Romola

by George Eliot

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO.

  A PROPHETESS.

  The incidents of that Carnival day seemed to Romola to carry no otherpersonal consequences to her than the new care of supporting poor cousinBrigida in her fluctuating resignation to age and grey hairs; but theyintroduced a Lenten time in which she was kept at a high pitch of mentalexcitement and active effort.

  Bernardo del Nero had been elected Gonfaloniere. By great exertions theMedicean party had so far triumphed, and that triumph had deepenedRomola's presentiment of some secretly-prepared scheme likely to ripeneither into success or betrayal during these two months of hergodfather's authority. Every morning the dim daybreak as it peered intoher room seemed to be that haunting fear coming back to her. Everymorning the fear went with her as she passed through the streets on herway to the early sermon in the Duomo: but there she gradually lost thesense of its chill presence, as men lose the dread of death in the clashof battle.

  In the Duomo she felt herself sharing in a passionate conflict which hadwider relations than any enclosed within the walls of Florence. ForSavonarola was preaching--preaching the last course of Lenten sermons hewas ever allowed to finish in the Duomo: he knew that excommunicationwas imminent, and he had reached the point of defying it. He held upthe condition of the Church in the terrible mirror of his unflinchingspeech, which called things by their right names and dealt in no politeperiphrases; he proclaimed with heightening confidence the advent ofrenovation--of a moment when there would be a general revolt againstcorruption. As to his own destiny, he seemed to have a double andalternating prevision: sometimes he saw himself taking a glorious partin that revolt, sending forth a voice that would be heard through allChristendom, and making the dead body of the Church tremble into newlife, as the body of Lazarus trembled when the Divine voice pierced thesepulchre; sometimes he saw no prospect for himself but persecution andmartyrdom:--this life for him was only a vigil, and only after deathwould come the dawn.

  The position was one which must have had its impressiveness for allminds that were not of the dullest order, even if they were inclined, asMacchiavelli was, to interpret the Frate's character by a key thatpresupposed no loftiness. To Romola, whose kindred ardour gave her afirm belief in Savonarola's genuine greatness of purpose, the crisis wasas stirring as if it had been part of her personal lot. It blent itselfas an exalting memory with all her daily labours; and those labours werecalling 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 wasspreading in the crowded city, and the Plague was expected. As Romolawalked, often in weariness, among the sick, the hungry, and themurmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than herpity--by the belief in a heroism struggling for sublime ends, towardswhich the daily action of her pity could only tend feebly, as the dewsthat freshen the weedy ground to-day tend to prepare an unseen harvestin the years to come.

  But that mighty music which stirred her in the Duomo was not without itsjarring notes. Since those first days of glowing hope when the Frate,seeing the near triumph of good in the reform of the Republic and thecoming of the French deliverer, had preached peace, charity, andoblivion of political differences, there had been a marked change ofconditions: political intrigue had been too obstinate to allow of thedesired oblivion; the belief in the French deliverer, who had turned hisback 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 newweapons and new determination.

  It followed that the spirit of contention and self-vindication piercedmore and more conspicuously in his sermons; that he was urged to meetthe popular demands not only by increased insistance and detailconcerning visions and private revelations, but by a tone of defiantconfidence against objectors; and from having denounced the desire forthe miraculous, and declared that miracles had no relation to truefaith, he had come to assert that at the right moment the Divine powerwould attest the truth of his prophetic preaching by a miracle. Andcontinually, in the rapid transitions of excited feeling, as the visionof triumphant good receded behind the actual predominance of evil, thethreats of coming vengeance against vicious tyrants and corrupt priestsgathered some impetus from personal exasperation, as well as fromindignant zeal.

  In the career of a great public orator who yields himself to theinspiration of the moment, that conflict of selfish and unselfishemotion which in most men is hidden in the chamber of the soul, isbrought into terrible evidence: the language of the inner voices iswritten out in letters of fire.

  But if the tones of exasperation jarred on Romola, there was oftenanother member of Fra Girolamo's audience to whom they were the onlythrilling 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 hemight drink in the threats of a voice which seemed like a power on theside of justice. He went the more because he had seen that Romola wenttoo; for he was waiting and watching for a time when not only outwardcircumstances, but his own varying mental state, would mark the rightmoment for seeking an interview with her. Twice Romola had caught sightof his face in the Duomo--once when its dark glance was fixed on hers.She wished not to see it again, and yet she looked for it, as men lookfor the reappearance of a portent. But any revelation that might be yetto come about this old man was a subordinate fear now: it referred, shethought, only to the past, and her anxiety was almost absorbed by thepresent.

  Yet the stirring Lent passed by; April, the second and final month ofher godfather's supreme authority, was near its close; and nothing hadoccurred to fulfil her presentiment. In the public mind, too, there hadbeen fears, and rumours had spread from Home of a menacing activity onthe part of Piero de' Medici; but in a few days the suspected Bernardowould go out of power.

  Romola was trying to gather some courage from the review of her futilefears, when on the twenty-seventh, as she was walking out on her usualerrands of mercy in the afternoon, she was met by a messenger fromCamilla Rucellai, chief among the feminine seers of Florence, desiringher presence forthwith on matters of the highest moment. Romola, whoshrank with unconquerable repulsion from the shrill volubility of thoseilluminated women, and had just now a special repugnance towards Camillabecause of a report that she had announced revelations hostile toBernardo del Nero, was at first inclined to send back a flat refusal.Camilla's message might refer to public affairs, and Romola's immediateprompting was to close her ears against knowledge that might only makeher mental burden heavier. But it had become so thoroughly her habit toreject her impulsive choice, and to obey passively the guidance ofoutward claims, that, reproving herself for allowing her presentimentsto make her cowardly and selfish, she ended by compliance, and wentstraight to Camilla.

  She found the nervous grey-haired woman in a chamber arranged as much aspossible like a convent cell. The thin fingers clutching Romola as shesat, and the eager voice addressing her at first in a loud whisper,caused her a physical shrinking that made it difficult for her to keepher seat.

  Camilla had a vision to communicate--a vision in which it had beenrevealed to her by Romola's Angel, that Romola knew certain secretsconcerning her godfather, Bernardo del Nero, which, if disclosed, mightsave the Republic from peril. Camilla's voice rose louder and higher asshe narrated her vision, and ended by exhorting Romola to obey thecommand of her Angel, and separate herself from the enemy of God.

  Romola's impetuosity was that of a massive nature, and, except inmoments when she was deeply stirred, her manner was calm andself-controlled. She had a constitutional disgust for the shallowexcitability of women like Camilla, whose faculties seemed all wroughtup into fantasies, leaving nothing for emotion and thought. Theexhortation was not yet ended when she started up and attempted towrench her arm from Camilla's tightening grasp. It was of no use. Theprophetess kept her hold like a crab, and, only inc
ited to more eagerexhortation by Romola's resistance, was carried beyond her own intentioninto a shrill statement of other visions which were to corroborate this.Christ himself had appeared to her and ordered her to send his commandsto certain citizens in office that they should throw Bernardo del Nerofrom the window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Fra Girolamo himself knew ofit, and had not dared this time to say that the vision was not of Divineauthority.

  "And since then," said Camilla, in her excited treble, straining upwardwith wild eyes towards Romola's face, "the Blessed Infant has come to meand laid a wafer of sweetness on my tongue in token of his pleasure thatI had done his will."

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

  The violence of her effort to be free was too strong for Camilla now.She wrenched away her arm and rushed out of the room, not pausing tillshe had hurriedly gone far along the street, and found herself close tothe church of the Badia. She had but to pass behind the curtain underthe old stone arch, and she would find a sanctuary shut in from thenoise and hurry of the street, where all objects and all uses suggestedthe 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 ofFilippino Lippi's serene Virgin appearing to Saint Bernard, she waitedin hope that the inward tumult which agitated her would by-and-bysubside.

  The thought which pressed on her the most acutely was that Camilla couldallege Savonarola's countenance of her wicked folly. Romola did not fora moment believe that he had sanctioned the throwing of Bernardo delNero from the window as a Divine suggestion; she felt certain that therewas falsehood or mistake in that allegation. Savonarola had become moreand more severe in his views of resistance to malcontents; but the ideasof strict law and order were fundamental to all his political teaching.Still, since he knew the possibly fatal effects of visions likeCamilla'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 todenounce wrong from the pulpit, did he not publicly denounce thesepretended revelations which brought new darkness instead of light acrossthe conception of a Supreme Will? Why? The answer came with painfulclearness: he was fettered inwardly by the consciousness that suchrevelations were not, in their basis, distinctly separable from his ownvisions; he was fettered outwardly by the foreseen consequence ofraising a cry against himself even among members of his own party, asone who would suppress all Divine inspiration of which he himself wasnot the vehicle--he or his confidential and supplementary seer ofvisions, Fra Salvestro.

  Romola, kneeling with buried face on the altar-step, was enduring one ofthose sickening moments, when the enthusiasm which had come to her asthe only energy strong enough to make life worthy, seemed to beinevitably bound up with vain dreams and wilful eye-shutting. Her mindrushed back with a new attraction towards the strong worldly sense, thedignified prudence, the untheoretic virtues of her godfather, who was tobe treated as a sort of Agag because he held that a more restricted formof government was better than the Great Council, and because he wouldnot pretend to forget old ties to the banished family.

  But with this last thought rose the presentiment of some plot to restorethe Medici; and then again she felt that the popular party was halfjustified in its fierce suspicion. Again she felt that to keep theGovernment of Florence pure, and to keep out a vicious rule, was asacred cause; the Frate was right there, and had carried herunderstanding irrevocably with him. But at this moment the assent ofher understanding went alone; it was given unwillingly. Her heart wasrecoiling from a right allied to so much narrowness; a right apparentlyentailing that hard systematic judgment of men which measures them byassents and denials quite superficial to the manhood within them. Heraffection and respect were clinging with new tenacity to her godfather,and with him to those memories of her father which were in the sameopposition to the division of men into sheep and goats by the easy markof some political or religious symbol.

  After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence ofideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agentsunless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The greatworld-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in thestruggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.

  If Romola's intellect had been less capable of discerning thecomplexities in human things, all the early loving associations of herlife would have forbidden her to accept implicitly the denunciatoryexclusiveness of Savonarola. She had simply felt that his mind hadsuggested deeper and more efficacious truth to her than any other, andthe large breathing-room she found in his grand view of human duties hadmade her patient towards that part of his teaching which she could notabsorb, so long as its practical effect came into collision with nostrong force in her. But now a sudden insurrection of feeling hadbrought about that collision. Her indignation, once roused by Camilla'svisions, could not pause there, but ran like an illuminating fire overall the kindred facts in Savonarola's teaching, and for the moment shefelt what was true in the scornful sarcasms she heard continually flungagainst him, more keenly than she felt 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 workand endure, with the belief that she was working for the right? On theside from which moral energy came lay a fanaticism from which she wasshrinking with newly-startled repulsion; on the side to which she wasdrawn by affection and memory, there was the presentiment of some secretplotting, which her judgment told her would not be unfairly calledcrime. And still surmounting every other thought was the dread inspiredby Tito's hints, lest that presentiment should be converted intoknowledge, in such a way that she would be torn by irreconcilableclaims.

  Calmness would not come even on the altar-steps; it would not come fromlooking at the serene picture where the saint, writing in the rockysolitude, was being visited by faces with celestial peace in them.Romola was in the hard press of human difficulties, and that rockysolitude was too far off. She rose from her knees that she might hastento her sick people in the courtyard, and by some immediate beneficentaction, revive that sense of worth in life which at this moment wasunfed by any wider faith. But when she turned round, she found herselfface to face with a man who was standing only two yards off her. Theman was Baldassarre.