all lines of the human face have something either touching or grand, unless they seem to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple?"

In the Duomo she felt herself sharing in a passionate conflict which had wider relations than any inclosed within the walls of Florence. For Savonarola was preaching-preaching the last course of Lenten sermons he was ever al"Yes, when one gets to be sixty, my Romola," lowed to finish in the Duomo: he knew that said Brigida, relapsing a little; "but I'm only excommunication was imminent, and he had fifty-five, and Monna Berta and every body-reached the point of defying it. He held up the but it's no use: I will be good, like you. Your condition of the Church in the terrible mirror mother, if she'd been alive, would have been as old as I am-we were cousins together. One must either die or get old. But it doesn't matter about being old, if one's a Piagnone."

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 Romola's presentiment of some secretly prepared scheme likely to ripen either into success or betrayal during these two months of her godfather's authority. Every morning the dim daybreak, as it peered into her room, seemed to be that haunting fear coming back to her. Every morning the fear went with her as she passed through the streets on her way to the early sermon in the Duomo: but there she gradually lost the sense of its chill presence, as men lose the dread of death in the clash of battle.

of his unflinching speech, which called things by their right names and dealt in no polite periphrases; he proclaimed with heightening confidence the advent of renovation-of a moment when there would be a general revolt against corruption. As to his own destiny, he seemed to have a double 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 impressiveness 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 Romola, whose kindred ardor gave her a firm belief in Savonarola'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 labors; and those labors were calling not only for difficult perseverance, but for new courage. Famine had never yet taken its flight from Florence, and all distress, by its long continuance, was getting harder to bear; disease was spreading in the crowded city, and the Plague was expected. As Romola walked, often in weariness, among the sick, the hungry, and the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than her pity-by the belief in a heroism struggling for sublime ends, toward which the daily action of her pity could only tend feebly, as the 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 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 Republic and the coming of the French deliverer, had preached peace, charity, and oblivion of political differences, there had been a marked change of conditions: political intrigue had been too obstinate to allow of the desired oblivion; the belief in the 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 contentioa and self-vindication pierced more and more conspicuously in his sermons; that he was urged to

meet the popular demands not only by increased | nounced revelations hostile to Bernardo del insistence and detail concerning visions and pri- Nero, was at first inclined to send back a flat vate revelations, but by a tone of defiant confi- refusal. Camilla's message might refer to pubdence against objectors; and from having de- lic affairs, and Romola's immediate prompting nounced the desire for the miraculous, and was to close her ears against knowledge that declared that miracles had no relation to true might only make her mental burden heavier. faith, he had come to assert that at the right But it had become so thoroughly her habit to moment the Divine power would attest the truth reject her impulsive choice, and to obey passiveof his prophetic preaching by a miracle. And ly the guidance of outward claims, that, reprovcontinually, in the rapid transitions of excited ing herself for allowing her presentiments to feeling, as the vision of triumphant good receded make her cowardly and selfish, she ended by behind the actual predominance of evil, the compliance, and went straight to Camilla. She threats of coming vengeance against vicious ty- found the nervous, gray-haired woman in a rants and corrupt priests gathered some impetus chamber arranged as much as possible like a from personal exasperation, as well as from in- convent cell. The thin fingers clutching Romodignant zeal. In the career of a great public la as she sat, and the eager voice addressing her orator who yields himself to the inspiration of at first in a loud whisper, caused her a physical the moment, that conflict of selfish and unself-shrinking that made it difficult for her to keep ish 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 the tones of exasperation jarred on Romola, there was often another member of Fra Girolamo's audience to 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 Romola went too; for he was waiting and watching for a time when not only outward circumstance, 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 Duomoonce when its dark glance was fixed on hers. She wished not to see it again, and yet she looked for it, as men look for the reappearance of a portent. But any revelation that might be yet to come about this old man was a subordinate fear now it referred, she thought, only to the past, and her anxiety was almost absorbed by the present.

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, Bernardo 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 selfcontrolled. She had a constitutional disgust 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 visions which were to corroborate this. Christ himself had appeared to her and ordered her to send his commands to certain citizens in office that they should throw Bernardo del Nero from the win

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 toward Romola'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."

Yet the stirring Lent passed by; April, the second and final month of her godfather's su-dow of the Palazzo Vecchio. Fra Girolamo preme authority, was near its close; and nothing had occurred to fulfill her presentiment. In the public mind, too, there had been fears, and rumors had spread from Rome of a menacing 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 twenty-seventh, 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 The violence of her effort to be free was too Florence, desiring her presence forthwith on strong for Camilla this time. She wrenched matters of the highest moment. Romola, who away her arm and rushed out of the room, not shrank with unconquerable disgust from the pausing till she had gone hurriedly far along shrill excitability of those illuminated women, the street, and found herself close to the church and had just now a special repugnance toward of the Badia. She had but to pass behind the Camilla because of a report that she had an- | curtain under the old stone arch, and she would

"Let me go!" said Romola, in a deep voice of anger. "God grant you are mad! else you are detestably wicked!"

find a sanctuary shut in from the noise and hur- | quite superficial to the manhood within them.

ry 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 St. Bernard, she waited in hope that the inward tumult which agitated her would by-andby subside.

Her affection and respect were clinging with new tenacity to her godfather, and with him to those memories of her father which were in the same opposition to the division of men into sheep and goats by the easy mark of some political or religious symbol.

After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought

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 sanc-is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of tioned the throwing of Bernardo del Nero from the affections, seeking a justification for love the window as a Divine suggestion; she felt cer- and hope. If Romola's intellect had been less tain that there was falsehood or mistake in that capable of discerning the complexities in human allegation. Savonarola had become more and things, all the early loving associations of her more severe in his views of resistance to mal-life would have forbidden her to accept implicitcontents; but the ideas of strict law and orderly the denunciatory exclusiveness of Savonarola. were fundamental 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 such spirit-seeing women, and kept aloof from them as much as possible, why, with his readiness to denounce wrong from the pulpit, did he not publicly denounce these pretended revelations which brought new darkness instead of light across the conception of a Supreme Will?, Why? The answer came with painful clearness: he was fettered inwardly by the consciousness that such revelations were not, in their basis, distinctly separable from his own visions; he was fettered outwardly by the foreseen consequence of raising a cry against himself even among members of his own party, as one who would suppress all Divine inspiration of which he himself was not the vehicle-he or his confidential and supplementary seer of visions, Fra Salvestro.

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 toward that part of his teaching which she could not absorb, so long as its practical effect came into collision with no strong force in her. But now a sudden insurrection of feeling had brought about that collision. Her indignation, once roused by Camilla's visions, could not pause there, but ran like an illuminating fire over all the kindred facts in Savonarola's teaching, and for the moment she felt what was true in the scornful sarcasms she heard continually flung against him, more keenly than 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 Romola, kneeling with buried face on the altar working for the right? On the side from which step, was enduring one of those sickening mo- moral energy came lay a fanaticism from which ments, when the enthusiasm which had come to she was shrinking with newly startled repulsion; her as the only energy strong enough to make on the side to which she was drawn by affection life worthy, seemed to be inevitably bound up and memory, there was the presentiment of with vain dreams and willful eye-shutting. Her some secret plotting, which her judgment told mind rushed back with a new attraction toward her would not be unfairly called crime. And the strong worldly sense, the dignified prudence, still surmounting every other thought was the the untheoretic virtues of her godfather, who dread inspired by Tito's hints, lest that presentiwas to be treated as a sort of Agag because he ment should be converted into knowledge, in held that a more restricted form of government such a way that she would be torn by irreconcilwas better than the Great Council, and because able claims. he would not pretend to forget old ties to the banished family. But with this last thought rose the presentiment of some plot to restore the Medici; and then again she felt that the popular party was half justified in its fierce suspicion. Again she felt that to keep the Government of Florence pure, and to keep out a vicious rule, was a sacred cause; the Frate was right there, and had carried her understanding irrevocably with him. But at this moment the assent of her understanding went alone; it was given unwillingly. Her heart was recoiling from a right allied to so much narrowness; a right apparently entailing that hard systematic judgment of men which measures them by assents and denials

Calmness would not come even on the altar step; it would not come from looking at the serene picture where the saint, writing in the rocky solitude, was being visited by faces with celestial peace in them. Romola 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 court-yard, 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. dassarre.

The man was Bal

CHAPTER LIII.

ON SAN MINIATO.

"I WOULD speak with you," said Baldassarre, as Romola looked at him in silent expectation. It was plain that he had followed her, and had been waiting for her. She was going at last to know the secret about him.

"Yes," she said, with the same sort of submission that she might have shown under an imposed penance. "But you wish to go where no one can hear us?"

"Where he will not come upon us," said Baldassarre, turning and glancing behind him timidly. "Out—in the air-away from the

"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 comparatively 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 vigor which belonged to it when he first appeared with the rope 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 for speech was come, to seize the words that would convey the thought he wanted to utter: and she remained as motionless as she could, lest he should suppose her impatient. He looked like nothing higher than a common-bred, neglected old man; but she was used now to be very near to such people, and to think a great deal about their troubles. Gradually his glance gathered a more definite expression, and at last he said, with abrupt emphasis

dassarre; for the first time his words had wrought their right effect. He went on with gathering eagerness and firmness, laying his hand on her arm.

"You are a woman of proud blood-is it not true? You go to hear the preacher; you hate baseness-baseness that smiles and triumphs. You hate your husband?"

"Oh, God! were you really his father?" said 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?"

"Ah, you believe me-you know what he is!" said Baldassarre, exultingly, tightening the pressure on 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 that grasped her arm, and the tears came to her eyes as she looked at him. "Oh! it is piteous! Tell me why, 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 Baldassare; "and they would not believe me, because he lied, and said I was mad; and they had me dragged to prison. And I am old-my mind will not come back. And the world is against me."

He paused a moment, and his eyes sank as if he were under a wave of despondency. Then he looked up at her again, and said, with renewed eagerness,

"But you are not against me. He made you love him, and he has been false to you; and you hate him. Yes, he made me love him: he was beautiful and gentle, and I was a lonely man. I took him when they were beating him. He slept in my bosom when he was little, and I watched him as he grew, and gave him all my knowledge, and every thing that was mine I meant to be his. I had many things: money, and books, and gems. He had my gems-he sold them; and he left me in slavery. He never came to seek me, and when I came back poor and in misery, he denied me. He said I was a madman."

"He told us his father was dead-was drowned," said Romola, faintly. "Surely he must have believed it then. Oh! he could not have been so base then!"

"Ah! you would have been my daughter!" The swift flush came in Romola's face and went back again as swiftly, leaving her with A vision had risen of what Tito was to her in white lips a little apart, like a marble image of those first days when she thought no more of horror. For her mind this revelation was made. wrong in him than a child thinks of poison in She divined the facts that lay behind that single flowers. The yearning regret that lay in that word, and in the first moment there could be no memory brought some relief from the tension check to the impulsive belief which sprang from of horror. With one great sob the tears rushed her keen experience of Tito's nature. The sens-forth.

itive response of her face was a stimulus to Bal- "Ah, you are young, and the tears come