolo, with the door of the Pazzi Garden. From a drawing by E. Burci in the Ufizi Gallery. . d6 Portrait bust of Girolamo Benivieni. From his death- mask in the Musee du Louvre 102 The fresco by Fra Bartolommeo in the Chapel of Savonarola 108 Portrait of Pier Capponi. From a contemporary por- trait preserved by the family 112 The Adoring Angels, by Fra Filippo Lippi. Part of a fresco in the Ancient Gallery, Florence 118 The Adoring Angels, by Fra Filippo Lippi. Another part of the fresco 122 The Piazza de' Signori, with the platform for the Priors, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. From the drawing by Giuseppe Zocchi in the Ufizi Gallery 128 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix Paob A view of Florence from San Niccol6. From the en- graving by Giuseppe Zocchi 132 A pinzochera, or a sister, belonging to the Order of St. Francis 136 A view of Fiesole and the hills outside Porta a San Gallo. From the drawing by Bartolommeo Rustici, fifteenth centuiy 140 The palace built for Bernardo Rucellai by Leon Battista Alberti 144 The Rucellai Loggia, by Leon Battista Alberti, where the splendid wedding of Bernardo Rucellai and Nannina de' Medici took place 148 The marble faqade of Santa Maria Novella, by Leon Battista Alberti 1 52 The Holy Sepulchre, by Leon Battista Alberti, in the Rucellai Chapel 158 The Holy Sepulchre. Another view l62 Portrait of Pico della Mirandola. From the contempo- rary portrait in the Ufizi Gallery l66 An alley in the Rucellai Gardens 170 A grotto in the Rucellai Gardens 174 A grotto in the Rucellai Gardens 178 A grotto in the Rucellai Gardens 182 Pisa in the fifteenth century, a contemporary view. From a drawing in the Ufizi Gallery 1S6 The shrine of the Madonna dell' Impnmeta, by Michelozzi and L. della Robbia 192 The Church of the Impruneta. From the drawing by Remigio Cantagallina (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) in the Ufizi Gallery 196 The piazza of the Impruneta. From the drawing by lacopo Callot (seventeenth century) in tlie Ufizi Gallery 200 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page The fair of the ^Impruneta. From the famous drawing by lacopo Callot in the Ufizi Gallery 204 The procession of the Madonna del/' Imprunela in 1711. From the engraving in Casotti, Memoiie dell' Im- magine di Maria Fergine dell' Imprunela, Firenze, 1714 208 The Church of Santo Stefano del Ponte . . . . . 212 A Benedictine Monk 218 A Monk of the Frati Minori, or Franciscans .... 224 An Augustinian Monk 228 A CarmeHte Monk 234 A Monk of the Servites, or Servants of the Divine Mother 240 A Dominican Monk 244 The bronze medal of Savonarola, with the sword of God as its obverse, by Fra Luca or Fra Ambrogio della Robbia. P'rom the original in the Bargello . . . 250 The Palace Spini at Santa TrinitA. From the fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Church of Santa Trinita 256 The Palazzo Spini as it is now 260 One of the streets in the heart of the city. From the drawing by Burci in the Ufizi Gallery 266 In the Church of the Badia 272 In the Church of the Badia, on the step of the altar, in front of Filippino Lippi's Virgin appearing to St. Bernard 278 On San Miniato. From the drawing by E. Burci in the Ufizi Gallery 282 The outer cloister of San Marco 288 The inner cloister of San Marco 294 Savonarola's cell in San Marco 300 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi Page The Treatise against the Astrologers by Savonarola . . 304 The refectory of San Marco 310 The court of the Bargello before its restoration . . . 3l6 The cell of the prophet in San Marco 322 An autograph by Savonarola in a book of the Monastery of San Marco. From the original in the Laurentian Library 326 The Bible of Savonarola with his marginal notes. From the original in the Riccardiana Library . . . 332 The rosebush of Savonarola in the inner cloister of San Marco 338 An autograph by Fra Domenico Bonvicini da Pescia, the coadjutor of Savonarola. From the original in the Laurentian Library 344 The walls of Florence near San Miniato. From the drawing by E. Burci in the Ufizi Gallery .... 350 The confession of Savonarola. From a contemporary MS. in the archives of Florence 356 The prison of Savonarola in the tower of Palazzo Vecchio 362 Portrait of Pope Alexander VI (Borgia). From the fresco by Pinturicchio 368 The martyrdom of Savonarola. From a contemporary picture in the Corsini Gallery 372 The martyrdom of Savonarola. From a drawing in the Ufizi Gallery 378 Portrait of Savonarola. From a contemporary miniature in a MS. of the Rinuccini Collection, now in the Magliabechian Library 384 ROMOLA BOOK II {continued) CHAPTER Xn A REVELATION THE next day Romola^ like every other Elorentiue, was excited about the departure of the French. Besides her other reasons for gladness, she had a dim hope, which she was conscious was lialf superstitious, that those new anxieties about Tito, having come with the burden- some guests, might perhaps vanish with them. The French had been in Florence hardly eleven days, but in that space she had felt more acute unhappiness than she had known in her life before. Tito had adopted the hateful armour on the day of their arrival ; and though she could frame no distinct notion why their departure should remove the cause of his fear, — though, when she thought of that cause, the image of the prisoner grasping him, as she had seen it in Piero^s sketch, urged itself before her and excluded every other, — still, when the French were gone, she would be rid of something that was strongly associated with her pain. Wrapped in her mantle, she waited under the loggia at the top of the house, and watched for the glimpses of the troops and the royal retinue passing the bridges on their way to the Porta San Piero, that looks towards Siena and Rome. She even returned to her station wdien the gates had been closed, that she might feel herself vibrating with the great peal of the bells. It was dusk then ; and when at last she descended into the library, she lit her lamp with the resolution that she VOL. n. — 1 2 ROMOLA would overcome the agitation which had made her idle all day, and sit down to work at her copying of the catalogue. Tito had left home early in the morning, and she did not ex- j)ect him yet. Before he came she intended to leave the li- brary, and sit in the pretty saloon, with the dancing nymphs and the birds. She had done so every evening since he had objected to the library as chill and gloomy. To her great surprise, she had not been at work long before Tito entered. Her first thought was, how cheerless he would feel in the wide darkness of this great room, with one little oil-lamp burning at the further end, and the fire nearly out. She almost ran towards him. " Tito, dearest, I did not know you would come so soon,'' she said nervously, puttmg up her white arms to unwind his becchetto. " I am not welcome, then," he said, with one of his brightest smiles, clasping her, but playfully holding his head back from her. " Tito ! " She uttered the word in a tone of pretty, loving reproach ; and then he kissed her fondly, stroked her hair, as his manner was, and seemed not to mind about taking off his mantle yet. Eomola quivered with delight. All the emotions of the day had been preparing in her a keener sensi- tiveness to the return of this habitual manner. "It will come back," she was saying to herself ; " the old happiness will perhaps come back. He is like himself again." l^to was taking great pains to be like himself; his heart was palpitating with anxiety. " If I had expected you so soon," said Eomola, as she at last helped him to take off his wrappings, " I would have h:i(l a little festival prepared to this^ joyful ringing of the bc^lls. I did not mean to be here in tlie library when you came home." A REVELATION 3 "Never mind, sweet/' he said carelessly. "Do not think about the fire. Come, — come and sit down." There was a low stool against Tito's chair, and that was Romola's habitual seat when they were talking to- gether. She rested her arm on his knee, as she used to do on her father's, and looked up at him while he spoke. He had never yet noticed the presence of the portrait, and she had not mentioned it, — thinking of it all the more. " I have been enjoying the clang of the bells for the first time, Tito," she began. " I like being shaken and deafened by them : I fancied I was something like a Bacchante pos- sessed by a divine rage. Are not the people looking very joyful to-night ? '' " Joyful after a sour and pious fashion,'' said Tito, with a shrug. " But in truth, those who are left behind in Flor- ence have little cause to be joyful : it seems to me, the most reasonable ground of gladness would be to have got out of Florence." Tito had sounded the desired key-note without any trouble, or appearance of premeditation. He spoke with no em])hasis, but he looked grave enough to make Romola ask rather anxiously, — " Why, Tito ? Are there fresh troubles ? " " No need of fresh ones, my Eomola. There are three strong parties in the city, all ready to fly at each other's throats. And if the Frate's party is strong enough to frighten the other two into silence, as seems most likely, life will be as pleasant and amusing as a funeral. They have the plan of a Great Council simmering already ; and if they get it, the man who sings sacred Lands tlie loudest will be the most eligible for of&ce. And besides that, the city will be so drained by the payment of this great subsidy to the French king, and by the war to get back Pisa, that the 4 ROMOLA ])rospect would be dismal enough without the rule of fanatics. On the whole, Florence will be a delightful place for those worthies who entertain themselves in the evening by going into crjpts and lashing themselves; but for everything else, the exiles have the best of it. For my own part, I have been thinking seriously that we should be wise to quit Florence, my Eomola/' She started. "Tito, how could we leave Florence? Surely you do not think I could leave it — at least, not yet — not for a long while.^' She had turned cold and trem- bling, and did not find it quite easy to speak. Tito must know the reasons she had in her mind. " That is all a fabric of your own imagination, my sweet one. Your secluded life has made you lay such false stress on a few things. You know I used to tell you, before we were married, that I wished we were somewhere else than in Florence. If you had seen more places and more people, you would know what I mean when I say that there is some- thing in the Florentines that reminds me of their cutting spring winds. I like people who take life less eagerly; and it would be good for my Pcomola, too, to see a new life. I should like to dip her a little in the soft waters of forgetfulness.''' He leaned forward and kissed her brow, and laid his hand on her fair hair again; but she felt his caress no more than if he had kissed a mask. She was too much agitated by the sense of the distance between their minds to be conscious that his lips touched her. "Tito, it is not because I suppose Florence is the plcasantest place in the world that I desire not to quit it. It is because I — because we have to see my father's wish ful- filled. My godfather is old, — he is seventy-one ; we could not leave it to him." A REVELATION 5 ''It is precisely tliose superstitions which hang about your mind like bedimming clouds, my Romola, that make one great reason why I could wish we were two hundred leagues from Florence. I am obliged to take care of you in opposi- tion to your own will : if those dear eyes, that look so tender, see falsely, I must see for them, and save my wife from wasting her life in disappointing herself by impracticable dreams/^ Eomola sat silent and motionless : she could not blind herself to the direction in which Tito's words pointed : he wanted to persuade her that they might get the library deposited in some monastery, or take some other ready means to rid themselves of a task, and of a tie to Elorejice; and she was determined never to submit her mind to his judgment on this question of duty to her father; she was inwardly pre- pared to encounter any sort of pain in resistance. But the determination was kept latent in these first moments by (he heart-crushing sense that now at last she and Tito must be confessedly divided in their wishes. He was glad of her si- lence; for, much as he had feared the strength of her feeling, it was impossible for him, shut up in the narrowness that hedges in all merely clever, unimpassioned men, not to over- estimate the persuasiveness of his own arguments. His con- duct did not look ugly to himself, and his imagination did not suffice to show him exactly how it would look to Romola. He went on in the same gentle, remonstrating tone. "You know, dearest, — your own clear judgment al- ways showed you, — that the notion of isolating a collection of books and antiquities, and attaching a single name to them forever, was one that had no valid, substantial good for its object : and yet more, one that was liable to be defeated in a thousand ways. See what has become of the Medici collections ! And, for my part, I consider it even blameworthy to entertain those petty views of appropriation : 6 ROMOLA why sliould any one be reasonably glad that Florence should possess the benefits of learned research and taste more than any other city ? I understand your feeling about the wishes of the dead ; but wisdom puts a limit to these sentiments, else lives might be continually wasted in that sort of futile devotion, — like praising deaf gods forever. You gave your life to your father while he lived; why should you demand more of yourself ? " " Because it was a trust/^ said Romola, in a low but distinct voice. " He trusted me, he trusted you, Tito. I did not expect you to feel anything else about it, — to feel as I do, — but I did expect you to feel that." " Yes, dearest, of course I should feel it on a point where your father^s real welfare or happiness was concerned; , but there is no question of that now. If we believed in pur- gatory, I should be as anxious as you to have masses said ; and if I believed it could now pain your father to see his library preserved and used in a rather different way from what he had set liis mind on, I should share the strictness of your views. But a little philosophy should teach us to rid our- selves of those air-woven fetters that mortals hang round themselves, spending their lives in misery under the mere imagination of weight. Your mind, which seizes ideas so readily, my Romola, is able to discriminate between substan- tial good and these brain-wrought fantasies. Ask yourself, dearest, what possible good can these books and antiquities do, stowed together under your father's name in Florence, more than they would do if they were divided or carried else- where? Nay, is not the very dispersion of such things in hands that know how to value them, one means of extending their usefulness ? This rivalry of Italian cities is very petty and illiberal. The loss of Constantinople was the gain of tlie whole civilized world." an ,1 -3 ^ g o ^ X V3 7q 5' ■"^ r^ n s O « o 1 3?' •a n* ^ V o «-"i*e-,^ A REVELATION 7 Eomola was still too thoroughly under the painful pres- sure of the new revelation Tito was making of himself for her resistance to find any strong vent. As that fluent talk fell on her ears, there was a rising contempt within her, which only made her more conscious of her bruised, despairing love, her love for the Tito she had married and believed in. Her nature, possessed with the energies of strong emotion, re- coiled from this hopelessly shallow readiness which professed to appropriate the widest sympathies and had no pulse for the nearest. She still spoke like one who was restramed from showing all she felt. She had only drawn away her arm from his knee, and sat with her hands clasped before her, cold and motionless as locked waters. " You talk of substantial good, Tito ! Are faithfulness, and love, and sweet grateful memories no good? Is it no good that we should keep our silent promises on which others build because they believe in our love and truth ? Is it no good that a just life should be justly honoured? Or, is it good that we should harden our hearts against all the wants and hopes of those who have depended on us ? What good can belong to men who have such souls ? To talk cleverly, perhaps, and find soft couches for themselves, and live and die with their base selves as their best companions.'" Her voice had gradually risen till there was a ring of scorn in the last words. She made a slight pause ; but he saw there were other words quivering on her lips, and he chose to let them come. " I know of no good for cities or the world if they are to be made up of such beings. But I am not thinking of other Italian cities and the whole civilized world, — I am thinking of my father, and of my love and sorrow for him, and of his just claims on us. I would give up anything else, Tito, — I would leave Florence, — what else did I live for 8 ROMOLA l)ut for liiin and you? But I Mill not give up that duty. What have 1 to do with your arguments? It was a yearuing of I/is heart, and therefore it is a yearning of mine/' Her voice, from having been tremulous, had become full and firm. She felt that she had been urged on to say all that it was needful for her to say. She thought, poor thing, there was nothing harder to come than this struggle against Tito's suggestions as against the meaner part of herself. He had begun to see clearly that he could not persuade her into assent : he must take another course, and show her that the time for resistance was past. That, at least, would put an end to further struggle ; and if the disclosure were not made by himself to-night, to-morrow it must be made in another way. This necessity nerved his courage ; and his experience of her afFectionateness and unexpected submis- siveness, ever since their marriage until now, encouraged him to hope that, at last, she would accommodate herself to what had been his will. " I am sorry to hear you speak in that spirit of blind persistence, my Romola,'' he said quietly, " because it obliges me to give you pain. But I partly foresaw your opposition, and as a prom])t decision was necessary, I avoided that obsta- cle and decided without consulting you. The very care of a husband for his wife's interest compels him to that separate action sometimes, — even when he has such a wife as you, my Eomola." She turned her eyes on him in breathless inquiry. "\ mean," he said, answering her look, "that I have arranged for tlie transfer, both of the books and of the antitj- uities, where they will find the highest use and value. The books have been bought for the Duke of Milan, the marbles and bronzes and the rest are going to France ; and both will A REVELATION 9 be protected by tbe stability of a great Power^ instead of remaiuing in a city which is exposed to ruin/' Before he liad finished speaking, PtomoUi had started from her seat, and stood up looking down at him^ with tight- ened hands falling before her, and, for the first time in her life, with a flash of fierceness in her scorn and anger. " You have sold them ? " she asked, as if she distrusted her ears. " I have," said Tito, quailing a little. The scene was unpleasant, — the descending scorn already scorched him. "^ You are a treacherous man ! " she said, with something grating in her voice, as she looked down at him. She was silent for a minute; and he sat still, feeling that ingenuity was powerless just now. Suddenly she turned away, and said in an agitated tone : " It may be hindered, — I am going to my godfather." In an instant Tito started up, went to the door, locked it, and took out the key. It was time for all the masculine predominance that was latent in him to show itself. But he was not angry ; he only felt that the moment was eminently unpleasant, and that when this scene was at an end he should be glad to keep away from Romola for a little while. But it was absolutely necessary first that she should be reduced to passiveness. " Try to calm yourself a little, Romola," he said, leaning in the easiest attitude possible against a pedestal under the bust of a grim old Roman. Not that he was inwardly easy : his heart palpitated with a moral dread, against which no chain-armour could be found. He had locked in his wife's anger and scorn, but he had been obliged to lock himself in with it; and his blood did not rise with contest, — his olive cheek was perceptibly paled. Romola had paused and turned her eyes on him as she 10 ROMOLA saw him take his stand and lodge the key in his scarsclla. lier eyes were flashing, and her w^hole frame seemed to be possessed by impetuous force that wanted to leap out in some deed. All the crushing pain of disappointment in her husband, wliich had made the strongest part of her consciousness a few minutes before, was annihilated by the vehemence of licr indignation. She could not care in this moment that the man she was despising as he leaned there in his loathsome beauty — she could not care that he was her husband; she could only feel that she despised him. The pride and fierceness of the old Bardo blood had been thoroughly awakened in her for the first time. " Try at least to understand the fact," said Tito, " and do not seek to take futile steps which may be fatal. It is of no use for you to go to your godfather. Messer Bernardo cannot reverse what I have done. Only sit down. You would hardly wish, if you were quite yourself, to make known to any lliird person what passes between us in private." Tito knew that he had touched the right fibre there. But she did not sit down ; she was too unconscious of her body voluntarily to change her attitude. " Why can it not be reversed ? " she said after a pause. " Nothing is moved yet." " Simply because the sale has been concluded by written agreement ; the purchasers have left Florence, and I hold the bonds for the purchase-money." "If my father had suspected you of being a faithless man," said Romola, in a tone of bitter scorn, which insisted on darting out before she could say anything else, " he would have placed the library safely out of your power. But deatli overtook him too soon, and when you were sure his ear was deaf, and his liand stifl", you robbed him." She paused an instant, and then said with gathered passion : " Have you The door of the Chapter House in the outer cloister of the Convent of St. Mark > .' yfiflBaB«fl^i*s '. ft31IEf>'!%;f"-».'7;-.j .1 A REVELATION 11 robbed somebody else, who is not dead ? Is that the reason you wear armour ? " Roraola had been driven to utter the words as men are driven to use the lash of the horsewhip. At first Tito felt horribly cowed ; it seemed to him that the disgrace he had been dreading would be worse than he had imagined it. But soon there was a reaction : such power of dislike and resist- ance as tliere was within him was beginnmg to rise against a wife whose voice seemed like the herald of a retributive fate. Her, at least, his quick mind told him that he might master. " It is useless," he said coolly, " to answer the words of madness, Eomola. Your peculiar feeling about your father has made you mad at this moment. Any rational person looking at the case from a due distance will see that I have taken the wisest course. Apart from the influence of your exaggerated feelings on him, I am convinced that Messer Bernardo would be of that opinion. '^ " He would not ! " said Eomola. " He lives in the hope of seeing my father's wish exactly fulfilled. Wc spoke of it together only yesterday. He will help me yet. Who are these men to whom you have sold my father's property ? " " There is no reason why you should not be told, except that it signifies little. The Count di San Severino and the Seneschal de Beaucaire are now on their way with the king to Siena.'' "They maybe overtaken and persuaded to give up their purchase," said Eomola, eagerly, her anger beginning to be surmounted by anxious thought. " No, they may not," said Tito, with cool decision. « Why ? " " Because I do not choose that they should." 12 ROMOLA " But if you were paid the uioucy ? — we will pay you the money," said llomola. No words could have disclosed more fully her sense of alienation from Tito ; but they were spoken with less of bitter- ness than of anxious pleading. And he felt stronger, for he saw that the first impulse of fury was past. " No, my Eomola. Understand that such thoughts as these are impracticable. You would not, in a reasonable moment, ask your godfather to bury three thousand florins in addition to what he has already paid on the library. I think your pride and delicacy would shrink from that." She began to tremble and turn cold again with dis- couragement, and sank down on the carved chest near which she was standing. He went on in a clear voice, under which she shuddered, as if it had been a narrow cold stream coursing over a hot cheek. "Moreover, it is not my will that Messer Bernardo should advance the money, even if the project were not an utterly wild one. And I beg you to consider, before you take any step or utter any word on the subject, what will be the consequences of your placing yourself in opposition to me, and trying to exhibit your husband in the odious light which your own distempered feelings cast over him. What object will you serve by injuring me with Messer Bernardo ? The event is irrevocable, the library is sold, and you are my wife." Every word was spoken for the sake of a calculated effect, for his intellect was urged into the utmost activity by the danger of the crisis. He knew that Eomola's mind would take in rapidly enough all the wide meaning of his speech. He waited and watched her in silence. She had turned her eyes from him, and was looking on the ground, and in that way she sat for several minutes. A REVELATION 13 When she spoke, her voice was quite altered, — it was quiet and cold. " I have one thing to ask/* " Ask anything that I can do without injuring us both, Romola." " That you will give me that portion of the money which belongs to my godfather, and let me pay him/' " I must have some assurance from you, first, of the attitude you intend to take towards me." " Do you believe in assurances, Tito ? " she said, with a tinge of returning bitterness. " From you I do." " I will do you no harm. I shall disclose nothing. I will sny nothing to pain him or you. You say truly, the event is irrevocable." "Then I will do what you desire to-morrow morning." " To-night, if possible," said Romola, " that we may not speak of it again." " It is possible," he said, moving towards the lamp, while she sat still, looking away from him with absent eyes. Presently he came and bent down over her, to put a piece of paper into her hand. " You will receive something in return, you are aware, my Eomola ? " he said gently, not minding so much what bud passed, now he was secure ; ;uul feeling able to try and propitiate her. " Yes," she said, taking the paper, without looking at him, " I understand." " And you will forgive me, my Romola, when you have had time to reflect." He just touched her brow with his lips ; but she took no notice, and seemed really unconscious of the act. She was aware that he unlocked the door and went out. 14 ROMOLA She moved her head and listened. The great door of the court opened aud shut again. She started up as if some sudden freedom had come, and going to her father's chair where his picture was propped, fell on her knees before it, and burst into sobs. CHAPTER XIII BALDASSARRE MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE WHEN Baldassarre was wandering about Florence in search of a spare outhouse where he might have the cheapest of sheltered beds, his steps had been attracted towards that sole portion of ground within the walls of the city which is not perfectly level, and where the spectator, lifted above the roofs of the houses, can see beyond the city to the protecting hills and far-stretchmg valley, otherwise shut out from his view except along the welcome opening made by the course of the Arno. Part of that ground has been already seen by us as the hill of Bogoli, at that time a great stone-quarry ; but the side towards which Baldassarre directed his steps was the one that sloped down behind the Via de' Bardi, and was most commonly called the hill of San Giorgio. Bratti had told him that Tito's dwell- ing was in the Via de^ Bardi ; and after surveying that street, he turned up the slope of the hill which he had observed as he was crossing the bridge. If he could find a sheltering outhouse on that hill, he would be glad ; he had now for some years been accustomed to live with a broad sky about him ; and, moreover, the narrow passes of the streets, with their strip of sky above, and the unknown labyrinth around them, seemed to intensify his sense of lonehness and feeble memory. 16 ROMOLA The hill was sparsely inhabited, and covered chiefly by gardens ; but in one spot was a piece of rough ground jagged with great stones, which had never been cultivated since a lan.dslip had ruined some houses there towards the end of the thirteenth century. Just above the edge of this broken ground stood a queer little square building, looking like a truncated tower roofed in with fluted tiles ; and close by was a small outhouse, apparently built up against a piece of ruined stonewall. Under a large half-dead mulberry tree that was now sending its last fluttering leaves in at the open doorways a shrivelled, hardy old woman was untying a goat with two kids, and Baldassarre could see that part of the outbuilding w:is occupied by live-stock ; but the door of the other j)art was open, and it was empty of everything but some tools and straw. It was just the sort of place he wanted. He spoke to the old woman ; but it was not till he got close to her and shouted in her ear, that he succeeded in making her under- stand his want of a lodging, and his readiness to pay for it. At first he could get no answer beyond shakes of the head and tlie words, "No — no lodging,-'-' uttered in the mulfled tone of the deaf. But, by dint of persistence, he made clear to her that he was a poor stranger from a long way over seas, and could not afibrd to go to hostelries ; that he only wanted to lie on the straw in the outhouse, and would pay her a quattrino or two a week for that shelter. She still looked iit him dubiously, shaking her head and talking low to herself; but presently, as if a new thought occurred to her, she fetched a hatchet from the house and, showing him a chump that lay half covered with litter in a corner, asked him if he would chop that up for her; if he would, he might lie in the outhouse for one night. He agreed, and TMonna Lisa stood with her arms akimbo to watch him, with a smile of gratified cuiming, saying low to herself, — Fra Ginoi.A.MO Savoxauoi.a BALDASSARRE MAKES ACQUAINTANCE 17 " It 's lain there ever since my old man died. What then? I might as well have put a stone on the fire. He chops very well, though he does speak with a foreign tongue, and looks odd. I could n^t have got it done cheaper. And if he only wants a bit of straw to lie on, I might make him do an errand or two up and down the hill. Who need know ? And sin that ^s hidden 's half forgiven.^ He 's, a stranger : he ^11 take no notice of her. And I ■'11 tell her to keep her tongue still.'' The antecedent to these feminine pronouns had a pair of blue eyes, which at that moment were applied to a large round hole in the shutter of the upper window. The shutter was closed, not for any penal reasons, but because only the oppo- site window had the luxury of glass in it : the weather was not warm, and a round hole four inches in diameter served all the purposes of observation. The hole was, unfortunately, a little too high, and obliged the small observer to stand on a low stool of a rickety character ; but Tessa would have stood a long while in a much more inconvenient position for the sake of seeing a little variety in her life. She had been drawn to the opening at the first loud tones of the strange voice speaking to Monna Lisa ; and darting gently across her room every now and then to peep at something, she continued to stand tliere until the wood had been chopped, and she saw Baldassarre enter the outhouse, as the dusk was gathering, and seat himself on the straw. A great temptation had laid hold of Tessa's mind ; she would go and take that old man part of her supper and talk to him a little. He was not deaf like Monna Lisa, and be- sides she could say a great many things to him that it was no ^ The Italian proverb " Percato celato e mezzo perdonato" means that a hidden sin is more worthy of forgiveness than a sin which is known to others. — Editor. VOL. II. — 2 18 ROMOLA use to sliout at Moiiim Lisa, wlio knew them already. And ho was a stranger, — strangers came from a long way off and went away again, and lived nowhere in particular. It was naughty, she knew, for obedience made the largest part in Tessa's idea of duty ; but it would be something to confess to the Padre next Pasqua, and there was nothing else to con- fess except going to sleep sometimes over her beads, and be- ing a little cross with Monna Lisa because she was so deaf; for she had as much idleness as she liked now, and was never frightened into telling white lies. She turned away from her shutter with rather an excited expression in her childish face, which was as pretty and pouting as ever. Her garb was still that of a simple contadina, but of a contadina prepared for a festa : her gown of dark-green serge, with its red girdle, was very clean and neat ; she had the string of red glass beads round her neck ; and her brown hair, rough from curliness, was duly knotted up, and fastened with the silver pin. She had but one new ornament, and she was very proud of it, for it was a fine gold ring. Tessa sat on a low stool, nursing her knees, for a minute or two, with her little soul poised in fluttering excitement on the edge of this pleasant transgression. It was quite irresis- tible. She had been commanded to make no acquaintances, and warned that if she did, all her new happy lot would van- ish away, and be like a liiddcn treasure that turned to lead as soon as it was brouglit to the dayliglit ; and she had been so obedient that when she had to go to church she had kept her face shaded by her hood and had pursed up her li])s quite tightly. It was true, her obedience liad been a little lielped by her own dread lest the alarming stepfather Nofri should turn up even in this quarter, so far from the Por' del Prato, and beat her at least, if he did not drag her back to work for him. But this old man was not an acquaintance ; lie was a BALDASSARRE MAKES ACQUAINTANCE 19 poor stranger going to sleep in the outhouse, and he probably knew nothing of stepfather Nofri ; and, besides, if slic took him some supper, he would like her, and not want to tell anything about her. Monna Lisa would say she must not go and talk to him, therefore Monna Lisa must not be con- sulted. It did not signify what she found out after it had been done. Supper was being prepared, she knew, — a mountain of maccaroni flavoured with cheese, fragrant enough to tame any stranger. So she tripped downstairs with a mind full of deej) designs, and first asking with an innocent look what that noise of talking had been, without waiting for an answer knit her brow with a peremptory air, something like a kitten try- ing to be formidable, and sent the old woman upstairs ; say- ing, she chose to eat her supj)er downi below. In three minutes Tessa, with her lantern in one hand and a wooden bowl of maccaroni in the other, was kicking gently at the door of the outhouse ; and Baldassarre, roused from sad revery, doubted in the first moment whether he were awake as he opened the door and saw this sur])rising little handmaid, with delight in her wide eyes, breaking in on his dismal loneliness. " I 've brought you some supper," she said, lifting her mouth towards his ear and shouting, as if lie had been deaf like Monna Lisa. " Sit down and eat it while I stay with you." Surprise and distrust surmounted every other feeling in Baldassarre; but though he had no smile or word of grati- tude ready, there could not be any impulse to push away this visitant, and he sank down passively on his straw again, while Tessa placed herself close to him, put the wooden bowl on his lap, and set down the lantern in front of them, crossing her hands before her, and nodding at the bowl wifli a significant so ROMOLA smile, as much as to say, " Yes, you may really eat it/' F(jr in the exeitcment of carrying out her deed, she had forgotten her previous thought that the stranger would not be deaf, and had fallen into her habitual alternative of dumb show and shouting. The invitation was not a disagreeable one, for he had been gnawing a remnant of dry bread, which had left 2)lcnty of appetite for anything warm and relishing. Tessa watched the disappearance of two or three mouthfuls without speaking, for she had thought his eyes rather fierce at first ; but now she ventured to put her mouth to his ear again and cry, — " I like my supper, don't you ? " It was not a smile, but rather the milder look of a dog touched by kindness, but unable to smile, that Baldassarre turned on this round blue-eyed thing that was caring about him. " Yes," he said ; " but I can hear well, — • I 'ni not deaf.'' "It is true; I forgot/' said Tessa, lifting her hands. and clasphig them. " But Monna Lisa is deaf and I live with her. iShe 's a kind old woman, and I 'm not frightened at lier. And we live very well ; we have plenty of nice things. I can have nuts if I like. And I 'm not obliged to work now. I used to have to work, and I did n't like it ; but I liked feeding the mules, and I should like to see poor Gian- netta, the little mule, again. . We 've only got a goat and two kids, and I used to talk to the goat a good deal, because there was nobody else but Monna Lisa. But now I 've got something else, — can you guess what it is ? " She drew her head back, and looked with a challenging smile at Baldassarre, as if she had proposed a difficult riddle to him. " No," said he, putting aside his bowl, and looking at « i' 2 BALDASSARRE MAKES ACQUAINTANCE 21 her dreamily. It seemed as if this young prattling thing were some memory come back out of his own youth. " You like me to talk to you, don^t you ? " said Tessa ; " but you must not tell anybody. Shall I fetch you a bit of cold sausage ?^^ He shook his head, but he looked so mild now that Tessa felt quite at her ease. "Well, then, I''ve got a little baby. Such a pretty bambinetto, with little fingers and nails ! Not old yet ; it was born at the Nativita, Monna Lisa says. I was married one Nativita, a long, long while ago, and nobody knew. O Santa Madonna ! I did n^t mean to tell you that ! " Tessa set up her shoulders and bit her lij), looking at Baldassarre as if this betrayal of secrets must have an exciting effect on him too. But he seemed not to care much ; and perhaps that was in the nature of strangers. " Yes,'' she said, carrying on her thought aloud, " you are a stranger ; you don't live anywhere or know anybody, do you?" " No," said Baldassarre, also thinking aloud, rather than consciously answering ; " I only know one man." " His name is not Nofri, is it ? " said Tessa, anxiously. " No," said Baldassarre, noticing her look of fear. " Is that your husband's name ? " That mistaken supposition was very amusing to Tessa. She laughed and clapped her hands as she said, — " No, indeed ! But I must not tell you anything about my husband. You would never think what he is, — not at all like Nofri ! " She laughed again at the delightful incongruity between the name of Nofri — which was not separable from the idea of the cross-grained stepfather, — and the idea of her husband. 22 ROMOLA ''But I dou^t sec liim very often," she went on, more gravely. " And sometimes I pray to the Holy IMadoniia to send him oftener, and once she did. But I must go back to my bimbo now. I ^11 bring it to show you to-morrow. You would like to see it. Sometimes it cries and makes a face, but only wlien it 's hungry, Monna Lisa says. You would n't think it, but Monna Lisa had babies once, and they are all dead old men. My husband says she will never die now, because she 's so well dried. I 'm glad of that, for I 'm fond of her. You would like to stay here to-morrow, should n't you ? " "I should like to have this place to come and rest in, that^s all," said Baldassarre. "I would pay for it, and harm nobody." "No, indeed; I think you are not a bad old man. But you look sorry about something. Tell me, is there anything you shall cry about when I leave you by yourself ? I used to cry once." " No, child ; I think I shall cry no more." " That 's right ; and I '11 bring you some breakfast, and show you the bimbo. Good-night." Tessa took up her bowl and lantern, and closed the door behind her. The pretty loving apparition had been no more to Baldassarre than a faint rainbow on the blackness to the man who is wrestling in deep waters. He hardly thought of her again till his dreamy waking passed into the more vivid images of disturbed sleep. But Tessa thought much of him. She had no sooner entered the house than she told Monna Lisa what she had done, and insisted that the stranger should be allowed to come and rest in the outhouse when he liked. The old woman, who had had her notions of making him a useful tenant, made a great show of reluctance, shook her head, and urged that BALDASSARRE MAKES ACQUAINTANCE 23 Messer Naldo would be angry if she let any one come about the house. Tessa did not believe that. Naldo had said nothing against strangers who lived nowhere ; and this old man knew nobody except one person, who was not Nofri. " Well/' conceded Monna Lisa at last, " if I let him stay for a while and carry things up the hill for me, thou must keep- thy counsel and tell nobody." " No," said Tessa, " I '11 only tell the bimbo." " And then," Monna Lisa went on, in her thick under- tone, " God may love us well enough not to let Messer Naldo find out anything about it. For he never comes here but at dark ; and as he was here two days ago, it 's likely he '11 never come at all till the old man 's gone away again." " Oh me ! Monna," said Tessa, clasping her hands, " I wish Naldo had not to go such a long, long way sometimes before he comes back again." " Ah, child ! the world 's big, they say. There are places behind the mountains, and if people go night and day, night and day, they get to Home, and see the Holy Father." Tessa looked submissive in the presence of this mystery, and began to rock her baby, and sing syllables of vague loving meaning, in tones that imitated a triple chime. The next morning she was unusually industrious in the prospect of more dialogue, and of the pleasure she should give the poor old stranger by showing him her baby. But before she could get ready to take Baldassarre his breakfast, she found that Monna Lisa had been employing him as a drawer of water. Slie deferred her paternosters, and hurried down to insist that Baldassarre should sit on his straw, so that she might come and sit by him again while he ate his breakfast. That attitude made the new companionship all the more delightful to Tessa, for she had been used to sitting on straw in old days along with her goats and mules. M ROMOLA " I ynW not let Monna Lisa give you too much work to do/^ she said, bringing him some steaming broth and soft bread. " I don't like much work, and I dare say you don't. I like sitting in the sunshine and feeding things. Monna Lisa says, work is good; but she does it all herself, so I don't mind. She 's not a cross old woman ; you need n't be afraid of her being cross. And now, you eat that, and I '11 go and fetch my baby and show it you.''' Presently she came back with the small mummy-case in her arms. The mummy looked very lively, having unusu- ally large dark eyes, though no more than the usual indication of a future nose. " This is my baby," said Tessa, seating herself close to Baldassarre. " You did n't think it was so pretty, did you ? It is like the little Gesu, and I should think the Santa Ma- donna would be kinder to me now, is it not true ? But I have not much to ask for, because I have everything now, — only that I should see my husband oftcner. You may hold the bambino a little if you like, but I think you must not kiss him, because you might hurt him." She spoke this prohibition in a tone of soothing excuse, and Baldassarre could not refuse to hold the small package. " Poor thing ! poor tiling ! " he said in a deep voice which had something strangely threatening in its apparent pity. It did not seem to him as if this guileless loving little woman could reconcile him to the world at all, but rather that she was with him against the world, that she was a creature who would need to be avenged. " Oh, don't you be sorry for me," she said ; " for though I don't see him often, he is more beautiful and good than anybody else in the world. I say prayers to him when he's away. You could n't think what he is ! " She looked at Baldassarre with a wide glance of BALDASSARRE MAKES ACQUAINTANCE 25 mysterious meaning, taking the baby from him again, and almost wishing he would question her as if he wanted very much to know more. "Yes, I could," said Baldassarre, rather bitterly. " No, I 'm sure you never could," said Tessa, earnestly. " You thought he might be Nofri," she added, with a trium- phant air of conclusiveness. " But never mind ; you could n^t know. What is your name ? " He rubbed his hand over his knitted brow, then looked at her blankly and said, " Ah, child, what is it ? " It was not that he did not often remember his name well enough ; and if he had had presence of mind now to remember it, he would have chosen not to tell it. But a sudden question appealing to his memory had a paralyzing effect, and in that moment he was conscious of nothing but helplessness. Ignorant as Tessa was, the pity stirred in her by his blank look taught her to say, — " Never mind : you are a stranger, it is no matter about your having a name. Good-by now, because I want my breakfast. You wall come here and rest when you like ; Monna Lisa says you may. And don't you be unhappy, for we '11 be good to you." " Poor thing ! " said Baldassarre again. CHAPTER XIV NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE MESSER NALDO came again sooner than was ex- pected : he came on the evening of the 28th of November, only eleven days after his previous visit, proving that he had not gone far beyond the mountains ; and a scene which we have witnessed as it took place that evening in the Via de' Bardi may help to explain the impulse which turned his steps towards the hill of San Giorgio. When Tito had first found this home for Tessa, on his return from Rome, more than a year and a half ago, he had acted, he persuaded himself, simply under the constraint im- posed on him by his own kindliness after the unlucky inci- dent which had made foolish little Tessa imagine him to be her husband. It was true that the kindness was manifested towards a pretty trusting thing whom it was impossible to be near without feeling inclined to caress and pet her ; but it was not less true that Tito had movements of kindness towards her apart from any contemplated gain to himself. Otherwise, charming us her prettincss and prattle were in a lazy moment, he might have preferred to be free from her ; for he was not in love with Tessa, — he was in love for the first time in his life with an entirely different woman, whom he was not simply inclined to shower caresses on, but whose presence possessed him so that the simple sweep of her long tresses across his cheek seemed to vibrate through the hours. All the young ideal passion he had in him had been stirred by Romola, and his fibre was too fine, his intellect too bright. ^2 "*: a » ^ 2 S^?! NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 27 for him to be tempted into the habits of a gross pleasure- seeker. But he had spun a web about himself and Tessa, which he felt incapable of breaking : in the first moments after the mimic marriage he had been prompted to leave her under an illusion by a distinct calculation of his own possible need, but since that critical moment it seemed to him that the web had gone on spinning itseK in spite of him, like a growth over which he had no power. The elements of kindness and self-indulgence are hard to distinguish in a soft nature like Tito's ; and the annoyance he had felt under Tessa's pursuit of him on the day of his betrothal, the thorough intention of revealing the truth to her with which he set out to fulfil his promise of seeing her again, were a sufficiently strong argument to him that in ultimately leav- ing Tessa under her illusion and providing a home for her, he had been overcome by his own kindness. And in these days of his first devotion to Eomola he needed a self- justifying argument. He had learned to be glad that she was deceived about some things. But every strong feeling makes to itself a conscience of its own, — has its own piety ; just as much as the feeling of the son towards the mother, which will sometimes survive amid the worst fumes of de])ra- vation; and Tito could not yet be easy in committing a secret ofPence against his wedded love. But he was all the more careful in taking precautions to preserve the secrecy of the offence. Monna Lisa, who, like many of her class, never left her habitation except to go to one or two particular shops, and to confession once a year, knew nothing of his real name and whereabout : she only knew that he paid her so as to make her very comfortable, and minded little about the rest, save that she got fond of Tessa, and found pleasure in the cares for which she was paid. There was some mystery behind, clearly, since Tessa was 28 ROMOLA a coiitadina, and Messer Naldo was a signer ^ ; but, for aught Monna Lisa knew, be might be a real husband. For Tito had thoroughly frightened Tessa into silence about the circumstances of their marriage, by telling her that if she broke that silence she would never see him again ; and Monna Lisa's deafness, which made it impossible to say any- thing to her without some premeditation, had saved Tessa from any incautious revelation to her, such as had run off her tongue in talking with Baldassarre. For a long while Tito's visits were so rare that it seemed likely enough he took journeys between them. They were prompted chiefly by the desire to see that all things were going on well with Tessa ; and though he always found his visit pleasanter than the prospect of it, — always felt anew the charm of that pretty ignorant lovingness and trust, — he had not yet any real need of it. But he was determined, if possible, to pre- serve the simplicity on which the charm depended ; to keep Tessa a genuine contadina, and not place the small field-flower among conditions that would rob it of its grace. He would have been shocked to see her in the dress of any other rank than her own; the piquancy of her talk would be all gone, if things began to have new relations for her, if her world became wider, her pleasures less childish ; and the squirrel- like enjoyment of nuts at discretion marked the standard of the luxuries he had provided for her. By this means Tito saved Tessa's charm from being sullied; and he also, by a convenient coincidence, saved himself from aggravating expenses that were already rather importunate to a man whose money was all required for his avowed habits of Kfe. This in brief had been the history of Tito's relation to 1 Signore used in this sense is modern. The authoress should have rather used gentiluomo. — Editoe. NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 29 Tessa up to a very recent date. It is true that once or twice before Bardo^s deaths tlie sense that there was Tessa up tlie hill, with whom it was possible to pass an hour agreeably, had been an inducement to him to escape from a little weari- ness of the old man, when, for lack of any positive engage- ment, he might otherwise have borne the weariness patiently and shared Eomola's burden. But the moment when he had first felt a real hunger for Tessa's ignorant lovingness and belief in him had not come till quite lately, and it was dis- tinctly marked out by circumstances as little to be forgotten as the oncoming of a malady that has permanently vitiated the sight and hearing. It was the day when he had first seen Baldassarre, and had bought the armour. Returning across the bridge that night, with the coat of mail in his hands, he had felt an unconquerable shrinking from an immediate en- counter with Romola. She, too, knew little of the actual world ; she, too, trusted him ; but he had an uneasy con- sciousness that behind her frank eyes there was a nature that could judge him, and that any ill-founded trust of hers sprang not from pretty brute-like incapacity, but from a nobleness which might prove an alarming touchstone. He wanted a little ease, a little repose from self-control, after the agitation and exertions of the day ; he wanted to be where he could adjust his mind to the morrow, without caring how he be- haved at the present moment. And there was a sweet, ador- ing creature within reach whose joresence was as safe and unconstraining as that of her own kids, — who would believe any fable, and remain quite unimpressed by public opinion. And so, on that evening, when Eomola was waiting and lis- tening for him, he turned his steps up the hill. No wonder, then, that the steps took the same course on this evening, eleven days later, when he had had to recoil under Romola's first outburst of scorn. He could not wish 30 ROMOLA Tessa in liis wife^s place, or refrain from wishing that liis wife should be thoroughly reconciled to him ; for it was ilomola, and not Tessa, that belonged to the world where all the larger desires of a man who had ambition and eifectivc faculties must necessarily lie. But he wanted a refuge from a standard disagreeably rigorous, of which he could not make himself independent simply by thinking it folly ; and Tessa's little soul was that inviting refuge. It was not much more than eight o'clock when he went up the stone steps to the door of Tessa's room. Usually she heard his entrance into the house, and ran to meet him, but not to-night ; and when he opened the door he saw the reason. A single dim light was burning above the dying fire, and showed Tessa in a kneeling attitude by the head of the bed where the baby lay. Her head had fallen aside on the pillow, and her brown rosary, which usually hung above the pillow over the picture of the Madonna and the golden palm-branches, lay in the loose grasp of her right hand. She had gone fast asleep over her beads. Tito stepped lightly across the little room, and sat down close to her. She had probably heard the opening of the door as part of her dream, for he had not been looking at her two moments before she opened her eyes. She opened them without any start, and remained quite mo- tioidess looking at him, as if the sense that he was there smiling at her shut out any impulse which could disturb that happy passivencss. But when he put his hand under her chin, and stooped to kiss her, she said, — " I dreamed it, and then I said it was dreaming, — and then I awoke, and it was true." "Little sinner!" said Tito, pinching her chin, "you liave not said half your prayers. I will punish you by not looking at your baby ; it is ugly." Tessa did not like those words, even though Tito was NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 31 smiling. She had some pouting distress in her face, as she said, bending anxiously over the baby, — " Ah, it is not true ! He is prettier than anything. You do not think he is ugly. You will look at him. He is even prettier than when you saw him before, — only he ^s asleep, and you can^t see his eyes or his tongue, and I can't show you his hair — and it grows — is n't that wonderful ? Look at him ! It 's true his face is very much all alike when he 's asleep, there is not so much to see as when he 's awake. If you kiss him very gently, he won't wake : you want to kiss him, is it not true ? " He satisfied her by giving the small mummy a butterfly kiss, and then putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her face towards him, said, — " You like looking at the baby better than looking at your husband, you false one." She was still kneeling, and now rested her hands on his knee, looking up at him like one of Fra Lippo Lippi's round-cheeked adoring angels. " No," she said, shaking her head ; " I love you always best, only I want you to look at the bambino and love him. I used only to want you to love me." " And did you expect me to come again so soon ? " said Tito, inclined to make her prattle. He still felt the effects of tlie agitation he had undergone, — still felt like a man who has been violently jarred ; and this was the easiest relief from silence and solitude. " Ah, no," said Tessa, " I have counted the days — to-day I began at my right thumb again — since you put on the beautiful chain-coat that Messer San IMichele gave you to take care of you on your journey. And you liave got it ou now," she said, peeping through the opening in the breast of his tunic. " Perhaps it made you come back sooner." 32 ROMOLA "Perhaps it did, Tessa/' he said. "But don't mind the coat now. Tell mc what has happened since I was here. Did you see the tents in the Prato, and the sohliers and liorsemen when they passed the bridges, — did you hear the drums and trumpets ? " " Yes_, and I was rather frightened, because I thought the soldiers might come up here. And Monna Lisa was a little afraid too, for she said they might carry our kids off; she said it was their business to do mischief. But the Holy Madonna took care of us, for we never saw one of them up here. But something has happened, only I hardly dare tell you, and that is what I was saying more Aves for." " What do you mean, Tessa ? •" said Tito, rather anxiously. " Make haste and tell me." " Yes, but will you let me sit on your knee ? because then I think I shall not be so frightened." He took her on his knee, and put his arm rouiul her, but looked grave : it seemed that something unpleasant must pur- sue him even here. " At first I did n't mean to tell you," said Tessa, speak- ing almost in a whisper, as if that would mitigate the offence ; " because we thouglit the old man would be gone away before you came again, and it would be as if it had not been. But now he is there, and you are come, and I never did anything you told me not to do before. And I want to tell you, and then you will perhaps forgive me, for it is a long while before I go to confession." " Yes, tell me everything, my Tessa." He began to hope it was, after all, a trivial matter. " Oh, you will be sorry for him : I 'm afraid he cries about something when I don't see him. But that was not the reason I went to him first; it was because I wanted to talk to him and sliow liim my baby, and he was a stranger Marsii.io Fkixo tmmmmitltiftmtmJklmaimmmm^im J-'mm lilt conteiii/)(irai y bust in the Duomo by Andrea Ferrucci NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 33 that lived nowhere, and I thought you would n't care so much about my talkmg to him. And I think he is not a bad old man, and he wanted to come and sleep on the straw next to the goats, and I made Monna Lisa say, ' Yes, he might,' and he 's away all the day almost ; but when he comes back I talk to him, and take him something to eat." "Some beggar, I suppose. It was naughty of you, Tessa, and I am angry with Monna Lisa. I must have him sent away." " No, I think he is not a beggar, for he wanted to pay Monna Lisa, only she asked him to do work for her instead. And he gets himself shaved, and his clothes are tidy : Monna Lisa says he is a decent man. But sometimes I think he is not in his right mind : Lupo, at Peretola, was not in his right mind, and he looks a little like Lupo sometimes, as if he did n't know where he was." " What sort of face has he ? " said Tito, his heart begin- ning to beat strangely. He was so haunted by the thouglit of Baldassarre, that it was already he whom he saw in imagi- nation sitting on the straw not many yards from him. " Fetch your stool, my Tessa, and sit on it." " Shall you not forgive me ? " she said timidly, moving from his knee. " Yes, I will not be angry, — only sit down, and tell me what sort of old man this is." " I can't think how to tell you : he is not like my step- father Nofri, or anybody. His face is yellow, and he has deep marks in it; and his hair is white, but there is none on the top of his head : and liis eyebrows are black, and he looks from under them at me, and says, ' Poor thing ! ' to me, as if he thought I was beaten as I used to be ; and that seems as if he could n't be in his right mind, does n't it ? And I asked him his name once, but he could n't tell me ; yet everybody VOL. II. — 3 34 ROMOLA has a name, — is it not true ? And he has a book now, and keeps looking at it ever so long, as if he were a Padre. But I think he is not saying prayers, for his lips never move ; — ah, you are angry with me, or is it because you are sorry for the old man ? " Tito's eyes were still fixed on Tessa ; but he had ceased to see her, and was only seeing the objects her words sug- gested. It was this absent glance which frightened her, and she could not help going to kneel at his side again. But he did not heed her, and she dared not touch him or speak to him : she knelt, trembling and wondering ; and this state of mind suggesting her beads to her, she took them from the floor, and began to tell them again, her pretty lips moving silently, and her blue eyes wide with anxiety and struggling tears. Tito was quite unconscious of her movements, uncon- scious of his own attitude ; he was in that rapt state in which a man will grasp painful roughness, and press and press it closer, and never feel it. A new possibility had risen before him which might dissolve at once the wretched conditions of fear and suppression that were marring his life. Destiny had brought within his reach an opportunity of retrieving that moment on the steps of the Duomo, when the Past had grasped him with living quivering hands, and he had disowned it. A few steps, and he might be face to face with his father, with no witness by ; he might seek forgiveness and reconciliation ; and there was money now, from the sale of the library, to enable them to leave Florence without disclosure, and go into Southern Italy, where under the probable French rule he had already laid a foundation for patronage. Romola need never know the whole truth, for she could have no certain means of identifying that prisoner in the Duomo with Baldassarre, or of learning what had taken place on the steps, except from NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 35 Baldassarre himself; and if his father forgave, he would also consent to bury that offence. But with this possibility of relief, by an easy spring, from present evil, there rose the other possibility, that the fierce-hearted man might refuse to be propitiated. Well — and if he did, things would only be as they had been before ; for there would be no witness by. It was not repentance with a white sheet round it and taper in hand, confessing its hated sin in the eyes of men, that Tito was preparing for : it was a repentance that would make all things pleasant again, and keep all past unpleasant things secret. And Tito's soft- heartedness, his indisposition to feel himself in harsh relations with any creature, was in strong activity towards his father, now his father was brought near to him. It would be a state of ease that his nature could not but desire, if the poisonous hatred in Baldassarre's glance could be replaced by something of the old affection and complacency. Tito longed to have his world once again completely cushioned with good-will, and longed for it the more eagerly because of what he had just suffered from the collision wdth Eomola. It was not difficult to him to smile pleadingly on those whom he had injured, and offer to do them much kind- ness : and no quickness of intellect could teU him exactly the taste of that honey on the lips of the injured. The opportu- nity was there, and it raised an inclination which hemmed in the calculating activity of his thought. He started up, and stepped towards the door ; but Tessa's cry, as she dropped her beads, roused him from his absorption. He turned and said, — "My Tessa, get me a lantern; and don't cry, little pigeon, I am not angry." Tliey went down the stairs, and Tessa was going to shout the need of the lantern in Monna Lisa's ear, when Tito, who 36 ROMOLA had opened the door, said : " Stay, Tessa — no, I want no lantern : go upstairs again, and keep quiet, and say nothing to Monna Lisa/' In half a minute he stood before the closed door of the outhouse, where the moon was shining white on the old paint- less wood. In this last decisive moment Tito felt a tremor upon him, — a sudden instinctive shrinking from a possible tiger-glance, a possible tiger-leap. Yet why should he, a young man, be afraid of an old one ? a young man with armour on, of an old man without a weapon ? It was but a moment's hesitation, and Tito laid his hand on the door. Was his father asleep ? Was there nothing else but the door that screened him from the voice and the glance which no magic could turn into case ? Baldassarre was not asleep. There was a square opening high in the wall of the hovel, through whicli the moonbeams sent in a stream of pale light; and if Tito could have looked through the opening, he would have seen his father seated on the straw, with something that shone like a white star in his hand. Baldassarre was feeling the edge of his poniard, taking refuge in that sensation from a hopeless blank of thought that seemed to lie like a great gulf between his passion and its aim. He was in one of his most wretched moments of conscious helplessness : he had been poring, while it was light, over the book that lay open beside him : tlien he had been trying to recall the names of his jewels, and the symbols engraved on them ; and though at certain other times he had recovered some of those names and symbols, to-night they were all gone into darkness. And this effort at inward seeing had seemed to end in utter paralysis of memory. He was reduced to a sort of mad consciousness that he was a solitary pulse of just rage in a world filled with d.'finnt baseness. He had clutched Savonarola preathine: in the Duomo irCOMPENDIODIREVELATIONE DELLO INVTILE SERVO Dl lESV CHRISTO FRATE HJERONYMO DA FERRA RA DELLORDINE DE ERA Tl PREDICATORl ClESVS MARIA BeSE3:2E2S3L23" ENCHE Lungo tempo in moltf modipcr infpi'rarione Diuina io habbia prcdccte mol techofefuturc.nicntedimeno conddcrando lafcntenaa del noftro faluatorc chnfto Icfu/ chedice. Nolitefanctumdare canibus:nccmittans mar caritas ucRras ante porcos:nc forte conculcent cas pcdi bus:&c6u€rfjdirumpanruos:Sono fcmprc ftato fcarfo ncl dire; &: non mifono cxrefo piu chc mifia parfo ciTere ncceflano alia falutc de&Ii huomini i in modo che ie con clufioncnoflrcfono dare pochcadnen^ba chc molte fie a i From an old ma/iuscript NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 37 and unsheathed his dagger, and for a long while had been feeling its edge, his mind narrowed to one image, and tlie dream of one sensation, — the sensation of plunging that dagger into a base heart, which he was unable to pierce in any other way. Tito had his hand on the door and was pulling it : it dragged against the ground, as such old doors often do ; and Baldassarre, startled out of his dreamlike state, rose from liis sitting posture in vague amazement, not knowing where lie was. He had not yet risen to his feet, and was still kneeling on one knee, when the door came wide open, and he saw, dark against the moonlight, with the rays falling on one bright mass of curls and one rounded olive cheek, the image of his revery, — not shadowy, — close and real like water at the lips after the thirsty dream of it. No thought could come athwart that eager thirst. In one moment, before Tito could start back, the old man, with the preternatural force of rage in his limbs, had sprung forward, and the dagger had flashed out. In the next moment the dagger had snapped in two; and Baldassarre, under the parrying force of Tito^s arm, had fallen back on the straw, clutching the hilt with its bit of broken blade. The pointed end lay sliining agahist Tito's feet. Tito had felt one great heart-leap of terror as hv. had staggered under the weight of the thrust : he felt now the triumph of deliverance and safety. His armour had been proved, and vengeance lay helpless before him. But the tri- umph raised no devilish impulse ; on the contrary, the sight of his father close to him and unable to injure him made the effort at reconciliation easier. He was free from fear, but he had only the more unmixed and direct want to be free from the sense that he was hated. After they had looked at each other a little while, Baldassarre lying motionless in despairing 38 ROMOLA rage, Tito said in his soft tones, just as tliej bad sounded before the last parting on the shores of Greece, — " Padre mio ! " Tliere was a pause after those words, but no movement or sound till he said, — " I came to ask your forgiveness ! " Again he paused, that the healing balm of those words might have time to work. But there was no sign of change in Baldassarre : he lay as he had fallen, leaning on one arm : he was trembling, but it was from the shock that had thrown him down. " I was taken by surprise that morning. I wish now to be a son to you again. I wish to make the rest of your life happy, that you may forget what you have suffered." He paused again. He had used the clearest and strongest words he could think of. It was useless to say more, until he had some sign that Baldassarre understood him. Perhaps his mind was too distcm})ered or too imbecile even for that; perhaps the shock of his fall and his dis- appointed rage might have quite suspended the use of his faculties. Presently Baldassarre began to move. He threw away the broken dagger, and slowly and gradually, still trembling, began to raise himself from the ground. Tito put out his hand to help him ; and so strangely quick are men's souls that in this moment, when he began to feel his atonement was accepted, he had a darting thought of the irksome efforts it entailed. Baldassarre clutched the hand that was held out, raised himself and clutched it still, going close up to Tito till their faces were not a foot off each other. Then he began to speak, in a deep trembling voice. " I saved you — I nurtured you — I loved you. You forsook me — you robbed me — you dem'ed me. What can you give me ? You have made the world bitterness to me ; NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 39 but there is oue draught of sweetness left, — that you shall know agony." He let fall Tito^s hand, and going backwards a little, first rested his arm on a projecting stone in the wall, and then sank again in a sitting posture on the straw. The outleap of fur J in the dagger-thrust had evidently exhausted him. Tito stood silent. If it had been a deep yearning emo- tion which had brought him to ask his father's forgiveness, the denial of it might have caused him a pang which would have excluded the rushing train of thought tliat followed those decisive words. As it was, though the sentence of unchange- able hatred grated on him and jarred him terribly, his mind glanced round with a self-preserving instinct to see how far those words could have the force of a substantial threat. When he had come down to speak to Baldassarre, he had said to himself that if his effort at reconciliation failed, things would only be as they had been before. The first glance of his mind was backward to that thought again, but the future possibilities of danger that were conjured up along with it brought the perception that things were not as they had been before, and the perception came as a triumphant relief. There was not only the broken dagger, there was the certainty, from what Tessa had told him, that Baldassarre's mind was broken too, and had no edge that could reach him. Tito felt he had no choice now : he must defy Baldassarre as a mad, imbecile old man ; and the chances were so strongly on his side that there was hardly room for fear. No \ except the fear of having to do many unpleasant things in order to save himself from what was yet more unpleasant. And one of those unpleasant thhigs must be done immediately : it was very difficult. " Po vou mean to stay here ? " he said, 40 ROMOLA "No/' said Baldassarre, bitterly, "you mean to turn me out/' " Not so/' said Tito ; " I only ask." "1 tell you, you have turned me out. If it is your straw, you turned me off' it three years ago.'' " Then you mean to leave this place ? " said Tito, more anxious about this certainty than the ground of it. " I have spoken/' said Baldassarre. Tito turned and re-entered the house. Monna Lisa was nodding ; he went up to Tessa, and found her crying by the side of her baby. " Tessa," he said, sitting down and taking her head be- tween his hands ; " leave off" crying, little goose, and listen to me." He lifted her chin upward, that she might look at him, while he spoke very distinctly and emphatically. "You must never speak to that old man again. He is a mad old man, and he wants to kill me. Never speak to him or listen to him again." Tessa's tears had ceased, and her lips were pale with fright. " Is he gone away ? " she whispered. " He will go away. Remember what I have said to you." " Yes ; I will never speak to a stranger any more," said Tessa, with a sense of guilt. He told her, to comfort her, that he would come again to-morrow ; and then went down to Monna Lisa to rebuke her severely for letting a dangerous man come about the house. Tito felt that these were odious tasks; they were very evil-tasted morsels, but they were forced upon him. He heard Monna Lisa fasten the door hehmd him, and turned PiERo de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo il Magnifico From the portrait by Botticelli, in the Ujizi Gnllerij NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE 41 away^ without looting towards the open door of the hovel. He felt secure that Baldassarre would go, and he could not wait to see him go. Even Ids young frame and elastic spirit were shattered by the agitations that had been crowded into this single evening. Baldassarre was still sitting on the straw when the shadow of Tito passed by. Before him lay the fragments of the broken dagger; beside him lay the open book,, over which he had pored in vain. They looked like mocking symbols of his utter helplessness ; and his body was still too trembling for him to rise and walk away. But the next morning very early, when Tessa peeped anxiously through the hole in the shutter, tho door of the hovel was open, and the strange old man was gone. CHAPTER XV WHAT FLORENCE WAS THINKING OF FOU several days Tito saw little of Romola. He told her gently, the next morning, that it would be better for her to remove any small articles of her own from the library, as there would be agents coming to pack up the antiquities. Then, leaning to kiss her on the brow, he sug- gested that she should keep in her own room where the little painted tabernacle was, and where she was then sitting, so that she might be away from the noise of strange footsteps. Romola assented quietly, making no sign of emotion : the night had been one long waking to her, and, in spite of her healthy frame, sensation had become a dull continuous pain, as if she had been stunned and bruised. Tito divined that she felt ill, but he dared say no more ; he only dared, per- ceiving that her hand and brow were stone cold, to fetch a furred mantle and throw it lightly round her. And in every brief interval that he returned to her, the scene was nearly the same : he tried to propitiate her by some unobtru- sive act or word of tenderness, and she seemed to have lost the power of speaking to him, or of looking at him. " Pa- tience ! " he said to himself. " She will recover it, and for- give at last. The tie to me must still remain the strongest.'' When the stricken person is slow to recover and look as if nothing had happened, the striker easily ghdes into the posi- tion of the aggrieved party; he feels no bruise himself, and is strongly conscious of his own amiable behaviour since he inflicted the blow. But Tito was not naturally disposed to WHAT FLORENCE WAS THINKING OF 43 feel himself aggrieved; the constant bent of his mind was towards propitiation, and he would have submitted to much for the sake of feeling llomola's hand resting on his head again, as it did that morning when he first shrank from looking at her. But he found it the less difficult to wait patiently for the return of his home happiness, because his life out of doors was more and more interesting to him. A course of action which is in strictness a slowly prepared outgrowth of the entire character, is yet almost always traceable to a single impression as its point of apparent origin ; and since that moment in the Piazza del Duomo, when Tito, mounted on the bales, had tasted a keen pleasure in the consciousness of his ability to tickle the ears of men with any phrases that pleased them, his imagination had glanced continually towards a sort of political activity which the troubled public life of Florence was likely enough to find occasion for. But the fresh dread of Baldassarre, waked in the same moment, had lain like an immovable rocky obstruction across that path, and had urged him into the sale of the library, as a preparation for the possible necessity of leaving Florence, at the very time when he was beginning to feci that it had a new attraction for him. That dread was nearly removed now : he must wear his armour still, he must prepare him- self for possible demands on his coolness and ingenuity, but he did not feel obliged to take the inconvenient step of leav- ing Florence and seeking new fortunes. His father had re- fused the ofi'ered atonement, — had forced him into defiance ; and an old man in a strange place, with his memory gone, was weak enough to be defied. Tito's implicit desires were working themselves out now in very explicit thoughts. As the freshness of young ])assion faded, life was taking more and more decidedly for him thq 44. ROMOLA aspect of a game in which there was an agreeable mingling of skill and chance. And the game that might be played in Florence prom- ised to be rapid and exciting ; it was a game of revolutionary and party struggle, sure to include plenty of that unavowed action in which brilliant ingenuity, able to get rid of all in- convenient beliefs except that " ginger is hot in the mouth," is apt to see the path of superior wisdom. No sooner were the French guests gone, than Florence was as agitated as a colony of ants when an alarming shadow has been removed, and the camp has to be repaired. " How are we to raise the money for the French king ? How are we to manage the war with those obstinate Pisan rebels ? Above all, how are we to mend our plan of government, so as to hit on the best way of getting our magistrates chosen and our laws voted ? " Till those questions were well answered trade was in danger of standing still, and tliat large body of the workingmen who were not counted as citizens and had not so much as a vote to serve as an anodyne to their stom- achs were likely to get impatient. Something must be done. And first the great bell was sounded, to call the citizens to a parliament in the Piazza de' Signori ; and when the crowd was wedged close, and hemmed in by armed men at all the outlets, the Signoria (or Gonfaloniere and eight Priors for the time being) came out and stood by the stone lion on the ])latform in front of the Old Palace, and proposed that twenty chief men of the city should have dictatorial authority given them, by force of which they should for one year choose all magistrates, and set the frame of government in order. And the people shouted their assent, and felt themselves the elec- tors of the Twenty. This kind of "Parliament" was a very old Florentine fashion, by which tlie will of the few was made to seem the choice of the many. WHAT FLORENCE WAS THINKING OF 45 The shouting in the, piazza was soon at an end, but not so the debating inside the palace : was Florence to have a Great Council after the Venetian mode, where all the officers of government might be elected, and all laws voted by a wide number of citizens of a certain age and of ascertained quali- fications, without question of rank or party ? or was it to be governed on a narrower and less popular scheme, in which the hereditary influence of good families would be less adulterated with the votes of shopkeepers ? Doctors of law disputed day after day, and far on into the night. Messer Pagolantonio Soderini alleged excellent reasons on the side of the jiopular scheme ; Messer Guidantonio Vespucci alleged reasons equally excellent on the side of a more aristocratic form. It was a question of boiled or roast, which had been prejudged by the palates of the disputants; and the excellent arguing might have been protracted a long while without any other result than that of deferring the cooking. The majority of the men inside the palace, having power already in their hands, agreed with Vespucci, and thought change should be moderate ; the majority outside the palace, conscious of little power and many grievances, were less afraid of change. And there was a force outside the palace which was gradually tending to give the vague desires of that majority the character of a determinate will. That force was the preaching of Savonarola. Impelled partly by the spiritual necessity that was laid upon him to guide the people, and partly by the prompting of public men who could get no measures carried without his aid, he was rapidly passing in his daily sermons from the general to the special, — from tell- ing his hearers that they must postpone their private passions and interests to the public good, to telling them precisely what sort of government they must have in order to promote that good, — from " Choose whatever is best for all,^* to 46 ROMOLA "Choose the Great Council/' and "The Great Council is the will of God." To Savonarola these were as good as identical proposi- tions. The Great Council was the only practicable plan for giving an expression to the public will large enough to coun- teract the vitiating influence of party interests : it was a plan that would make honest impartial public action at least possible. And the purer the government of Florence would become — the more secure from the designs of men who saw their own advantage in the moral debasement of their fellows — the nearer would the Florentine people approach the char- acter of a pure community, worthy to lead the way in the renovation of the Church and the world. And Fra Girolamo's mind never stopped short of that sublimest end : the objects towards which he felt himself working had always the same moral magnificence. He had no private malice, — he sought no petty gratification. Even in the last terrible days, when ignominy, torture, and the fear of torture had laid bare every hidden weakness of his soul, he could say to his importunate judges : " Do not wonder if it seems to you that I have told but few things ; for my purposes were few and great." Bekxardo Dovizi From the paintin;/ by Raphntl, in the Pilti Gallery CHAPTER XVI ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF IT was more than three weeks before the contents of the library were all packed and carried away. And Romola, instead of shutting her eyes and ears^ had watched the process. The exhaustion consequent on violent emotion is apt to bring a dreamy disbelief in the reality of its cause ; and in the evening, when the workmen were gone, Romola took her hand-lamp and walked slowly round among the confusion of straw and wooden cases, pausing at every vacant pedestal, every well-known object laid prostrate, with a sort of bitter desire to assure herself that there was a sufficient reason why her love was gone and the world was barren for her. And still, as the evenings came, she went and went again; no longer to assure herself, but because this vivifying of pain and despair about her father's memory was the strongest life left to her affections. On the 23d of December she knew that the last packages were going. She ran to the loggia at the top of the house, that she might not lose the last pang of seeing the slow wheels move across the bridge. It was a cloudy day, and nearing dusk. Arno ran dark and shivering ; the hills were mournful ; and Florence with its girdling stone towers had that silent, tomb-like look, which unbroken shadow gives to a city seen from above. Santa Croce, where her father lay, was dark amidst that darkness ; and slowly crawling over the bridge, and slowly vanishing up the narrow street, was the white load, like a cruel, deliberate Fate carrying away her father's lifelong hope 48 ROMOLA to bury it in an unmarted grave. Eomola felt less tliat slie was seeing this licrsclf than that her father was conscious of it as he lay helpless under the imprisoning stones, where her hand could not reach his to tell him that he was not alone. She stood still even after the load had disappeared, heed- less of the cold, and soothed by the gloom which seemed to cover her like a mourning garment and shut out the discord of joy — when suddenly the great bell in the palace-tower rang out a mighty peal ; not the hammer-sound of alarm, but an agitated peal of triumph ; and one after another every other bell in every other tower seemed to catch the vibration and join the chorus. And as the chorus swelled and swelled till the air seemed made of sound, little flames, vibrating too, as if the sound had caught fire, burst out between the turrets of the palace and on the girdling towers. That sudden clang, that leaping light, fell on Romola like sharp wounds. They were the triumph of demons at the success of her husband's treachery, and the desolation of her life. Little more than three weeks ago she had been intoxi- cated with the sound of those very bells ; and in the gladness of Florence she had heard a prophecy of her own gladness. But now the general joy seemed cruel to her: she stood aloof from that common life, — that Florence which was flinging out its loud exultation to stun the ears of sorrow and loneliness. She could never join hands witii gladness again, but only with those whom it was in the hard nature of gladness to forget. And in her bitterness she felt that all rejoicing was mockery. Men shouted pa;ans with their souls full of heaviness, and then looked in their neighbours' faces to see if there was really such a thing as joy. Romola had lost her belief in the hap- piness she had once thirsted for : it was a hateful, smiling, soft-handed thing with a narrow, selfish heart. She ran down from the loggia, with her hands pressed ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF 49 against her ears, and was hurrying across the antechamber, when she was startled by unexpectedly meeting her husband, who was coming to seek her. His step was elastic, and there was a radiance of satis- faction about him not quite usual. " What ! the noise was a little too much for you ? " he said ; for Romola, as she started at the sight of him, had pressed her hands all the closer against her ears. He took her gently by the wrist, and drew her arm within his, leading her into the saloon surrounded with the dancing nymphs and fauns, and then went on speaking : " Florence is gone quite mad at getting its Great Council, which is to put an end to all the evils under the sun, especially to the vice of merriment. You may well look stunned, my Romola, and you are cold. You must not stay so late under that windy loggia without wrappings. I was coming to tell you that I am suddenly called to Home about some learned business for Bernardo Rucellai. I am going away immediately, for I am to join my party at San Gaggio to-night, that we may start early in the morning, I need give you no trouble ; I have had my pack- ages made already. It will not be very long before I am back again." He knew he had nothing to expect from her but quiet endurance of what he said and did. He could not even ven- ture to kiss her brow this evening, but just pressed her hand to his lips, and left her. Tito felt that Romola was a more unforgiving woman than he had imagined ; her love was not that sweet chnging instinct, stronger than all judgments, which, he began to see now, made the great charm of a wife. Still, this petrified coldness was better than a passionate, futile opposition. Her pride and capability of seeing where resist- ance was useless had their convenience. But when the door had closed on Tito, Romola lost the 50 ROMOLA look of cold immobility which came over her like an inevitable frost whenever he approached her. Inwardly she was very far from being in a state of quiet endurance, and the days that had passed since the scene which had divided her from Tito had been days of active planning and preparation for the fulfilment of a purpose. The first thing she did now was to call old Maso to her. "Maso/' she said in a decided tone, " we take our jour- ney to-morrow morning. We shall be able now to overtake that first convoy of cloth, while they are waiting at San Piero. See about the two mules to-night, and be ready to set off with them at break of day, and wait for me at Trespiano." She meant to take Maso with her as far as Bologna, and then send him back with letters to her godfather and Tito, tell- ing them that she was gone and never meant to return. She had plaimed her departure so that its secrecy might be perfect, and her broken love and life be hidden away unscanned by vulgar eyes. Bernardo del Nero had been absent at his villa, willing to escape from political suspicions to his favourite occupation of attending to his land, and she had paid him the debt without a personal interview. He did not even know that the library was sold, and was left to conjecture that some sudden piece of good fortune had enabled Tito to raise this sum of money. Maso had been taken into her confidence only so far that he knew her intended journey was a secret ; and to do just what she told him was the thing he cared most for in his withered wintry age. Uomola did not mean to go to bed that night. When she had fastened the door, she took her taper to the carved and painted chest which contained her wedding-clothes. The white silk and gold lay there, the long white veil an.d the circlet of pearls. A great sob rose as she looked at them : ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF 51 they seemed the shroud of her dead happiness. In a tiny gold loop of tlie circlet a sugar- plum had lodged, — a pink hailstone from the shower of sweets : Tito had detected it first, and had said that it should always remain there. At certain moments — and this was one of them — Romola was carried, by a sudden wave of memory, back again into the time of perfect trust, and felt again the presence of the hus- band whose love made the world as fresh and wonderful to her as to a little child that sits in stillness among the sunny flowers : heard the gentle tones and saw the soft eyes with- out any lie in them, and breathed again that large freedom of the soul which comes from the faith that the being who is nearest to us is greater than ourselves. And in those brief moments the tears always rose : the woman's lovingness felt something akin to what the bereaved mother feels when the tiny fingers seem to lie warm on her bosom, and yet are marble to her lips as she bends over the silent bed. But there was something else lying in the chest besides the wedding- clothes : it was something dark and coarse, rolled up in a close bundle. She turned away her eyes from the white and gold to the dark bundle ; and as her hands touched the serge, her tears began to be checked. That coarse roughness recalled her fully to the present, from which love and delight were gone. She unfastened the thick white cord, and spread the bundle out on the table. It was the gray serge dress of a sister belonging to the third order of St. Francis, living in the world, but especially devoted to deeds of piety, — a personage whom the Florentines were ac- customed to call a Pinzochera. Romola was going to put on this dress as a disguise ; and she determined to put it on at once, so that, if she needed sleep before the morning, she might wake up in perfect readiness to be gone. She put off her black garment ; and as she thrust her soft white arms into 6^ ROMOLA the harsh sleeves of the serge mantle, and felt the hard girdle of rope hurt her fingers as she tied it, she courted those rude sensations : they were in keeping with her new seorn of that thing called pleasure which made men base, — that dexterous contrivance for selfish ease, that shrinking from endurance and strain, when others were bowing beneath burdens too heavy for them, which now made one image with her hus- band. Then she gathered her long hair together, drew it away tight from her face, bound it in a great hard knot at the back of her head, and taking a square piece of black silk, tied it in the fashion of a kerchief close across her head and under her chin ; and over that she drew the cowl. She lifted tlie candle to the mirror. Surely her disguise would be complete to any one who had not lived very near to her. To herself she looked strangely like her brother Dino : the full oval of the cheek had only to be wasted ; the eyes, already sad, had only to become a little sunken. Was she getting more like him in anything else? Only in this, that she understood now how men could be prompted to rush away forever from earthly delights, how they could be prompted to dwell on images of sorrow rather than of beauty and joy. But she did not linger at the mirror : she set about collecting and packing all the relics of her father and mother that were too large to be carried in her small travelling- wallet. They were all to be put in the chest along with her weddiiig-clothcs, and the chest was to be committed to her godfather when she was safely gone. First she laid in the portraits ; then one by one every little thing that had a sa- cred memory clinging to it was put into her wallet or into the chest. She paused. There was still something else to be stript away from her, belonging to that past on which she was going to turn her back forever. She put her thumb and her forefinger to her betrothal ring; but they rested there, ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF 53 without drawing it off. Eomola^s mind had been rushing with an impetuous current towards this act, for which she was preparing : the act of quitting a husband who had dis- appointed all her trust, the act of breaking an outward tic that no longer represented the inward bond of love. But that force of outward symbols by which our active life is knit together so as to make an inexorable external identity for us, not to be shaken by our wavering consciousness, gave a strange effect to this simple movement towards taking off her ring, — a movement which was but a small sequence of her energetic resolution. It brought a vague but arresting sense that she was somehow violently rending her life in two : a presentiment that the strong impulse which had seemed to exclude doubt and make her path clear might after all be blindness, and that there was something in human bonds which must prevent them from being broken with the break- ing of illusions. If that beloved Tito who had placed the betrothal ring on her finger was not in any valid sense the same Tito whom she had ceased to love, why should she return to him the sign of their union, and not rather retain it as a memorial ? And this act, which came as a palpable demonstration of her own and his identity, had a power unexplained to herself, of shaking Romola. It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsa- tions that are never born into sound. But there was a pas- sionate voice speaking within her that presently nullified all such muffled murmurs. " It cannot be ! I cannot be subject to him. He is false. I shrink from him. I despise him ! " She snatched the ring from her finger, and laid it on the table against the pen with which she meant to write. Again she felt that there could be no law for her but the law 64 ROMOLA of her affections. That tenderness ami keen fellow-feeling for the near and the loved which are the main outgrowth of the affections, hud made the religion of her life : they had made her patient in spite of natural impetuosity ; they would have sufficed to make her heroic. But now all that strength was gone, or, rather, it was converted into the strength of repulsion. She had recoiled from Tito in proportion to the energy of that young belief and love which he liad disap- pointed, of that lifelong devotion to her father against which he had committed an irredeemable offence. And it seemed as if all motive had slipped away from her, except the in- dignation and scorn that made her tear herself asunder from him. She "was not actmg after any precedent, or obeying any adopted maxims. The grand severity of the stoical i)hilos- ophy in whicli her father had taken care to instruct her, was familiar enough to her ears and hps, and its lofty spirit had raised certain echoes within her ; but she had never used it, never needed it as a rule of life. She had endured and for- borne because she loved : maxims which told her to feel less, and not to cling close lest the onward course of great Nature should jar her, had been as powerless on her tenderness as they had been on her father's yearning for just fame. She had appropriated no theories : she had simply felt strong in the strength of affection, and life without that energy came to her as an entirely new problem. She was going to solve the problen in a way that seemed to her very simple. Her mind had never yet bowed to any obligation apart from personal love and reverence ; she had no keen sense of any other human relations, and all she had to obey now was the instinct to sever herself from the man she loved no longer. . Yet the unswerving resolution was accompanied with ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF 55 continually varying phases of anguish. And now that the active preparation for her departure was almost finished, she lingered : she deferred writing the irrevocable words of part- ing from all her little world. The emotions of the past weeks seemed to rush in again with cruel hurry, and take possession even of her limbs. She was going to write, and her hand fell. Bitter tears came now at the delusion which had blighted her young years : tears very different from the sob of remembered happiness with which she had looked at the circlet of pearls and the pink hailstone. And now she felt a tingling shame at the words of ignominy she had cast at Tito, — " Have you robbed some one else who is not dead ? " To have had such words wrung from her, to have uttered them to her husband, seemed a degradation of her whole life. Hard speech between those who have loved is hideous in the memory, like the sight of greatness and beauty sunk into vice and rags. That heart-cutting comparison of the present with the past urged itself upon Romola till it even transformed itself into wretched sensations : she seemed benumbed to every- thing but inward throbbings, and began to feel the need of some hard "contact. She drew her hands tight along the harsh knotted cord that hung from her waist. She started to her feet and seized the rough lid of the chest : there was nothing else to go in? No. She closed the lid, pressing her hand upon the rough carving, and locked it. Then she remembered that she had still to complete her equipment as a Pinzochera. The large leather purse or scar- sella, with small coin in it, had to be hung on the cord at her waist (her florins and small jewels, presents from her godfather and cousin Brigida, were safely fastened within her serge mantle), and on the other side must hang the rosary. 56 ROMOLA It did not occur to Roraola, as she hung that rosary by her side, that something else besides the mere garb would perhaps be necessary to enable her to pass as a Pinzochera, and that her whole air and expression were as little as possi- ble like those of a sister whose eyelids were used to be bent_, and whose lips were used to move in silent iteration. Her inexperience prevented her from picturing distant details, and it helped her proud courage in shutting out any foreboding of danger and insult. She did not know that any Florentine woman had ever done exactly what she was going to do : unhappy wives often took refuge with their friends or in the cloister, she knew, but both those courses were impossible to her ; she had invented a lot for herself, — to go to the most learned woman in the world, Cassandra Fedele, at Yenice, and ask her how an instructed woman could support herself in a lonely life there. She was not daunted by the practical difficulties in the way or the dark uncertainty at the end. Her life could never be happy any more, but it must not, could not, be ignoble. And by a pathetic mixture of childish romance with her woman's trials, the philosophy which had nothing to do with this great decisive deed of hers had its place in her imagination of the future : so far as she conceived her soli- tary loveless life at all, she saw it animated by a proud stoical heroism, and by an indistinct but strong purpose of labour, that she might be wise enough to write something which would rescue her father's name from oblivion. After all, she was only a young girl, — this poor Romola, who had found herseK at the end of her joys. There were other things yet to be done. There was a small key in a casket on the table, — but now Pvomola per- ceived that her taper was dying out, and she had forgotten to provide herself with any other light. In a few moments = s.> CR rr ■^ c S w < rt — ' c ^ E:"** n n 2 ? :g_ ^ « "» "^ 2:0 S2. ^ ^ « =r

p ^ ?i S-sr Tk P ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF 57 the room was in total darkness. Feeling her way to the nearest chair, she sat down to wait for the morning. Her purpose in seeking the key had called up certain memories which had come back upon her during the past week with the new vividness that remembered words always have for us when we have learned to give them a new menn- ing. Since the shock of the revelation which had seemed to divide her forever from Tito, that last interview with Dino had never been for many hours together out of her mind. And it solicited her all the more because while its remembered images pressed upon her almost with the imperious force of sensations, they raised struggling thoughts which resisted their influence. She could not prevent herself from hearing inwardly the dying prophetic voice saying again and again : " The man whose face was a blank loosed thy hand and de- parted ; and as he went, I could see his face, and it was the face of the great Tempter. . . . And thou, Romola, didst wring thy hands and seek for water, and there was none . . . and the plain was bare and stony again, and thou wast alone in the midst of it. And then it seemed that the night fell, and I saw no more.^^ She could not prevent herself from dwelling with a sort of agonized fascmation on the wasted face, on the straining gaze at the crucifix, on the awe which had compelled her to kneel, on the last broken words, and then the unbroken silence, — on all the details of the death-scene, which had seemed like a sudden opening into a world apart from that of her life-long knowledge. But her mind was roused to resistance of impressions that, from being obvious phantoms, seemed to be getting solid in the daylight. As a strong body struggles against fumes with the more violence when they begin to be stifling, a strong soul struggles against phantasies with all the more alarmed energy when they threaten to govern in the place of thought. 58 ROMOLA What had the words of that vision to do with her real sorrows ? That fitting of certain words was a mere chance ; tlie rest was all vague, — nay, those words themselves were vague ; they were determined by nothing but her brother's memories and beliefs, lie believed there was something fatal in pagan learning ; he believed that celibacy was more holy than marriage ; he remembered their home, and all the objects in the library ; and of these threads the vision was woven. What reasonable warrant could she have had for believing in such a vision and acting on it ? None. True as the voice of foreboding had proved, Eomola saw with unshaken conviction that to have renounced Tito in obedience to a warning like that would have been meagre-hearted folly. Her trust had been delusive, but she would have chosen over again to have acted on it rather than be a creature led by phantoms and disjointed whispers in a world where there was the large music of reasonable speech, and the warm grasp of living hands. But the persistent presence of these memories, linking themselves in her imagination with her actual lot, gave her a glimpse of understanding into the lives which had before lain utterly aloof from her sympathy, — the lives of the men and women who were led by such inward images and voices. " If they were only a little stronger in me,'' she said to herself, " I should lose the sense of what that vision really was, and take it for a prophetic light. I might in time get to be a seer of visions myself, like the Suora Maddalena, and Camilla Eucellai, and the rest." Eomola shuddered at the possibility. All the instruc- tion, all the main influences of her life had gone to fortify her scorn of that sickly superstition which led men and women, with eyes too weak for the daylight, to sit in dark swamps and ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF 59 try to read human destiny by the chance flame of wandering vapours. And yet she was conscious of something deeper tlian that coincidence of words which made the parting contact with her dying brother live anew in her mind, and gave a new sister- hood to the wasted face. If there were much more of such experience as his in the world, she would like to understand it, — would even like to learn the thoughts of men who sank in ecstasy before the pictured agonies of martyrdom. There seemed to be something more than madness in that supreme fellowship with sufli'ering. The springs were all dried up around her ; she wondered what other waters there were at which men drank and found strength in the desert. And those moments in the Duomo when slie had sobbed with a mysterious mingling of rapture and pain, while Era Girolamo offered himself a willing sacrifice for the people, came back to her as if they had been a transient taste of some such far-off fountain. But again she shrank from impressions that were alluring her within the sphere of visions and narrow fears which compelled men to outrage natural afiections as Diuo had done. This was the tangled web that Eomola had in her mind as she sat weary in the darkness. No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision, — men who believed falsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the 60 ROMOLA path of reliance and action wliich is tlic patli of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. And so Romola, seeing no ray across the darkness, and heavy with conflict that changed nothing, sank at last to sleep. The Faun, by Michelangelo, now in the Bargello CHAPTER XVII THE TABERNACLE UNLOCKED ROMOLA was waked by a tap at the door. The cold light of early morning was in the room, and Maso was come for the travelling-wallet. The old man could not help starting when she opened the door, and showed him, instead of the graceful outline he had been used to, crowned with the brightness of her hair, the thick folds of the gray mantle and the pale face shadowed by the dark cowl. " It is well, Maso,^' said Eomola, trying to speak in the calmest voice, and make the old man easy. " Here is the wallet quite ready. You will go on quietly, and I shall not be far behind you. When you get out of the gates you may go more slowly, for I shall perhaps join you before you get to Trespiano." She closed the door behind him, and then put lier hand on the key which she had taken from the casket the last thing in the night. It was the original key of the little painted tabernacle : Tito had forgotten to drown it in the Arno, and it had lodged, as such small things will, in the corner of the embroidered scarsella whicli he wore with the purple tunic. One day, long after their marriage, Romola had found it there, and had put it by without using it, but with a sense of satis- faction that the key was within reach. The cabinet on which the tabernacle stood had been moved to the side of the room, close to one of the windows, where the pale morning light fell 62 ROMOLA upon it so as to make the painted forms discernible enough to Romola, who knew them well, — the triumphant Bacchus, with his clusters and his vine-clad spear, clasping the crowned Ariadne ; the Loves showering roses, the wreathed vessel, the cunning-eyed dolphins, and the rippled sea : all encircled by a flowery border, like a bower of paradise. Romola looked at the familiar images with new bitterness and repulsion : they seemed a more pitiable mockery than ever on this chill morn- ing, when she had waked up to wander in loneliness. They had been no tomb of sorrow, but a lying screen. Poolish Ariadne ! with her gaze of love, as if that bright face, with its hyacinthine curls like tendrils among the vines, held the deep secret of her life ! " Ariadne is wonderfully transformed," thought Rom- ola. " She would look strange among the vines and the roses now." She took up the mirror, and looked at herself once more. But the sight was so startling in this morning light that she laid it down again, with a sense of shrinking almost as strong as that with which she had turned from the joyous Ariadne. The recognition of her own face, with the cowl about it, brought back the dread lest she should be drawn at last into fellowship with some wretched superstition, — into the com- pany of the howling fanatics and weeping nuns, who had been her contempt from childhood till now. She thrust the key into the tabernacle hurriedly : hurriedly she opened it, and took out the crucifix, without looking at it ; then, with trembling fingers, she passed a cord through the little ring, hung the crucifix round her neck, and hid it in the bosom of her mantle. " For Dino's sake," she said to herself. Still there were the letters to be written which Maso was to carry back from Bologna. They were very brief. The first said, — THE TABERNACLE UNLOCKED 63 "Tito, my love for you is dead ; and therefore, so far as I was yours, I too am dead. Do not try to put in force any laws for the sake of fetching me back : that would bring you no happiness. The Romola you married can never return. T need explain noth- ing to you after the words I uttered to you the last time we spoke long together. If you supposed them to be words of transient anger, you will know now that they were the sign of an irreversible change. " I think you will fulfil my wish that my bridal chest should be sent to my godfather, who gave it me. It contains my wedding- clothes and the portraits and other relics of my father and mother." She folded the ring inside this letter, and wrote Tito's name outside. The next letter was to Bernardo del Nero : — Dearest Godfather, — K I could have been any good to your life by staying, I would not have gone away to a distance. But now I am gone. Do not ask the reason ; and if you love my father, try to prevent any one from seeking me. I could not bear my life at Florence. I cannot bear to tell any one why. Help to cover my lot in silence. I have asked that my bridal chest should be sent to you ; when you open it, you wiU know the reason. Please to give all the things that were my mother's to my cousin Brigida, and ask her to forgive me for not saying any words of parting to her. Farewell, my second father. The best thing I have in life is still to remember your goodness and be grateful to you. KOMOLA. Eomola put the letters, along with the crucifix, within the bosom of her mantle, and then felt that everything was done. She was ready now to depart. No one was stirring in the house, and she went almost as quietly as a gray phantom down the stairs and into the silent street. Her heart was palpitating violently, yet she enjoyed the sense of her firm tread on the broad flags, — of 64. ROMOLA the swift movement, which was like a chained-up resolution set free at last. The anxiety to carry out her act, and the dread of any obstacle, averted sorrow ; and as she reached tlie Pontc Ilubaconte, she felt less that Santa Croce was in her sight than that the yellow streak of morning which parted the gray was getting broader and broader, and that, unless she hastened her steps, she should have to encounter faces. Her simplest road was to go right on to the Borgo Pinti, and then along by the walls to the Porta San Gallo, from which she must leave the city ; and this road carried her by the Piazza di Santa Croce. But she walked as steadily and rapidly as ever through the piazza, not trusting herself to look towards the church. The thought that any eyes might be turned on her with a look of curiosity and recognition, and that indifferent minds might be set speculating on her private sorrows, made Romola shrink physically as from the imagination of torture. She felt degraded oven by that act of her husband from which she was helplessly suffering. But there was no sign that any eyes looked forth from win- dows to notice this tall gray sister, with the firm step, and proud attitude of the cowled head. Her road lay aloof from the stir of early traffic; and when she reached the Porta San Gallo, it was easy to pass while a dispute was going forward about the toll for panniers of eggs and market produce which were just entering. Out ! Once past tlie liouscs of the Borgo, she would be beyond the last fringe of Florence, the sky would be broad above her, and she would have entered on her new life, — a life of loneliness and endurance, but of freedom. She had been strong enough to snap asunder the bonds she had ac- cepted in blind faith : whatever befell her, she would no more feel the breath of soft hated lips warm upon her cheek, no longer feel the breath of an odious mind stifling her own. THE TABERNACLE UNLOCKED 65 The bare wintry morning, the chill air, were welcome in their severity : the leafless trees, the sombre hills, were not haunted by the gods of beauty and joy, whose worship she had forsaken forever. But presently the light burst forth with sudden strength, and shadows were thrown across the road. It seemed that the sun was going to chase away the grayness. The light is perhaps never felt more strongly as a divine presence stirring all those inarticulate sensibilities which are our deepest life, than in these moments when it instantaneously awakens the shadows. A certain awe which inevitably accompanied this most momentous act of her life became a more conscious element in Romola^s feeling as she found herself in the sudden presence of the impalpable golden glory and the long shadow of herself that was not to be escaped. Hitherto she had met no one but an occasional contadino with mules, and the many turnings of the road on the level prevented her from seeing that Maso was not very far ahead of her. But when she had passed Pietra and was on rising ground, she lifted up the hanging roof of her cowl and looked eagerly before her. The cowl was dropped again immediately. She had seen, not Maso, but — two monks, who were approaching within a few yards of her. The edge of her cowl making a pent-house on her brow had shut out the objects above the level of her eyes, and for the last few moments she had been looking at nothing but the brightness on the path and at her own shadow tall and shrouded like a dread spectre. She wished now that she had not looked up. Her dis- guise made her especially dishke to encounter monks : they might expect some pious pass-words of which she knew nothing, and she walked along with a carcfid appearance of unconsciousness till she had seen the skirts of the black VOL. II. — S 66 ROMOLA mantles pass by her. The encounter had made her heart beat disagreeably, for Romola had an uneasiness in her religious disguise, a shame at this studied concealment, which was made more distinct by a special effort to appear unconscious under actual glances. But the black skirts would be gone the faster because they were going down-hill; and seeing a great flat stone against a cypress that rose from a projecting green bank, she yielded to the desire which the slight shock had given her, to sit down and rest. She turned her back on Florence, not meaning to look at it till the monks were quite out of sight ; and raising the edge of her cowl again when she had seated herself, she dis- cerned Maso and the mules at a distance where it was not hopeless for her to overtake them, as the old man would probably linger in expectation of her. Meanwhile she might pause a little. She was free and alone. ''^> "i CHAPTER XVin THE BLACK MARKS BECOME MAGICAL THAT journey of Tito^s to Rome, which had removed many difficulties from Romola's departure, had been resolved on quite suddenly, at a supper, only the evemng before. Tito had set out towards that supper with agreeable ex- pectations. The meats were likely to be delicate, the wines choice, the company distinguished ; for the place of entertain- ment was the Selva or Orto de' Rucellai, or, as we should say, the Rucellai Gardens ; and the host, Bernardo Rucellai, was quite a typical Florentine grandee. Even his family name has a significance which is prettily symbolic : properly under- stood, it may bring before us a little lichen, popularly named orcella or roccella, which grows on the rocks of Greek isles and in the Canaries, and having drunk a great deal of light into its little stems and button-heads, will, under certain cir- cumstances, give it out again as a reddish purple dye, very grateful to the eyes of men. By bringing the excellent secret of this dye, called oricello, from the Levant to Florence, a certain merchant, who lived nearly a hundred years before our Bernardo^s time, won for himself and liis descendants much wealth, and the pleasantly suggestive surname of Oricellari or Roccellari, which on Tuscan tongues speedily became Rucellai. And our Bernardo, who stands out more prominently than the rest on this purple background, had added all sorts of distmction to the family name : he had married the sister 68 ROMOLA of Lorenzo de^ Medici, and had had the most splendid wedding in the memory of Florentine upholstery ; and for these and other virtues he had been sent on embassies to France and Venice, and had been chosen Gonfaloniere ; he had not only built himself a jBne palace, but had finished putting the black and wliite marble facade to the church of Santa Maria No- vella ; he had planted a garden with rare trees, and had made it classic ground by receiving within it the meetings of the Platonic Academy, orphaned by the death of Lorenzo ; he had written an excellent, learned book, of a new topographical sort, about ancient Rome ; he had collected antiquities ; he had a pure Latinity. The simplest account of him, one sees, reads like a laudatory epitaph at the end of which the Greek and Ausonian Muses might be confidently requested to tear their hair, and Nature to desist from any second attempt to combine so many virtues with one set of viscera. His invitation had been conveyed to Tito through Lorenzo Tornabuoni, with an emphasis which would have suggested that the object of the gathering was political, even if the public questions of the time had been less absorbing. As it w^as, Tito felt sure that some party purposes were to be fur- thered by the excellent flavours of stewed fish and old Greek wine; for Bernardo Eucellai was not simply an influential personage, he was one of the elect Twenty who for three weeks had held the reins of Florence. This assurance put Tito in the best spirits as he made his way to the Via della Scala, where the classic garden was to be found : without it, he might have had some uneasy speculation as to whether the high company he would have the honour of meeting was likely to be dull as well as distinguished ; for he had had experience of various dull suppers even in the Eucellai gardens, and es- pecially of the dull philosophic sort, wherein he had not only been called upon to accept an entire scheme of the universe THE BLACK MARKS BECOME MAGICAL 69 (which woulJ have been easy to him), but to listen to an exposition of the same, from the origin of things to their complete ripeness in the tractate of the philosopher then speaking. It was a dark evening, and it was only when Tito crossed the occasional light of a lamp suspended before an image of tlie Yirgin, that the outline of his figure was dis- cernible enough for recognition. At such moments any one caring to watch liis passage from one of these lights to another might have observed that the tall and graceful per- sonage with the mantle folded round him was followed con- stantly by a very different form, thick-set and elderly, in a serge tunic and felt hat. The conjunction might have been taken for mere chance, since there were many passengers along the streets at this hour. But when Tito stopped at the gate of the Rucellai gardens, the figure behind stopped too. The sportello, or smaller door of the gate, was already being held open by the servant, who in the distraction of attending to some question had not yet closed it since the last arrival, and Tito turned in rapidly, giving his name to the servant, and passing on between the evergreen bushes that shone like metal in the torchlight. The follower turned in too. " Your name ? " said the servant. " Baldassarre Calvo," was the immediate answer. " You are not a guest ; the guests have all passed." " I belong to Tito Melema, who has just gone in. I am to wait in the gardens." The servant hesitated. "I had orders to admit only guests. Are you a servant of Messer Tito ? " "No, friend, I am not a servant; I am a scholar," There are men to whom you need only say, " I am a buffalo," in a certain tone of quiet confidence, and they will let you pass. The porter gave way at once, Baldassarre 70 ROMOLA entered, and heard the door closed and chained behind him, as he too disappeared among the shining bushes. Those ready and firm answers argued a great change in Baldassarre since the List meeting face to face with Tito, when the dagger broke in two. The change had declared itself in a startling way. At the moment when the shadow of Tito passed in front of the hovel as he departed homeward, Baldassarre was sitting in that state of after-tremor known to every one who is liable to great outbursts of passion, — a state in which physical powerlessness is sometimes accompanied by an exceptional lucidity of thought, as if that disengagement of excited passion had carried away a fire-mist and left clearness behind it. He felt unable to rise and walk away just yet; his limbs seemed benumbed ; he was cold, and his hands shook. But in that bodily helplessness he sat surrounded, not by the habitual dimness and vanishing shadows, but by the clear images of the past j he was living again in an unbroken course through that life which seemed a long preparation for the taste of bitterness. For some minutes he was too thoroughly absorbed by the images to reflect on the fact that he saw them, and note the fact as a change. But when that sudden clearness had travelled through the distance, and came at last to rest on the scene just gone by, he felt fully where he was : he remembered Monna Lisa and Tessa. Ah ! he then was the mysterious husband; he who had another wife in Yia de' Bardi. It was time to pick up the broken dagger and go, — go and leave no trace of himself; for to hide his feebleness seemed the thing most like power that was left to him. He leaned to take up the fragments of the dagger; then he turned towards the book which lay open at his side. It was a fine large manuscript, an odd volume of Pausanias. The ^ H 99 n ^ THE BLACK MARKS BECOME MAGICAL 71 moonlight was upon it, and lie could sec the large letters at the head of the page : MESEHNIKA. KB'. In old days he had known Pausanias familiarly ; yet an hour or two ago he had been looking hopelessly at that page, and it had suggested no more meaning to him than if the letters had been black weather-marks on a wall; but at this mo- ment they were once more the magic signs that conjure up a world. That moonbeam falling on the letters had raised Messenia before him, and its struggle against the Spartan oppression. He snatched up the book, but the light was too pale for him to read further by. No matter : he knew that chap- ter; he read inwardly. He saw the stoning of the traitor Aristocrates, — stoned by a whole people, who cast him out from their borders to lie unburied, and set up a pillar with verses upon it telling how Time had brought home justice to the unjust. The words arose within him, and stirred innu- merable vibrations of memory. He forgot that he was old : he could almost have shouted. The light was come again, mother of knowledge and joy ! In that exultation his limbs recovered their strength : he started up with his broken dag- ger and book, and went out under the broad moonlight. It was a nipping frosty air, but Baldassarre could feel no chill, — • he only felt the glow of conscious power. He walked about and paused on all the open spots of that high ground, and looked down on the domed and towered city sleeping darkly under its sleeping guardians the mountains, on the pale gleam of the river, on the valley vanishing towards the peaks of snow ; and felt himself master of them all. That sense of mental empire which belongs to us all in 72 ROMOLA moments of exceptional cleariiesss was intensified for liim by the long days and nights in which memory had been little more than the consciousness of something gone. That city, which had been a weary labyrinth, was material that he could subdue to his purposes now : his mind glanced througli its affairs with flashing conjecture ; he was once more a man who knew cities, whose sense of vision was instructed with large experience, and who felt the keen delight of holding all things in the grasp of language. Names ! Images ! — his mind rushed through its wealth without pausing, like one who enters on a great inheritance. But amidst all that rushing eagerness there was one End presiding in Baldassarre^s consciousness, — a dark deity in the inmost cell, who only seemed forgotten while his hecatomb was being prepared. And when the first triumph in the certainty of recovered power had had its way, his thoughts centered themselves on Tito. That fair slippery viper could not escape bim now; thanks to struggling jus- tice, the heart that never quivered with tenderness for an- other had its sensitive selfish fibres that could be reached by the sharp point of anguish. The soul that bowed to no right bowed to the great lord of mortals. Pain. He could search into every secret of Tito^s life now : he knew some of the secrets already, and the failure of the broken dagger, which seemed like frustration, had been the beginning of achievement. Doubtless that sudden rage had shaken away the obstruction which stifled his soul. Twice before, when his memory had partially returned, it had been in consequence of sudden excitation, — once when he had had to defend himself from an enraged dog ; once when he had been overtaken by the waves, and had had to scramble up a rock to save himself. Yes ; but if this time, as then, the light were to die out, and the dreary conscious blank come back again ! This tiuic THE BLACK MARKS BECOME MAGICAL 73 the light was stronger and steadier; but what security was there that before the morrow the dark fog would not be round him again ? Even the fear seemed like the beginning of fee- bleness : he thought with alarm that he might sink the faster for this excited vigil of his on the hill, which was expending his force ; and after seeking anxiously for a sheltered corner where he might lie down, he nestled at last against a heap of warm garden straw, and so fell asleep. When he opened his eyes again, it was daylight. The first moments were filled with strange bewilderment : he was a man with a double identity ; to which had he awaked ? — to the life of dim-sighted sensibilities like the sad heirship of some fallen greatness, or to the life of recovered power ? Surely the last, for the events of the night all came back to him, — the recognition of the page in Pausanias, the crowd- ing resurgence of facts and names, the sudden wide prospect which had given him such a moment as that of the Mfenad in the glorious amaze of her morning waking on the moun- tain top. He took up the book again, he read, he remembered without reading. He saw a name, and the images of deeds rose with it : he saw the mention of a deed, and he linked it with a name. There were stories of inexpiable crimes, but stories also of guilt that seemed successful. There were sanctuaries for swift-footed miscreants : baseness had its armour, and the weapons of justice sometimes broke against it. What then? If baseness triumphed everywhere else, if it could heap to itself all the goods of the world and even hold the keys of hell, it would never triumph over the hatred which it had itself awakened. It could devise no torture that would seem greater than the torture of submitting to its smile. Baldassarre felt the indestructible independent force of a supreme emotion, which knows no terror, and asks for no 74 ROMOLA motive, which is itseK an ever-burning motive, consuming all other desire. And now in this morning light, when the assur- ance came again that the fine fibres of association were active still, and that his recovered self had not departed, all his gladness was but the hope of vengeance. From that time till the evening on which we have seen him enter the Rucellai gardens, he had been incessantly, but cautiously, inquiring into Tito's position and all his circum- stances, and there was hardly a day on which he did not con- trive to follow his movements. But he wished not to arouse any alarm in Tito : he wished to secure a moment when the hated favourite of blind fortune was at the summit of confi- dent ease, surrounded by chief men on whose favour he de- pended. It was not any retributive payment or recognition of himself for his own behoof, on which Baldassarre's whole soul was bent : it was to find the sharpest edge of disgrace and shame by which a selfish smiler could be pierced : it was to send through his marrow the most sudden shock of dread. He was content to lie hard, and live stintedly, — he had spent the greater part of his remaining money in buying another l)oniard : his hunger and his thirst were after nothing exquisite but an exquisite vengeance. He had avoided addressing himself to any one whom he suspected of intimacy with Tito, lest an alarm raised in Tito's mind should urge him either to flight or to some other counteracting measure which hard- pressed ingenuity might devise. For this reason he had never entered Nello's shop, which he observed that Tito frequented, and he had turned aside to avoid meeting Piero di Cosimo. The possibility of frustration gave added eagerness to his desire that the great opportunity he sought should not be deferred. The desire was eager in him on another ground : be trembled lest his memory should go again. Whether THE BLACK MARKS BECOME MAGICAL 75 from the agitating presence of that fear^, or from some other causes, he had twice felt a sort of mental dizziness, in which the inward sense or imagination seemed to be losing the dis- tinct forms of things. Once he had attempted to enter the Palazza Vecchio and make liis way into a council-chamber where Tito was, and had failed. But now, on this evening, he felt that his occasion was come. CHAPTER XIX A SUPPER IN THE liUCELLAI GARDENS ON entering the handsome pavilion^ Tito's quick glance soon discerned in the selection of the guests the confirmation of his conjecture that the object of the gathering was political, though, perhaps, nothing more dis- tinct than that strengthening of ])artj which comes from good-fellowship. Good dishes and good wine were at that time believed to heighten the consciousness of political pref- erences, and in the inspired ease of after-supper talk it was supposed that people ascertained their own opinions with a clearness quite inaccessible to uninvited stomachs. The Florentines were a sober and frugal people ; but wherever men have gathered wealth, Madonna della Gozzoviglia and San Buonvino have had tlieir worshippers ; and the Rucellai were among the few Florentine families who kept a great table and lived splendidly. It was not probable that on this evening there would be any attempt to apply high philo- sophic theories; and there could be no objection to the bust of Plato looking on, or even to the modest presence of the cardinal virtues in fresco on the walls. That bust of Plato had been long used to look down on conviviality of a more transcendental sort, for it had been brought from Lorenzo's villa after his death, when the meet- ings of the Platonic Academy had been transferred to these gardens. Especially on every 13th of November, reputed anniversary of Plato's death, it had looked down from under laurel leaves on a picked company of scholars and philosophers. Charles VIII of France From a contemporary bronze bust in the Bargello A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 77 who met to eat and drink with moderation, and to discuss and admire, perhaps with less moderation, the doctrines of the great master, — on Pico della Mirandola, once a Quixotic young genius with long curls, astonished at his own powers and astonishing Eome with heterodox theses, after- wards a more humble student with a consuming passion for inward perfection, having come to find the universe more as- tonishing than his own cleverness; on innocent, laborious Marsilio Ficino, picked out young to be reared as a Platonic philosopher, and fed on Platonism in all its stages till his mind was perhaps a little pulpy from that too exclusive diet ; on Angelo Poliziano, chief literary genius of that age, a born poet, and a scholar without dulness, whose phrases had blood in them and are alive still ; or, further back, on Leon Bat- tista Alberti, a reverend senior when those three were young, and of a much grander type than they, a robust universal mind, at once practical and theoretic, artist, man of science, inventor, poet; and on many more valiant workers whose names are not registered where every day we turn the leaf to read them, but whose labours make a part, though an unrec- ognized part, of our inheritance, like the ploughing and sowing of past generations. Bernardo Rucellai was a man to hold a distinguished place in that Academy even before he became its host and patron. He was still in the prime of life, not more than four and forty, with a somewhat haughty, cautiously dignified presence ; conscious of an amazingly pure Latinity, but, says Erasmus, not to be cauglit speaking Latin, — no word of Latin to be sheared off him by the sharpest of Teutons. He welcomed Tito with more marked favour than usual, and gave him a place between Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giannozzo Pucci, both of them accomplished young members of the Medicean party. 78 ROMOLA Of course the talk was the lightest in the world while the brass bowl filled with scented water was passing round, that the company might wash their hands, and rings flashed on white fingers under the wax-lights, and there was the pleasant fragrance of fresh white damask newly come from France. The tone of remark was a very common one in those times. Some one asked what Dante^s pattern old Florentine would think if the life could come into him again under his leathern belt and bone clasp, and he could see silver forks on the table? And it was agreed on all hands that the habits of posterity would be very surprising to ancestors, if ancestors could only know them. And while the silver forks were just dallying with the appetizing delicacies that introduced the more serious business of the supper, — such as morsels of liver, cooked to that exquisite point that they would melt in the mouth, — there was time to admire the designs on the enamelled silver centres of the brass service, and to say something, as usual, about the silver dish for confetti, a masterpiece of Antonio Pollajuolo, whom patronizing Popes had seduced from his native Flor- ence to more gorgeous Eome. " Ah, I remember,'^ said Niccolb Eidolfi, a middle-aged man, with that negligent ease of manner which, seeming to claim nothing, is really based on the life-long consciousness of commanding rank, — "I remember our Antonio getting bitter about his chiselling and enamelling of these metal things, and taking in a fury to painting, because, said he, ' the artist who puts his work into gold and silver, puts his brains into the melting pot.' " "And that is not unlikely to be a true forboding of Antonio's," said Giannozzo Pucci. " If this pretty war with Pisa goes on, and the revolt only spreads a little to our other towns, it is not only our silver dishes that are likely to go j I A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 79 doubt whether Antonio^s silver saints round the altar of San Giovanni will not some day vanish from the eyes of the faithful to be worshipped more devoutly in the form of coin." "The Frate is preparing us for that already/^ said Tomabuoni. " He is telling the people that God will not have silver crucifixes and starving stomachs; and that the church is best adorned with the gems of holiness and the fine gold of brotherly love." " A very useful doctrine of war-finance, as many a Con- dottiere has fouud/^ said Bernardo Eucellai, dryly. "But politics come on after the confetti, Lorenzo, when we can drink wine enough to wash them down ; they are too solid to be taken with roast and boiled." " Yes, indeed," said Niccolb Ridolfi. " Our Luigi Pulci would have said this delicate boiled kid must be eaten with an impartial mind. I remember one day at Creggi, when Luigi was in his rattling vein he was maintaining that nothmg perverted the palate like opinion. ' Opinion,'' said he, ^ cor- rupts the saliva, — that 's why men took to pepper. Scepticism is the only philosophy that does n't bring a taste in the mouth.' ' Nay,' says poor Lorenzo de' Medici, ' you must be out there, Luigi. Here is this untainted sceptic, Matteo Franco, who wants hotter sauce than any of us.' * Because he has a strong opinion of himself' fiashes out Luigi, ' which is the original egg of all other ophiion. He a sceptic ? He believes in the immortality of his own verses. He is such a logician as that preaching friar who described the pavement of the bottomless pit.' Poor Luigi, his mind was like sharpest steel that can touch nothing without cutting." " And yet a very gentle-hearted creature," said Gian- nozzo Pucci. " It seemed to me his talk was a mere blow- ing of soap-bubbles. What dithyrambs he went into about 80 ROMOLA eating and drinking ! and yet he was as temperate as a butterfly/' The light talk and the solid eatables were not soon at an end, for after the roast and boiled meats came the indispensa- ble capon and game, and, crowning glory of a well-spread table, a peacock cooked according to the receipt of Apicius for cooking partridges, namely, with the feathers on, but not plucked afterwards, as that great authority ordered concern- ing his partridges ; on the contrary, so disposed on the dish that it might look as much as possible like a live peacock tak- ing its unboiled repose. Great was the skill required in that confidential servant who was the official carver, respectfully to turn the classical though insipid bird on its back, and expose the plucked breast from which he was to dispense a delicate slice to eacli of the honourable company, unless any one sliould be of so independent a mind as to decline that expensive toughness and prefer the vulgar digestibility of capon. Hardly any one was so bold. Tito quoted Horace, and dispersed his slice in small particles over his plate ; Bernardo Hucellai made a learned observation about the ancient price of peacocks' eggs, but did not pretend to eat his slice; and Niccolb Eidolfi held a mouthful on his fork while he told a favourite story of Luigi Pulci's, about a man of Siena, who, wanting to give a splendid entertainment at moderate expense, bought a wild goose, cut off its beak and webbed feet, and boiled it in its feathers, to pass for a pea-hen. In fact, very little peacock was eaten ; but there was the satisfaction of sitting at a table where peacock was served up in a remarkable manner, and of knowing that such ca- prices were not within reach of any but those who supped with the very wealtliiest men. And it would have been rashness to speak slightingly of peacock's flesh, or any other A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 81 venerable institution^ at a time when Fra Girolamo was teach- ing the disturbing doctrine that it was not the duty of the ricli to be luxurious for the sake of the poor. Meanwhile, in the chill obscurity that surrounded this centre of warmth and light and savoury odours, the lonely disowned man was walking in gradually narrowing circuits. He paused among the trees, and looked in at the windows, which made briUiant pictures against the gloom. He could hear the laughter ; he could see Tito gesticulating with care- less grace, and hear his voice, now alone, now mingling in the merry confusion of interlacing speeches. Baldassarre's mind was highly strung. He was preparing himseK for the moment when he could win his entrance into this brilliant company ; and he had a savage satisfaction in the sight of Tito's easy gayety, which seemed to be preparing the unconscious victim for more effective torture. But the men seated among the branching tapers and the flashing cups could know nothing of the pale fierce face that watched them from without. The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness. And the talk went on with more eagerness as it became less disconnected and trivial. The sense of citizenship was just then strongly forced even on the most indifferent minds. What the overmastering Pra Girolamo was saying and prompt- ing was really uppermost in the thoughts of every one at table ; and before the stewed fish was removed, and while the favourite sweets were yet to come, his name rose to the sur- face of the conversation, and, in spite of Rucellai's previous prohibition, the talk again became political. At first, while the servants remained present, it was mere gossip : what had been done in the Palazzo on the first day^s voting for the Great Council, how hot-tempered and domhieering Francesco Valori was, as if he were to have everything his own way by VOL. II. — 6 82 ROMOLA right of his austere virtue ; and how it was clear to every- body who heard Sodcrini's speeches in favour of the Great Council and also heard the Frate's sermons, that they were both kneaded in the same trough. " My opinion is," said Niccolb Eidolfi, " that the Frate has a longer head for public matters than Soderini or any Piagnone among them : you may depend on it that Soderini is his mouthpiece more than he is Sodcrini's/^ " No, Niccolo ; there I difl'er from you/'' said Bernardo Rucellai: "the Frate has an acute mind, and readily sees what will serve his own ends; but it is not likely that Pago- lantonio Soderini, who has had long experience of affairs, and has specially studied the Venetian Council, should be much indebted to a monk for ideas on that subject. No, no ; So- derini loads the cannon; though, I grant you, Fra Girolamo brings the powder and lights the match. He is master of the people, and the people are getting master of us. Ecco ! " " Well,'' said Lorenzo Tornabuoni, presently, when the room was clear of servants, and nothing but wine was passing round, " whether Soderini is indebted or not, loe are indebted to the Frate for the general amnesty which has gone along with the scheme of the Council. We might have done with- out the fear of God and the reform of morals being passed by a majority of black beans ; but that excellent proposition, that our Medicean heads should be allowed to remain com- fortably on our shoulders, and that we should not be obliged to hand over our property in fines, has my warm approval, and it is my belief that nothing but the Frate's predominance could have procured that for us. And you may rely on it that Fra Girolamo is as firm as a rock on that point of pro- moting peace. I have had an interview with him." There was a murmur of surprise and curiosity at the farther end of the table ; but Bernardo Eucellai simply Charles VIII of France Fram the dr,in:iiuj di/ Cri.itofhro dell' Aldssimo {1554-1605) in the Ufzi Gallery A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS S3 noddedj as if he knew what Tornabuoni had to saj, and wished him to go on. " Yes/' proceeded Tornabuoni^ " I have been favoured with an interview in the Praters own cell, which, let me tell you, is not a common favour ; for I have reason to believe that even Francesco Valori very seldom sees him in private. However, I think he saw me the more willingly because I was not a ready-made follower, but had to be converted. And, for my part, I see clearly enough that the only safe and wise policy for us Mediceans to pursue is to throw our strength into the scale of the Praters party. We are not strong enough to make head on our own behalf; and if the Prate and the popular party were upset, every one who hears me knows j)erfectly well what other party would be uppermost just now : Nerli, Alberti, Pazzi, and the rest, — Arrabbiati, as somebody christened them the other day, — who instead of giving us an amnesty, would be inclined to fly at our throats like mad dogs, and not be satisfied till they had banished half of us.'' There were strong interjections of assent to this last sentence of Tornabuoni' s, as he paused and looked round a moment. " A wise dissimulation," he went on, " is the only course for moderate rational men in times of violent party feeling. I need hardly tell this company what are my real political attachments : I am not the only man here who has strong personal ties to the banished family; but, apart from any such ties, I agree with my more experienced friends, who are allowing me to speak for them in their presence, that the only lasting and peaceful state of things for Plorence is the predominance of some single family interest. This theory of the Prate's that we are to have a popular government, in which every man is to strive only for the general good, and know no party names, is a theory that may do for some isle 84 ROMOLA of Cristoforo Colombo's finding, but will never do for our fine old quarrelsome Florence. A change must come before long, and with patience and caution we have every chance of determining the change in our favour. Meanwhile, the best thing we can do will be to keep the Frate's flag flying ; for if any other were to be hoisted just now, it would be a black flag for us.'' " It 's true," said Niccolb Eidolfi, in a curt, decisive way. " What you say is true, Lorenzo. For my own part, I am too old for anybody to believe tlKit I have changed my feathers. And there are certain of us — our old Bernardo del Nero for one — whom you would never persuade to bor- row another man's shield. But we can lie still, like sleepy old dogs ; and it 's clear enough that barking would be of no use just now. As for this psalm-singing party, who vote for nothing but the glory of God, and want to make believe we can all love each other, and talk as if vice could be swept out with a besom by the Magnificent Eight, their day will not be a long one. After all the talk of scholars, there are but two sorts of government : one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest. They '11 get their Great Council finally voted to-morrow — that 's certain enough — and they '11 think they 've found out a new plan of govern- ment ; but as sure as there 's a human skin under every lucco in the Council, their new plan will end like every other, in snarling or in licking. That 's my view of things as a plain man. Not that I consider it becoming in men of fam- ily and following, who have got others depending on their constancy and on their sticking to their colours, to go a-hunting with a fine net to catch reasons in the air, like doctors of law. I say frankly that, as the head of my family, I shall be true to my old alliances; and I have never yet A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 85 seen any clialk-mark on political reasons to tell me which is true and which is false. My friend Bernardo Rucellai here is a man of reasons, I know, and I have no objection to any- body's finding fine-spun reasons for me, so that they don't interfere with my actions as a man of family who has faith to keep with his connections.'' "If that is an appeal to me, Niccolb," said Bernardo Rucellai, with a formal dignity, in amusing contrast with Ei- dolfi's curt and pithy ease, " I may take this opportunity of saying, that while my wishes are partly determined by long- standing personal relations, I cannot enter into any positive schemes with persons over whose actions I have no control. I myself might be content with a restoration of the old order of things ; but with modifications, — with important modifi- cations. And the one point on which I wish to declare my concurrence with Lorenzo Tornabuoni is, that the best policy to be pursued by our friends is, to throw the weight of their interest into the scale of the popular party. Por myself, I condescend to no dissimulation ; nor do I at present sec the party or the scheme that commands my full assent. In all alike there is crudity and confusion of ideas, and of all the twenty men who are my colleagues in the present crisis, there is not one with whom I do not find myself in wide disagreement." Niccolb Ridolfi shrugged his shoulders, and left it to some one else to take up the ball. As the wine went round, the talk became more and more frank and lively, and the desire of several at once to be the chief speaker, as usual, caused the company to break up into small knots of two and three. It was a result which had been foreseen by Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giannozzo Pucci, and they were among the first to turn aside from the highroad of general talk and enter into a special conversation with Tito, who sat between them j 86 ROMOLA gradually pushing away their seats, and turning their backs on the table and wine. " In truth, Meleraa," Tornabuoni was saying at this stage, laying one hose-clad leg across the knee of the other, and caressing his ankle, " I know of no man in Florence who can serve our party better than you. You see what most of our friends are, — men who can no more hide their prejudices than a dog can hide the natural tone of his bark, or else men whose political ties are so notorious that they must always be objects of suspicion. Giannozzo here, and I, I flatter myself, are able to overcome that suspicion ; we have that power of concealment and finesse without which a rational cultivated man, instead of having any prerogative, is really at a disad- vantage compared with a wild bull or a savage. But, except yourself, I know of no one else on whom we could rely for the necessary discretion.''^ " Yes," said Giannozzo Pucci, laying his hand on Tito^s shoulder, " the fact is, Tito mio, you can help us better than if you were Ulysses himself, for I am convhiccd that Ulysses often made himself disagreeable. To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath. And there is not a soul in Florence who could undertake a business like this journey to Rome, for example, with the same safety that you can. There is your scholarship, which may always be a pre- text for such journeys; and what is better, there is your talent, which it would be harder to match than your scholar- ship. Niccolb Macchiavelli might have done for us if he had been on our side, but hardly so well. He is too much bitten with notions, and has not your power of fascination. All the worse for him. He has lost a great chance in life, and you have got it." " Yes," said Tornabuoni, lowering his voice in a signifi- cant manner^ " you have only to play your game well, Melema, Sa\oxauola preaching From a mnrble statue hi/ Enrico Pazzi in Palazzo Vecchio A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 87 and the future belongs to you. For the Medici, you may rely upon it, will keep a foot in Rome as well as in Florence, and the time may not be far off when they will be able to make a finer career for their adherents even than they did in old days. Why should n't you take orders some day ? There 's a cardi- nal's hat at the end of that road, and you would not be the first Greek who has worn that ornament." Tito laughed gayly. He was too acute not to measure Tornabuoni's exaggerated flattery, but still the flattery had a pleasant flavour. " My joints are not so stiff yet," he said, ^^ that I can't be induced to run without such a high prize as that. I think the income of an abbey or two held ' in commendam,' without the trouble of getting my head shaved, would satisfy me at present." " I was not joking," said Tornabuoni, with grave suav- ity ; " I think a scholar would always be the better off" for taking orders. But we '11 talk of that another time. One of the objects to be first borne in mind is that you should win the confidence of the men who hang about San Marco ; that is what Giannozzo and I shall do, but you may carry it far- ther than we can, because you are less observed. In that way you can get a thorough knowledge of their doings, and you will make a broader screen for your agency on our side. Nothing of course can be done before you start for Rome, because this bit of business between Piero de' Medici and the French nobles must be effected at once. I mean when you come back, of course ; I need say no more. I believe you could make yourself the pet votary of San Marco, if you liked ; but you are wise enough to know that effective dissimulation is never immoderate." " If it were not that an adhesion to the popular side is necessary to your safety as an agent of our party, Tito mio," 88 ROMOLA said Giannozzo Pucci^ who was more fraternal and less patronizing iu his manner than Tornabuoni, " I could have wished your skill to have been employed in another way, for which it is still better fitted. But now we must look out for some other man among us who will manage to get into the confidence of our sworn enemies, the Arrabbiati ; we need to know their movements more than those of the Frate^s party, who are strong enough to play above-board. Still, it would have been a difficult thing for you, from your known relations with the Medici a Kttle while back, and that sort of kinship your wife has with Bernardo del Nero. We must find a man who has no distinguished connections, and who has not yet taken any side.''^ Tito was pushing his hair backward automatically, as his manner was, and looking straight at Pucci with a scarcely perceptible smile on his lips. " No need to look out for any one else,*' he said promptly. " I can manage the whole business with perfect ease. I will engage to make myself the special confidant of that thick- headed Dolfo Spiui, and know his projects before he knows them himself.^' Tito seldom spoke so confidently of his own powers, but he was in a state of exultation at the sudden opening of a new path before him, where fortune seemed to have hung higher prizes than any he had thought of hitherto. Hith- erto he had seen success only in the form of favour; it now flashed on him in the shape of power, — of such power as is possible to talent without traditional ties and without beliefs. Each party that thought of him as a tool might become dependent on him. His position as an alien, his indifference to the ideas or prejudices of the men among whom he moved, were suddenly transformed into advan- tages ; lie became newly conscious of his own adroitness in A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 89 the presence of a game that he was called on to play. And all the motives which might have made Tito shrink from the triple deceit that came before him as a tempting game had been slowly strangled in him by the successive falsities of his life. Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves^ as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradi- tion for the race; and to have once acted nobly seems a reason why we should always be noble. But Tito was feel- ing the effect of an opposite tradition : he had won no mem- ories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could have a sense of falling. The triple colloquy went on with growing spirit till it was interrupted by a call from the table. Probably the movement came from the listeners in the party^ who were afraid lest the talkers should tire themselves. At all events it was agreed that there had been enough of gravity, and Eucellai had just ordered new flasks of Montepulciano. " How many minstrels are there among us ? " he said, when there had been a general rallying round the table. " Melema, I think you are the chief : Matteo will give you the lute/' " Ah, yes ! " said Giannozzo Pucci, " lead the last chorus from Poliziano's ' Orfeo,' that you have found such an excellent measure for, and we will all fall in : — " ' Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te : Bacco, Bacco, evoe, evoe ! ' " The servant put the lute into Tito's hands, and then said something in an undertone to his master. A little subdued questioning and answering went on between them, while Tito touched the lute hi a preluding way to the strain of the chorus, and there was a confusion of speech and mu- sical humming all round the table. Bernardo Rucellai had 90 ROMOLA said, " Wait a moment, Melcma ; " but the words had been unlieard by Tito, who was k'aiiing towards Pucci, and sing- ing low to him the phrases of the Maenad-chorus, lie no- ticed nothing until the buzz round the table suddenly ceased, and the notes of his own voice, with its soft low-toned tri- umph, " Evoe, evoe ! " fell in startling isolation. It was a strange moment. Baldassarre had moved round the table till he was opposite Tito; and as the hum ceased, there might be seen for an instant Baldassarre^'s fierce dark eyes bent on Tito^s bright, smiling unconsciousness, while the low notes of triumph dropped from his lips into the silence. Tito looked up with a slight start, and his lips turned pale, but he seemed hardly more moved than Giannozzo Pucci, who had looked up at the same moment, — or even than several others round the table ; for that sallow-lined face with the hatred in its eyes seemed a terrible apparition across the wax-lit ease and gaycty. And Tito quickly recovered some self-command. " A mad old man, — he looks like it, — he is mad ! " was the instantaneous thought that brouglit some courage with it ; for he could conjecture no hiward change in Baldassarre since they had met before. He just let his eyes fall and laid the lute on the table with apparent ease ; but his fingers pinched the neck of the lute hard while he governed his head and his glance sufficiently to look with an air of quiet appeal towards Bernardo Eucellai, who said at once, — "Good man, what is your business? What is the im- portant declaration that you have to make ? " " Messer Bernardo Eucellai, I wish you and your hon- ourable friends to know in what sort of company you are sitting. There is a traitor among you.'^ There was a general movement of alarm. Every one A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 91 present, except Tito, thought of political danger and not of private injury. Baldassarre began to speak as if he were thoroughly assured of what he had to say ; but in spite of his long preparation for this moment, there was the tremor of over- mastering excitement in his voice. His passion shook him. He went on, but he did not say what he had meant to say. As he fixed his eyes on Tito again, the passionate words were like blows, — they defied premeditation. " There is a man among you who is a scoundrel, a liar, a robber. I was a father to him. I took him from beggary when he was a child. I reared him, I cherished him, I taught him, I made him a scholar. My head has lain hard that his might have a pillow. And he left me in slavery ; lie sold the gems that were mine, and when I came again, he denied me." The last words had been uttered with almost convulsed agitation; and Baldassarre paused, trembling. All glances were turned on Tito, who was now looking straight at Baldas- sare. It was a moment of desperation that annihilated all feeling in him, except the determination to risk anything for the chance of escape. And he gathered confidence from the agitation by which Baldassarre was evidently shaken. He had ceased to pinch the neck of the lute, and had thrust his thumbs into his belt, while his lips had begun to assume a slight curl. He had never yet done an act of murderous cruelty even to the smallest animal that could utter a cry, but at that moment he would have been capable of treading the breatli from a smiling child for the sake of his own safety. " What docs this mean, Melema ? " said Bernardo Ru- cellai, in a tone of cautious surprise. He, as well as the rest of the company, felt relieved that the tenor of the accusation was not political. "Messer Bernardo," said Tito, "I believe this man is 92 ROMOLA mad. I did not recognize him the first time he encountered me in Plorence^ but I know now that he is the servant who years ago accompanied me and ray adoptive father to Greece, and was dismissed on account of misdemeanours. His name is Jacopo di Nola. Even at that time I believed his mind was unhinged, for, .with out any reason, he had conceived a strange hatred towards me; and now I am convinced that he is laboring under a mania which causes him to mistake his iden- tity. He has already attempted my life since he has been in Florence ; and I am in constant danger from him. But he is an object of pity rather than of indignation. It is too certain that my father is dead. You have only my word for it ; but I must leave it to your judgment how far it is probable that a man of intellect and learning would have been lurking about in dark corners for the last month with the purpose of assas- sinating me ; or how far it is probable that if this man were my second father, I could have any motive for denying him. That story about my being rescued from beggary is the vision of a diseased brain. But it will be a satisfaction to me at least if you will demand from him proofs of his identity, lest any malignant person should choose to make this mad impeachment a reproach to me.'' Tito had felt more and more confidence as he went on : the lie was not so difficult when it was once begun ; and as the words fell easily from his lips, they gave liim a sense of power such as men feel when they have begun a muscular feat successfully. In this way he acquired boldness enough to end with a challenge for proofs. Baldassarre, while he had been walking in the gardens and afterwards waiting in an outer room of the pavilion with the servants, had been making anew the digest of the evidence he would bring to prove his identity and Tito's baseness, re- calling the description and history of his gems, and assuring LuDovico Sforza From the woodcut in "■Antonio Campo," htoria di Cremona A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 93 himself by rapid mental glances that he could attest his learning and his travels. It might be partly owing to this nervous strain that the new shock of rage he felt as Tito's lie fell on his ears brought a strange bodily effect with it : a cold stream seemed to rush over him, and the last words of the speech seemed to be drowned by ringing chimes. Thought gave way to a dizzy horror, as if the earth were slipping away from under him. Every one in the room was looking at him as Tito ended, and saw that the eyes which had had such fierce intensity only a few minutes before had now a vague fear in them. He clutched the back of a seat, and was silent. Hardly any evidence could have been more in favour of Tito's assertion. " Surely I have seen this man before, somewhere,'^ said Tornabuoni. " Certainly you have," said Tito, readily, in a low tone. " He is the escaped prisoner who clutched me on the steps of the Duomo. I did not recognize him then : he looks now more as he used to do, except that he has a more unmistak- able air of mad imbecility." " I cast no doubt on your word, Melema," said Bernardo Rucellai, with cautious gravity, " but you are right to desire some positive test of the fact." Then turning to Baldassarre, lie said : " If you are the person you claim to be, you can doubtless give some description of the gems which were your property. I myself was the purchaser of more than one gem from Messer Tito, — the chief rings, I believe, in his collec- tion. One of them is a fine sard, engraved vrith a subject from Homer. If, as you allege, you are a scholar, and the rightful owner of that ring, you can doubtless turn to the noted passage in Homer from which that subject is taken. Do you accept this test, Melema ? or have you anything to 94 ROMOLA allege against its validity ? The Jacopo you speak of, was he a scholar ? " It was a fearful crisis for Tito. If he said " Yes," his quick mind told him that he would shake the credibility of his story; if he said "No," he risked everything on the uncertain extent of Baldassarre's imbecility. But there was no noticeable pause before he said, "No. I accept the test." There was a dead silence while Rucellai moved towards the recess where the books were, and came back with the fine Florentine Homer in his hand. Baldassarre, when he was addressed, had turned his head towards the speaker, and Rucellai believed that he had understood him. But he chose to repeat what he had said, that there might be no mistake as to the test. " The ring I possess," he said, " is a fine sard, engraved with a subject from Homer. There was no other at all re- sembling it in Messer Tito's collection. Will you turn to the passage iu Homer from which that subject is taken? Seat yourself here," he added, laying the book on the table, and pointing to his own seat while he stood beside it. Baldassarre had so far recovered from the first confused horror produced by the sensation of rushing coldness and chiming din in the ears as to be partly aware of what was said to him : he was aware that something was being de- manded from him to prove his identity, but he formed no distinct idea of the details. The sight of the book recalled the habitual longing and faint hope that he could read and understand, and he moved towards the chair immediately. The book was open before him, and he bent his head a little towards it, while everybody watched him eagerly. He turned no leaf. His eyes wandered over the pages that lay before him, and then fixed on them a straining gaze. A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 95 This lasted for two or three minutes in dead silence. Tlien he lifted his hands to eacli side of his head, and said, in a low tone of despair, " Lost, lost ! " There was something so piteous in the wandering look and the low cry, that while they confirmed the belief in his madness they raised compassion. Nay, so distinct some- times is the working of a double consciousness within us, that Tito himself, while he triumphed in the apparent verifi- cation of his lie, wished that he had never made the lie necessary to himself, — wished he had recognized his father on the steps, — wished he had gone to seek him, — wished everything had been different. But he had borrowed from the terrible usurer Falsehood, and the loan had mounted and mounted with the years, till he belonged to the usurer, body and soul. The compassion excited in all the witnesses was not with- out its danger to Tito ; for conjecture is constantly guided by feeling, and more than one person suddenly conceived that this man might have been a scholar and have lost his faculties. On the other hand, they had not present to their minds the motives which could have led Tito to the denial of his benefactor, and having no ill-will towards him, it would have been difficult to them to believe that he had been utter- ing the basest of lies. And the originally common type of Baldassarre's person, coarsened by years of hardship, told as a confirmation of Tito's lie. If Baldassarre, to begin with, could have uttered precisely the words he had premeditated, there might have been something in the form of his accusa- tion which would have given it the stamp not only of true experience but of mental refinement. But there liad been no such testimony in his impulsive agitated words ; and there seemed the very opposite testimony in the rugged face and the coarse hands that trembled beside it, standing out in 96 ROMOLA strong contrast in the midst of that velvct-clacl^ fair-handed company. His next movement, while he was being watclied in silence, told against him too. He took his hands from his head, and felt for something under his tunic. Every one guessed what that movement meant, — guessed that there was a weapon at his side. Glances were interchanged ; and Bernardo Rucellai said, in a quiet tone, touching Baldassarre's shoulder, — " My friend, this is an important business of yours. You shall have all justice. Follow me into a private room.^' Baldassarrc was still in that half-stunned state in which lie was susceptible to any prompting, in the same way !is an insect that forms no conception of what the prompting leads to. He rose from his seat, and followed Eucellai out of the room. In two or three minutes Rucellai came back again, and said, — " He is safe under lock and key. Piero Pitti, you are one of the Magnificent Eight, what do you think of our sending Matteo to the palace for a couple of sbirri, who may escort him to the Stinche ? If there is any danger in him, as I think there is, he will be safe there ; and we can inquire about him to-morrow.^' Pitti assented, and the order was given. "lie is certainly an ill-looking fellow," said Torna- buoni. " And you say he has attempted your life already, Melema?" And the talk turned on the various forms of madness, and the fierceness of the southern blood. If the seeds of conjecture unfavourable to Tito had been planted in the mind of any one present^ they were hardly strong enough to grow The Via dell' Oriuolo, witli the door of the Pazzi Garden From the ilrowlnq by E. Bttrci in the Ufizi Gallery A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS 97 without the aid of much dayliglit and ill-will. The common- looking, wild-eyed old man, clad in serge, might have won belief without very strong evidence, if he had accused a man who was envied and disliked. As it was, the only congru- ous and probable view of the case seemed to be the one that sent the unpleasant accuser safely out of sight, and left the pleasant serviceable Tito just where he was before. The subject gradually floated away, and gave place to others, till a heavy tramp, and something like the struggling of a man who was being dragged away, were heard outside. The sounds soon died out, and the interruption seemed to make the last hour's conviviality more resolute and vigourous. Every one was willing to forget a disagreeable incident. Tito's heart was palpitating, and the wine tasted no better to him than if it had been blood. To-night he had paid a heavier price than ever to make himself safe. He did not like the price, and yet it was inevitable that he should be glad of the purchase. And after all he led the chorus. He was in a state of excitement in which oppressive sensations, and the wretched consciousness of something hateful but irrevocable, were mingled with a feeling of triumph which seemed to assert itself as the feeling that would subsist and be master of the morrow. And it was master. For on the morrow, as we saw, when he was about to start on his mission to Rome, he had the air of a man well satisfied with the world. VOL. II. — 7 CHAPTER XX AN AREESTING VOICE WHEN Romola sat down on the stone under the cypress, all things conspired to give her the sense of freedom and solitude, — her escape from the accustomed walls and streets ; the widenmg distance from her husband, who was by this time riding towards Siena, while every hour would take her farther on the opposite way; the morning stillness; the great dip of ground on the roadside making a gulf between her and the sombre calm of the mountains. For the first time in her Kfe she felt alone in the presence of the earth and sky, with no human presence interposing and making a law for her. Suddenly a voice close to her said, — " You are Eomola de^ Bardi, the wife of Tito Melema.*' She knew the voice, — it had vibrated through her more than once before; and because she knew it, she did not turn round or look up. She sat shaken by awe, and yet inwardly rebelling against the awe. It was one of those black-skirted monks who was daring to speak to her, and interfere with her privacy : that was all. And yet she was shaken, as if that destiny which men thought of as a sceptred deity had come to her, and grasped her with fingers of flesh. " You are fleeing from Florence in disguise. I have a command from God to stop you. You are not permitted to flee.^^ Romola's anger at the intrusion mounted higher at these imperative words. She would not turn round to look at the AN ARRESTING VOICE 99 speaker, whose examining gaze she resented. Sitting quite motionless, she said, — " What right have you to speak to me or to hinder me?" " The right of a messenger. You have put on a reli- gious garb, and you have no religious purpose. You have sought the garb as a disguise. But you were not suffered to pass me without being discerned. It was declared to me who you were : it is declared to me that you are seeking to escape from the lot God has laid upon you. You wish your true name and your true place in life to be hidden, that you may choose for yourself a new name and a new place, and have no rule but your own will. And I have a command to call you back. My daughter, you must return to your place." Romola^s mind rose in stronger rebellion with every sen- tence. She was the more determined not to show any sign of submission, because the consciousness of being inwardly shaken made her dread lest she should fall into irresolution. She spoke with more irritation than before. "I will not return. I acknowledge no right of priests and monks to interfere with my actions. You have no power over me," " I know — I know you have been brought up in scorn of obedience. But it is not the poor monk who claims to interfere with you : it is the truth that commands you. And you cannot escape it. Either you must obey it, and it will lead you ; or you must disobey it, and it will hang on you with the weight of a chain which you will drag forever. But you will obey it, my daughter. Your old servant will return to you with the mules ; my companion is gone to fetch him ; and you will go back to Florence." She started up with anger in her eyes, and faced the speaker. It was Fra Girolamo ; she knew that well enough 100 ROMOLA before. She was nearly as tall as he was, and their faces were almost on a level. She had started up with defiant words ready to burst from her lips, but they feU back again without utterance. She had met Fra Girolamo's calm glance, and the impression from it was so new to her that her anger sank ashamed as something irrelevant. There was nothing transcendent in Savonarola's face. It was not beautiful. It was strong-featured, and owed all its refinement to habits of mind and rigid discipline of the body. The source of the impression his glance produced on Eomola was the sense it conveyed to her of interest in her and care for her apart from any personal feeling. It was the first time she had encountered a gaze in which simple human fel- lowship expressed itself as a strongly felt bond. Such a glance is half the vocation of the priest or spiritual guide of men, and Eomola felt it impossible again to question his au- thority to speak to her. She stood silent, looking at him. And he spoke again. " You assert your freedom proudly, my daughter. But who is so base as the debtor that thinks himself free ? " There was a sting in those words, and Eomola's counte- nance changed as if a subtle pale flash had gone over it. " And you are flying from your debts, — the debt of a Florentine woman, the debt of a wife. You are turning your back on the lot that has been appointed for you ; you are going to choose another. But can man or woman choose duties ? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother. My daughter, you are fleeing from the presence of God into the wilderness." As the anger melted from Eomola's mind, it had given place to a new presentiment of the strength there might be in submission, if this man, at whom she was beginning to look with a vague reverence, had some valid law to show her. I AN ARRESTING VOICE 101 But no — it was impossible ; he could not know what deter- mined her. Yet she could not again simply refuse to be guided ; she was constrained to plead ; and in her new need to be reverent wliile she resisted, the title which she had never given him before came to her lips without forethought. " My father, you cannot know the reasons which compel me to go. None can know them but myself. None can judge for me. I have been driven by great sorrow. I am resolved to go.^' " I know enough, my daughter : my mind has been so far illuminated concerning you, that I know enough. You are not happy in your married life : but I am not a confessor, and I seek to know nothing that should be reserved for the seal of confession. I have a divine warrant to stop you, which does not depend on such knowledge. You were warned by a message from heaven, delivered in my presence, — you were warned before marriage, when you might still have law- fully chosen to be free from the marriage-bond. But you chose the bond; and in wilfully breaking it — I speak to you as a pagan, if the holy mystery of matrimony is not sacred to you — you are breaking a pledge. Of what wrongs will you complain, my daughter, when you yourself are committing one of the greatest wrongs a woman and a citizen can be guilty of, — withdrawing in secrecy and disguise from a pledge which you have given in the face of God and your fellow- men ? Of what wrongs will you complain, when you yourself are breaking the simplest law that lies at the foundation of the trust which binds man to man, — faithfulness to the spoken word ? This, then, is the wisdom you have gained by scorning the mysteries of the Church ? — not to see the bare duty of integrity, where the Church would have taught you to see, not integrity only, but religion." The blood had rushed to Uomola's face, and ^1^^ shrank s"^^"- !taK^-^-^ ^ C:0..- 102 ROMOLA as if she had been stricken. " I would not have put on a disguise," she began ; but she could not go on, — she was too much shaken by the suggestion in the Frate's words of a pos- sible affinity between her own conduct and Tito's. " And to break that pledge you fly from Florence, — Florence, where there are the only men and women in the world to whom you owe the debt of a fellow-citizen." "I should never have quitted Florence," said Romola, tremulously, "as long as there was any hope of my fulfilling a duty to my father there." " And do you owe no tie but that of a child to her father in the flesh ? Your life has been spent in blindness, my daughter. You have lived with those who sit on a hill aloof, and look down on the life of their fellow-men. I know their vain discourse. It is of what has been in the times which they fill with their own fancied wisdom, while tliey scorn God's work in the present. And doubtless you were taught how there were pagan women who felt what it was to live for the Eepublic ; yet you have never felt that you, a Florentine woman, should live for Florence. If your own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, instead of struggling with them to lighten it ? There is hunger and misery in our streets ; yet you say, ' I care not ; I have my own sorrows; I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.' The servants of God are struggling after a law of justice, peace, and charity, that the hundred thousand citizens among whom you were bom may be governed righteously ; but you think no more of tliis than if you were a bird, that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to its liking. And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my daughter. As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind choice, were not below the humblest Floren- tine woman who stretches forth her hands with her own GiROLAMO BeKIVIEXI From his death-mask in the Miisee clii Loiivn AN ARRESTING VOICE 103 people^ and craves a blessing for them ; and feels a close sister- hood with the neighbour who kneels beside her and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God has for Florence ; and waits and endures because the prom- ised work is great, and she feels herself little." " I was not going away to ease and self-indulgence/^ said Eomola, raising her head again, with a prompting to vindicate herself. " I was going away to hardship. I expect no joy : it is gone from my life." "You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good other than the law you are bouiul to obey. But how will you find good ? it is not a thing of choice : it is a rivei' that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth; and what will you find, my daughter ? Sorrow without duty, — bitter herbs, and no bread with them." "But if you knew," said Romola, clasping her hands and pressing them tight, as she looked pleadingly at Era Girolamo, — " if you knew what it was to me, — how impos- sible it seemed to me to bear it." "My daughter," he said, pointing to the cord round Romola^'s neck, "you carry something within your mantle; draw it forth, and look at it." Romola gave a slight start, but her impulse now was to do just what Savonarola told her. Her self-doubt was grappled by a stronger will and a stronger conviction than her own. She drew forth the crucifix. Still pointing towards it, he said, — "There, my daughter, is tlie image of a Supreme Offer- ing, made by Supreme Love, because the need of mau was great." 104 ROMOLA He paused, and she held the crucifix trembling, — trem- bling under a sudden impression of the wide distance between her present and her past self. What a length of road she had travelled through since she first took that crucifix from the Frate's hands ! Had life as many secrets before her still as it had for her then, in her young blindness? It was a thought that helped all other subduing iufiueiiccs; and at (he sound of Fra Girolamo's voice again, Jloinola, with a quick involuntnry movement pressed the crucifix against her mantle and looked at him with more submission than before. "Conform your life to that image, my daughter; make your sorrow an offering : and when the fire of Divine charity bums within you, and you behold the need of your fellow-men by the light of that flame, you will not call your offering great. You have carried yourself proudly, as one who lield herself not of common blood or of common thoughts ; but you have been as one unborn to the true life of man. What! you say your love for your father no longer tells you to stay in Florence? Then, since that tie is snapped, you are with- out a law, without religion : you are no better than a beast of the field wlien she is robbed of her young. If the yearn- ing of a fleshly love is gone, you are without love, without obligation. See, then, my daughter, how you are below the life of tlie believer who worships that image of the Supreme Offering, and feels the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that offering was made, and beholds the history of the world as the history of a great redemption in which he is himself a fellow-worker, in his own place and among his own j^eople ! If you held that faith, my beloved daugliter, you would not be a wanderer flying from suffering, and blindly seeking the good of a freedom which is lawless- ness. You M'ould feel that Florence was the home of your soul as well as your birthplace, because you would see the AN ARRESTING VOICE 105 work that was given you to do tliere. If you forsake your place, who will fill it ? You ought to be in your place now, helping in the great work by which God will purity Florence, and raise it to be the guide of the nations. What ! the earth is full of iniquity, full of groans, — the light is still strug- gling with a mighty darkness, and you say, ' I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst them asunder; I will go where no man claims nie ' ? My daughter, every bond of your life is a debt : the right lies in the payment of that debt ; it can lie nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the earth ; you will be wandering forever away from the right/^ Eomola was inwardly struggling with strong forces, — that immense personal influence of Savonarola, which came from the energy of his emotions and beliefs ; and her con- sciousness, surmounting all prejudice, that his words implied a higher law than any she had yet obeyed. But the resisting thoughts were not yet overborne. " How, then, could Dino be right ? He broke ties ; he forsook his place. •'^ " That was a special vocation. He was constrained to depart, else he could not have attained the higher life. It would have been stifled within him." " And I too," said Eomola, raising her hands to her brow, and speaking in a tone of anguish, as if she were being dragged to some torture. " Father, you may be wrong." " Ask your conscience, my daughter. You have no vocation such as your brother had. You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will and anger, not because the liigher life calls upon you to renou!ice them. The higher life begins for us, my daughter, wlien we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom and freedom and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before you. That wisdom is the 106 ROMOLA religion of the Cross. And you stand aloof from it : you are a pagan ; you have been taught to say, ' I am as the wise men who lived before the time when tlie Jew of Nazareth was crucified/ And that is your wisdom ! To be as the dead whose eyes are closed, and whose ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since their time. What has your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter ? It has left you without a heart for the neighbours among whom you dwell, without care for the great work by which Florence is to be regenerated and the world made holy ; it has left you without a share in the Divine life which quenches the sense of suffer- ing Self in the ardours of an ever-growing love. And now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you say, ' I will go away ; I cannot bear my sorrow.^ And you think nothing of the sorrow and the wrong that are within the walls of the city where you dwell : you would leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled with your pity and your labour. If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should shine with the light of purity ; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to teach you a new worship : the sign of it hangs before you." Romola's mind was still torn by conflict. She foresaw that she should obey Savonarola and go back : his words had come to her as if they were an interpretation of that revulsioii from self-satisfied ease, and of that new fellowship with suf- fering, which had already been awakened in her. His arrest- ing voice had brought a new condition into her life, which made it seem impossible to her that she could go on her way as if she had not heard it ; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctive shrinking from a retura to AN ARRESTING VOICE 107 her husband brought doubts. She turned away her eyes from Era Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two M'ith her hands hanging clasped before her^ like a statue. At last she spoke, as if the words were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground. " My husband ... he is not . . . my love is gone ! " " My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Mar- riage is not carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you to ! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the obligations of your place and name. That would not have been, if you had learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God can release you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to be blown by the winds ; it is a thing of flesh and blood, that dies if it be sundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?'* Romola started. " Heaven forbid ! No ; I accuse him of nothing.'* " I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant that if he were a malefactor, your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter, if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You may say, ' I will forsake my husband,* but you cannot cease to be a wife.*' " Yet if — oh, how could I bear — ** Romola had in- voluntarily begun to say something which she sought to banish from her mind again. " Make your marriage-sorrows an offering too, my daughter: an offering to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our blessedness to die for it : to die daily by the crucifixion of our selfish will, — to (lir at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My daughter, 108 ROMOLA you are a child of Florence ; fulfil the duties of that great in- heritance. Live for Florence, — for your own people, whom God is preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp — I know, I know — it rends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup, — there is the vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter, come back to your place ! " While Savonarola spoke with growing intensity, his arms tightly folded before him still, as they had been from the first, but his face alight as from an inward flame, Romola felt herself surrounded and possessed by the glow of his pas- sionate faith. The chill doubts all melted away; she was subdued by the sense of something unspeakably great to which she was being called by a strong being who roused a new strength within herself. In a voice that was like a low, prayerful cry, she said, — " Father, I will be guided. Teach me ! I will go back.^^ Almost unconsciously she sank on her knees. Savona- rola stretched out his hands over her ; but feeling would no longer pass through the channel of speech, and he was silent. I The fresco by Fra Bartoloramco in the Chapel of Savonarola R CHAPTER XXI COMING BACK ISE, my daughter," said Fra Girolamo, at last, " Your servant is waiting not far off with the mules. It is time that I should go onward to Florence/' Romola arose from her knees. That silent attitude had been a sort of sacrament to her, confirming the state of yearning passivity on which she had newly entered. By the one act of renouncing her resolve to quit her husband, her will seemed so utterly bruised that she felt the need of direc- tion even in small things. She lifted up the edge of her cowl, and saw Maso and the second Dominican standing with their backs towards her on the edge of the hill about ten yards from her ; but she looked at Savonarola again without speaking, as if the order to Maso to turn back must come from him and not from her. " I will go and call them," he said, answering her glance of appeal ; "and I will recommend you, my daughter, to the Brother who is with me. You desire to put yourself under guidance, and to learn that wisdom which has been hitherto as foolishness to you. A chief gate of that wisdom is the sacrament of confession. You will need a confessor, my daughter, and I desire to put you under the care of Fra Sal- vestro, one of the brethren of San Marco, in whom I most confide. " " I would ratlicr liave no guidance but yours, father," said Romola, looking anxious. 110 ROMOLA " My dauglitcr, I do not act as a confessor. The voca- tion I have withdraws me from offices that would force me into frequent contact with the laity, and interfere with my special duties/' " Then shall I not be able to speak to you in private ? if I waver, if — " Romola broke off from risijig agitation. She felt a sudden alarm lest her new strength in renunciation should vanish if the immediate personal influence of Savona- rola vanished. " My daughter, if your soul has need of the word in private from my lips, you will let me know it through Fra Salvestro, and I will see you in the sacristy or in the choir of San Marco. And I will not cease to watch over you. I will instruct my brother concerning you, that he may guide you into that path of labour for the suffering and the hun- gry to which you are called as a daughter of Florence in these times of hard need. I desire to behold you among the feebler and more ignorant sisters as the apple-tree among the trees of the forest, so that your fairness and all natural gifts may be but as a lamp through which the Divine light shines the more purely. I will go now and call your servant.'^ When Maso had been sent a little way in advance, Fra Salvestro came forward, and Savonarola led Romola towards him. She had beforehand felt an inward shrinking from a new guide who was a total stranger to her ; but to have re- sisted Savonarola's advice would have been to assume an attitude of independence at a moment when all her strength must be drawn from the renunciation of independence. And the whole bent of her mind now was towards doing what was painful rather than what was easy. She bowed reverently to Fra Salvestro before looking directly at him ; but when she raised her head and saw him fully, her reluctance became a palpitating doubt. There are men whose presence infuses COMING BACK 111 trust and reverence ; there are others to whom we have need to carry our trust and reverence ready-made ; and that differ- ence flashed on Romola as she ceased to have Savonarola before her, and saw in his stead Fra Salvestro Maruffi. It was not that there was anything manifestly repulsive in Pra Salvcs- tro's face and manner, any air of hypocrisy, any tinge of coarseness ; his face was handsomer than Fra Girolamo's, his person a little taller. He was the long-accepted confessor of many among the chief personages in Florence, and had there- fore had large experience as a spiritual director. But his face had the vacillating expression of a mind unable to con- centrate itself strongly in the channel of one great emotion or belief, — an expression which is fatal to influence over an ardent nature like Romola's. Such an expression is not the stamp of insincerity; it is the stamp simply of a shallow soul, which will often be found sincerely striving to fill a high vocation, sincerely composing its countenance to the utterance of sublime formulas, but finding the muscles twitch or relax in spite of belief, as prose insists on coming instead of poetry to the man who has not the divine frenzy. Fra Salvestro had a peculiar liability to visions, dependent apparently on a constitution given to somnambulism. Savonarola believed in the supernatural character of these visions, while Fra Sal- vestro himself had originally resisted such an interpretation of them, and liad even rebuked Savonarola for his prophetic preaching, — another proof, if one were wanted, that the rela- tive greatness of men is not to be gauged by their tendency to disbelieve the superstitions of their age ; for of these two there can be no question which was the great man and which the small. The difference between them was measured very accurately by the change in Romola^s feeling as Fra Salvestro began to address her in words of exhortation and 112 ROMOLA encouragement. After her first angry resistance of Savonarola liad passed away, she liad lost all remembrance of the old dread lest any influence should drag her within the circle of fanati- cism and sour monkish piety. But now again, the chill breath of that dread stole over her. It could have no deci- sive effect against the impetus her mind had just received; it was only like the closing of the gray clouds over the sunrise, which made her returning path monotonous and sombre. And perhaps of all sombre paths that on which we go back after treading it with a strong resolution is the one that most severely tests the fervour of renunciation. As they re-entered the city gates, the light snow-flakes fell about them ; and as the gray sister walked hastily homeward from the Piazza di San Marco, and trod the bridge again, and turned in at the large door in the Via de' Bardi, her foot- steps were marked darkly on the thin carpet of snow, and her cowl fell laden and damp about her face. She went up to her room, threw off her serge, destroyed the parting letters, replaced all her precious trifles, un- bound her hair, and put on her usual black dress. Instead of taking a long exciting journey, she was to sit down in her usual place. The snow fell against the windows, and she was alone. She felt the dreariness, yet her courage was high, like that of a seeker who has come on new signs of gold. She was going to thread life by a fresh clew. She had tlirown all tlie energy of her will into renunciation. The empty tabernacle remained locked, and slie placed Dino^s crucifix outside it. Nothing broke the outward monotony of her solitary home, till the night came like a white ghost at the windows. Yet it was the most memorable Christmas-eve in her life to Romola, this of 14<9'1. Pier Capponi JJr\R 1)1 u/.V A.^mAscl-\ carijO nil Dl A ^LmFuRTAJmLLAPATRl-i, 'mcrrro t/afi 2/ S^n^MCDXCPJ. u/ffi ^r////-,.' ft'/.'/^^/Zf /./-,•/.;»» /-4;^/,r-~K/,^?A,vv.(v,k^ ("/!»,..»«•(■ From a contemporary portrait pveserred by the family BOOK III CHAPTEE XXII ROMOLA IN HER PLACE IT was the 30th of October, 1496. The sky that morning was clear enough, and there was a pleasant autumnal breeze. But the Florentines just then thought very little about the land breezes : they were thinking of the gales at sea, which seemed to be uniting with all other powers to disprove the Frate^s declaration that Heaven took special care of Florence. For those terrible gales had driven away from the coast of Leghorn certain ships from Marseilles, freighted with soldiery and corn ; and Florence was in the direst need, first of food, and secondly of fighting men. Pale Famine was in her streets, and her territory was threatened on all its borders. For the French king, that new Charlemagne, who had entered Italy in anticipatory triumph, and had conquered Naples without the least trouble, had gone away again fifteen months ago, and was even, it is feared in his grief for the loss of a new-born son, losing the languid intention of coming back again to redress grievances and set the Church in order. A league had been formed against him — a Holy League, with Pojie Borgia at its head — to " drive out the barbarians," who still garrisoned tlie fortress of Naples. That had a patri- otic sound ; but, looked at more closely, the Holy League VOL. II. 8 114 ROMOLA seemed very much like an agreement among certain wolves to drive away all otlier wolves, and then to see which among themselves could snatch the largest share of the prey. And there was a general disposition to regard Florence not as a fellow-wolf, but rather as a desirable carcass. Florence, therefore, of all the chief Italian States, had alone declined to join the League, adhering still to the French alliance. She had declined at her peril. At this moment Pisa, still fighting savagely for liberty, was being encouraged not only by strong forces from Venice and Milan, but by the presence of the German Emperor Maximilian, who had been invited by the League, and was joining the Pisans with such troops as he had in the attempt to get possession of Leghorn, while the coast was invested by Venetian and Genoese ships. And if Leghorn should fall into the hands of the enemy, woe to Florence ! For if that one outlet towards the sea were closed, hedged in as she was on the land by the bitter ill-will of the Pope and the jealousy of smaller States, how could succour reach her? The government of Florence had shown a great heart in this urgent need, meeting losses and defeats with vigorous efforts, raising fresh money, raising fresh soldiers, but not neglecting the good old method of Italian defence, — con- ciliatory embassies. And while the scarcity of food was every day becoming greater, they had resolved, in opposition to old precedent, not to shut out the starving country people, and the mendicants driven from the gates of other cities, who came flocking to Florence like birds from a land of snow. These acts of a government in which the disciples of Savonarola made the strongest element were not allowed to pass without criticism. The disaffected were plentiful, and they saw clearly that the government took the worst course for the public welfare. Florence ought to join the League and ROMOLA IN HER PLACE 115 make common cause with the other great ItaKan States, in- stead of drawiog down their hostility by a futile adherence to a foreign ally. Florence ought to take care of her own citi- zens, instead of opening her gates to famine and pestilence in the shape of starving contadini and alien mendicants. Every day the distress became sharper : every day the murmurs became louder. And, to crown the difficulties of the government, for a month and more, — in obedience to a mandate from Eome, — Fra Girolamo had ceased to preacii. But on the arrival of the terrible news that the ships from Marseilles had been driven back, and that no corn was coming, the need for the voice that could infuse faith and patience iiilo the people became too imperative to be resisted. In defiance of the Papal mandate the Signoria requested Savonarola to preach. And two days ago he had mounted again the pulpit of the Duomo, and had told the people only to wait and be steadfast, and the Divine help would certainly come. It was a bold sermon : he consented to have his frock stripped off him if, when Florence persevered in fulfilling the duties of piety and citizenship, God did not come to her rescue. Yet, at present, on this morning of the 30th, there were no signs of rescue. Perhaps if the precious Tabernacle of the Madonna deir Impruneta were brought into Florence and carried in devout procession to the Duomo, that Motlier, rich in sorrows and therefore in mercy, would plead for the suftering city ? For a century and a half there were records how the Florentines, suffering from drought, or flood, or famine, or pestilence, or the threat of wars, had fetched the potent image within their walls, and had found deliverance. And grateful honour had been done to her and her ancient church of L'Impruneta; the high house of Buondelmonti, patrons of tho. church, had to guard her hidden image with bare sword ; 116 ROMOLA weal til had been poured out for prayers at her shrine, for chautings and chapels and ever-burning lights ; and lands had been added, till there was much quarreling for the privilege of serving her. The Florentines were deeply convinced of her graciousness to them, so that the sight of her tabernacle within their walls was like the parting of the cloud, and the proverb ran, that the Florentines had a Madonna who would do what they pleased. When were they in more need of her pleading pity than now ? And already, the evening before, the tabernacle con- taining the miraculous hidden image had been brought with high and reverend escort from Ulmpruneta, the privileged spot six miles beyond the gate of San Piero that looks towards Rome, and had been deposited in the church of San Gaggio, outside the gate, whence it was to be fetched in solemn procession by all the fraternities, trades, and authori- ties of Florence. But the Pitying Mother had not yet entered within the walls, and the mornhig arose on unchanged misery and de- spondcaicy. Pestilence was hovering in the track of famine. Not only the hospitals were full, but the courtyards of private houses had been turned into refuges and infirmaries ; and still there was unsheltered want. Aiid early this morning, as usual, members of the various fraternities who made it ])art of their duty to bury the unfriended dead, were bearing away the corpses that had sunk by the wayside. As usual, sweet womanly forms, with the refined air and carriage of the well-born, but in the plainest garb, were moving about the streets on their daily errands of tending the sick and relieving the hungry. One of these forms was easily distinguishable as Romola de' Bardi. Clad in the sim])lest garment of black serge, with a plain piece of black drapery drawn over her head, so as to ROMOLA Ix\ HER PLACE 117 hide all her hair, except the bands of gold that rippled apart on her brow, she was advancing from the Ponte Vecchio towards the Por' Santa Maria — the street in a direct line with the bridge, — when she found her way obstructed by the pausing of a bier, which was being carried by members of the company of San Jacopo del Popolo, in search for the unburied dead. The brethren at the head of the bier were stooping to examine something, while a group of idle workmen, with features paled and sharpened by hunger, were clustering around and all talking at once. " He 's dead, I tell you ! Messer Domeneddio has loved him well enough to take him." " Ah, and it would be well for us all if we could have our legs stretched out and go with our heads two or three bracci foremost ! It 's ill standing upright with hunger to prop you." " Well, well, he 's an old fellow. Death has got a poor bargain. Life 's had the best of hun." " And no Florentine, ten to one ! A beggar turned out of Siena. San Giovanni defend us ! They 've no need of soldiers to fight us. They scud us an army of starving men." " No, no ! This man is one of the prisoners turned out of the Stinche. I know by the gray patch where the prison badge was." " Keep quiet I Lend a hand ! Don't you see the breth- ren are going to lift him on the bier ? " " It 's likely he 's alive enough if he could only look it. The soul may be inside him if it had only a drop of verriaccia to warm it." " In truth, I think he is not dead," said one of the brethren, when they had hfted him on the bier. " He has perhaps only sunk down for want of food." 118 ROMOLA " Let me try to give him some wine/' said Romola, com- ing forward. She loosened the small flask which she carried at her belt, and, l^^aning towards the prostrate body, with a deft hand she applied a small ivory implement between the teeth, and poured into the mouth a few drops of wine. The stimulus acted : the wine was evidently swallowed. She poured more, till the head was moved a little towards her, and the eyes of the old man opened full upon her with the vague look of returning consciousness. Then for the first time a sense of complete recognition came over Romola. Those wild dark eyes opening in the sallow deep-lined face, with the white beard, which was now long again, were like an unmistakable signature to a remem- bered handwriting. The light of two summers had not made that image any fainter in Eomola's memory : the image of the escaped prisoner, whom she had seen in the Duomo the day when Tito first wore the armour, — at whose grasp Tito was paled with terror in the strange sketch she had seen in Piero's studio. A wretched tremor and palpitation seized her. Now, at last, perhaps, she was gomg to know some secret which might be more bitter than all that had gone before. She felt an impulse to dart away as from a sight of horror ; and again, a more imperious need to keep close by the side of this old man, whom, the divination of keen feeling told her, her hus- band had injured. In the very instant of this conflict she still leaned towards him and kept her right hand ready to admin- ister more wine, while her left was passed under his neck. Her hands trembled, but their habit of soothing helpfulness would have served to guide them without the direction of her thought. Baldassarre was looking at Aer for the first time. The close seclusion in which Romola's trouble had kept her in the weeks preceding her flight and his arrest had denied him The Adoring Angels, by Fra Filippo Lippi Part of a fresco in the Ancient Gallery. Florence ROMOLA IN HER PLACE 119 the opportunity he had sought of seeing the Wife who lived in the Via de' Bardi ; and at this moment the descriptions he had heard of the fair golden-haired woman were all gone^ like yesterday^s waves. "Will it not be well to carry him to the steps of S:iii Stefano?" said Eomola. "We shall cease then to stop up the street, and you can go on your way with your bier." They had only to move onward for about thirty yards before reaching the steps of San Stefano ; and by this time Baldassarre was able himself to make some efforts towards getting off the bier, and propping himself on the steps against the church doorway. The charitable brethren passed on ; but the group of interested spectators, who had nothing to do and much to say, had considerably increased. Tlie feeling towards the old man was not so entirely friendly now it was quite certain that he was alive, but the respect inspired by Romola's presence caused the passing remarks to be made in a rather more subdued tone than before. " Ah, they gave him his morsel every day in the Stinche, — that's why he can't do so well without it. You and I, Cecco, know better what it is to go to bed fasting." " Gnaffe ! that 's why the Magnificent Eight have turned out some of the prisoners, that they may shelter honest people instead. But if every thief is to be brought to life with good wine and wheaten bread, we Ciompi had better go and fill ourselves in Arno while the water's plenty." Eomola had seated herself on the steps by Baldassarre, and was saying, " Can you eat a little bread now ? perhaps by-and-by you will be able, if I leave it with you. I must go on, because I have promised to be at the hospital. But I will come back, if you will wait here, and then I will take you to some shelter. Do you understand ? Will you wait ? I will come back." 120 ROMOLA He looked dreamily at her, and repeated her words, " come back.'" It was uo wonder that his mind was enfeebled by his bodily exhaustion, but she hoped that he apprehended her meaning. She opened her basket, which was filled with pieces of soft bread, and put one of the pieces into his hand. " Do you keep your bread for those that can't swallow, madonna ? " said a rough-looking fellow, in a red nightcap, who had elbowed his way into tlie inmost circle of spectators, — a circle that was pressing rather closely on Romola. " If anybody is n't hungry,** said another, " I say, let him alone. He 's better off than people who 've got craving stomachs and no breakfast." " Yes, indeed ; if a man 's a mind to die, it 's a time to encourage him, instead of making him come back to life against his will. Dead men want no trencher.'* " Oh, you don't understand the Frate's charity," said a young man in an excellent cloth tunic, whose face showed no signs of want. " The Prate has been preaching to the birds, like Saint Anthony, and he's been telling the hawks they were made to feed the sparrows, as every good Floren- tine citizen was made to feed six starving beggar men from Arezzo or Bologna. Madonna, there, is a pious Piagnone ; she 's not going to throw away her good bread on honest citizens who 've got all the Prate's prophecies to swallow." "Come, madonna," said he of the red cap, "the old thief does n't eat the bread, you see ; you 'd better try us. We fast so much, we 're half saints already." The circle had narrowed till the coarse men — most of them gaunt from privation — had left hardly any margin round Eomola. She had been taking from her basket a small horn-cup, into which she put the piece of bread and just moistened it with wine; and hitherto she had not ap- peared to heed them. But now she rose to her feet, and ROMOLA IN HER PLACE 121 looked round at them. Instinctively the men who were nearest to her pushed backward a little, as if their rude nearness were the fault of those behind. Eomola held out the basket of bread to the man in the nightcap, looking at him without anj reproach in her glance, as she said, — " Hunger is hard to bear, I know, and you have the power to take this bread if you will. It was saved for sick women and children. You are strong men; but if you do not choose to suffer because you are strong, you have the power to take everything from the weak. You can take the bread from this basket ; but I shall watch by this old man ; I shall resist your taking the bread from him" For a few moments there was perfect silence, while Romola looked at the faces before her, and held out the basket of bread. Her own pale face had the slightly pinched look and the deepening of the eye-socket which indicates un- usual fasting in the habitually temperate, and the large direct gaze of her hazel eyes was all the more impressive. The man in the nightcap looked rather silly, and backed, thrusting his elbow into his neighbour's ribs with an air of moral rebuke. The backing was general, every one wishing to imply that he had been pushed forward against his will ; and the young man in the fine cloth tunic had disappeared. But at this moment the armed servitors of the Signoria, who had begun to patrol the luie of streets through which the procession was to pass, came up to disperse the group which was obstructing the narrow street. The man ad- dressed as Cecco retreated from a threatening mace up the church steps, and said to Romola, in a respectful tone, — " Madonna, if you want to go on your errands, I '11 take care of the old man." Cecco was a wild-looking figure : a very ragged tunic, 122 ROMOLA made shaggy and variegated by cloth-dust and chnging frag- ments of wool, gave relief to a pair of bare bouy arms and a long sinewy neck : his square jaw shaded by a bristly black beard, his bridgeless nose and low forehead, made his face look as if it had been crushed down for purposes of packing, and a narrow piece of red rag tied over his ears seemed to assist in the compression. Eomola looked at him with some hesitation. " Don't distrust me, madonna,*' said Cecco, who under- stood her look perfectly ; " I am not so pretty as you, but I \e got an old mother wlio eats my porridge for me. What ! there 's a heart inside me, and I \e bought a candle for the most Holy Virgin before now. Besides, see tliere, the old fellow is eat- ing his sop. He 's hale enough : he '11 be on his legs as well as the best of us by-and-by." ** Thank you for offering to take care of him, friend," said Romola, rather penitent for her doubting glance. Then leaning to Baldassarre, she said, ''Pray wait for me till I come again." He assented with a slight movement of the head and hand; and Romola went on her way towards the hospital of San Matteo, in the Piazza di San Marco. The Adoring Angel-s, b_v Fra Filippo Lippi Pari (if a fresco in the AncUnt Gallery, Florence I CHAPTER XXIII THE UNSEEN MADONNA IN returning from the hospital, more than an hour later, Eomola took a different road, making a wider circuit towards the river, which slie reached at some distance from the Ponte Vecchio. She turned her steps towards that bridge, intending to hasten to San Stefano in search of Bal- dassarre. She dreaded to know more about him, yet she felt as if, in forsaking him, she would be forsaking some near claim upon her. But when she approached the meeting of the roads where the Por^ Santa Maria would be on her right hand and the Ponte Vecchio on her left, she found herself involved in a crowd who suddenly fell on their knees ; and she immediately knelt with them. The Cross was passing, — the Great Cross of the Duomo — which headed the procession. Eomola was later than she had expected to be, and now she must wait till the procession had passed. As she rose from her knees, when the Cross had disappeared, the return to a standing jjosture, with nothing to do but gaze, made her more conscious of her fatigue than she had been while she had been walking and occupied. A shopkeeper by her side said, — " Madonna Eomola, you will be weary of standing : Gian Fantoni will be glad to give you a seat in his house. Here is his door close at hand. Let me open it for you. "Wliat ! he loves God and the Prate as we do. His house is yours." Eomola was accustomed now to be addressed in this fraternal way by ordinary citizens, whose faces were familiar 124 ROMOLA to her from her having seen them constantly in the Duomo. The idea of home had come to be identified for her less with the house in the Via de' Bardi^ where she sat in frequent lone- liness, than with the towered circuit of Florence, where there was hardly a turn of the streets at which she was not greeted with looks of appeal or of friendliness. She was glad enough to pass through the open door on her right hand and be led by the fraternal hose-vender to an upstairs window where a stout woman with three children, all in the plain garb of Piagnoni, made a place for her with much reverence above the bright hanging draperies. From this corner station she could see not only the procession pouring in solemn slowness between the lines of houses on the Ponte Vecchio, but also the river and the Lung' Arno on towards the bridge of the Santa Trinita. In sadness and in stillness came the slow procession. Not even a wailing chant broke the silent appeal for mercy •, there was only the tramp of footsteps, and the faint sweep of woollen garments. They were young footsteps that were passing when Eomola first looked from the window, — a long train of the Florentine youth, bearing high in the midst of them the white image of the youthful Jesus, with a golden glory above his head, standing by the tall cross where the thorns and the nails lay ready. After that train of fresh beardless faces came the myste- rious-looking Companies of Discipline, bound by secret rules to self-chastisement, and devout praise, and special acts of piety ; all wearing a garb which concealed the whole head and face except the eyes. Every one knew that these mysterious forms were Florentine citizens of various ranks, who might be seen at ordinary times going about the business of the shop, the counting-house, or the State ; but no member now was discernible as son, husband, or father. They had dropped 6 rr THE UNSEExN MADONNA 125 their personality, and walked as symbols of a common vow. Eacli company had its colour and its badge ; but the garb of all was a complete shroud, and left no expression but that of fellowship. In comparison with them, the multitude of monks seemed to be strongly distinguished individuals, hi spite of the com- mon tonsure and the common frock. Eirst came a white stream of reformed Benedictines; and then a much longer stream of the Frati Minori, or Pranciscans, in that age all clad in gray, with the knotted cord round their waists, and some of them with the zoccoli, or wooden sandals, below their bare feet; — perhaps the most numerous order in Florence, owning many zealods members who loved mankind and hated the Dominicans. And after the gray came the black of the Atigustinians of San Spirito, with more cultured human faces above it, — men who had inherited the library of Boccaccio, and had made the most learned company in Florence when learning was rarer ; then the white over dark of the Carmel- ites ; and then again the unmixed black of the Servites, that famous Florentine order founded by seven merchants who forsook their gains to adore the Divine Mother. And now the hearts of all on-lookers began to beat a little faster, either with hatred or with love, for there was a stream of black and white coming over the bridge, — of black mantles over white scapularics ; and every one knew that the Dominicans were coming. Those of Fiesole passed first. One black mantle parted by white after another, one tonsured head after another, and still expectation was sus- pended. They were very coarse mantles, all of them, and many were threadbare, if not ragged ; for the Prior of San Marco had reduced the fraternities under his rule to the strictest poverty and discipline. But in the long line of black and white there was at last singled out a mantle only 126 ROMOLA a little more worn than the rest, with a tonsured head above it which might not have appeared supremely remarkable to a stranger who had not seen it on bronze medals, with the sword of God as its obverse; or surrounded by an armed guard on the way to the Duomo ; or transfigured by the in- ward flame of the orator as it looked round on a rapt multitude. As the approach of Savonarola was discerned, none dared conspicuously to break the stillness by a sound which would rise above the solemn tramp of footsteps and the faint sweep of garments; nevertheless his ear, as well as other ears, caught a mingled sound of slow hissing that longed to be curses, and murmurs that longed to be blessings. Perhaps it was the sense that the hissing predominated which made two or three of his disciples in the foreground of the crowd, at the meeting of the roads, fall on their knees, as if some- thing divine were passing. The movement of silent homage spread : it went along the sides of the streets like a subtle shock, leaving some unmoved, while it made the most bend the knee and bow the head. But the hatred, too, gathered a more intense expression ; and as Savonarola passed up the Por' Santa Maria, Eomola could see that some one at an upper window spat upon him. Monks again — Frati Umiliati, or Humbled Brethren, from Ognissanti, with a glorious tradition of being the earliest workers in the wool-trade ; and again more monks — Vallombrosan and other varieties of Benedictines, reminding the instructed eye by niceties of form and colour that in ages of abuse, long ago, reformers had arisen who had marked a change of spirit by a change of garb ; till at last the shaven crowns were at an end, and there came the train of untonsured secular priests. Then followed the twenty-one incorporated Arts of THE UNSEEN MADONNA 127 Florence in long array^ with their banners floating above them in proud declaration that the bearers had their distinct functions from the bakers of bread to the judges and nota- ries. And then all the secondary officers of State, beginning with the less and going on to the greater, till the line of secularities was broken by the Canons of the Duomo, carry- ing a sacred relic, — the very head, enclosed in silver, of San Zenobio, immortal bishop of Florence, whose virtues were held to have saved the city perhaps a thousand years before. Here was the nucleus of the procession. Behind the relic came the archbishop in gorgeous cope, with canopy held above him ; and after him the mysterious hidden Image, — hidden first by rich curtains of brocade enclosing an outer painted tabernacle, but within this, by the more ancient tabernacle which had never been opened in the memory of livmg men, or the fathers of living men. In that inner shrine was the image of the Pitying Mother, found ages ago in the soil of L^Impruncta, uttering a cry as the spade struck it. Hitherto the unseen Image had hardly ever been carried to the Duomo without having rich gifts borne before it. There was no reciting the list of precious offerings made by emulous men and communities, especially of veils and curtains and mantles. But the richest of all these, it was said, had been given by a poor abbess and her nuns, who, having no money to buy materials, wove a mantle of gold brocade witli their prayers, embroidered it and adorned it with their prayers, and, finally, saw their work presented to the Blessed Virgin in the great piazza by two beautiful youths who spread out white whigs and vanished in the blue. But to-day there were no gifts carried before the taber- nacle: no donations were to be given to-day except to the poor. That had been the advice of Fra Girolamo, whose 128 ROMOLA preaching never insisted on gifts to the invisible powers, but only on help to visible need ; and altars had been raised at various points in front of the churches^ on which the ob- lations for the poor were deposited. Not even a torch was carried. Surely the hidden Mother cared less for torches and brocade than for the Avail of the hungry people. Florence was in extremity : she had done her utmost, and could only wait for something divine that was not in her own power. The Prate in the torn mantle had said that help would certainly come, and many of the faint-hearted were clinging more to their faith in the Prate's word, than to their faith in the virtues of the unseen Image. But there were not a few of the fierce-hearted who thought with secret rejoicing that the Prate's word miglit be proved false. Slowly the tabernacle moved forward, and knees were bent. There was profound stillness ; for the train of j)riests and chaplains from L'Impruneta stirred no passion in the on-looters. The procession was about to close with the Priors and the Gonfaloniere : the long train of companies and symbols which have their silent music and stir the mind as a chorus stirs it, was passing out of sight, and now a faint yearning hope was all that struggled with the accustomed despondency. Roniola, v/liose heart had been swelling, half with fore- boding, half with that enthusiasm of fellowship which the life of the last two years had made as habitual to her as the consciousness of costume to a vain and idle woman, gave a deep sigh, as at the end of some long mental tension, and remained on her knees for very languor; when suddenly there flashed from between the houses on to the distant bridge something bright-coloured. In the instant Eoraola started up and stretched out her arms, leaning from the window, while the black drapery fell from her head, and the golden ^^^y . -■ X „'!:. «^ -^ v^\.: THE UNSEEN MADONNA 129 gleam of her hair and the flush in her face seemed the effect of one illumination. A shout arose in the same instant ; the last troops of the procession paused, and all faces were turned towards the distant bridge. But the bridge was passed now : the horseman was pressing at full gallop along by the Arno ; the sides of his bay horse, just streaked with foam, looked all white from swiftness : his cap was flying loose by his red becchetto, and he waved an olive-branch in his hand. It was a messenger, — a messenger of good tidings ! The blessed olive-branch spoke afar off. But the impatient people could not wait. They rushed to meet the on-comer, and seized his horse^s rein, pushing and trampling. And now Homola could see that the horseman was her husband, who had been sent to Pisa a few days before on a private embassy. The recognition brought no new flash of joy into her eyes. She had checked her first impulsive atti- tude of expectation ; but her governing anxiety was still to know what news of relief had come for Florence. " Good news ! " " Best news ! " " News to be paid with hose {novelle da calze) ! " ^ were the vague answers with which Tito met the importunities of the crowd, until he had succeeded in pushing on his horse to the spot at the meeting of the ways where the Gonfaloniere and the Priors were awaiting him. There he paused, and bowing low, said, — " Magnificent Signori ! I have to deliver to you the joy- ful news that the galleys from Prance, laden with corn and men, have arrived safely in the port of Leghorn, by favour of a strong wind, which kept the enemy's fleet at a distance.^^ The words had no sooner left Tito's lips than they seemed to vibrate up the streets. A great shout rang through the 1 It was an ancient custom to give a pair of long trunk hose to the messenger who first brought a welcome piece of news. — Editor. VOL. II. — 9 130 ROMOLA air, and rushed along tlic river; and then another, and another; and the shouts were heard spreading along the line of the procession towards the Duomo ; and then there were fainter answering shouts, like the intermediate plash of distant waves in a great lake whose waters obey one impulse. For some minutes there was no attempt to speak further : the Signoria themselves lifted up their caps, and stood bare- headed in the presence of a rescue which had come from out- side the limit of their own power, — from that region of trust and resignation which has been in all ages called divine. At last, as the signal was given to move forward, Tito said, with a smile, — " I ouglit to say that any hose to be bestowed by the Magnificent Signoria in reward of these tidings are due, not to me, but to another man who had ridden hard to bring them, and would have been here in my place if his horse had not broken down just before he reached Signa. Meo di Sasso will doubtless be here in an hour or two, and may all the more justly claim the glory of the messenger, because he has had the chief labour and has lost the chief delight.'' It was a graceful way of putting a necessary statement ; and after a word of reply from the Projoosto, or spokesman of the Signoria, this dignified extremity of the procession passed on, and Tito turned his horse's head to follow in its train, while the great bell of the Palazzo Vecchio was already beginning to swing, and give a louder voice to the people's joy- In that moment, when Tito's attention had ceased to be imperatively directed, it might have been expected that he would look round and recognize Romola ; but he was appar- ently engaged with his cap, which, now the eager people were leading his horse, he was able to seize and place on his head, while his right hand was still encumbered by the olive-branch. II THE UNSEEN MADONNA 131 He had a becoming air of lassitude after his exertions ; and Eomola, instead of making any effort to be recognized by him, threw her black drapery over her head again, and re- mained perfectly quiet. Yet she felt almost sure that Tito had seen her; he had the power of seeing everything without seemiQg to see it. CHAPTER XXIV THE VISIBLE MADONNA THE crowd had no sooner passed onward than Romola descended to the street, and hastened to the steps of San Stefano. Cecco had been attracted with the rest towards the piazza, and she found Baldassarre standing alone against the church door, with the horn-cup in his hand, wait- ing for her. There was a striking change in him : the blank, dreamy glance of a half-returned consciousness had given place to a fierceness which, as she advanced and spoke to him, flashed upon her as if she had been its object. It was the glance of caged fury that sees its prey passing safe beyond the bars. Romola started as the glance was turned on her, and her immediate thought was that he had seen Tito. And as she felt the look of hatred grating on her, something like a hope arose that this man might be the criminal, and that her hus- band might not have been guilty towards him. If she could learn that now, by bringing Tito face to face with him, and have her mind set at rest ! " If you will come with me," she said, " I can give you shelter and food until you are quite rested and strong. Will you come ? " " Yes," said Baldassarre, " I shall be glad to get my strength. I want to get my strength," he repeated, as if he were mutterijig to himself ratlier than speaking to her. I ^7^^^" 5*^ THE VISIBLE MADONNA 133 " Come ! " she said^ inviting him to walk by her side, and taking the way by the Aruo towards the Ponte Rubacontc as the more private road. " I think you are not a Florentine/' she said presently, as they turned on to the bridge. He looked round at her without speaking. His suspi- cious caution was more strongly upon him than usual, just now that the fog of confusion and oblivion was made denser by bodily feebleness. But she was looking at him too, and there was something in her gentle eyes which at last compelled him to answer her. But he answered cautiously, — " No, I am no Florentine ; I am a lonely man.'* She observed his reluctance to speak to her, and dared not question him further, lest he should desire to quit her. As she glanced at him from time to time, her mind was busy with thoughts which quenched the faint hope that there was nothing painful to be revealed about her husband. If this old man had been in the wrong, where was the cause for dread and secrecy ? They walked on in silence till they reached the entrance into the Yia de' Bardi, and Romola noticed that he turned and looked at her with a sudden movement as if some shock had passed through him. A few moments after, she paused at the half-open door of the court and turned towards him. " Ah ! " he said, not waiting for her to speak, " you are his wife.'' " Wliose wife ? " said Romola. It would have been impossible for Baldassarre to recall any name at that moment. The very force with which the image of Tito pressed upon him seemed to expel any verbal sign. He made no answer, but looked at her with strange fixedness. She opened the door wide, and showed the court covered 134 ROMOLA with straw, on which lay four or five sick people, while some little children crawled or sat on it at their ease, — tiny pale creatures, biting straws and gurgling. "If you will come in,^' said Romola, tremulously, "I will find you a comfortable place, and bring you some more food/' "No, I will not come in," said Baldassarre. But he stood still, arrested by the burden of impressions under which his mind was too confused to choose a course. "Can I do nothing for you?" said Romola. "Let me give you some money, that you may buy food. It will be more plentiful soon." She had put her hand into her scarsella as she spoke, and held out her palm with several grossi ^ in it. She purposely offered him more than she would have given to any other man in the same circumstances. He looked at the coins a little while, and then said, — " Yes, I will take them." She poured the coins into his palm, and he grasped them tightly. " Tell me,^^ said Romola, almost beseechmgly, " What shall you — " But Baldassarre had turned away from her, and was walking again towards the bridge. Passing from it, straight on up the Yia del Fosso, he came upon the shop of Niccolb Caparra, and turned towards it without a pause, as if it had been the very object of his search. Niccolo was at that mo- ment in procession with the armourers of Florence, and there was only one apprentice in the shop. But there were all sorts of weapons in abundance hanging there, and Baldassarre's 1 Giosso, or grossone, was a small coin of old Florentine money of the value of twenty-one Tuscan quattrini, about twenty-nine ceatesimi of modern money. — Editob. THE VISIBLE MADONNA 135 eyes discerned what he was more hungry for than for bread. Niccolo himself would probably have refused to sell anything that might serve as a weapon to this man with signs of the prison on him ; but the apprentice, less observant and scrupulous, took three grossi for a sharp hunting-knife witli- out any hesitation. It was a conveniently small weapon, which Baldassarre could easily thrust within the breast of his tunic ; and he walked on, feeling stronger. That sharp edge might give deadliness to the thrust of an aged arm : at least it was a companion, it was a power in league with him, even if it failed. It would break against armour, but was the armour sure to be always there ? In those long months while vengeance had lain in prison, baseness had per- haps become forgetful and secure. The knife had been bought with the traitor's own money. That was just. Be- fore he took the money, he had felt what he should do with it, — buy a weapon. Yes, and if possible, food too, — food to nourish the arm that would grasp the weapon, food to nourish the body which was the temple of vengeance. When he had had enough bread, he should be able to think and act, — to think first how he could hide himself, lest Tito should have him dragged away again. With that idea of hiding in his mind, Baldassarre turned up the narrowest streets, bought himself some meat and bread, and sat down under the first loggia to eat. The bells that swung out louder and louder peals of joy, laying hold of him and making him vibrate along with all the air, seemed to him simply part of that strong world wliich was against him. Romola had watched Baldassarre until he had disap- peared round the turning into the Piazza de' Mozzi, half feeling that his departure was a relief, half reproaching her- self for not seeking with more decision to know the truth about him, for not assuring herself whether there were any 136 llOMOLA guiltless misery in his lot which she was not helpless to re- lieve. Yet what could she have done if the truth had proved to be the burden of some painful secret about her husband, in addition to the anxieties that already weighed upon her ? Surely a wife was permitted to desire ignorance of a hus- band's wrong-doing, since she alone must not protest and warn men against him. But that thought stirred too many intricate fibres of feeling to be pursued now in her weariness. It was a time to rejoice, since help had come to Florence ; and she turned into the court to tell the good news to her patients on their straw beds. She closed the door after her, lest the bells should drown her voice, and then throwing the black drapery from her head, that the women might see her better, she stood in the midst and told them that corn was coming, and that the bells were ringing for gladness at the news. They all sat up to listen, while the children trotted or crawled towards her, and pulled her black skirts, as if they were impatient at being all that long way off her face. She yielded to them, weary as she was, and sat down on the straw, while the little pale things peeped into her basket and pulled her hair down, and the feeble voices around her said, " The Holy Virgin be praised ! " " It was the procession ! " " The Mother of God has had pity on us ! " At last Eomola rose from the heap of straw, too tired to try and smile any longer, saying as she turned up the stone steps, — " I wlU come by-and-by, to bring you your dinner." " Bless you, madonna ! bless you ! " said the faint chorus, in much the same tone as that in which they had a few minutes before praised and thanked the unseen Madonna. Eomola cared a great deal for that music. She had no A I'iNzocHERA, or a sister, belonging to the Order of St. Francis ^^^Hk?*'"— yj^^^^^- 4 ^^H ^^v a^^^^^^K^ fly .^1 JHBWfe #v 1 HB .^-i^sHI^^BrHhhHSI^^^HHDf ^ocnitcns soli tar la cj ^racisci THE VISIBLE MADONNA 137 innate taste for tending the sick and clothing the ragged, like some women to whom the details of such work are welcome in themselves, simply as an occupation. Her early training had kept her aloof from such womanly labours ; and if she had not brought to them the inspiration of her deepest feel- ings, they would have been irksome to her. But they had come to be the one unshaken resting-place of her mind, the one narrow pathway on which the light fell clear. If the gulf between herself and Tito which only gathered a more perceptible wideness from her attempts to bridge it by sub- mission, brought a doubt whether, after all, the bond to which she had laboured to be true might not itself be false, — if she came away from her confessor, Fra Salvestro, or from some contact with the disciples of Savonarola among whom she worshipped, with a sickening sense that these people were miserably narrow, and with an almost impetu- ous reaction towards her old contempt for their superstition, — she found herself recovering a firm footing hi her works of womanly sympathy. Whatever else made her doubt, the help she gave to her fellow-citizens made her sure that Fra Girolamo had been right to call her back. According to his unforgotten words, her place had not been empty : it had been filled with her love and her labour. Florence had had need of her, and the more her own sorrow pressed upon her, the more gladness she felt in the memories, stretching through the two long years of hours and moments in which she had lightened the burden of life to others. All that ardour of her nature which could no longer spend itself in the woman's tenderness for father and husband, had transformed itself into an enthusiasm of sympathy with the general life. She had ceased to think that her own lot could be happy, — had ceased to think of happiness at all : the one end of her hie seemed to her to be the diminishing? of sorrow. 138 ROMOLA Her enthusiasm was continually stirred to fresh vigour by the influence of Savonarola. In spite of the wearisome visions and allegories from whicli she recoiled in disgust when they came as stale repetitions from other lips than his, her strong affinity for his passionate sympathy and the splen- dour of his aims had lost none of its power. His burning indignation against the abuses and oppression that made the daily story of the Church and of States had kindled the ready fire in her too. His special care for liberty and purity of government in Florence, with his constant reference of this immediate object to the wider end of a universal regenera- tion, had created in her a new consciousness of the great drama of human existence in which her life was a part ; and through her daily helpful contact with the less fortunate of her fellow-citizens this new consciousness became something stronger than a vague sentiment; it grew into a more and more definite motive of self-denying practice. She thought little about dogmas, and shrank from reflecting closely on the Frate's prophecies of the immediate scourge and closely following regeneration. She had submitted her mind to his, and had entered into communion with the Church, because in this way she had found an immediate satisfaction for moral needs which all the previous culture and experience of her life had left hungering. Fra Girolamo's voice had waked in her mind a reason for living, apart from personal enjoyment and personal affection ; but it was a reason that seemed to need feeding with greater forces than she pos- sessed within herself, and her submissive use of all ofiices of the Church was simply a watching and waiting if by any means fresh strength might come. The pressing problem for Romola just then was not to settle questions of contro- versy, but to keep alive that flame of unselfish emotion by which a life of sadness might still be a life of active love. THE VISIBLE MADONNA 139 Her trust in Savonarola^s nature as greater than her own made a large part of the strength she had found. And the trust was not to be lightly shaken. It is not force of in- tellect which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision that causes the eye to explore the warts on a face bright witli human expression ; it is simply the negation of high sensibil- ities. Eomola was so deeply moved by the grand energies of Savonarola's nature, that she found herself listening patiently to all dogmas and prophecies, when they came in the vehicle of his ardent faith and believing utterance. No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. Eomola's trust in Savonarola was something like a rope suspended securely by her path, making her step elastic w^hile she grasped it : if it were suddenly removed, no firmness of the ground she trod could save her from staggerhig, or perhaps from falling. CHAPTER XXV AT THE BAEBEr's SHOP A FTEE, that welcome appearance as the messenger with /-% the olive-branchy which was an unpromised favour of fortune^ Tito had other commissions to fulfil of a more premeditated character. He paused at the Palazza Vecchioj and awaited there the return of the Ten, who man- aged external and war affairs, that he might duly deliver to them the results of his private mission to Pisa, intended as a preliminary to an avowed embassy of which Bernardo Rucellai was to be the head, with the object of coming, if possible, to a pacific understanding with the Emperor Maximilian and the League. Tito's talents for diplomatic work had been well ascer- tained ; and as he gave with fulness and precision the results of his inquiries and interviews, Bernardo del Nero, who was at that time one of the Ten, could not withhold his admiration. He would have withheld it if he could ; for his original dislike of Tito had returned, and become stronger, since the sale of the library. Romola had never uttered a word to her god- father on the circumstances of the sale, and Bernardo had understood her silence as a prohibition to him to enter on the subject ; but he felt sure that the breach of her father's wish had been a blighting grief to her, and the old man's observant eyes discerned other hidications that lier married life was not happy. " Ah," he said inwardly, '' that doubtless is the reason she has taken to listening to Fra Girolamo, and going among A VIEW of Fiesole and the hills outside Porta a San Gallo wr I ^■m-:^'^^* From tilt ilrawing by Bartolommeo Jiustichi, ffteenin ctntury AT THE BARBER^S SHOP 141 the Piagnoni^ which I never expected from her. These women, if they are not happy, and have no cljildren, must either take to folly or to some overstrained religion that makes them think they '\e got all heaven's work on their shoulders. And as for my poor child Romola, it is as I always said, — the cramming with Latin and Greek has left her as much a woman as if she had done nothing all day but prick her fingers with the needle. And this husband of hers, who gets employed everywhere, because he 's a tool witli a smooth handle, I wish Tornabuoni and the rest may not find their fingers cut. Well, well, solco torfo, sacco dritto, — many a full sack comes from a crooked furrow; and he who will be captain of none but honest men will have small hire to pay.'' With this long-established conviction that there could be no moral sifting of political agents, the old Plorentine abstained from all interference in Tito's disfavour. Apart from what must be kept sacred and private for Eomola's sake, Bernardo had nothing direct to allege against the useful Greek, except that he was a Greek, and that he, Bernardo, did not like him ; for the doubleness of feigning attachment to the popular gov- ernment, while at heart a Medicean, was common to Tito with more than half of the Medicean party. He only feigned with more skill than the rest : tliat was all. So Bernardo was simply cold to Tito, who returned the coldness with a scrupu- lous, distant respect. And it was still the notion in Florence that the old tie between Bernardo and Bardo made any ser- vice done to Romola's husband an acceptable homage to her godfather. After delivering himself of his charge at the Old Palace, Tito felt that the avowed official work of the day was done. He was tired and adust with long riding ; but he did not go home. There were certain things in his scarsella and on his mind from which he wished to free himself as soon as 142 ROMOLA possible, but the opportunities must be found so skilfully that they must iwt seem to be sought. He walked from the Palazzo in a sauntering fashion towards the Piazza del Duomo. The procession was at an end now, but the bells were still ringing, and the people were moving about the streets rest- lessly, longing for some more definite vent to their joy. If the Prate could have stood up in the great piazza and preached to them, they might have been satisfied ; but now, in spite of the new discipline which declared Christ to be the special King of the Florentines, and required all pleasures to be of a Christian sort, there was a secret longing in many of the youngsters who shouted " Viva Gesii ! " for a little vigorous stone-throwing in sign of thankfulness. Tito, as he passed along, could not escape being recog- nized by some as the welcome bearer of the olive-branch, and could only rid himself of an inconvenient ovation, chiefly in the form of eager questions, by telling those who pressed on him that Meo di Sasso, the true messenger from Leghorn, must now be entering, and might certainly be met towards the Porta San Prediano. He could tell much more than Tito knew. Freeing himself from importunities in this adroit manner, he made his way to the Piazza del Duomo, casting his long eyes round the space with an air of the utmost carelessness, but really seeking to detect some presence which might furnish him with one of his desired opportunities. The fact of the procession having terminated at the Duomo made it probable that there would be more than the usual concentration of loungers and talkers in the piazza and round Nello^s shop. It was as he expected. There was a group leaning against the rails near the north gates of the baptistery,^ so exactly what he sought that he looked more indifferent than ever, and 1 Tlie rails in front of S. Giovanni did not exist at this period. — Editor. AT THE BARBER^S SHOP 143 seemed to recognize the tallest member of the group entirely by chance as he had half passed him, just turning his head to give him a slight greeting, while he tossed the end of his becchetto over his left shoulder. Yet the tall, broad-shouldered personage greeted in that slight way looked like one who had considerable claims. He wore a richly embroidered tunic, with a great show of linen, after the newest French mode, and at his belt there hung a sword and poniard of fine workmanship. His hat, with a red plume in it, seemed a scornful protest against the gravity of Florentine costume, which had been exaggerated to the utmost under the influence of the Piagnoni. Certain undefinable in- dications of youth made the breadth of his face and the large diameter of his waist ajjpear the more emphatically a stamp of coarseness, and his eyes had that rude desecrating stare at all men and things which to a refined mind is as intolerable as a bad odour or a flaring light. He and his companions, also young men dressed expen- sively and wearing arms, were exchanging jokes with that sort of ostentatious laughter which implies a desire to prove that the laughter is not mortified, though some people might suspect it. There were good reasons for such a suspicion ; for this broad-shouldered man with the red feather was Dolfo Spini, leader of the Compagnacci, or Evil Companions, — that is to say, of all the dissolute young men belonging to the old aristocratic party, enemies of the Mediceans, enemies of the popular government, but still more bitter enemies of Savonarola. Dolfo Spini, heir of the great house with the loggia, over the bridge of the Santa Trinita, had organized these young men into an armed band, as sworn champions of extravagant suppers and all the pleasant sins of the flesh, against reforming pietists who threatened to make the world chaste and temperate to so intolerable a degree that there 144 ROMOLA would soon be no reason for living, except tlie extreme un- pleasantness of the alternative. Up to this very morning he had been loudly declaring that Tlorenee was given up to famine and ruin entirely through its blind adherence to the advice of the Frate, and that there could be no salvation for Florence but in joining the League and driving the Frate out of the city, — sending him to Eome, in fact, whither he ought to have gone long ago in obedience to the summons of the Pope. It was suspected, therefore, that Messer Dolfo Spiiii^s heart was not aglow with pure joy at the unexpected succours which had come in apparent fulfilment of the Frate's prediction ; and the laughter, which was ringing out afresh as Tito joined the group at Nello's door, did not serve to dissipate the suspicion. For leaning against the door- post in the centre of the group was a close-shaven, keen-eyed personage, named Niccolo Macchiavelli, who, young as he was, had penetrated all the small secrets of egoism. " Messer Dolfo's head," he was saying, " is more of a pumpkin than I thought. I measure men's dulness by the devices they trust in for deceiving others. Your dullest animal of all is he who grins and says he does n't mind just after he has had his sliins kicked. If I were a trifle duller, now," he went on, smiling as the circle opened to admit Tito, " I should pretend to be fond of this Melema, who has got a secretaryship that would exactly suit me, — as if Latin ill-paid could love better Latin that 's better paid ! Melema, you are a pestiferously clever fellow, very much in my way, and I 'm sorry to hear you 've had another piece of good-luck to-day." " Questionable luck, Niccolo," said Tito, touching him on the shoulder in a frieruUy way ; " I have got nothing by it yet but being laid hokl of and breathed upon by wool- beaters, when I am as soiled and battered with riding as a tabellario (letter-carrier) from Bologna." The palace built for Bernardo Rucellai by Leon Battista Albert! AT THE BARBER^S SHOP 145 " Ah ! you want a touch of my art, Messer Oratore," said Nello, who had come forward at the sound of Tito's voice ; " your chin, I perceive, has yesterday's crop upon it. Come, come, — consign yourself to the priest of all the Muses. Sandro, quick with the lather ! '* " In truth, Nello, that is just what I most desire at this moment," said Tito, seating himself ; " and that was why I turned my steps towards thy shop, instead of going home at once, when I had done my business at the Palazzo." " Yes, indeed, it is not fitting that you should present yourself to Madonna Eomola with a rusty chin and a tangled zazzera. Nothing that is not dainty ought to approach the Florentine lily; though I see her constantly going about like a sunbeam among the rags that line our comers, — if indeed she is not more like a moonbeam now, for I thought yesterday, when I met her, that she looked as pale and worn as that fainting Madonna of Fra Giovanni's. You must see to it, my bel erudito : she keeps too many fasts and vigils in your absence." Tito gave a melancholy shrug. " It is too true, Nello. She has been depriving herself of half her proper food every day during this famine. But what can I do? Her mind has been set all aflame. A husband's influence is powerless against the Prate's." " As every other influence is likely to be, that of the Holy Pather included," said Domenico Cennini, one of the group at the door, who had turned in with Tito. " I don't know whether you have gatliered anytliing at Pisa about the way the wind sits at Rome, Melema ?" " Secrets of the council chamber, IMesser Domenico ! " said Tito, smiling and opening his palms in a depreca- tory manner. " An envoy must be as dumb as a father confessor." VOL. II. — 10 146 ROMOLA " Certainly, certainly," said Cennini, " I ask for no breach of that rule. Well, my belief is, that if his Holiness were to drive Fra Girolamo to extremity, the Frate would move heaven and earth to get a General Council of the Church, — ay, and would get it too ; and I, for one, should not be sorry, though I am no Piagnone." " With leave of your greater experience, Messer Dome- nico," said Macchiavelli, "I must differ from you, — not in your wish to see a General Council which might reform the Church, but in your belief that the Frate will checkmate his Holiness. The Frate^s game is an impossible one. If he had contented himself with preaching against the vices of Rome, and with prophesying that in some way, not men- tioned, Italy would be scourged, depend upon it Pope Alex- ander would have allowed him to spend his breath in that way as long as he could find hearers. Such spiritual blasts as those knock no walls down. But the Frate wants to be something more than a spiritual trumpet : he wants to be a lever, and what is more, he is a lever. He wants to spread the doctrine of Christ by maintaining a popular government in Florence, and the Pope, as I know, on the best authority, has private views to the contrary." "Then Florence will stand by the Frate," Cennini broke in, with some fervour. " I myself should prefer that he would let his prophesying alone ; but if our freedom to choose our own government is to be attacked — I am an obe- dient son of the Church, but I would vote for resisting Pope Alexander the Sixth, as our forefathers resisted Pope Gregory the Eleventh." " But pardon me, Messer Domenico," said Macchiavelli, sticking his thumbs into his belt, and speaking with that cool enjoyment of ex])osition wliich surmounts every other force in discussion. " Have you correctly seized the Prate's AT THE BARBER'S SHOP 147 position ? How is it that lie has become a lever, and made himself worth attacking by an acute man like his Holiness ? Because he has got the ear of the people : because he gives them threats and promises, which they believe come straight from God, not only about hell, purgatory, and paradise, but about Pisa and our Great Council. But let events go against him, so as to shake the people's faith, and the cause of his power will be the cause of his fall. He is accumulating three sorts of hatred on his head, — the hatred of average mankind against every one who wants to lay on them a strict yoke of virtue ; the hatred of the stronger powers in Italy who want to farm Florence for their own purposes ; and the hatred of the people, to whom he has ventured to promise good in this world, instead of confining his promises to the next. If a prophet is to keep his power, he must be a prophet like Mahomet, with an army at his back, that when the people's faith is fainting it may be frightened into life again." " Rather sum up the three sorts of hatred in one," said Prancesco Cei, impetuously, " and say he has won the hatred of all men who have sense and honesty, by inventing hypo- critical lies. His proper place is among the false proph- ets in the Inferno, who walk with their heads turned hindforemost." " You are too angry, my Prancesco," said Macchiavelli, smiling ; " you poets are apt to cut the clouds in your wrath. I am no votary of tlie Prate's, and would not lay down my little finger for his veracity. But veracity is a plant of para- dise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls. You yourself, my Prancesco, tell poetical lies only ; partly compelled by the poet's fervour, partly to please your audi- ence ; but you object to lies in prose. Well, the Prate differs from you as to the boundary of poetry, that is all. When he 148 ROMOLA gets iuto the pulpit of the Duomo, lie has the fervour within him, and without him he has the audience to please. Ecco ! " " You are somewhat lax tliere, Niccolo/' said Cennini, gravely. " I myself believe in the Frate's integrity, though I don^t believe in his prophecies ; and as long as his integrity is not disproved, we have a popular party strong enough to protect him and resist foreign interference." " A party that seems strong enough," said Macchiavelli, with a shrug, and an almost imperceptible glance towards Tito, who was abandoning himself with much enjoyment to Nello's combing and scenting. " But how many Mediceans are there among you ? How many who will not be turned round by a private grudge?" " As to the Mediceans," said Cennini, " I believe there is very little genuine feeling left on behalf of the Medici. Who would risk much for Piero de^ Medici ? A few old stanch friends, perhaps, like Bernardo del Nero ; but even some of those most connected with the family are hearty friends of the popular government, and would exert them- selves for the Frate. I was talking to Giannozzo Pucci only a little while ago, and I am convinced there's nothing he would set his face against more than against any attempt to alter the new order of things." " You are right there, Messer Domenico," said Tito, with a laughing meaning in his eyes, as he rose from the shaving- chair j " and I fancy the tender passion came in aid of hard theory there. I am persuaded there was some jealousy at the bottom of Giannozzo's alienation from Piero de^ Medici ; else so amiable a creature as he would never feel the bitterness he sometimes allows to escape him in that quarter. He was in the procession with you, I suppose ? " " No," said Cennini ; " he is at his villa, — went there three days ago." AT THE BARBER'S SHOP 149 Tito was settling his cap and glancing down at his splashed hose as if he hardly heeded the answer. In reality he had obtained a much-desired piece of information. He had at that moment in his scarsella a crushed gold ring which he had engaged to deliver to Giannozzo Pucci. He had received it from an envoy of Piero de' Medici, whom he had ridden out of his way to meet at Certaldo on the Siena road. Since Pucci was not in the town, he would send the ring by Pra Michele, a Carthusian lay Brother in the service of the Medi- ceans ; and the receipt of that sign would bring Pucci back to hear the verbal part of Tito^s mission. " Behold him ! " said Nello, flourishing his comb and pointing it at Tito, " the handsomest scholar in the world or in the wolds, now he has passed through my hands ! A trifle thinner in the face, though, than when he came in his first bloom to Florence, — eh? and, I vow, there are some lines just faintly hinting themselves about your mouth, Messer Oratore ! Ah, mind is an enemy to beauty ! I myself was thought beautiful by the women at one time, — when I was in my swaddling-bands. But now — oime ! I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face ! " Tito, laughing with the rest as Nello looked at himself tragically in the hand-mirror, made a sign of farewell to the company generally, and took his departure. " I 'm of our old Piero di Cosimo's mind/' said Francesco Cei. " I dont half like Melema. That trick of smiling gets stronger than ever, — no wonder he has lines about the mouth.*' " He 's too successful," said ]\[acchiavelli, playfully. " I 'm sure there 's something wrong about him, else he wouldn't have that secretaryship." " He 's an able man," said Ccnnini, in a tone of judicial fairness. " I and my brother have always found him useful 150 ROMOLA with our Greek sheets, and he gives great satisfaction to the Ten. I like to see a young man work his way upward by merit. And the secretary Scala, who befriended him from the first, thinks highly of him still, I know.'' " Doubtless," said a notary in the background. " He writes Scala's official letters for him, or corrects them, and gets well paid for it too." " I wish Messer Bartolommeo would pay me to doctor his gouty Latin," said Macchiavelli, with a shrug. " Did he tell you about the pay, Ser Ceccone, or was it Melema himself ? " he added, looking at the notary with a face ironically innocent. " Melema ? No, indeed," answered Ser Ceccone. " He is as close as a nut. He never brags. That 's why he ^s em- ployed everywhere. They say he 's getting rich with doing all sorts of underhand work." " It is a little too bad," said Macchiavelli, " and so many able notaries out of employment ! " " Well, I must say I thought that was a nasty story a year or two ago about the man who said he had stolen jewels,'* said Cei. ^' It got hushed up somehow ; but I remember Piero di Cosimo said, at the time, he believed there was something in it, for he saw Melema's face when the man laid hold of him, and he never saw a visage so ' painted with fear,' as our sour old Dante says." "Come, spit no more of that venom, Francesco," said Nello, getting indignant, "else I shall consider it a public duty to cut your hair awry the next time I get you under my scissors. That story of the stolen jewels was a lie. Bernardo Rucellai and the Magnificent Eight knew all about it. The man was a dangerous madman, and he was very properly kept out of mischief in prison. As for our Piero di Cosimo, his wits are running after the wind of Mongibello : he has such an extravagant fancy that he would take a lizard for a crocodile. AT THE BARBER^S SHOP 151 No : that story lias been dead and buried too long, — our noses object to it." " It is true/' said Macchiavelli. " You forget the dan- ger of the precedent, Francesco. The next mad beggarman may accuse you of stealing his verses, or me, God help me ! of stealing his coppers. Ah ! " he went on, turning towards the door, " Dolfo Spiui has carried his red feather out of the piazza. That captain of swaggerers would like the Bepublic to lose Pisa just for the chance of seeing the people tear the frock off the Prate's back. With your pardon, Prancesco, — I know he is a friend of yours, — there are few things I should like better than to see him play the part of Capo d'Oca, who went out to the tournament blowing his trumpets and returned with them in a bag.'' CHAPTER XXYI BY A STREET LAMP THAT evening, when it was dark and threatening rain, Eomola, returning with Maso and the lantern bj lier side, from the hospital of San Matteo, which she had visited after vespers, encountered her husband just issuing from the monastery of San Marco. Tito, who had gone out again shortly after his arrival in the Via de^ Bardi, and had seen little of Romola during the day, immediately proposed to accompany her home, dismissing Maso, whose short steps annoyed him. It was only usual for him to pay her such an official attention when it was obviously demanded from him. Tito and Romola never jarred, never remonstrated with each other. They were too hopelessly alienated in their inner life ever to have that contest which is an effort towards agree- ment. They talked of all affairs, public and private, with careful adlierence to an adopted course. If Tito wanted a supper prepared in the old library, now pleasantly furnished as a banqueting-room, Romola assented, and saw that every- thing needful was done ; and Tito, on his side, left her en- tirely uncontrolled in her daily habits, accepting the help she offered him in transcribing or making digests, and in return meeting her conjectured want of sujjplies for her charities. Yet he constantly, as on this very morning, avoided exchang- ing glances with her; affected to believe that she was out of the house, in order to avoid seeking her in her own room ; and playfully attributed to her a perpetual preference of solitude to his society. z*-: BY A STREET LxVMP 153 111 the first ardour of her self-conquest, after she had renounced her resolution of flight, Romola had made many timid efforts towards the return of a frank relation between them. But to her such a relation could only come by open speech about their differences, and the attempt to arrive at a moral understanding; while Tito could only be saved from alienation from her by such a recovery of her effusive tenderness as would have presupposed oblivion of their dif- ferences. He cared for no exjjlanation between them ; he felt any thorough explanation impossible : he would have cared to have Eomola fond again, and to her, fondness was impossible. She could be submissive and gentle, she could repress any sign of repulsion ; but tenderness was not to be feigned. She was helplessly conscious of the result : her husband was alien- ated from her. It was an additional reason why she should be care- fully kept outside of secrets which he would in no case have chosen to communicate to her. With regard to his politi- cal action he sought to convince her that he considered the cause of the Medici hopeless ; and that on that practical ground, as well as in theory, he heartily served the popular government, in which she had now a warm interest. But impressions subtle as odours made her uneasy about his re- lations with San Marco. She was painfully divided between the dread of seeing any evidence to arouse her suspicions, and the impulse to watch lest any harm should come that she might have arrested. As they walked together this evening, Tito said : " The business of the day is not yet quite ended for me. I shall conduct you to our door, my Romola, and then I must fulfil another commission, which will take me an hour, perhaps, before I can return and rest, as I very much need to do." And then he talked amusingly of what he had seen at 154 . ROMOLA Pisa, until they were close upon a loggia, near wliich there hung a lamp before a picture of the Virgin. The street was a quiet one, and hitherto they had passed few people; but now there was a sound of many approaching footsteps and confused voices. " We shall not get home without a wetting, unless we take shelter under this convenient loggia,^^ Tito said hastily, hurrying Romola, with a slightly startled movement, up the step of the loggia. " Surely it is useless to wait for this small drizzling rain,'^ said Romola, in surprise. " No ; I felt it becoming heavier. Let us wait a little." With that wakefulness to the faintest indication which be- longs to a mind habitually in a state of caution, Tito lind detected by the glimmer of the lamp that the leader of tlie advancing group wore a red feather and a glittering sword- hilt, — in fact, was almost the last person in the world he would have chosen to meet at this hour with Romola by liis side. He had already during the day had one momentous interview with Dolfo Spini, and the business he had spoken of to Romola as yet to be done was a second interview with that personage, a sequence of the visit he had paid at San Marco. Tito, by a long-preconcerted plan, had been the bearer of letters to Savonarola, — carefully forged letters ; one of them, by a stratagem, bearing the very signature and seal of the Cardinal of Naples, who of all the Sacred College had most exerted his influence at Rome in favour of the Frate. The purport of the letters was to state that the Cardinal was on his progress from Pisa, and, unwilling for strong reasons to enter Florence, yet desirous of taking counsel with Sa- vonarola at this difficult juncture, intended to pause this very day at San Casciano, about ten miles from the city, whence he would ride out the next morning in the plain garb BY A STREET LAMP 155 of a priest, and meet Savonarola, as if casually, five miles on the Plorence road, two hours after sunrise. The plot, of which these forged letters were the initial step, was that DoKo Spmi with a band of his Compagnacci was to be posted in ambush on the road, at a lonely spot about five miles from the gates ; that he was to seize Savonarola with the Domini- can brother who would accompany him according to rule, and deliver him over to a small detachment of ]\Iilanese horse in readiness near San Casciano, by whom he was to be carried into the Eoman territory. There was a strong chance that the penetrating Frate would suspect a trap, and decline to incur the risk, which he had for some time avoided, of going beyond the city walls. Even when he preached, his friends held it necessary that he should be attended by an armed guard ; and here he was called on to commit himself to a solitary road, with no other attendant than a fellow-monk. On this ground the minimum of time had been given him for decision, and the chance in favour of his acting on the letters was that the eagerness with which his mind was set on the combining of interests within and without the Church towards the procuring of a General Council, and also the expectation of immediate service from the Cardinal in the actual juncture of his contest with the Pope, would triumph over his shrewdness and caution in the brief space allowed for deliberation. Tito had had an audience of Savonarola, having declined to put the letters into any hands but his, and with consummate art had admitted that incidentally, and by inference, he was able so far to conjecture tlieir purport as to believe they re- ferred to a rendezvous outside the gates, in which case he urged that the Frate should seek an armed guard from the Signoria, and offered his services in carrying the request with the utmost privacy. Savonarola had replied briefly 156 ROMOLA that this was impossible : an armed guard was incompatible with privacy. He spoke with a flashing eye, and Tito felt convinced that he meant to incur the risk. Tito himself did not much care for the result. He man- aged his afl'airs so cleverly that all results, he considered, must turn to liis advantage. Whichever party came uppermost, he was secure of favour and money. That is an indecorously naked statement ; the fact, clothed as Tito habitually clothed it, was that his acute mind, discerning the equal hollowness of all parties, took the only rational course in making them subservient to his own interest. If Savonarola fell into the snare, there were diamonds in question and papal patronage ; if not, Tito^s adroit agency had strengthened his position with Savonarola and with Spini, while any confidences he obtained from them made him the more valuable as an agent of the Mediceans. But Spini was an inconvenient colleague. He had cun- ning enough to delight in plots, but not the ability or self- command necessary to so complex an effect as secrecy. He frequently got excited with drinking, for even sober Florence had its " Beoni/' or topers, both lay and clerical, who became loud at taverns and private banquets ; and in spite of the agreement between him and Tito, that their public recognition of each other should invariably be of the coolest sort, there was always the possibility that on an evening encounter he would be suddenly blurting and affectionate. The delicate sign of casting the becchetto over the left shoulder was under- stood in the morning, but the strongest hint short of a threat might not suffice to keep off a fraternal grasp of the shoulder in the evening. Tito's chief hope now was that Dolfo Spini had not caught sight of him, and the hope would have been well founded if Spini had had no clearer view of him than he had caught of BY A STREET LAMP 157 Spini. But^ liimself in shadow, he had seen Tito illuminated for an instant by the direct rays of the lamp, and Tito in his way was as strongly marked a personage as the captain of the Compagnacci. Eomola^s black-shrouded figure had escaped notice, and she now stood behind her husband's shoulder in the corner of the loggia. Tito was not left to hope long. " Ha ! my carrier-pigeon," grated Spini's harsh voice, in what he meant to be an undertone, while his hand grasped Tito's shoulder ; " what did you run into hiding for ? You did n't know it was comrades who were coming. It 's well I caught sight of you ; it saves time. What of the chase to- morrow morning? Will the bald-headed game rise? Are the falcons to be got ready ? " If it had been in Tito's nature to feel an access of rage, he would have felt it against this bull-faced accomplice, unfit either for a leader or a tool. His lips turned white, but his excitement came from the pressing difficulty of choosing a safe device. If he attempted to hush Spini, that would only deepen E-omola's suspicion, and he knew her well enough to know that if some strong alarm were roused in her, she was neither to be silenced nor hoodwinked ; on the other hand, if he re- pelled Spini angrily, the wine-breathing Compagnaccio might become savage, being more ready at resentment than at the divhiation of motives. He adopted a third course, which proved that Romola retained one sort of power over him, — the power of dread. He pressed her hand, as if intending a hint to her, and said in a good-humoured tone of comradeship, — '^ Yes, my Dolfo, you may prepare in all security. But take no trumpets with you." " Don't be afraid," said Spini, a little piqued. " No need to play Ser Sacccnte with me. I know where the devil keeps his tail as well as you do. What ! he swallowed the 158 ROMOLA bait whole ? The prophetic nose did ii't scent the liook at all ? " he went on^ lowering his tone a little, with a blundering sense of secrecy. " The brute will not be satisfied till he has emptied the bag," thought Tito ; but aloud he said : " Swallowed all as easily as you swallow a cup of Trebbiano. Ila ! I see torches : there must be a dead body coming. The pestilence has been spreading, I hear." " Santiddio ! I hate the sight of those biers. Good- night," said Spini, hastily moving off. The torches were really coming, but they preceded a churcli dignitary who was returning homeward; the sugges- tion of the dead body and the pestilence was Tito^s device for getting rid of Spini without telling him to go. The moment he had moved away, Tito turned to Eomola, and said quietly, — "Do not be alarmed by anything that bestia has said, my Romola. We will go on now : I think the rain has not increased." She was quivering with indignant resolution ; it was of no use for Tito to speak in that unconcerned way. She distrusted every word he could utter "I will not go on," she said. "I will not move nearer home until I have some security against this treachery being perpetrated." " Wait, at least, until these torches have passed," said Tito, with perfect self-command, but with a new rising of dis- like to a wife who this time, he foresaw, might have the power of thwarting him in spite of the husband^s predominance. The torches passed, with the Yicario dell' Arcivescovo, and due reverence was done by Tito, but Eomola saw nothing outward. If for the defeat of this treachery, in which she believed with all the force of long presentiment, it had been necessary at that moment for her to spring on her husband The Holy Sepulchre, by Leon Battista Albert!, in the Rucellai Chapel BY A STREET LAMP 159 and hurl herself with him down a precipice, she felt as if she could have done it. Union with this man ! At that moment the self-quelling discipline of two years seemed to be nullified : she felt nothing but that they were divided. They were nearly in darkness again, and could only see each other's faces dimly. " Tell me the truth, Tito, — this time tell me the truth," said Eomola, in a low, quivering voice. " It will be safer for you." "Why should I desire to tell you anything else, my angry saint ? " said Tito, with a slight touch of contempt, which was the vent of his annoyance ; " since the truth is precisely that over which you have most reason to rejoice, — namely, that my knowing a plot of Spini^s enables me to secure the Frate from falling a victim to it." "What is the plot?" "That I decline to tell," said Tito. "It is enough that the Frate's safety will be secured." " It is a plot for drawing him outside the gates, that Spini may murder him." " Tliere has been no intention of murder. It is simply a plot for compelling him to obey the Pope's summons to Rome. But as I serve the popular government, and tliink the Frate^s presence here is a necessary means of maintaining it at present, I choose to prevent his departure. You may go to sleep with entire case of mind to-night." For a moment Eomola was silent. Then she said, in a voice of anguish, " Tito, it is of no use : I have no belief in you." She could just discern his action as he shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his palms in silence. That cold dislike which is tlie anger of unimpassioned beings was hardening within him. 160 ROMOLA " If the Frate leaves the city, — if any harm happens to him/^ said Romohi, after a slight pause, in a new tone of indignant resolution, — "I will declare what I have heard to the Signoria, and you will be disgraced. What if I am your wife ? " she went on imjjetuously ; " I will be disgraced with you. If we are united, I am that part of you that will save you from crime. Others shall not be betrayed/'' " I am quite aware of what you would be likely to do, anima mia" said Tito, in the coolest of his liquid tones; " therefore if you have a small amount of reasoning at your disposal just now, consider that if you believe me in nothing else, you may believe me when I say I will take care of myself, and not put it in your power to ruin me.''' ''Then you assure me that the Frate is warned, — he will not go beyond the gates ? '' " He shall not go beyond the gates/' There was a moment's pause, but distrust was not to be expelled. " I will go back to San Marco now and find out," Eomola said, making a movement forward. " You shall not ! " said Tito, in a bitter whisper, seizing her wrists with all his masculine force. " I am master of you. You shall not set yourself in opposition to me." There were passers-by approaching. Tito had heard them, and that was why he spoke in a whisper. Eomola was too conscious of being mastered to have struggled, even if she had remained unconscious that witnesses were at hand. But she was aware now of footsteps and voices, and her habitual sense of personal dignity made her at once yield to Tito's movement towards leading her from the loggia. They walked on in silence for some time, under the small drizzling rain. The first rush of indignation and alarm in Eomola had begun to give way to more complicated BY A STREET LAMP 161 feelings, which rendered speech and action difficult. In that simpler state of vehemence, open opposition to the husband from whom she felt her soul revolting had had the aspect of temptation for her ; it seemed the easiest of all courses. But now, habits of self-questioning, memories of impulse sub- dued, and that proud reserve which all discipline had left unmodified, began to emerge from the flood of passion. The grasp of her wrists, which asserted her liusband^s physi- cal predominance, instead of arousing a new fierceness in her, as it might have done if her impetuosity had been of a more vulgar kind, had given her a momentary shuddering horror at this form of contest with him. It was the first time they had been in declared hostility to each other since her flight and return, and the check given to her ardent resolution then, retained the power to arrest her now. In this altered condition her mind began to dwell on tlie probabilities that would save her from any desperate course : Tito would not risk betrayal by her; whatever had been his original inten- tion, he must be determined now by the fact that she knew of the plot. She was not bound now to do anything else than to hang over him that certainty, — that if he deceived her, her lips would not be closed. And then, it was possible — yes, she must cling to that possibility till it was disproved — that Tito had never meant to aid in the betrayal of the Prate. Tito, on his side, was busy with thoughts, and did not speak again till they were near home. Then he said, — "Well, Romola, have you now had time to recover calmness ? If so, you can supply your want of belief in me by a little rational inference : you can see, I presume, that if I had had any intention of furthering Spini's plot, I should now be aware that the possession of a fair Piaguone for my wife, who knows the secret of the plot, would be a serious obstacle in my way." VOL. II. — 11 162 ROMOLA Tito assumed the tone which was just then the easiest to him, conjecturing that in Eomola^s present mood persuasive deprecation would be lost upon her. " Yes, Tito," she said in a low voice, " I think you be- lieve that I would guard the Eepublic from further treachery. You are right to believe it : if the Frate is betrayed, I will denounce you." She paused a moment, and then said with an effort : " But it was not so. I have perhaps spoken too hastily, — you never meant it. Only, why will you seem to be that man's comrade ?" '^ Such relations are inevitable to practical men, my Romola," said Tito, gratified by discerning the struggle within her. " You fair creatures live in the clouds. Pray go to rest with an easy heart," he added, opening the door for her. The Holy Sepulchre. Another view CHAPTEE XXVn CHECK TITO'S clever arrangements had been unpleasantly- frustrated by trivial incidents which could not enter into a clever man's calculations. It was very seldom that he walked with Eomola in the evening, yet he had hap- pened to be walking with her precisely on this evening when her presence was supremely inconvenient. Life was so com- plicated a game that the devices of skill were liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down. It was not that he minded about the failure of Spini's plot, but he felt an awkward difficulty in so adjusting his warning to Savonarola on the one hand, and to Spini on the other, as not to incur suspicion. Suspicion roused in the popular party might be fatal to his reputation and ostensible position in Florence : suspicion roused in Dolfo Spini might be as disagreeable in its effects as the hatred of a fierce dog not to be chained. If Tito went forthwith to the monastery to warn Savona- rola before the monks went to rest, his warning would follow so closely on his delivery of the forged letters that he could not escape unfavourable surmises. He could not warn Spini at once without telling him the true reason, since he could not immediately allege the discovery that Savonarola had changed his purpose ; and he knew Spini well enough to know that his understanding would discern nothing but that Tito had " turned round " and frustrated the plot. On the 164 ROMOLA other hand, by deferring liis warning to Savonarola until the morning, he would be almost sure to lose the opportunity of warning Spini that the Frate had changed his mind ; and the band of Compagnacci would come back in all the rage of disappointment. This last, however, was the risk he chose, trusting to his power of soothing Spini by assuring him that the failure was due only to the Praters caution. Tito was annoyed. If he had had to smile, it would have been an unusual effort to him. He was determined not to encounter Romola again, and he did not go home that night. She watched through the night, and never took off her clothes. She heard the rain become heavier and heavier. She liked to hear the rain; the stormy heavens seemed a safeguard against men's devices, compelling them to inaction. And Ex)mola^s mind was again assailed, not only by the ut- most doubt of her husband, but by doubt as to her own conduct. What lie might he not have told her? What project might he not have, of which she was still ignorant ? Every one who trusted Tito was in danger; it was useless to try and persuade herself of the contrary. And was not she selfishly listening to the promptings of her own pride, when she shrank from warning men against him ? " If her husband was a malefactor, her place was in the prison by his side " — that might be; she was contented to fulfil that claim. But was she, a wife, to allow a husband to inflict the injuries that would make him a malefactor, when it might be in her power to prevent them ? Prayer seemed impossible to her. The activity of her thought excluded a mental state of which the essence is expectant passivity. The excitement became stronger and stronger. Her imagination, in a state of morbid activity, conjured up possi- ble schemes by which, after all, Tito would have eluded her CHECK 165 threat ; and towards daybreak the rain became less violent, till at last it ceased^ the breeze rose again and dispersed the clouds, and the morning fell clear on all the objects around her. It made her uneasiness all the less endurable. She wrapped her mantle round her, and ran up to the loggia, as if there could be anything in the wide landscape that might determine her action ; as if there could be anything but roofs hiding the line of street along which Savonarola might be walking towards betrayal. If she went to her godfather, might she not induce him, without any specific revelation, to take measures for prevent- ing Fra Girolamo from passing the gates ? But that might be too late. E-omola thought, with new distress, that she had failed to learn any guiding details from Tito, and it was already long past seven. She must go to San Marco : there was nothing else to be done. She hurried down the stairs, she went out into the street without looking at her sick people, and walked at a swift pace along the Via de' Bardi towards the Ponte Vecchio. She would go through the heart of the city ; it was the most direct road, and, besides, in the great piazza there was a chance of encountering her husband, who, by some possibility to which she still clung, might satisfy her of the Frate's safety, and leave no need for her to go to San Marco. When she arrived in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, she looked eagerly into the pillared court ; then her eyes swept the piazza ; but the well- known figure, once painted in her heart by young love, and now branded there by eating pain, was nowhere to be seen. She hurried straight on to the Piazza del Duomo. It was already full of movement : there were worshippers passing up and down the marble steps, there were men pausing for chat, and there were market-people carrying their burdens. Be- tween those moving figures Romola caught a glimpse of her 166 ROMOLA husband. On his way from San Marco he had turned into Nello's shop, and was now leaning against the door-post. As Romola approached she could see tliat he was standing and talking, with the easiest air in the M'orld, holding his cap in his hand, and shaking back his freshly combed hair. The contrast of this ease with the bitter anxieties he had created convulsed her with indignation : the new vision of his hard- ness heightened her dread. She recognized Cronaca and two other frequenters of San Marco standing near her husband. It flashed through her mind, — "I will compel him to speak before those men/' And her light step brought her close upon him before he ha,d time to move, whUe Cronaca was saying, " Here comes Madonna Romola.^' A slight shock passed through Tito's frame as he felt himself face to face witli his wife. She was haggard with her anxious watching, but there was a flash of something else than anxiety in her eyes as she said, — " Is the Prate gone beyond the gates ? " " No,'' said Tito, feeling completely helpless before this woman, and needing all the self-command he possessed to pre- serve a countenance in which there should seem to be nothing stronger than surprise. " And you are certain that he is not going ? " she insisted. " I am certain that he is not going." " That is enough," said Roinola ; and she turned up the steps, to take refuge in the Duomo till she could recover from her agitation. Tito never had a feeling so near hatred as that with which his eyes followed Romola retreating up the steps. There were present not only genuine followers of the Frate, but Ser Ceccone, the notary, who at that time, like Tito himself, was secretly an agent of the Mediceans. Pico def.la Miraxdoi.a From the contemporary poj-trait in the Ufzi Gallery CHECK 167 Ser Francesco di Ser Barone, more briefly known to infamy as Ser Ceccone, was not learned^ not handsome^ not successful, and the reverse of generous. He was a traitor without charm. It followed that he was not fond of Tito Melema. CHAPTER XXVin COUNTER-CHECK IT was late in the afternoon when Tito returned home. Romola, seated opposite the cabinet in her narrow room, copying documents, was about to desist from her work because the light was getting dim, when her husband entered. He had come straight to this room to seek her, with a thor- oughly defined intention ; and there was something new to Romola in his manner and expression as he looked at hw silently on entering, and, without taking off his cap and mantle, leaned one elbow on the cabinet, and stood directly in front of her. Romola, fully assured during the day of the Frate^s safety, was feeling the reaction of some penitence for the access of distrust and hidignation which had impelled her to address her husband publicly on a matter that she knew he wished to be private. She told herself that she had probably been wrong. The scheming duplicity which she had heard even her godfather allude to as inseparable from party tactics might be sufficient to account for the connection with Spiiii, without the supposition that Tito had ever meant to further the plot. She wanted to atone for her impetuosity by confessing that she had been too hasty, and for some hours her mind had been dwelling on the possibility that this confession of hers might lead to other frank words breaking the two years* silence of their hearts. The silence had been so complete that Tito was ignorant of her having fled from him and come back again; they had never approached an avowal of that COUNTER-CHECK 169 past which, both in its young love and in the shock that shattered the love, lay locked away from thein like a banquet- room where death had once broken tlie feast. She looked up at him with that submission in her glance which belonged to her state of self-reproof; but the subtle change in his face and manner arrested her speech. For a few moments they remained silent, looking at each other. Tito himself felt that a crisis was come in his married life. The husband's determination to mastery, which Liy deep below all blandness and beseechingness, had risen per- manently to the surface now, and seemed to alter his face, as a face is altered by a hidden muscular tension with which a man is secretly throttling or stamping out the life from some- thing feeble, yet dangerous. " Romola," he began, in the cool liquid tone that made her shiver, " it is time that we should understand each other." He paused. "That is what I most desire, Tito," she said faintly. Her sweet pale face, with all its anger gone and nothing but the timidity of self-doubt in it, seemed to give a marked pre- dominance to her husband^s dark strength. " You took a step this morning," Tito went on, " which you must now yourself perceive to have been useless, — which exposed you to remark^ and may involve me in serious prac- tical difficulties." " I acknowledge that I was too hasty ; I am sorry for any injustice I may have done you." Romola spoke these words in a fuller and firmer tone ; Tito, she hoped, would look less hard when she had expressed her regret, and then she could say other things. "I wish you once for all to understand," he said, without any change of voice, " that such collisions are 170 ROMOLA incompatible with our position as husband and wife. I wish you to reflect on the mode in which you were led to that step, that the process may not be repeated/' "That depends chiefly on you, Tito," said Roraola, taking fire slightly. It was not at all what she had thought of saying, but we see a very Kttle way before us in mutual speech. "You would say, I suppose,^' answered Tito, "that nothing is to occur in future which can excite your unrea- sonable suspicions. You were frank enough to say last night that you have no belief in me. I am not surprised at any exaggerated conclusion you may draw from slight premises, but I wish to point out to you what is likely to be the fruit of your making such exaggerated conclusions a ground for interfering in affairs of which you are ignorant. Your attention is thoroughly awake to what I am saying ? " He paused for a reply. "Yes," said Romola, flushing in irrepressible resent- ment at this cold tone of superiority. " Well, then, it may possibly not be very long before some other chance words or incidents set your imagination at work devising crimes for me, and you may perhaps rush to the Palazzo Vecchio to alarm the Signoria and set the city in an uproar. Shall I tell you what may be the result ? Not simply the disgrace of your husband, to which you look forward with so much courage, but tlie arrest and ruin of many among the chief men in Florence, including Messer Bernardo del Nero." Tito had meditated a decisive move, and he had made it. The flush died out of Romola's face, and her very lips were p;ile, — an unusual effect with her, for she was little subject to fear. Tito perceived his success. " You would perhaps flatter yourself," he went on^ Ax alley in the Rucellai Gardens COUNTER-CHECK 171 " that jou were performing a heroic deed of deliverance; you might as well try to turn locks M'ith fine words as apply such notions to the politics of Florence. The question now is, not whether you can have any belief in me, but whether, now you have been warned, you will dare to rush, like a blind man with a torch in his hand, among intricate affairs of which you know nothing/' Eomola felt as if her mind were held in a vice by Tito's : the possibilities he had indicated were rising before her with terrible clearness. " I am too rash," she said. " I will try not to be rash.'' "Remember," said Tito, with unsparing insistence, " that your act of distrust towards me this morning might, for aught you knew, have had more fatal effects than that sacrifice of your husband which you have learned to contem- plate without flinching." " Tito, it is not so," Romola burst forth in a pleading tone, rising and going nearer to him, with a desperate resolu- tion to speak out. " It is false that I would willingly sacri- fice you. It has been the greatest effort of my life to cling to you. I went away in my anger two years ago, and I came back again because I was more bound to you than to anything else on earth. But it is useless. You shut me out from your mind. You affect to think of me as a being too unreasonable to share in the knowledge of your affairs. You will be open with me about nothing." She looked like his good angel pleading with him, as she bent her face towards him with dilated eyes, and laid her hand upon his arm. But llomola's touch and glance no longer stirred any fibre of tenderness in her husband. The good-humoured, tolerant Tito, incapable of hatred, incapable almost of impatience, disposed always to be gentle towards 172 ROMOLA the rest of the worldj felt himself becoming strangely hard towards this wife whose presence had once been the strongest inflaence he had known. With all his softness of disposition, he had a masculine effectiveness of intellect and purpose which, like sharpness of edge, is itself an energy, working its way without any strong momentum. Romola had an energy of her own which thwarted his ; and no man, who is not ex- ceptionally feeble, will endure being thwarted by his wife. Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest. No emotion darted across his face as he heard Eomola for the first time speak of having gone away from him. His lips only looked a little harder as he smiled slightly and said, — " My Eomola, when certain conditions are ascertained, ■we must make up our minds to them. No amount of wisliing will fill the Arno, as your people say, or turn a plum into an orange. I have not observed even that prayers have much efficacy that way. You are so constituted as to have certain strong impressions inaccessible to reason ; I cannot share those impressions, and you have withdrawn all trust from me in consequence. You have changed towards me; it has followed that I have changed towards you. It is useless to take any retrospect. We have simply to adapt ourselves to altered conditions.''' " Tito, it would not be useless for us to speak openly ,'' said Romola, with the sort of exasperation that comes from using living muscle against some lifeless, insurmountable resistance. "It was the sense of deception in you that changed me, and that has kept us apart. And it is not true that I changed first. You changed towards me the night you first wore that chain-armour. You had some secret from me — it was about that old man — and I saw him COUNTER-CHECK 173 again yesterday. Tito/^ she went on, in a tone of agonized entreaty, "if you would once tell me everything, let it be what it may — I would not mind jjain — that there might be no wall between us ! Is it not possible that we could begin a new life ? ^' This time there was a flash of emotion across Tito's face. He stood j)erfectly still; but the flash seemed to have whit- ened him. He took no notice of Eomola's appeal, but after a moment^s pause said quietly, — " Your impetuosity about trifles, Romola, has a freezing influence that would cool the baths of Nero." At these cutting words Romola shrank, and drew herself up into her usual self-sustained attitude. Tito went on : " If by ' that old man ' you mean the mad Jacopo di Nola who attempted my life and made a strange accusation against me, of which I told you nothing because it would have alarmed you to no purpose, he, poor wretch, has died in prison. I saw his name in the list of dead." " I know nothing about his accusation," said Eomola ; " but I know he is the man whom I saw with the rope round his neck in the Duomo, — the man whose portrait Piero di Cosimo painted, grasping your arm as he saw him grasp it the day the French entered, the day you first wore the armour." " And where is he now, pray ? " said Tito, still pale, but governing himself. " He was lying lifeless in the street from starvation," said Eomola. " I revived him with bread and wine. I brought him to our door, but he refused to come in. Then I gave him some money, and he went away without telling me anything. But he had found out that I was your wife. Who is he ? " "A man, half mad, half imbecile, who was once my 174 ROMOLA father's servant in Greece, and who has a rancorous hatred towards me because I got him dismissed for theft. Now you have the whole mystery, and the further satisfaction of know- ing that I am again in danger of assassination. The fact of my wearing the armour, about which you seem to have thought so much, must have led you to infer that I was in danger from this man. Was that the reason you chose to cultivate his acquaintance and invite him into the house ? " Romola was mute. To speak was only like rushing with bare breast against a shield. Tito moved from his leaning posture, slowly took off his cap and mantle, and pushed back his hair. He was collect- ing himself for some final words. And Romola stood up- right, looking at him as she might have looked at some on-coming deadly force, to be met only by silent endurance. " We need not refer to these matters again, Romola," he said, precisely in the same tone as that in which he had spoken at first. " It is enough if you will remember that the next time your generous ardour leads you to interfere in political affairs, you are likely, not to save any one from danger, but to be raising scaffolds and setting houses on fire. You are not yet a sufficiently ardent Piagnone to believe that Messer Bernardo del Nero is the prince of darkness, and Messer Prancesco Valori the archangel Michael. I think I need demand no promise from you ? " " I have understood you too well, Tito." " It is enough,'^ he said, leaving the room. Romola turned around with despair in her face, and sank into her seat. " O God, I have tried — I cannot help it. We shall always be divided." Those words passed silently through her mind. " Unless," she said aloud, as if some sudden vision had startled her into speech, — " unless misery should come and join us ! " ''■ . -'fw' t COUNTER-CHECK 175 Tito, too, had a new thought in his mind after he had closed the door behind him. With the project of leaving Florence as soon as his life there had become a liigh enough stepping-stone to a life elsewhere, perhaps at Rome or Milan, there was now for the first time associated a desire to be free from Eomola, and to leave her behind him. She had ceased to belong to the desirable furniture of his life ; there was no possibility of an easy relation between them without genuine- ness on his part. Genuineness implied confession of the past, and confession involved a change of purpose. But Tito had as little bent that way as a leopard has to lap milk when its teeth are grown. From all relations that were not easy and agreeable, we know that Tito shrank : why should he cling to them? And Eomola had made his relations difficult wdth others besides herself. He had had a troublesome interview with Dolfo Spini, who had come back in a rage after an ineffectual soaking with rain and long waiting in ambush ; and that scene between Eomola and himself at Nello^s door, once reported in Spini^s ear, might be a seed of something more unmanageable than suspicion. But now, at least, he believed that he had mastered Eomola by a terror which appealed to the strongest forces of her nature. He had alarmed her affection and her conscience by the shadowy image of consequences ; he had ar- rested her intellect by hanging before it the idea of a hopeless complexity in affairs which defied any moral judgment. Yet Tito was not at ease. The world was not yet quite cushioned with velvet, and, if it had been, he could not have abandoned himself to that softness with thorough enjoyment ; for before he went out again this evening, he put on his coat of chain-armour. CHAPTER XXIX THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES THE wintry days passed for Eomola as the white ships pass one who is standing lonely on the shore, — pass- ing in silence and sameness, yet each bearing a hidden burden of coming change. Tito^s hint had mingled so much di'ead with her interest in the progress of public aifairs that she had begun to court ignorance rather than knowledge. The threatening German Emperor was gone again ; and, in other ways besides, the position of Florence was alleviated ; but so much distress remained that Romola^s active duties were hardly diminished, and in these, as usual, her mind found a refuge from its doubt. She dared not rejoice that the relief which had come in extremity and had appeared to justify the policy of the Praters party was making that party so triumphant that Francesco Yalori, hot-tempered chieftain of the Piagnoni, had been elected Gonfalouiere at the beginning of the year, and was making haste to have as much of his own liberal way as pos- sible during his two months of power. That seemed for the moment like a strengthening of the party most attached to freedom, and a reinforcement of protection to Savonarola ; but Eomola was now alive to every suggestion likely to deepen her foreboding that whatever the present might be, it was only an unconscious brooding over the mixed germs of Change which might any day become tragic. And already by Carnival time, a little after mid-February, her presentiment was confirmed by the signs of a very decided change : the Mediceans had ceased THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 177 to be passive, and were openly exerting themselves to procure the election of Bernardo del Nero as the new Gonfaloniere. On the last day of the Carnival, between ten and eleven in the morning, Uomola walked out, according to promise, towards the Corso degli Albizzi, to fetch her cousin Brigida, that they might both be ready to start from the Via de' Bardi early in the afternoon, and take their places at a window which Tito had had reserved for them in the Piazza della Signoria, where there was to be a scene of so new and striking a sort that all Plorentine eyes must desire to see it. Por the Piagnoni were having their own way thoroughly about the mode of keeping the Carnival. In vain Dolfo Spini and his companions had struggled to get up the dear old masks and practical jokes, well spiced with indecency. Such things were not to be in a city where Christ had been declared king. Romola set out in that languid state of mind with which every one enters on a long day of sight-seeing purely for the sake of gratifying a child or some dear childish friend. The day was certainly an epoch in carnival-keeping ; but this phase of reform had not touched her enthusiasm : and she did not know that it was an epoch in her own life when another lot would begin to be no longer secretly but visibly entwined with her own. She chose to go through the great piazza that she might take a first survey of the unparalleled siglit there while she was still alone. Entering it from the south, she saw some- thing monstrous and many-coiourcd in the shape of a pyramid, or, rather, like a huge fir-tree, sixty feet high, with shelves on the branches, widening and widening towards the base till they reached a circumference of eighty yards. Tlie piazza was full of life : slight young figures, in white garments, with olive wreaths on their heads, were moving to and fro about the base of the pyramidal tree, carrying baskets full of briglit-coloured things ; and maturer forms, some in the monastic frock, some VOL. II. — 12 178 ROMOLA in the loose tunics and dark-red caps of artists, were lielping and examining, or else retreating to various points in the distance to sui'vey the wondrous whole ; wliile a considerable group, among whom Romola recognized Piero di Cosimo, standing on the marble steps of Orgagna's Loggia, seemed to be keeping aloof in discontent and scorn. Approaching nearer, she paused to look at the multifa- rious objects ranged in gradation from the base to the sum- mit of the pyramid. There were tapestries and brocades of immodest design, pictures and sculptures held too likely to incite to vice; there were boards and tables for all sorts of games, playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them, dice, and other apparatus for gambling; there were worldly music-books, and musical instruments in all the pretty varieties of lute, drum, cymbal, and trumpet; there were masks and masquerading-dresses used in the old Car- nival shows ; there were handsome copies of Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Pulci, and other books of a vain or impure sort; there were all the implements of feminine vanity, — rouge- pots, false hair, mirrors, perfumes, powders, and transparent veils intended to provoke inquisitive glances; lastly, at the very summit, there was the unflattermg effigy of a probably mythical Venetian merchant, who was understood to have offered a heavy sum for this collection of marketable abomi- nations, and, soaring above him in surpassing ugliness, the symbolic figure of the old debauched Carnival. This was the preparation for a new sort of bonfire, — the Burning of Vanities. Hidden in the interior of the pyra- mid was a i)lentiful store of dry fuel and gunpowder; and on this last day of the festival, at evening, the pile of vani- ties was to be set ablaze to the sound of trumpets, and the ugly old Carnival was to tumble into the flames amid the songs of reforming triumph. A Grotto in the Rucellai Gardens c^ THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 179 This crowning act of the new festivities could hardly have been prepared but for a peculiar organization which had been started by Savonarola two years before. The mass of the Florentine boyhood and youth was no longer left to its own genial promptings towards street mischief and crude dis- soluteness. Under the training of Pra Domenico, a sort of lieutenant to Savonarola, lads and striplings, the hope of Florence, were to have none but pure words on their lips, were to have a zeal for Unseen Good that should put to shame the lukewarmness of their elders, and were to know no pleasures save of an angelic sort, — singing divine praises and walking in white robes. It was for them that the ranges of seats had been raised high against the walls of the Duomo; and they had been used to hear Savonarola appeal to them as the future glory of a city specially appointed to do the work of God. These fresh-cheeked troops were the chief agents in the regenerated merriment of the new Carnival, which was a sort of sacred parody of the old. Had there been bonfires in the old time? There was to be a bonfire now, consuming im- purity from off the earth. Had there been symbolic proces- sions ? There were to be processions now, but the symbols were to be white robes and red crosses and olive wreaths, — emblems of peace and innocent gladness, — and the banners and images held aloft were to tell the triumphs of goodness. Had there been dancing in a ring under the open sky of the piazza, to the sound of choral voices chanting loose songs ? There was to be dancing in a ring now, but dancing of monks and laity in fraternal love and divine joy, and the music was to be the music of hymns. As for the collections from street passengers, they were to be greater than ever, — not for gross and superfluous suppers, but for the benefit of tlie hungry and needy; and, besides, there was the collecting of the 180 ROMOLA Anathema, or the Vanities to be laid on the great pyramidal bonfire. Troops of young inquisitors went from house to house on this exciting business of asking that the Anathema should be given up to them. Perhaps, after the more avowed vani- ties had been surrendered, Madonna, at the head of the household, had still certain little reddened balls brought fi'om the Levant, intended to produce on a sallow cheek a sudden bloom of the most ingenuous falsity ? If so, let her bring them down and cast them into the basket of doom. Or, perhaps, she had ringlets and coils of " dead hair '' ? If so, let her bring them to the street-door, not on her head, but in her hands, and publicly renounce the Anathema which hid the respectable signs of age under a ghastly mockery of youth. And, in reward, she would hear fresh young voices pronounce a blessing on her and her house. The beardless inquisitors, organized into little regiments, doubtless took to their work very willingly. To coerce peo- ple by shame, or other spiritual pelting, into the giving up of things it will probably vex them to part with, is a form of piety to which tlie boyish mind is most readily converted ; and if some obstinately wicked men got enraged and threat- ened the whip or the cudgel, this also was exciting. Savona- rola himself evidently felt about the training of these boys the difficulty weighing on all minds with noble yearnings towards great ends, yet with that imperfect perception of means which forces a resort to some supernatural constraining influence as the only sure hope. The Florentine youth had had very evil habits and foul tongues : it seemed at first an unmixed blessing when they were got to shout, " Viva Gesu!" But Savonarola was forced at last to say from the pulpit, " There is a little too nuicli shouting of ' Viva Gesii ! ' This constant utterance of sacred words brings them THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 181 into contempt. Let me have no more of tliat shouting till the next Festa/^ Nevertheless^ as the long stream of white-robed youtli- fulness, with its little red crosses and olive wreaths^ had gone to the Duomo at dawn this morning to receive the com- munion from the hands of Savonarola^ it was a sight of beauty ; and^ doubtless, many of those young souls were lay- ing up memories of hope and awe that might save them from ever resting in a merely vulgar view of their work as men and citizens. There is no kind of conscious obedience that is not an advance on lawlessness, and these boys became the generation of men who fought greatly and endured greatly in the last struggle of their Republic. Now, in the interme- diate hours between the early communion and dinner-time, they were making their last perambulations to collect alms and vanities, and this was why Romola saw the slim white figures moving to and fro about the base of the great pyramid. " What think you of this folly, Madonna Eomola ? " said a brusque voice close to her ear. " Your Piagnoni w ill make V inferno a pleasant prospect to us, if they are to carry things their own way on earth. It 's enough to fetch a cudgel over the mountains to see painters, like Lorenzo di Credi and young Baccio there, helping to burn colour out of life in this fashion." " My good Piero," said Romola, looking up and smiling at the grim man, " even you must be glad to see some of these things burnt. Look at those gewgaws and wigs and rouge-pots : I have heard you talk as indignantly against those things as Fra Girolamo himself." " What then ? " said Piero, turning round on her sharply. " I never said a woman should make a black patch of herself against the background. Va ! Madonna Antigone, it 's a shame for a woman with your hair and shoukhu's to run into 182 ROMOLA such nonsense, — leave it to women who are not worth paint- ing. What ! the most holy Virgin herseK has always been dressed well; that's the doctrine of the Church: — talk of heresy, indeed ! And I should like to know what the excel- lent Messer Bardo would have said to the burning of the divine poets by these Frati, who are no better an imitation of men than if they were onions with the bulbs uppermost. Look at that Petrarca sticking up beside a rouge-pot : do the idiots pretend that the heavenly Laura was a painted harridan? And Boccaccio, now : do you mean to say, Madonna Romola, — you who are fit to be a model for a wise Saint Catherine of Egypt, — do you mean to say you have never read the stories of the immortal Messer Giovanni ? " '^It is true I have read them, Piero," said Romola. " Some of them a great many times over, when I was a little girl. I used to get the book down when my father was asleep, so that I could read to myself.^^ " Ebbene ? " said Piero, in a fiercely challenging tone. " There are some things in them I do not want ever to forget/' said Romola ; " but you must confess, Piero, that a great many of those stories are only about low deceit for the lowest ends. Men do not want books to make them think lightly of vice, as if life were a vulgar joke. And I cannot blame Fra Girolamo for teaching that we owe our time to something better.'" " Yes, yes, it 's very well to say so now you Ve read them," said Piero, bitterly, turning on his heel and walking away from her. Romola, too, walked on, smiling at Piero's innuendo, with a sort of tenderness towards the old painter's anger, because she knew that her father would have felt something like it. For herself, she was conscious of no inward collision with the strict and sombre view of pleasure which t(;nded to J A Groito in th'e Rucellai Gardens THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 183 repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice. Sorrow and joy have each their peculiar narrowness; and a religious enthusiasm like Savonarola's which ultimately blesses man- kind by giving the soul a strong propulsion towards sympathy with pain, indignation against wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must always incur the reproach of a great negation. Romola's life had given her an affinity for sadness which inevitably made her unjust towards merriment. That subtle result of culture which we call Taste was subdued by the need for deeper motive ; just as the nicer demands of the palate are annihilated by urgent hunger. Moving habitually among scenes of suffering, and carrying woman's heaviest disappointment in her heart, the severity which allied itself with self-renouncing beneficent strength had no dissonance for her. CHAPTER XXX TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME A NOTHER figure easily recognized by us — a figure not /-\ clad in black, but in the old red, green, and white — was approaching the piazza that morning to see the Carnival. She came from an opposite point, for Tessa no longer lived on the hill of San Giorgio. After what had happened there with Baldassarre, Tito had thought it best for that and other reasons to find her a new home, but still in a quiet airy quarter, in a house bordering on the wide garden grounds north of the Porta Santa Croce. Tessa was not come out sight-seeing without special leave. Tito had been with her the evening before, and she had kept back the entreaty which she felt to be swelling her heart and throat until she saw him in a state of radiant ease, with one arm round the sturdy Lillo, and the other resting gently on her own shoulder as she tried to make the tiny Ninna steady on her legs. She was sure then that the weariness with which he had come in and flung himself into his chair had quite melted away from his brow and lips. Tessa had not been slow at learning a few small stratagems by which she might avoid vexing Naldo and yet have a little of her own way. She could read nothing else, but she had learned to read a good deal in her husband's face. And certainly the charm of that bright, gentle-humoured Tito who woke up under the Loggia de' Cerchi on a Lenten morning five years before, not having yet given any hostages to deceit, 7ievcr returned so nearly as in the person of Naldo, TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 185 seated in that straiglit-backed, carved arm-cliair which he liad provided for his comfort when he came to see Tessa and the children. Tito himself was surprised at the growing sense of relief which he felt in these moments. No guile was needed towards Tessa : she was too ignorant and too innocent to sus- pect him of anything. And the little voices calling him " Babbo " were very sweet in his ears for the short while that he heard them. "When he thought of leaving Florence^ he never thought of leaving Tessa and the little ones behind. He was very fond of these round-cheeked, Avide-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 Eomola, 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. "Ninna is very good without me now,^^ began Tessa, feeling her request rising very high in her throat, and letting Ninna seat herself on the floor. " I can leave her Avith Monna Lisa any time ; and if she is in the cradle and cries, Lillo is as sensible as can be, — he goes and thumps Monna Lisa." Lillo, whose great dark eyes looked all the darker be- cause 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 ]\Ionna Lisa, who was shaking her head slowly over her spinning at the other end of the room. " A wonderful boy ! ^' said Tito, laughing. " Is n't he ? " said Tessa, eagerly, getting a little closer to him ; " and I might go and see the Carnival to-morrow, just for an hour or two, might n't 1?" " Oh, you wicked pigeon ! " said Tito, pinching her cheek ; " those are your longings, are they ? "What have you 186 ROMOLA to do with carnivals now you are an old woman with two children ? " "But old women like to see things," said Tessa, her lower lip hanging a little. " Monna Lisa said she should like to gOj only she 's so deaf she can't hear what is behind her, and she thinks we couldn't take care of both the chil- dren." " No, indeed, Tessa,'' said Tito, looking rather 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 Nofri is dead, for you know the poor ■madre died ; and I shall never forget the Carnival I saw once : it was so pretty — all roses and a king and queen under them — and singing. I liked it better than the San Giovanni." " But there 's nothing like that now, my Tessa. They are going to make a bonfire in the piazza, — that 's all. But I cannot let you go out by yourself in the evening." " Oh, no, no ! I don't want to go in the evening. I only want to go and see the procession by daylight. There will be a procession, — is it not true ? " " Yes, after a sort," said Tito, " as lively as a flight of cranes. You must not expect roses and glittering kings and queens, my Tessa. However, I suppose any string of people to be called a procession will please your blue eyes. And there 's a thing they have raised in the Piazza de' Signori for the bonfire. You may like to see that. But come home early, and look like a grave little old woman ; and if you see any men with feathers and swords, keep out of tlieir way : they are very fierce, and like to cut old women's heads off." " Santa Madonna ! where do they come from ? Ah ! I TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 187 you are laughing ; it is not so bad. But I will keep away from them. Only/' Tessa went on in a whisper, putting lier lips near Naldo's ear, " if I might take Lillo with me ! He is very sensible .■'' " But who will thump Monua Lisa then, if she does n^t hear?'' said Tito, finding it difficult not to laugh, but think- ing it necessary to look serious. " No, Tessa, you could not take care of Lillo if you got into a crowd, and he 's too heavy for you to carry him." " It is true," said Tessa, rather sadly, " and he likes to run away. I forgot that. Then I will go alone. But now look at Ninna, — you have not looked at her enough." Ninna was a blue-eyed thing, at the tottering, tumbling age, — a fair solid, which, like a loaded die, found its base with a constancy that warranted prediction. Tessa went to snatch her up, and when Babbo was paying due attention to the recent teeth and other marvels, she said, in a whisper, " And shall I buy some confetti for the children ? " Tito drew some small coins from his scarsella, and poured them into her palm. "That will buy no end," said Tessa, delighted at this abundance. " I shall not mind going without Lillo so much, if I bring him something." So Tessa set out in the morning towards the great piazza where the bonfire was to be. She did not think the February breeze cold enough to demand further covering than her green woollen dress. A mantle would have been oppressive, for it would have hidden a new necklace and a new clasp, mounted with silver, the only ornamental presents Tito had ever made her. Tessa did not think at all of show- ing 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 contadiua, and she 188 llOMOLA arranged her white hood over her head so that the front of her necklace might be well displayed. These ornaments, she considered, must inspire respect for her as the wife of some one who could 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 any one who might be observhig her. Yet her descent from her upper story into the street had been watched, and she was being kept in sight as she walked by a person who had often waited in vain to see if it were not Tessa who lived in that house to which he had more than once dogged Tito. Baldassarre was carrying a package of yarn : he was con- stantly 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 imprison- ment had so intensified his timid suspicion and his belief in some diabolic fortune favouring Tito, that he had not dared to pursue him, except under cover of a crowd or of the dark- ness ; he felt, with instinctive horror, that if Tito's eyes fell upon him, he should again be held up to obloquy, again be dragged away ; his weapon would be taken from him, and he should be cast helpless into a prison-cell. His fierce pur- pose had become as stealthy as a serpent's, which depends for its prey on one dart of the fang. Justice was weak and unfriended ; and he could not hear again the voice that pealed the promise of vengeance in the Duomo ; he had been there again and again, but that voice, too, had apparently been sti- fled by cunning strong-armed wickedness. For a long wliile Baldassarre's ruling thought was to ascertain whether Tito still M'ore the armour, for now at last his fainting hope would TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 189 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 an- swering this question by touching Tito's back in the press of the street. Since then, the knowledge that the sharp steel was useless, and that he had no hope but in some new device, had fallen with leaden weight on his enfeebled mind. A dim vision of winning one of those two wives to aid him came before him 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 colours, trying to interpret them into consistent significance. Tessa had to pass through various long streets without seeing any other sign of the Carnival than unusual groups of the country people in their best garments, and that disposi- tion in everybody to chat and loiter which marks the early hours of a holiday, before the spectacle has begun. Presently, in her disappointetl search for remarkable objects, her eyes fell on a man witli a pedlcr's basket before him, who seemed to be selling nothing but little red crosses to all the passen- gers. A little red cross would be pretty to hang up over her bed ; it would also help to keep oS harm, and would perliaps make Niniia stronger. Tessa went to the other side of the street, that she might ask the pedler the price of the crosses, fearing that they would cost a little too much for her to spare from her purchase of sweets. The pedler's back had been turned towards her hitherto, but when she came near 190 ROMOLA liim she recognized an old acquaintance of the Mercato Bratti Ferravccchi, and, accustomed to feel that she was to avoid old acquaintances, she turned away again and passed to the other side of the street. But Bratti^s eye was too well practised in looking out at the corner after possible cus- tomers, for her movement to have escaped him, and she was presently arrested by a tap on the arm from one of the red crosses. " Young woman," said Bratti, as she unwillingly turned her head, " you come from some castello a good way off, it seems to me, else you 'd never think of walking about, this blessed Carnival, without a red cross in your hand. Santa Madonna ! Four white quattrini is a small price to pay for your soul, — prices rise in purgatory, let rae tell you." " Oh, I should like one," said Tessa, hastily, " but I couldn't spare four white quattrini." Bratti had at first regarded Tessa too abstractedly as a mere customer to look at her with any scrutiny, but when she began to speak he exclaimed : " By the head of San Giovanni, it must be the little Tessa, and looking as fresh as a ripe apple ! What ! you 've done none the worse, then, for running away from father Nofri? You were in the right of it, for he goes on crutches now, and a crabbed fellow with crutches is dangerous ; he can reach across the house and beat a woman as he sits." " I 'm married," said Tessa, rather demurely, remember- ing Naldo's command that she should behave with gravity ; " and my husband takes great care of me." " Ah, then you Ve fallen on your feet ! Nofri said you were good-for-nothing vermin ; but what then ? An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down. I always said you did well to run away, and it is n't often Bratti 's in TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 191 the wrong. Well, and so you Ve got a husband and plenty of money ? Then you '11 never think much of giving four white quattrini for a red cross. I get no profit ; but what with the famine and the new religion, all other merchandise is gone down. You live in the country where the 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 four quattrini. It is n't for the profit ; I hardly get a danaro by the whole lot. But then they 're holy wares, and it 's getting harder and harder work to see your way to Paradise : the very Carnival is like Holy Week, and the least you can do to keep the Devil from getting the upper hand is to buy a cross. God guard you ! think what the Devil's tooth is ! You 've seen him biting the man in San Giovanni, I should hope?" Tessa felt much teased and frightened. " Oh, Bratti," she said, with a discomposed face, " I want to buy a great many confetti : I 've got little Lillo and Ninna at home. And nice coloured 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 Bratti, fond of laying up a store of merits by imagining possible extortions and then heroically renouncing them, " since you 're an old acquaintance, you shall have it for two quattrini. It 's making you a present of the cross, to say nothing of the blessing." Tessa was reaching out her two quattrini with trembling hesitation, when Bratti said abruptly, " Stop a bit ! Where do vou live ? " 192 ROMOLA " Oh, a long way off/* she answered, almost automati- cally, being preoccupied with her quattrini; ''beyond San Ambrogio, in tlie Yia Piccola, at the top of the house where the wood is stacked below/* " Very good,** said Bratti, in a patronizing tone ; " then 1*11 let you have the cross on trust, and call for the money. So you live inside the gates ? Well, 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 Bratti, resolutely; "I*m not a hard- hearted pedler. I '11 call and see if you *ve got any rags, and you shall make a bargain. See, here *s the cross ; and there *s Pi])po*s shop not far behind you : you can go and fill your basket, and I must go and get mine empty. Addio, piccina." Bratti went on his way, and Tessa, stimulated to change her money into confetti before further accident, went into Pippo's shop, a little fluttered by the thought that she had let Bratti know more about her than her husbiind would approve. There were certainly more dangers in coming to see the Carnival than in staying at home ; and she would liave 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 burdoi on his back. The consciousness of having a small basketful of things to make the children glad dispersed her anxiety, and as she entered the Via de' Libraj her face had its usual expression of 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 Thf: shrine of the Madonna dell' Impruneta, by Mk-helozzi and L. della Robbia TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 193 a little aside, but in that narrow street there was the pleas- ure 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 that she also had her red cross. Certainly they looked as beautiful as the angels on the clouds ; and to Tessa^s mind they, too, had a background of cloud, like everything else that came to her in 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 trem- bled as she would have done if Saint Michael in the picture had shaken his head at her, and was conscious of nothing but terrified wonder till she saw close to her a round, boyish face, lower than her own, and heard a treble voice saying, " Sister, you carry the Anathema about you. Yield it up to the blessed Gesu, and He will adorn you with the gems of His grace." Tessa was only more frightened, understanding nothing. Her first conjecture settled on her basket of sweets. They wanted that, these alarming angels. Oh, dear, dear ! She looked down at it. " No, sister," said a taller youth, pointing to her neck- lace and the clasp of her belt, " it is those vanities that arc the Anathema. Take otl' that necklace and unclasp that belt, that they may be burned in the holy Bonfire of Vanities, and saveyow from burning." VOL. II. — 13 194 ROMOLA " It is the truths mj sister," said a still taller youth, evi- dently the archangel of this band, "Listen to these voices speaking the divine message. You already carry a red cross : let that be your only adornment. Yield up your necklace and belt, and you shall obtain grace." This was too much. Tessa, overcome with awe, dared not say " no," but she was equally unable to render up her beloved necklace and clasp. Her pouting lips were quiver- ing, the tears rushed to her eyes, and a great drop fell. For a moment she ceased to see anything; she felt nothing but confused terror and misery. Suddenly a gentle hand was laid on her arm, and a soft, wonderful voice, as if the Holy Ma- donna were speaking, said, " Do not be afraid ; no one shall harm you." Tessa looked up and saw a lady in black, with a young heavenly face and loving hazel eyes. She had never seen any one like this lady before, and under other circumstances might have had awestruck thoughts about her ; but now everything else was overcome by the sense that loving protection was near her. The tears only fell the faster, relieving her swelling heart, as she looked up at the heavenly face, and, putting her hand to her necklace, said sobbingly, — " I can't give them to be burnt. My husband — he bought them for me — and they are so pretty — and Ninna • — oh, I wish I 'd never come." '^Do not ask her for them," said Romola, speaking to the white-robed boys in a tone of mild authority. " It an- swers 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 Romola'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 TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 195 bliss that they were gone, and that her necklace and clasp were still with her. " Oh, I will go back to the house," she said, still agi- tated ; " I will go nowhere else. But if I should meet thim again, and you not be there ? " she added, expecting everything from this heavenly lady. " Stay a little," said Romola. " Come with me under this doorway, and we will hide the necklace and clasp, and then you will be in no danger.'' She led Tessa under the archway, and said, " Now, can we find room for your necklace and belt in your basket? Ah ! your basket is full of crisp things that will break : let us be careful, and lay the heavy necklace under them." It was like a change in a dream to Tessa — the escape from nightmare into floating safety and joy — to find herself taken care of by this lady, so lovely and powerful and gentle. She let Eomola unfasten her necklace and clasp, while she herself did nothing but look up at the face that bent over her. " They are sweets for Lillo and Ninna," she said, as Eomola carefully lifted up the light parcels in the basket, and placed the ornaments below them. " Those are your children ? " said Eomola, smiling. " And you would rather go home to them than to see any more of the Carnival ? Else you have not far to go to the Piazza de' Signori, and there you would see the pile for the great bonfire." " No, oh, no ! " said Tessa, eagerly ; " I shall never like bonfires again. I will go back." "You live at some castello, doubtless," said Eomola, not waiting for an answer. " Towards which gate do you go ? " " Towards Por' Santa Croce." " Come, then," said Eomola, taking her by the hand and 196 ROMOLA leading her to the corner of a street nearly opposite. " If you go down there/'' she said, pausing, "you will soon be in a straight road. And I must leave you now, because some one else expects me. You will not be frightened. Your pretty things are quite safe now. Addio." " Addio, Madonna," said Tessa, almost in a whisper, not knowing what else it would be right to say ; and in an instant the heavenly lady was gone. Tessa turned to catch a last glimpse, but she only saw the tall gliding figure vanish round the projecting stonework. So she went on her way in wonder, longing to be once more safely housed with Monna Lisa, undesirous of carnivals forevermore. Baldassarre had kept Tessa in sight till the moment of her parting with Eomola ; then he went away with his bundle of yarn. It seemed to him that he had discerned a clew 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 ob- structions 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 ven- geance for that. If this wife of Tito^s loved him, she would have a sense of injury which Baldassarre's mind dwelt on with keen longing, as if it would be the strength of another Will added to his own, the strength of another mind to form devices. Both these wives had been kind to Baldassarre, and their o r ^i ^^ -A y^ TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME 197 acts toward him, being bound up with the very image of them, had not vanished from his memory ; yet the thought of their pain could not present itself to him as a check. To him it seemed that pain was the order of the world for all except the hard and base. If any were innocent, if any were noble, where could the utmost gladness lie for them ? Where it lay for him, — in unconquerable hatred and triumphant vengeance. But he must be cautious : he must watch this wife in the Yia de' Bardi, and learn more of her ; for even here frustration was possible. There was no power for him now but in patience. CHAPTER XXXI MONNA BRIGIDA's CONVERSION WHEN Romola said that some one else expected her, slie meant her cousin Brigida, but she was far from suspecting how much that good kins- woman was in need of her. Returning together towards the piazza, they had descried the company of youths coming to a stand before Tessa, and when Romola, having approached near enough to see the simple little contadina's distress, said, "Wait for me a moment, Cousin," Monna Brigida said hastily, " Ah, I Avill not go on : come for me to Boni^s shop, — I shall go back there." The truth was, Monna 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 Piagnoni should be right in holding that rouge and false hair and pearl em- broidery endamaged the soul. Their serious view of things filled the air like an odour ; nothing seemed to have exactly the same flavour as it used to have ; and there was the dear child Romola, in her youth and beauty, leading a life that was uncomfortably suggestive of rigorous demands on woman. A widow at fifty-five whose satisfaction has been largely drawn from what she thinks of her own person, and what she be- lieves others think of it, requires a great fund of imagination to keep her spirits buoyant. And ]\Ionna Brigida had begun to have frequent struggles at her toilet. If her soul would prosper better without them, was it really worth while to put on the rouge and the braids ? But when she lifted up the MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION 199 hand-mirror and saw a sallow face witli baggy cheeks^ and crows'-feet that were not to be dissimulated by any simpering of the lips, — when she parted her gray hair, and let it lie in simple Piagnone fashion round her face, her courage failed. Monna Berta would certainly burst out laughing at her, and call her an old hag ; and as Monna Berta was really only fifty-two, she had a superiority which would make the obser- vation cutting. Every woman who was not a Piagnone would give a shrug at the sight of her, and the men would accost her as if she were their grandmother. Whereas at fifty-five a woman was not so very old, — she only required making up a little. So the rouge and the braids and the embroidered berretta went on again, and Monna Brigida was satisfied with the accustomed effect ; as for her neck, if she covered it up, people might suppose it was too old to show, and, on the con- trary, with the necklaces round it, it looked better than Monna Berta^s. This very day, when she was preparing for the Piagnone Carnival, such a struggle had occurred ; and the conflicting fears and longings which caused the struggle, caused her to turn back and seek refuge in the druggist's shop rather than encounter the collectors of the Anathema when Roraola was not by her side. But Monna Brigida M-as not quite rapid enough in her retreat. She had been descried, even before she turned away, by the white-robed boys in the rear of those who wheeled round towards Tessa ; and the willingness with which Tessa was given up was, perhaps, slightly due to the fact that part of the troop had already accosted a personage carrying more markedly upon her the dangerous weight of the Anathema. It happened that several of this troop were at the youngest age taken into peculiar training ; and a small fellow of ten, his olive wreath resting above cherubic checks and wide brown eyes, his imagination really possessed with a hovering awe at existence as something 200 ROMOLA 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 Monna Brigida and place himself across her path. She felt angry, and looked for an open door; but there was not one at hand, and by attempting to escape now, she would only make things worse. But it w^as not the cherubic-faced young one who first addressed her ; it was a youth of fifteen, who held one handle of a wide basket. "Venerable mother !^^ he began, "the blessed Jesns commands you to give up the Anathema which you carry upon you. That cap embroidered with pearls, those jewels that fasten up your false hair, — let them be given up and sold for the poor; and cast the hair itself away from you, as a lie that is only fit for burning. Doubtless, too, you have other jewels under your silk mantle.''' " Yes, lady," said the youth at the other handle, who had many of Fra Girolamo's phrases by heart, " they are too heavy for you : they are heavier than a millstone, and are weighthig 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, buona madre," said the cherubic boy, in a sweet soprano. " You look very ugly with the red on your cheeks, and that black glistening hair, and those fine things. It is only Satan who can like to see you. Your Angel is sorry. He wants you to rub away the red." The little fellow snatched a soft silk scarf from the bas- ket, and held it towards Monna Brigida, that she might use it as her guardian angel desired. Her anger and mortification were fast giving way to spiritual alarm. Monna Berta and that cloud of witnesses, highly dressed society in general, were not looking at her, and she was surrounded by young MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION 201 monitors^ whose white robes^ and wreaths, and red crosses, aud dreadful candour had something awful iu their unusual- ness. Her Franciscan confessor, Era Cristoforo, of Sauta Croce, was not at hand to reinforce her distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was helplessly possessed and sliaken by a vague sense tliat a supreme warning was come to her. Un- visited by the least suggestion of any other course that was open to her, she took the scarf that was held out, and rubbed her clieeks, with trembling submissiveness. " It is well, madonna/' said the second youth. " It is a holy beginning. And when yon have taken those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly grace will descend on it/' The infusion of mischief was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the berretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell down over Monna Brigida's face, and dragged the rest of the head- gear forward. It was a new reason for not hesitating : she put up her hands hastily, undid the other ftistenings, aud flung down into the basket of doom her beloved crimson-velvet berretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed-pearls, and stood an unrouged woman, with gray hair pushed back- ward from a face where certain deep lines of age had triumphed over embonpoint. But the berretta was not allowed to lie in the basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it, and held it up pitilessly, with the false hair dangling. " See, venerable mother," said the taller youth, " what ugly lies you have delivered yourself from ! And now you look like the blessed Saint Anna, the mother of the Holy Yirgin." Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, and never showing herself in the world again, were rushing through Monna Brigida's mind. Tiiere was nothing possij^b ittJ>yher 202 ROMOLA but to take care of her soul. Of course, there were spectators laughing : she had no need to look round to assure herself of that. Well ! it would, perhaps, be better to be forced to think more of Paradise. But at the thought that the dear accus- tomed world was no longer in her choice, there gathered some of those hard tears which just moisten elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a large rough hand holding a red cross, which was suddenly thrust before her over the shoulders of the boys, while a strong gutteral voice said, — " Only four quattrini, madonna, blessing and all ! Buy it. You '11 find a comfort in it now your wig 's gone. Dch ! 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 four quattrini ; the profit is not so much as the smeU of a danaro, and it goes to the poor.'" Monna Brigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was proceeding to the further submission of reaching money from her em- broidered scarsella, at present hidden by her silk mantle, when the group round her, which she had not yet entertained the idea of escaping, opened before a figure as Avelcome as an angel loosing prison-bolts. " Romola, look at me ! " said Monna Brigida, in a piteous tone, putting out both her hands. The white troop was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the head-gear had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings. " Dear cousin, don^t be distressed,^^ said Romola, smitten with pity, yet hardly able to helj) smiling at the sudden appa- rition of her kinswoman in a genuine, natural guise, strangely contrasted with all memories of her. She took the black drapery from her own head, and threw it over Monna MONNA BRIGIDA^S CONVERSION 203 Brigida^s. " There/' she went on soothingly, " no one will remark you now. We will turn down the Yia del Palagio and go straight to our house/' They hastened away, Monna Brigida grasping Romola's hand tightly, as if to get a stronger assurance of her being actually there. "Ah, ray Romola, my dear child!'' said the short fat woman, hurrying with frequent steps to keep pace with the majestic young figure beside her ; " what an old scarecrow I am ! I must be good, — I mean to be good ! " " Yes, yes ; buy a cross ! " said the gutteral voice, while the rough hand was thrust once more before Monna Brigida : for Bratti was not to be abashed by Eomola's presence into renouncing a probable customer, and had quietly followed up their retreat. " Only four quattrini, blessing and all, — and if there was any profit, it would all go to the poor." Monna Brigida would have been compelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submissive mood. Slie put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest Romola's remonstrance, and with the other reached out a grosso, worth many white quat- trini, saying, in an entreating tone, — " Take it, good man, and begone." " You 're in the right, madonna," said Bratti, taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into her hand : " I '11 not ofl'er you change, for I might as well rob you of a mass. What ! we must all be scorched a little, but you will come off the easier : better fall from the window than the roof. A good Easter and a good year to you ! " " Well, Eomola," cried Monna Brigida, pathetically, as Bratti left them, " if I 'm to be a Piagnone, it 's no matter how I look ! " " Dear cousin," said Eomola, smiling at her affection- ately, " you don't know how much better you look than you 204 ROMOLA ever did before. I see now how good-natured your face is, like yourself. That red and finery seemed to thrust them- selves forward and hide expression. Ask our Piero or any otlier 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 uiy godfather ! Why should not old women look grand and simple ? " " Yes, when one gets to be sixty, my Romola," said Brigida, relapsing a little ; " but I ^n only fifty-five, and Monna Berta, and everybody — But it 's no use : I will be good, like you. Your mother, if she'd been alive, would have been as old as I am ; we were cousins together. One must either die or get old. But it does n't matter about being old, if one's a Piagnone." I CHAPTER XXXn A PROPHETESS THE incidents of that Carnival day seemed to Romola to carry no other personal consequences to her than the new care of supporting poor Cousin Brigida in her fluctuating resignation to age and gray hairs ; but they introduced a Lenten time in which she was kept at a high pitch of mental excitement and active effort. Bernardo del Nero had been elected Gonfaloniere. By great exertions, the Medicean party had so far triumphed, and that triumph had deepened RomoWs presentiment of some secretly prepared scheme likely to ripen either into success or betrayal during these two months of her godfather's author- ity. 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 excommuni- cation was imminent, and he had reached the point of defy- ing it. He held nj) 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 periphrases; he 206 ROMOLA proclaimed with heightening confidence the advent of reno- vation, — of a moment when there would be a general revolt against corruption. As to his own destiny, he seemed to have a double and alternating prevision : sometimes he saw himself taking a glorious part in that revolt, sending forth a voice that would be heard through all Christendom, and making the dead body of the Church tremble into new life, as the body of Lazarus trembled when the Divine voice pierced the sepulchre; sometimes he saw no prospect for himself but persecution and 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 impres- siveness for all minds that were not of the dullest order, even if they were inclined, as Macchiavelli was, to interpret the Frate's character by a key that presupposed no loftiness. To Eomola, whose kindred ardour gave her a firm belief in Sa- vonarola^s genuine greatness of purpose, the crisis was as stirring as if it had been part of her personal lot. It blent itself as an exalting memory with all her daily labours ; and those labours were caUing 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 Romola walked, often in weariness, among the sick, the huiigry, and the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than her pity, — by the belief in a heroism struggHng for sublime ends, towards which tlie daily action of her pity *could only tend feebly, as tlie dews that freshen the weedy ground to-day tend to prepare an unseen harvest in the years to come. But that mighty music which stirred her in the Duomo A PROPHETESS 207 was not without its jarring notes. Since those first days of glowing hope when the Frate, seeing the near triumph of good in the reform of the Eepubhc and the coming of the French deliverer, had preached peace, charity, and oblivion of political differences, there had been a marked change of con- ditions : political intrigue had been too obstinate to allow of the desired oblivion ; the belief in the 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 Prophet with new weapons and new determination. It followed that the spirit of contention and self-vindica- tion pierced more and more conspicuously in his sermons ; that he was urged to meet the popular demands not only by increased insistence and detail concerning visions and private revelations, but by a tone of defiant confidence against objec- tors ; and from having denounced the desire for the miracu- lous, and declared that miracles had no relation to true faith, he had come to assert that at the right moment the Divine power would attest the truth of his prophetic preaching by a miracle. And 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 moniout, that conflict of selfish and unselfish emotion which in most men is hidden in the chamber of the soul, is brought into terrible evidence : the language of the inner voices is written out in letters of fire. But if tlie tones of exasperation jarred on Romola, there was often another member of Fra Girolamo^s audience to 208 ROMOLA whom they were the only thrilling tones, like the vibration of deep bass notes to the deaf. Baldassarre had found out that the wonderful Frate was preaching again, and as often as he could, he went to hear the Lenten sermon, that he might drink 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 E,om- ola went too ; for he was waiting and watching for a time when not only outward circumstances, but his own varying mental state, would mark the right moment for seeking an interview with her. Twice Romola 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 subordi- nate fear now : it referred, she thought, only to the past, and her anxiety was almost absorbed by the present. Yet the stirring Lent passed by ; April, the second and final month of her godfather^s supreme authority, was near its close; and nothing had occurred to fulfil her presentiment. Li the public mind, too, there had been fears, and rumours had spread from Rome of a menachig activity on the part of Piero de' Medici, but in a few days the suspected Bernardo would go out of power. Romola was trying to gather some courage from the review of her futile fears, when on the 27th, as she was walking out on her usual errands of mercy in the afternoon, she was met by a messenger from Camilla Rucellai, chief among the feminine seers of Florence, desiring her presence forthwith on matters of the highest moment. Romola, who shrank with unconquerable repulsion from the shrill volubility of those illuminated women, and had just now a special re- pugnance towards Camilla because of a report that she had announced revelations hostile to Bernardo del Nero, was at A PROPHETESS 209 first inclined to send back a flat refusal. Camilla's message might refer to public affairs, and Romola's immediate prompt- ing 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, reprov- ing herself for allowing her presentiments to make her cow- ardly 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 Romola as she sat, and the eager voice ad- dressing 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 Romola's Angel, that Romola knew certain secrets concerning her godfather, Ber- nardo del Nero, which, if disclosed, might save the Republic from peril. Camilla's voice rose louder and higher as she narrated her vision, and ended by exhorting Romola to obey the command of her Angel, and separate herself from the enemy of God. Romola's impetuosity was that of a massive nature, and, except in moments when she was deeply stirred, her manner was calm and self-controlled. She had a constitutional dis- gust for the shallow excitability of women like Camilla, whose faculties 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 kept her hold like a crab, and, only incited to more eager exhortation by Romola's resistance, was carried beyond her own intention into a shrill statement of other VOL. II. — 14 210 ROMOLA 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 Beniardo del Nero from the window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Pra Giro- lamo himself knew of it, and had not dared this time to say that the vision was not of Divine authority. " And since then/^ said Camilla, in her excited treble, straining upward with wild eyes towards Eomola's face, " the Blessed Infant has come to me and laid a wafer of sweetness on my tongue in token of his pleasure that I had done his will.^^ '' Let me go ! " said Eomola, in a deep voice of anger. " God grant you are mad ! else you are detestably wicked ! " The violence of her effort to be free was too strong for Camilla nov/. She wrenched away her arm and rushed out of the room, not pausing till she had hurriedly 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 suggested the thought of an eternal peace subsisting in the midst of turmoil. She turned in, and sinking down on the step of the altar in front of Filippino Lippi^s serene Virgin appearing to Saint 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 ^ The picture by Filippino Lippi, representing the appearance of the Virgin surrounded by angels to San Beniard as he sits writing in a wood, was at that time in the Chapel belonging to Francesco del Pugliese at le Campora, a convent of the Badia monks outside the city. It remained there until the Seige of 1529, when it was removed for safety to the sacristy of the Badia. Francesco del Pugliese paid Filippino Lippi 250 ducats for the picture. — Editok. A PROPHETESS 211 that Camilla could allege Savonarola's countenance of her wicked folly. Eomola did not for a moment believe that he had sanctioned the throwing of Bernardo del Nero from the window as a Divine suggestion ; she felt certain that 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 fun- damental to all his political teaching. Still, since he knew the possibly fatal effects of visions like Camilla's, since he had a marked distrust of sucb spirit-seeing women, and kept aloof from them as much as possible, why, with his readi- ness to denounce wrong from the pulpit, did he not 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 reve- lations were not, in their basis, distinctly separable from his own visions ; he was fettered outwardly by the foreseen con- sequence of raising a cry against himself even among members of his own party, as one who would suppress all Divine inspi- ration of which he himself was not the vehicle, — he or his confidential and supplementary seer of visions, Fra Salvestro. Ilomola, kneeling with buried face on the altar-step, was enduring one of those sickening moments, when the en- thusiasm which had come to her as the only energy strong enough to make life worthy, seemed to be inevitably bound up with vain dreams and wilful eye-shutting. Her mind rushed back with a new attraction towards the strong worldly sense, the dignified prudence, the untheoretic virtues of her godfatlier, who was to be treated as a sort of Agag because he held that a more restricted form of government was better than the Great Council, and because he would not pretend to forget old ties to the banished family. 212 ROMOLA But with this hist thought rose tlie 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 Frate was right there, and had carried her understanding irrevocably with him. But at this moment the assent of her understand- ing went alone ; it was given unwillingly. Her heart was recoiling from a right allied to so much narrowness ; a right apparently entailing that hard systematic judgment of men which measures them by assents and denials quite superficial to the manhood within them. Her affection and respect were clinging with new tenacity to her godfather, and with him to those memories of her father which were in the same opposition to the division of men into sheep and goats by the easy mark of some political or religious symbol. After all has been said that can be said about the widen- ing influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope. If E-omola's intellect had been less capable of discerning the complexities in human things, all the early loving associa- tions of her life would have forbidden her to accept implicitly the denunciatory exclusiveness 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 The Church of Santo Stefano del Poiite b». A PROPHETESS 213 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 belief that she was working for the right ? On the side from which moral energy came, lay a fanaticism from which she was shrinking with newly startled repulsion ; on the side to which she was drawn by affection and memory, there was the pre- sentiment of some secret plotting, which her judgment told her would not be unfairly called crime. And still surmount- ing every other thought was the dread inspired by Tito's hints, lest that presentiment should be converted into knowl- edge, in such a way that she would be torn by irreconcilable claims. Calmness would not come even on the altar-steps; it would not come from looking at the serene picture where the saint, writing iu the rocky solitude, was being visited by faces with celestial peace in them. Eomola 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 beneficent action revive that sense of worth in life which at this moment was unfed by any wider faith. But when she turned round, she found herself face to face with a man who was standing only two yards off her. The man was Baldassarre. CHAPTER XXXIII ON SAN MINIATO " "W "WOULD speak with you/' said Baldassarre, as Romola I looked at liim 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 ke will not come upon us/' said Baldassarre, turning and glancing behind him timidly. " Out — in the aifj — away from the streets." " I sometimes go to San Miniato at this hour/' said Romola. "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 Romola set out. To some women it might have seemed an alarming risk to go to a compara- tively solitary spot with a man who had some of the outward signs of that madness which Tito attributed to him. But Romola was not given 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 cypress-trunks, and looked round for Baldassarre. He was not far off, but when he reached her, he was glad to sink down on an edge of stony earth. His thick-set frame had no longer the sturdy vigour which belonged to it when he first appeared with the rope ON SAN MINIATO 215 round him in the Duomo ; and under the transient tremor caused by the exertion of walking up the hill, his eyes seemed to have a more helpless vagueness. " The hill is steep/'' said Romola, with 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 sup- pose her impatient. He looked like nothing higher than a common-bred, neglected old man ; but she was used now to be very near to such people, and to think a great deal about their troubles. Gradually his glance gathered a more definite expression, and at last he said with abrupt emphasis, — " Ah ! you would have been my daughter ! " The swift flush came in Eomola'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 divined the facts that lay behind that single word, and in the first moment there could be no check to the impul- sive belief which sprang from her keen experience of Tito's nature. The sensitive response of her face was a stimulus to Baldassarre ; for the first time his words had wrought their right efi'ect. 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 Romola, in a low voice, too entirely possessed by the images of the past to take any note of Baldassarre's question. " Or was it as he said ? Did you take him when he was little ? " 216 ROMOLA " Ah, you believe me, — you know what he is ! " said Baldassarre, exultingly^ tighteniug the pressure ou her arm, as if the contact gave him power. " You will help me ? " " Yes,^^ said Romola, not interpreting the words as he meant them. She laid her palm gently on the rough hand tliat 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 even of 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 Baldassarre^ " and they would not believe me, because he lied, and said I was mad ; and they had me dragged to prison. And I am old, — my mind will ]iot 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 1/ou are not against me. He made you love him, and he has been false to you ; and you hate him. Yes, he made'M^? love him : he was beautiful and gentle, and I wns a lonely man. I took him when they were beating him. He slept in my bosom when he was little, and I watched him as he grew, and gave him all my knowledge, and everything that was mine I meant to be his. I had many things, — money and books and gems. He had my gems, — he sold tliem; 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 ON SAN MINIATO 217 Romola, faintly. " Surely he must have believed it then. Oh ! he could not have been so base then ! " A vision had risen of what Tito was to her in those first days when she thought no more of wrong in him than a child thinks of poison in flowers. The 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 Baldassarre, with some impatience. "But tears are no good ; they only put out the fire within, and it is the fire that works. Tears will hinder us. Listen to me." Eomola 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 paining him by any show of doubt. " Tell me," she said, as gently as she could, " how did you lose your memory, — your scholarship ? " " I was ill, I can't tell how long, — it was a blank. I remember nothing, only at last I was sitting in the sun among the stones, and everything else was darkness. iVnd slowly, and by degrees, I felt something besides that : a longing for something, — I did not know what, — that never came. And when I was in the ship on the waters I began to know what I longed for ; it was for the Boy to come back, — it ■was to find all my thoughts again, for I was locked away outside them all. And I am outside now. I feel nothing but a wall and darkness." Baldassarre had become dreamy again, and sank into silence, resting his head between his hands : and again Roni- ola's belief in him had submerged all cautioning doubts. The pity with which she dwelt on his words seemed like the 218 ROMOLA revival of an old pang. Plad she not daily seen how her father missed Dino and the future he had dreamed of in that son? "It all came back once/' Baldassarre went on presently. " I was master of everything. I saw all the world again, and my gems, and my books; and I thought I had him in my power, and I went to expose him where — where the lights were and the trees ; and he lied again, and said I was mad, and they dragged me away to prison. . . . Wickedness is strong; and he wears armour." Tlie fierceness had flamed up again. He spoke with his former intensity, and again he grasped Romola's arm. " But you will help me ? He has been false to you too. He has another wife, and she has children. He makes her believe he is her husband, and she is a foolish, helpless thing. I will show you where she lives." The first shock that passed through Romola was visibly one of anger. The woman's sense of indignity was inevitably foremost. Baldassarre instinctively felt her in 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." Eomola 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 Baldassarre, 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 A Benedictine monk lloihichiis L/inicihiinus ON SAN MINIATO 219 die. You believe that, — is it not true ? If they "will not hang him for robbing me, you will take away his armour, — you will make him go without it, and I will stab him. I have a knife, and my arm is still strong enough,'^ He put his hand under his tunic, and reached out the hidden knife, feeling the edge abstractedly, as if he needed the sensation to keep alive his ideas. It seemed to Romola as if every fresh hour of her life were to become more difficult than the last. Her judgment was too vigorous and rapid for her to fall into the mistake of using futile deprecatory words to a man in Baldassarre's state of mind. She chose not to answer his last speech. She would win time for his excitement to allay itself by asking 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 Baldassarre, pausing in that action of feeling the knife, and looking bewildered. " I can remem- ber Jio more. I only know where she lives. You shall see her. I wiU take you; but not now," he added hurriedly, " he may be there. The night is coming on." "It is true," said Romola, starting up with a sudden consciousness that the sun had set and the hills were darken- ing ; " but you will come and take me — when ? " " In the morning," said Baldassarre, dreaming that she, too, wanted to hurry to her vengeance. "Come to me, then, where you came to me to-day, in the church. I will be there at ten ; and if you are not there, I wiU go again towards mid-day. Can you remember?" "Mid-day," said Baldassarre, — "only mid-day. The same place, and mid-day. And, after that," he added, rising 220 ROMOLA and grasping her arm again with his left hand, while he held the knife in his right, " we will have our revenge. lie shall feel the sharp edge of justice. The world is against me, but jou will help me." " I would help you in other ways/' said Romola, mak- ing a first, timid effort to dispel his illusion about her. " I fear you are in want ; you have to labour, and get little. I should like to bring you comforts, and make you feel again that there is some one who cares for you.'' " Talk no more about that," said Baldassarre, fiercely. " I will have nothing else. Help me to wring one drop of vengeance on this side of the grave. I have nothing but my knife. It is sharp ; but there is a moment after the thrust when men see the face of death, — and it shall be my face that he will see." He loosed his hold, and sank down again in a sitting posture. Eomola felt helpless : she must defer all inten- tions till the morrow. " Mid-day, 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. CHAPTER XXXIT THE EVENING AND THE MORNING ROMOLA had a purpose in her mind as she was hasten- ing away, — a purpose which had been growing through the afternoon hours like a side-stream, ris- ing higher and higher along with the main current. It was less a resolve than a necessity of her feeling. Heedless of the darkening streets, and not caring to call for Masons slow escort, she hurried across the bridge where the river showed itself black before the distant dying red, and took the most direct way to the Old Palace.^ She might encounter her husband there. No matter. She could not weigh proba- bilities; she must discharge her heart. She did not know what she passed in the pillared court or up the wide stairs ; she only knew that she asked an usher for the Gonfaloniere, giving her name, and begging to be shown into a private room. She was not left long alone with the frescoed figures and the newly lit tapers. Soon the door opened, and Bernardo del Nero entered, still carrying his white head erect above his silk lucco. 1 The Palazzo del Popolo, dci Signori, or della Signoria (not to be con- fused with the Palagio del Comune, which corresponded to the Falagio del Podesta, or Bargello) could not, at the cud of the fifteenth century, yet be called the Palazzo Vecchio, or the Old Palace, because at that time there was no other for which it could be mistaken. It was only called Palazzo Vecchio when Cosimo I, in 1550, established the Grand Ducal residence in the palace he had bought from the Pitti family and had had embellished by Bartolommeo Am- mannati. — Editor. 222 ROMOLA " Romola, my cliild^ what is tins?" he said, in a tone of anxious surprise as he closed the door. She had uncovered her head, and went towards him without speaking. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and held her a little way from him that he might see her better. Her face w^as haggard from fatigue and long agitation, her hair had rolled down in disorder; but there was an excitement in her eyes that seemed to have triumphed over the bodily consciousness. "What has he done?" said Bernardo, abruptly. "Tell mc everything, child; throw away pride. I am your father." " It is not about myself, — nothing about myself," said Eomola, hastily. "Dearest godfather, it is about you. I have heard things, — some I cannot tell you. But you are in danger in the palace ; you are in danger everywhere. There are fanatical men who would harm you, and — and there are traitors. Trust nobody. If you trust, you will be betrayed." Bernardo smiled. " Have you worked yourself up into this agitation, my poor child," he said, raising his hand to her head and patting it gently, " to tell such old truth as that to an old man like me?" " Oh, no, no ! they are not old truths that I mean,'^ said E/omola, pressing her clasped hands painfully together, as if that action would help her to suppress what must not be told. " They are fresh things that I know, but cannot tell. Dearest godfather, you know I am not foolish. I would not come to you without reason. Is it too late to warn you against any one, every one who seems to be work- ing 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 THE EVENING AND THE MORNING 223 office are ovcr^? Oh, God! perhaps it is too late! and if any harm comes to you, it will be as if I had doue it ! " The last words had burst from Romola involuntarily : a long-stifled feeling had found spasmodic utterance. But she herself was startled and arrested. "I mesLu/' she added hesitatingly, "I know nothing positive. I only know what fills me with fears.''' " Poor child ! " said Bernardo, looking at her with quiet penetration for a moment or two. Then he said : " Go, Eom- ola, — go home and rest. These fears may be only big ugly shadows of something very little and harmless. Even traitors must see their interest in betraying; the rats will run where they smell the cheese, and there is no knowing yet which way the scent will come.'' He paused, and turned away his eyes from her with an air of abstraction, till, with a slow shrug, he added, — " As for warnings, they are of no use to me, child. I enter into no plots, but I never forsake my colours. If I march abreast Muth 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 caressingly, 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, my Romola?" 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. 224 ROMOLA "Well, you have a father's ear while I am above ground/' — he lifted the black drapery and folded it round her head, adding — "and a father's home; remember that." Then opening the door, lie said : " There, hasten away. You are like a black ghost ; you will be safe enough." When Romola fell asleep that night, she slept deep. Agitation had reached its limits; she must gather strength before she could suffer more ; and, in spite of rigid habit, she slept on far beyond sunrise. When she awoke, it was to the sound of guns. Piero de' Medici, with thirteen hundred men at his back, was be- fore the gate that looks towards Rome. So much Romola learned from Maso, with many cir- cumstantial additions of dubious quality. A countryman had come in and alarmed the Signoria 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 sbe went up to the loggia from time to time to try and discern any signs of the dreaded entrance having been made, or of its having been effectively repelled. Maso brought her word that the great piazza was full of armed men, and that many of the chief citizens suspected as friends of the Medici had been summoned to the palace and detained there. Some of the people seemed not to mind whether Piero got in or not, and some said the Signoria it- self had invited him ; but however that might be, they were giving liim 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 Romola could distinguish as actual exter- nal experiences standing markedly out above the tumultuous waves of retrospect and anticipation. She knew that she had A Monk of the Frati Minori, or Franciscans 3^ranci^ca?iit