Romola

by George Eliot

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

  OUTSIDE THE DUOMO.

  While Baldassarre was possessed by the voice of Savonarola, he had notnoticed that another man had entered through the doorway behind him, andstood not far off observing him. It was Piero di Cosimo, who took noheed of the preaching, having come solely to look at the escapedprisoner. During the pause, in which the preacher and his audience hadgiven themselves up to inarticulate emotion, the new-comer advanced andtouched Baldassarre on the arm. He looked round with the tears stillslowly rolling down his face, but with a vigorous sigh, as if he haddone with that outburst. The painter spoke to him in a low tone--

  "Shall I cut your cords for you? I have heard how you were madeprisoner."

  Baldassarre did not reply immediately; he glanced suspiciously at theofficious stranger. At last he said, "If you will."

  "Better come outside," said Piero.

  Baldassarre again looked at him suspiciously; and Piero, partly guessinghis thought, smiled, took out a knife, and cut the cords. He began tothink that the idea of the prisoner's madness was not improbable, therewas something so peculiar in the expression of his face. "Well," hethought, "if he does any mischief, he'll soon get tied up again. Thepoor devil shall have a chance, at least."

  "You are afraid of me," he said again, in an undertone; "you don't wantto tell me anything about yourself."

  Baldassarre was folding his arms in enjoyment of the long-absentmuscular sensation. He answered Piero with a less suspicious look and atone which had some quiet decision in it.

  "No, I have nothing to tell."

  "As you please," said Piero, "but perhaps you want shelter, and may notknow how hospitable we Florentines are to visitors with torn doubletsand empty stomachs. There's an hospital for poor travellers outside allour gates, and, if you liked, I could put you in the way to one.There's no danger from your French soldier. He has been sent off."

  Baldassarre nodded, and turned in silent acceptance of the offer, and heand Piero left the church together.

  "You wouldn't like to sit to me for your portrait, should you?" saidPiero, as they went along the Via dell' Oriuolo, on the way to the gateof Santa Croce. "I am a painter: I would give you money to get yourportrait."

  The suspicion returned into Baldassarre's glance, as he looked at Piero,and said decidedly, "No."

  "Ah!" said the painter, curtly. "Well, go straight on, and you'll findthe Porta Santa Croce, and outside it there's an hospital fortravellers. So you'll not accept any service from me?"

  "I give you thanks for what you have done already. I need no more."

  "It is well," said Piero, with a shrug, and they turned away from eachother.

  "A mysterious old tiger!" thought the artist, "well worth painting.Ugly--with deep lines--looking as if the plough and the harrow had goneover his heart. A fine contrast to my bland and smiling Messer Greco--my _Bacco trionfante_, who has married the fair Antigone incontradiction to all history and fitness. Aha! his scholar's bloodcurdled uncomfortably at the old fellow's clutch!" When Pierore-entered the Piazza del Duomo the multitude who had been listening toFra Girolamo were pouring out from all the doors, and the haste theymade to go on their several ways was a proof how important they held thepreaching which had detained them from the other occupations of the day.The artist leaned against an angle of the Baptistery and watched thedeparting crowd, delighting in the variety of the garb and of the keencharacteristic faces--faces such as Masaccio had painted more than fiftyyears before: such as Domenico Ghirlandajo had not yet quite left offpainting.

  This morning was a peculiar occasion, and the Frate's audience, alwaysmultifarious, had represented even more completely than usual thevarious classes and political parties of Florence. There were men ofhigh birth, accustomed to public charges at home and abroad, who hadbecome newly conspicuous not only as enemies of the Medici and friendsof popular government, but as thorough Piagnoni, espousing to the utmostthe doctrines and practical teaching of the Frate, and frequenting SanMarco as the seat of another Samuel: some of them men of authoritativeand handsome presence, like Francesco Valori, and perhaps also of a hotand arrogant temper, very much gratified by an immediate divineauthority for bringing about freedom in their own way; others, likeSoderini, with less of the ardent Piagnone, and more of the wisepolitician. There were men, also of family, like Piero Capponi, simplybrave undoctrinal lovers of a sober republican liberty, who preferredfighting to arguing, and had no particular reasons for thinking anyideas false that kept out the Medici and made room for public spirit.At their elbows were doctors of law whose studies of Accursius and hisbrethren had not so entirely consumed their ardour as to prevent themfrom becoming enthusiastic Piagnoni: Messer Luca Corsini himself, forexample, who on a memorable occasion yet to come was to raise hislearned arms in street stone-throwing for the cause of religion,freedom, and the Frate. And among the dignities who carried their blacklucco or furred mantle with an air of habitual authority, there was anabundant sprinkling of men with more contemplative and sensitive faces:scholars inheriting such high names as Strozzi and Acciajoli, who werealready minded to take the cowl and join the community of San Marco;artists, wrought to a new and higher ambition by the teaching ofSavonarola, like that young painter who had lately surpassed himself inhis fresco of the divine child on the wall of the Frate's bare cell--unconscious yet that he would one day himself wear the tonsure and thecowl, and be called Fra Bartolommeo. There was the mystic poet GirolamoBenevieni hastening, perhaps, to carry tidings of the beloved Frate'sspeedy coming to his friend Pico della Mirandola, who was never to seethe light of another morning. There were well-born women attired withsuch scrupulous plainness that their more refined grace was the chiefdistinction between them and their less aristocratic sisters. There wasa predominant proportion of the genuine _popolani_ or middle class,belonging both to the Major and Minor Arts, conscious of pursesthreatened by war-taxes. And more striking and various, perhaps, thanall the other classes of the Frate's disciples, there was the longstream of poorer tradesmen and artisans, whose faith and hope in hisDivine message varied from the rude and undiscriminating trust in him asthe friend of the poor and the enemy of the luxurious oppressive rich,to that eager tasting of all the subtleties of biblical interpretationwhich takes a peculiarly strong hold on the sedentary artisan,illuminating the long dim spaces beyond the board where he stitches,with a pale flame that seems to him the light of Divine science.

  But among these various disciples of the Frate were scattered many whowere not in the least his disciples. Some were Mediceans who hadalready, from motives of fear and policy, begun to show the presidingspirit of the popular party a feigned deference. Others were sincereadvocates of a free government, but regarded Savonarola simply as anambitious monk--half sagacious, half fanatical--who had made himself apowerful instrument with the people, and must be accepted as animportant social fact. There were even some of his bitter enemies:members of the old aristocratic anti-Medicean party--determined to tryand get the reins once more tight in the hands of certain chieffamilies; or else licentious young men, who detested him as the killjoyof Florence. For the sermons in the Duomo had already become politicalincidents, attracting the ears of curiosity and malice, as well as offaith. The men of ideas, like young Niccolo Macchiavelli, went toobserve and write reports to friends away in country villas; the men ofappetites, like Dolfo Spini, bent on hunting down the Frate, as a publicnuisance who made game scarce, went to feed their hatred and lie in waitfor grounds of accusation.

  Perhaps, while no preacher ever had a more massive influence thanSavonarola, no preacher ever had more heterogeneous materials to workupon. And one secret of the massive influence lay in the highly mixedcharacter of his preaching. Baldassarre, wrought into an ecstasy ofself-martyring revenge, was only an extreme case among the partial andnarrow sympathies of that audience. In Savonarola's preaching therewere strains that appealed to the very finest susceptibilities of men'snatures, and there were elements
that gratified low egoism, tickledgossiping curiosity, and fascinated timorous superstition. His need ofpersonal predominance, his labyrinthine allegorical interpretations ofthe Scriptures, his enigmatic visions, and his false certitude about theDivine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobledby that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that activesympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the subjection of selfishinterests to the general good, which he had in common with the greatestof mankind. But for the mass of his audience all the pregnancy of hispreaching lay in his strong assertion of supernatural claims, in hisdenunciatory visions, in the false certitude which gave his sermons theinterest of a political bulletin; and having once held that audience inhis mastery, it was necessary to his nature--it was necessary for theirwelfare--that he should _keep_ the mastery. The effect was inevitable.No man ever struggled to retain power over a mixed multitude withoutsuffering vitiation; his standard must be their lower needs and not hisown best insight.

  The mysteries of human character have seldom been presented in a waymore fitted to check the judgments of facile knowingness than inGirolamo Savonarola; but we can give him a reverence that needs noshutting of the eyes to fact, if we regard his life as a drama in whichthere were great inward modifications accompanying the outward changes.And up to this period, when his more direct action on political affairshad only just begun, it is probable that his imperious need ofascendancy had burned undiscernibly in the strong flame of his zeal forGod and man.

  It was the fashion of old, when an ox was led out for sacrifice toJupiter, to chalk the dark spots, and give the offering a false show ofunblemished whiteness. Let us fling away the chalk, and boldly say,--the victim is spotted, but it is not therefore in vain that his mightyheart is laid on the altar of men's highest hopes.