CHAPTER XV. What Florence was thinking of. several days Tito saw little of Romola. He told her the next morning, that it would be better for her to any small articles of her own from the library, as there De agents coming to pack up the antiquities. Then, to kiss her on the brow, he suggested that she should her own room where the little painted tabernacle was, ere she was then sitting, so that she might be away noise of strange footsteps. Romola assented quietly, no sign of emotion: the night had been one long to her, and, in spite of her healthy frame, sensation ome a dull continuous pain, as if she had been stunned ised. Tito divined that she felt ill, but he dared say ; he only dared, perceiving that her hand and brow ne cold, to fetch a furred mantle and throw it lightly er. And in every brief interval that he returned to scene was nearly the same: he tried to propitiate her e unobtrusive act or word of tenderness, and she to have lost the power of speaking to him, or of at him. "Patience!" he said to himself. "She will it, and forgive at last. The tie to me must still remain gest." When the stricken person is slow to recover as if nothing had happened, the striker easily glides position of the aggrieved party; he feels no bruise and is strongly conscious of his own amiable besince he inflicted the blow. But Tito was not naturposed to feel himself aggrieved; the constant bent of i was towards propitiation, and he would have subo much for the sake of feeling Romola's hand resting ad again, as it did that morning when he first shrank king at her. he found it the less difficult to wait patiently for the f 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 out-growth 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 feel that it had a new attraction for him. That dread was nearly removed now: he must wear his armour still, he must prepare himself for possible demands on his coolness and ingenuity, but he did not feel obliged to take the inconvenient step of leaving Florence and seeking new fortunes. His father had refused the offered atonement had forced him into defiance; and an old man in a strange place with his memory gone, was weak enough to be defied. age the war with those Tito's implicit desires were working themselves out now in very explicit thoughts. As the freshness of young passion faded, life was taking more and more decidedly for him the aspect of a game in which there was an agreeable mingling of skill and chance. And first the great bell being) came out and in front of the Old men of the city sho P The shouting in the P debating inside the il after the Venet remment might be el mber of citizens of a c ations, without questio vered on a narrower reditary influence of g ith the votes of shopke er day, and far on i derini alleged excelle heme; Messer Guid ally excellent on the question of boiled Samola. II. And the game that might be played in Florence promised 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 inconvenient 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 e war with those obstinate Pisan rebels? Above all, e to mend our plan of government, so as to hit on ay of getting our magistrates chosen and our laws Till those questions were well answered trade was in standing still, and that large body of the working were not counted as citizens and had not so much as erve as an anodyne to their stomachs were likely to ent. Something must be donesaw salt bak st the great bell was sounded, to call the citizens to ent in the Piazza de' Signori; and when the crowd ed close, and hemmed in by armed men at all the e Signoria (or Gonfaloniere and eight Priors for the g) came out and stood by the stone lion on the platront of the Old Palace, and proposed that twenty of the city should have dictatorial authority given force of which they should for one year choose all es, and set the frame of government in order. And le shouted their assent, and felt themselves the f the Twenty. This kind of "parliament" was a very tine fashion, by which the will of the few was made e choice of the many. houting in the Piazza was soon at an end, but not so ing inside the palace: was Florence to have a Great after the Venetian mode, where all the officers of ent might be elected, and all laws voted by a wide of citizens of a certain age and of ascertained qualifiwithout question of rank or party? or, was it to be on a narrower and less popular scheme, in which the y influence of good families would be less adulterated votes of shopkeepers? Doctors of law disputed day 7, and far on into the night; Messer Pagolantonio alleged excellent reasons on the side of the popular Messer Guidantonio Vespucci alleged reasons excellent on the side of a more aristocratic form. It estion of boiled or roast, which had been prejudged II.stroqui ahl or ya binos on Ino a 26 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 telling 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 "Choose the Great Council," and "the Great Council is the will of God." ARIADNE 1 Jo not wonder if it s s; for my purposes CHA was more than thi y were all packed d of shutting her ey exhaustion consequ amy disbelief in t ng, when the work amp, and walked w and wooden case well-known object e to assure herself t e was gone and the evenings came, e herself, but beca her father's memo . And on the 23r the To Savonarola these were as good as identical propositions. The Great Council was the only practicable plan for giving an expression to the public will large enough to counteract 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 could become. the more secure from the designs of men who saw their own advantage in the moral debasement of their fellows nearer would the Florentine people approach the character 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 sh ges were going. that she might no els more across the as a cloudy day vering; the hills ling stone towe ich broken shadd Croce, where h ess, and slowly ing up the narro l, deliberate Fate to bury it in an u Tas seeing this her Se vi pare che io al mie cose erano po wonder if it seems to you that I have told but few or my purposes were few and great." bad bool wit tots move flite hools ofe CHAPTER XVI. bloo ada 30 seol 300 Ariadne discrowns Herself. Om a sfil od 1979 o virsbbus asdwi yol s more than three weeks before the contents of the were all packed and carried away. And Romola, shutting her eyes and ears, had watched the process. ustion consequent on violent emotion is apt to bring 7 disbelief in the reality of its cause; and in the when the workmen were gone, Romola took her p, and walked slowly round amongst the confusion and wooden cases, pausing at every vacant pedestal, Il-known object laid prostrate, with a sort of bitter assure herself that there was a sufficient reason why was gone and the world was barren for her. And still, nings came, she went and went again; no longer to rself, but because this vivifying of pain and despair father's memory was the strongest life left to her afAnd on the 23rd of December, she knew that the last were going. She ran to the loggia at the top of the it she might not lose the last pang of seeing the slow ove across the bridge. 3 a cloudy day, and nearing dusk. Arno ran dark ring; the hills were mournful; and Florence with ng stone towers had that silent, tomb-like look, broken shadow gives to a city seen from above. oce, where her father lay, was dark amidst that and slowly crawling over the bridge, and slowly up the narrow street, was the white load, like a liberate Fate carrying away her father's life-long ury it in an unmarked grave. Romola felt less that eeing this herself than that her father was conscious vi pare che che io abbia detto poche cose non vene maravigliate, ie cose erano poche e grandi." Tod |