a true account of what passes within us something else is necessary besides sincerity, even when sincerity is unmixed. In these very moments, when Savonarola was kneeling in audible prayer, he had ceased to hear the words on his lips. They were drowned by argumentative voices within him that shaped their reasons more and more for an outward audience.

Yet it was impossible to him to satisfy them; | hand among our store of opinions, and to give and with bitter distress he saw now that it was impossible for him any longer to resist the prosecution of the trial in Fra Domenico's case. Not that Savonarola had uttered and written a falsity when he declared his belief in a future supernatural attestation of his work; but his mind was so constituted that while it was easy for him to believe in a miracle which, being distant and undefined, was screened behind the strong reasons he saw for its occurrence, and yet easier for him to have a belief in inward miracles such as his own prophetic inspiration and divinely wrought intuitions; it was at the same time insurmountably difficult to him to believe in the probability of a miracle which, like this of being carried unhurt through the fire, pressed in all its details on his imagination and involved a demand not only for belief but for exceptional action.

"To appeal to Heaven for a miracle by a rash acceptance of a challenge, which is a mere snare prepared for me by ignoble foes, would be a tempting of God, and the appeal would not be responded to. Let the Pope's legate come, let the embassadors of all the great Powers come and promise that the calling of a General Council and the reform of the Church shall hang on the miracle, and I will enter the flames, trusting that God will not withhold His seal from that great work.. Until then I reserve myself for higher duties which are directly laid upon me: it is not permitted to me to leap from the chariot for the sake of wrestling with every loud vaunter. But Fra Domenico's invincible zeal to enter into the trial may be the sign of a Divine vocation, may be a pledge that the miracle—”

But no! when Savonarola brought his mind close to the threatened scene in the Piazza, and

belief recoiled again. It was not an event that his imagination could simply see: he felt it with shuddering vibrations to the extremities of his sensitive fingers. The miracle could not be. Nay, the trial itself was not to happen: he was warranted in doing all in his power to hinder it. The fuel might be got ready in the Piazza, the people might be assembled, the preparatory for

Savonarola's nature was one of those in which opposing tendencies coexist in almost equal strength: the passionate sensibility which, impatient of definite thought, floods every idea with emotion and tends toward contemplative ecstasy, alternated in him with a keen perception of outward facts and a vigorous practical judgment of men and things. And in this case of the Trial by Fire, the latter characteristics were stimula-imagined a human body entering the fire, his ted into unusual activity by an acute physical sensitiveness which gives overpowering force to the conception of pain and destruction as a necessary sequence of facts which have already been experienced as causes of pain. The readiness with which men will consent to touch red-hot iron with a wet finger is not to be measured by their theoretic acceptance of the impossibility that the iron will burn them: practical belief de-malities might be gone through: all this was pends on what is most strongly represented in the mind at a given moment. And with the Frate's constitution, when the Trial by Fire was urged on his imagination as an immediate demand, it was impossible for him to believe that he or any other man could walk through the flames unhurt-impossible for him to believe that even if he resolved to offer himself he would not shrink at the last moment.

But the Florentines were not likely to make these fine distinctions. To the common run of mankind it has always seemed a proof of mental vigor to find moral questions easy, and judge | conduct according to concise alteratives. And nothing was likely to seem plainer than that a man who at one time declared that God would not leave him without the guarantee of a miracle, and yet drew back when it was proposed to test his declaration, had said what he did not believe. Were not Fra Domenico and Fra Mariano, and scores of Piagnoni besides, ready to enter the fire? What was the cause of their superior courage, if it was not their superior faith? Savonarola could not have explained his conduct satisfactorily to his friends, even if he had been able to explain it thoroughly to himself. And he was not. Our naked feelings make haste to clothe themselves in propositions which lie at

perhaps inevitable now, and he could no longer resist it without bringing dishonor on-himself? Yes, and therefore on the cause of God. But it was not really intended that the Franciscan should enter the fire, and while he hung back there would be the means of preventing Fra Domenico's entrance. At the very worst, if Fra Domenico were compelled to enter, he should carry the consecrated Host with him, and with that Mystery in his hand, there might be a warrant for expecting that the ordinary effects of fire would be stayed; or, more probably, this demand would be resisted, and might thus be a final obstacle to the trial.

But these intentions could not be avowed: he must appear frankly to await the trial, and to trust in its issue. That dissidence between inward reality and outward seeming was not the Christian simplicity after which he had striven through years of his youth and prime, and which he had preached as a chief fruit of the Divine life. In the stress and heat of the day, with cheeks burning, with shouts ringing in the ears, who is so blest as to remember the yearnings he had in the cool and silent morning, and know that he has not belied them?

"O God, it is for the sake of the peoplebecause they are blind-because their faith de

pends on me. If I put on sackcloth and cast myself among the ashes, who will take up the standard and head the battle? Have I not been led by a way which I knew not to the work that lies before me?"

The conflict was one that could not end, and in the effort at prayerful pleading the uneasy | mind laved its smart continually in thoughts of the greatness of that task which there was no man else to fulfill if he forsook it. It was not a thing of every day that a man should be inspired with the vision and the daring that made a sacred rebel.

Even the words of prayer had died away. He continued to kneel, but his mind was filled with the images of results to be felt through all Europe; and the sense of immediate difficulties was being lost in the glow of that vision, when the knocking at the door announced the expected visit.

The fact was that Savonarola had expected to receive this intimation from Domenico Mazzinghi, one of the Ten, an ardent disciple of his, whom he had already employed to write a private letter to the Florentine embassador in France, to prepare the way for a letter to the French king himself in Savonarola's handwriting, which now lay ready in the desk at his side. It was a letter calling on the king to assist in summoning a General Council, that might reform the abuses of the Church, and begin by deposing Pope Alexander, who was not rightfully Pope, being a vicious unbeliever, elected by corruption, and governing by simony.

This fact was not what Tito knew, but what his hypothetic talent, constructing from subtle indications, had led him to guess and hope.

"It is true, my son," said Savonarola, quietly. "It is true I have letters which I would gladly send by safe conveyance under cover to our embassador. Our community of San Mar

Savonarola drew on his mantle before he left his cell, as was his custom when he received vis-co, as you know, has affairs in France, being, itors; and with that immediate response to any among other things, responsible for a debt to appeal from without which belongs to a power- that singularly wise and experienced Frenchloving nature accustomed to make its power felt man, Signor Philippe de Comines, on the libraby speech, he met Tito with a glance as self-ry of the Medici, which we purchased; but I possessed and strong as if he had risen from res-apprehend that Domenico Mazzinghi himself olution instead of conflict. may return to the city before evening, and I

letters if I waited to deposit them in his hands."

Tito did not kneel, but simply made a greet-should gain more time for preparation of the ing of profound deference, which Savonarola received quietly without any sacerdotal words, and then desiring him to be seated, said at once, "Your business is something of weight, my son, that could not be conveyed through others?" "Assuredly, father, else I should not have presumed to ask it. I will not trespass on your time by any proem. I gathered from a remark of Messer Domenico Mazzinghi that you might be glad to make use of the next special courier who is sent to France with dispatches from the Ten. I must entreat you to pardon me if I have been too officious; but inasmuch as Messer Domenico is at this moment away at his villa, I wished to apprise you that a courier carrying important letters is about to depart for Lyons at daybreak to-morrow."

"Assuredly, reverend father, that might be better on all grounds except one, namely, that if any thing occurred to hinder Messer Domenico's return, the dispatch of the letters would require either that I should come to San Marco again at a late hour, or that you should send them to me by your secretary; and I am aware that you wish to guard against the false inferences which might be drawn from a too frequent communication between yourself and any officer of the government." In throwing out this dif ficulty Tito felt that the more unwillingness the Frate showed to trust him the more certain he would be of his conjecture.

Savonarola was silent; but while he kept his mouth firm a slight glow rose in his face with the suppressed excitement that was growing within him. It would be a critical momentthat in which he delivered the letter out of his own hands.

The muscles of Fra Girolamo's face were eminently under command, as must be the case with all men whose personality is powerful, and in deliberate speech he was habitually cautious, confiding his intentions to none without neces- "It is most probable that Messer Domenico sity. But under any strong mental stimulus will return in time," said Tito, affecting to conhis eyes were liable to a dilation and added brill-sider the Frate's determination settled, and risiancy that no strength of will could control. ing from his chair as he spoke. "With your He looked steadily at Tito, and did not answer permission I will take my leave, father, not to immediately, as if he had to consider whether trespass on your time when my errand is done; the information he had just heard met any pur- but as I may not be favored with another interpose of his. view, I venture to confide to you what is not yet known to others except to the magnificent Ten, that I contemplate resigning my secretaryship, and leaving Florence shortly. Am I presuming too much on your interest in stafing what relates chiefly to myself?"

Tito, whose glance never seemed observant, but rarely let any thing escape it, had expected precisely that dilation and flash of Savonarola's eyes which he had noted on other occasions. He saw it, and then immediately busied himself in adjusting his gold fibula, which had got wrong; seeming to imply that he awaited an answer patiently.

"Speak on, my son," said the Frate, "I desire to know your prospects."

"I find, then, that I have mistaken my real

they are absent-minded and inwardly excited there is silence in the air.

Tito made a deep reverence, and went out with the letter under his mantle.

vocation in forsaking the career of pure letters, for which I was brought up. The politics of Florence, father, are worthy to occupy the greatest mind-to occupy yours-when a man is in a position to execute his own ideas; but when, The letter was duly delivered to the courier like me, he can only hope to be the mere instru- and carried out of Florence. But before that ment of changing schemes, he requires to be an- happened another messenger, privately employimated by the minor attachments of a born Flor-ed by Tito, had conveyed information in cipher, entine: also, my wife's unhappy alienation from a Florentine residence since the painful events of August naturally influences me. I wish to join her."

Savonarola inclined his head approvingly.

"I intend, then, soon to leave Florence, to visit the chief courts of Europe, and to widen my acquaintance with the men of letters in the various universities. I shall go first to the court of Hungary, where scholars are eminently welcome; and I shall probably start in a week or ten days. I have not concealed from you, father, that I am no religious enthusiast; I have not my wife's ardor; but religious enthusiasm, as I conceive, is not necessary in order to appreciate the grandeur and justice of your views concerning the government of nations and the Church. And if you condescend to intrust me with any commission that will further the relations you wish to establish I shall feel honored. May I now take my leave?"

"Stay, my son. When you depart from Florence I will send a letter to your wife, of whose spiritual welfare I would fain be assured, for she left me in anger. As for the letters to France, such as I have ready—"

Savonarola rose and turned to his desk as he spoke. He took from it a letter on which Tito could see, but not read, an address in the Frate's own minute and exquisite handwriting, still to be seen covering the margins of his Bibles. He took a large sheet of paper, inclosed the letter, and sealed it.

which was carried by a series of relays to armed agents of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, on the watch for the very purpose of intercepting dispatches on the borders of the Milanese territory.

CHAPTER LXV.

THE TRIAL BY FIRE.

LITTLE more than a week after, on the seventh of April, the great Piazza della Signoria presented a stranger spectacle even than the famous Bonfire of Vanities. And a greater multitude had assembled to see it than had ever before tried to find place for themselves in the wide Piazza, even on the day of San Giovanni.

It was near mid-day, and since the early morning there had been a gradual swarming of the people at every coign of vantage or disadvantage offered by the façades and roofs of the houses, and such spaces of the pavement as were free to the public. Men were seated on iron rods that made a sharp angle with the rising wall, were clutching slim pillars with arms and legs, were astride on the necks of the rough statuary that here and there surmounted the entrances of the grander houses, were finding a palm's-breadth of seat on a bit of architrave, and a footing on the rough projections of the rustic stone-work, while they clutched the strong iron rings or staples driven into the walls beside them.

"Pardon me, father," said Tito, before Sa- For they were come to see a Miracle: cramped vonarola had time to speak, "unless it were your limbs and abraded flesh seemed slight inconvendecided wish, I would rather not incur the re-iences with that prospect close at hand. It is sponsibility of carrying away the letter. Messer the ordinary lot of mankind to hear of miracles, Domenico Mazzinghi will doubtless return, or, and more or less believe in them; but now the if not, Fra Niccolò can convey it to me at the Florentines were going to see one. At the very second hour of the evening, when I shall place least they would see half a miracle; for if the the other dispatches in the courier's hands." monk did not come whole out of the fire, they would see him enter it, and infer that he was burned in the middle.

"At present, my son," said the Frate, waiving that point, "I wish you to address this packet to our embassador in your own handwriting, which is preferable to my secretary's."

Tito sat down to write the address while the Frate stood by him with folded arms, the glow mounting in his cheek, and his lip at last quivering. Tito rose and was about to move away, when Savonarola said, abruptly,

"Take it, my son. There is no use in waiting. It does not please me that Fra Niccolò should have needless errands to the Palazzo."

As Tito took the letter Savonarola stood in suppressed excitement that forbade further speech. There seems to be a subtle emanation from passionate natures like his, making their mental states tell immediately on others; when

There could be no reasonable doubt, it seemed, that the fire would be kindled, and that the monks would enter it. For there, before their eyes, was the long platform, eight feet broad and twenty yards long, with a grove of fuel heaped up terribly, great branches of dry oak as a foundation, crackling thorns above, and wellanointed tow and rags, known to make fine flames in Florentine illuminations. The platform began at the corner of the marble terrace in front of the old palace, close to Marzocco, the stone lion, whose aged visage looked frowningly along the grove of fuel that stretched obliquely across the Piazza.

Besides that there were three large bodies of

armed men five hundred hired soldiers of the Signoria stationed before the palace, five hundred Compagnacci, under Dolfo Spini, far off on the opposite side of the Piazza, and three hundred armed citizens of another sort, under Marco Salviati, Savonarola's friend, in front of Orcagna's Loggia, where the Franciscans and Dominicans were to be placed with their champions.

Here had been much expense of money and labor, and high dignities were concerned. There could be no reasonable doubt that something great was about to happen; and it would certainly be a great thing if the two monks were simply burned, for in that case too God would have spoken, and said very plainly that Fra Girolamo was not his prophet.

on the day of the Trial by Fire the doubleness which is the pressing temptation in every public career, whether of priest, orator, or statesman, was more strongly defined in Savonarola's consciousness as the acting of a part, than at any other period in his life. He was struggling not against impending martyrdom, but against impending ruin.

Therefore he looked and acted as if he were thoroughly confident, when all the while foreboding was pressing with leaden weight on his heart, not only because of the probable issues of this trial, but because of another event already past-an event which was spreading a sunny satisfaction through the mind of a man who was looking down at the passion-worn prophet from a window of the Old Palace. It was a common And there was not much longer to wait, for turning-point toward which those widely-sunit was now near mid-day. Half the monks dered lives had been converging, that two evenwere already at their post, and that half of the ings ago the news had come that the Florentine Loggia that lies toward the Palace was already courier of the Ten had been arrested and robbed filled with gray mantles; but the other half, di- of all his dispatches, so that Savonarola's letter vided off by boards, was still empty of every | was already in the hands of the Duke of Milan, thing except a small altar. The Franciscans and would soon be in the hands of the Pope, had entered and taken their places in silence. not only heightening rage, but giving a new But now, at the other side of the Piazza, was justification to extreme measures. There was heard loud chanting from two hundred voices, no malignity in Tito Melema's satisfaction: it and there was general satisfaction, if not in the was the mild self-gratulation of a man who has chanting, at least in the evidence that the Do- won a game that has employed hypothetic skill, · minicans were come. That loud chanting rep- not a game that has stirred the muscles and etition of the prayer, "Let God arise, and let heated the blood. Of course that bundle of his enemies be scattered," was unpleasantly sug- desires and contrivances called human nature, gestive to some impartial ears of a desire to when moulded into the form of a plain-featured vaunt confidence and excite dismay; and so Frate Predicatore, more or less of an impostor, was the flame-colored velvet cope in which Fra could not be a pathetic object to a brilliantDomenico was arrayed as he headed the proces- minded scholar who understood every thing. sion, cross in hand, his simple mind really ex-Yet this tonsured Girolamo, with the high nose alted with faith, and with the genuine intention and large under lip, was an immensely clever to enter the flames for the glory of God and Fra Frate, mixing with his absurd superstitions or Girolamo. Behind him came Savonarola in the fabrications very remarkable notions about govwhite vestment of a priest, carrying in his hands ernment: no babbler, but a man who could keep a vessel containing the consecrated Host. He his secrets. Tito had no more spite against too was chanting loudly, he too looked firm and him than against Saint Dominic. On the conconfident; and as all eyes were turned eagerly trary, Fra Girolamo's existence had been highon him, either in anxiety, curiosity, or malig-ly convenient to Tito Melema, furnishing him nity, from the moment when he entered the Piazza till he mounted the steps of the Loggia, and deposited the Sacrament on the altar, there was an intensifying flash and energy in his countenance responding to that scrutiny.

We are so made, almost all of us, that the false seeming which we have thought of with painful shrinking when beforehand in our solitude it has urged itself on us as a necessity, will possess our muscles and move our lips as if nothing but that were easy when once we have come under the stimulus of expectant eyes and

And ev

with that round of the ladder from which he
was about to leap on to a new and smooth foot-
ing very much to his heart's content.
ery thing now was in forward preparation for
that leap: let one more sun rise and set, and
Tito hoped to quit Florence. He had been so
industrious that he felt at full leisure to amuse
himself with to-day's comedy, which the thick-
headed Dolfo Spini could never have brought
about but for him.

Not yet did the loud chanting cease, but rather swelled to a deafening roar, being taken up in all parts of the Piazza by the Piagnoni, who carried their little red crosses as a badge, and, most of them, chanted the prayer for the confusion of God's enemies, with the expectation of an answer to be given through the medium of a more signal personage than Fra Domenico. This good Frate, in his flame-colored cope, was now kneeling before the little altar on which the Sacrament was deposited, awaiting his summons.

On the Franciscan, side of the Loggia there | If the miracle did not begin, it could be no one's was no chanting and no flame-color: only si- fault but Fra Girolamo's, who might put an end lence and grayness. But there was this coun- to all difficulties by offering himself now the terbalancing difference, that the Franciscans had fire was ready, as he had been forward enough two champions: a certain Fra Giuliano was to to do when there was no fuel in sight. pair with Fra Domenico, while the original champion, Fra Francesco, confined his challenge to Savonarola.