Girolamo Savonarola

And in using Tito's facile ability, they were not keenly awake to the fact that the absence of traditional attachments, which made him a convenient agent, was also the absence of what among themselves was the chief guarantee of mutual honor.

Again, the Roman and Milanese friends of the aristocratic party, or Arabiati, who were the bitterest enemies of Savonarola, carried on a system of underhand correspondence and espionage in which the deepest hypocrisy was the best service and demanded the heaviest pay, so that to suspect an agent because he played a part strongly would have been an absurd want of logic.

On the other hand, the Pianoni of the popular party, who had the directness that belongs to energetic conviction, were the more inclined to credit Tito with sincerity in his political adhesion to them because he affected no religious sympathies.

By virtue of these conditions, the last three months had been a time of flatter and success to Tito.

She was thrown back again on the conflict between the demands of an outward law, which she recognized as a widely ramifying obligation, and the demands of inner moral facts, which were becoming more and more peremptory.

She had drunk in deeply the spirit of that teaching by which Savonarola had urged her to return to her place.

She felt that the sanctity attached to all close relations, and, therefore, pre-eminently to the closest, was but the expression in outward law of that result towards which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend.

that the light abandonment of ties whether inherited or voluntary because they had ceased to be pleasant was the uprooting of social and personal virtue what else had tito's crime towards baltissari been but that abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity and ingratitude and the inspiring consciousness breathed into her by savonarola's influence that her lot was vitally united with the general lot had exalted even the minor details of obligation into religion she was marching with a great army she was feeling the stress of a common life if victims were needed and it was uncertain on whom the lot might fall she would stand ready to answer to her name she had stood long she had striven hard to fulfil the bond but she had seen all the conditions which made the fulfilment possible gradually forsaking her the one effect of her marriage tie seemed to be the stifling predominance over her of a nature that she despised all her efforts at union had only made its impossibility more palpable and the relation had become for her simply a degrading servitude the law was sacred yes but rebellion might be sacred too it flashed upon her mind that the problem before her was essentially the same as that which had lain before savonarola the problem where the sacredness of obedience ended and where the sacredness of rebellion began to her as to him there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant not only without external law to appeal to but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with divine lightnings lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false before the sun had gone down she had adopted a resolve she would ask no counsel of her godfather or of savonarola until she had made one determined effort to speak freely with tito and obtain his consent that she should live apart from him She desired not to leave him clandestinely again, or to forsake Florence.

Fra Dolcino was put down.

Savonarola was put down.

The Albigeois were put down.

The Vaudois were put down.

In the Duomo she felt herself sharing in a passionate conflict which had wider relations than any enclosed within the walls of Florence.

For Savonarola was preaching, preaching the last course of Lenten sermons he was ever allowed to finish in the Duomo.

He knew that excommunication was imminent, and he had reached the point of defying it.

He held up the condition of the Church in the terrible mirror of his unflinching speech, which called things by their right names and dealt in no polite paraphrases.

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— suggests the thought of an eternal peace subsisting in the mists of turmoil.

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

The thought which pressed on her the most acutely was that Camilla could allege Savonarola's countenance of her wicked folly.

Romola did not for a moment believe that he had sanctioned the throwing of Bernardo del Nero from the window as a divine suggestion.

Behind all the great tyrants and butchers of history, he has marched with loud hosannas, but his hand is eternally against those who seek to liberate the spirit of the race.

He was in favor of Nero and Torquemada by instinct, and he was against Galileo and Savonarola by the same instinct.

When a Cagliostro dies, he is ready for a Danton.

From the funeral of a Barnum, he rushes to the triumph of a Bryan.

Fra Dolcino was put down.

Savonarola was put down.

The Albigois were put down.

The Vaudois were put down.