A Final Understanding.
Tito soon returned from Siena, but almost immediately set out on
another journey, from which he did not return till the seventeenth of
August. Nearly a fortnight had passed since the arrest of the accused,
and still they were in prison, still their fate was uncertain. Romola
had felt during this interval as if all cares were suspended for her,
other than watching the fluctuating probabilities concerning that fate.
Sometimes they seemed strongly in favour of the prisoners; for the
chances of effective interest on their behalf were heightened by delay,
and an indefinite prospect of delay was opened by the reluctance of all
persons in authority to incur the odium attendant on any decision. On
the one side there was a loud cry that the Republic was in danger, and
that lenity to the prisoners would be the signal of attack for all its
enemies; on the other, there was a certainty that a sentence of death
and confiscation of property passed on five citizens of distinguished
name, would entail the rancorous hatred of their relatives on all who
were conspicuously instrumental to such a sentence.
The final judgment properly lay with the Eight, who presided over the
administration of criminal justice; and the sentence depended on a
majority of six votes. But the Eight shrank from their onerous
responsibility, and asked in this exceptional case to have it shared by
the Signoria (or the Gonfaloniere and the eight Priors). The Signoria
in its turn shrugged its shoulders, and proposed the appeal to the
Great Council. For, according to a law passed by the earnest persuasion
of Savonarola nearly three years before, whenever a citizen was
condemned to death by the fatal six votes (called the _set fave_ or
_six beans_, beans being in more senses than one the political pulse of
Florence), he had the right of appealing from that sentence to the
Great Council.
But in this stage of the business, the friends of the accused resisted
the appeal, determined chiefly by the wish to gain delay; and, in fact,
strict legality required that sentence should have been passed prior to
the appeal. Their resistance prevailed, and a middle course was taken;
the sentence was referred to a large assembly convened on the
seventeenth, consisting of all the higher magistracies, the smaller
council or Senate of Eighty, and a select number of citizens.
On this day Romola, with anxiety heightened by the possibility that
before its close her godfather’s fate might be decided, had obtained
leave to see him for the second time, but only in the presence of
witnesses. She had returned to the Via de’ Bardi in company with her
cousin Brigida, still ignorant whether the council had come to any
decisive issue; and Monna Brigida had gone out again to await the
momentous news at the house of a friend belonging to one of the
magistracies, that she might bring back authentic tidings as soon as
they were to be had.
Romola had sunk on the first seat in the bright saloon, too much
agitated, too sick at heart, to care about her place, or be conscious
of discordance in the objects that surrounded her. She sat with her
back to the door, resting her head on her hands. It seemed a long while
since Monna Brigida had gone, and Romola was expecting her return. But
when the door opened she knew it was not Monna Brigida who entered.
Since she had parted from Tito on that memorable night, she had had no
external proof to warrant her belief that he had won his safety by
treachery; on the contrary, she had had evidence that he was still
trusted by the Mediceans, and was believed by them to be accomplishing
certain errands of theirs in Romagna, under cover of fulfilling a
commission of the government. For the obscurity in which the evidence
concerning the conspirators was shrouded allowed it to be understood
that Tito had escaped any implication.
But Romola’s suspicion was not to be dissipated: her horror of his
conduct towards Baldassarre projected itself over every conception of
his acts; it was as if she had seen him committing a murder, and had
had a diseased impression ever after that his hands were covered with
fresh blood.
As she heard his step on the stone floor, a chill shudder passed
through her; she could not turn round, she could not rise to give any
greeting. He did not speak, but after an instant’s pause took a seat on
the other side of the table just opposite to her. Then she raised her
eyes and looked at him; but she was mute. He did not show any
irritation, but said, coolly—
“This meeting corresponds with our parting, Romola. But I understand
that it is a moment of terrible suspense. I am come, however, if you
will listen to me, to bring you the relief of hope.”
She started, and altered her position, but looked at him dubiously.
“It will not be unwelcome to you to hear—even though it is I who tell
it—that the council is prorogued till the twenty-first. The Eight have
been frightened at last into passing a sentence of condemnation, but
the demand has now been made on behalf of the condemned for the Appeal
to the Great Council.”
Romola’s face lost its dubious expression; she asked eagerly—
“And when is it to be made?”
“It has not yet been granted; but it _may_ be granted. The Special
Council is to meet again on the twenty-first to deliberate whether the
Appeal shall be allowed or not. In the meantime there is an interval of
three days, in which chances may occur in favour of the prisoners—in
which interest may be used on their behalf.”
Romola started from her seat. The colour had risen to her face like a
visible thought, and her hands trembled. In that moment her feeling
towards Tito was forgotten.
“Possibly,” said Tito, also rising, “your own intention may have
anticipated what I was going to say. You are thinking of the Frate.”
“I am,” said Romola, looking at him with surprise. “Has he done
anything? Is there anything to tell me?”
“Only this. It was Messer Francesco Valori’s bitterness and violence
which chiefly determined the course of things in the council to-day.
Half the men who gave in their opinion against the prisoners were
frightened into it, and there are numerous friends of Fra Girolamo both
in this Special Council and out of it who are strongly opposed to the
sentence of death—Piero Guicciardini, for example, who is one member of
the Signoria that made the stoutest resistance; and there is Giovan
Battista Ridolfi, who, Piagnone as he is, will not lightly forgive the
death of his brother Niccolò.”
“But how can the Appeal be denied,” said Romola, indignantly, “when it
is the law—when it was one of the chief glories of the popular
government to have passed the law?”
“They call this an exceptional case. Of course there are ingenious
arguments, but there is much more of loud bluster about the danger of
the Republic. But, you see, no opposition could prevent the assembly
from being prorogued, and a certain powerful influence rightly applied
during the next three days might determine the wavering courage of
those who desire that the Appeal should be granted, and might even give
a check to the headlong enmity of Francesco Valori. It happens to have
come to my knowledge that the Frate has so far interfered as to send a
message to him in favour of Lorenzo Tornabuoni. I know you can
sometimes have access to the Frate: it might at all events be worth
while to use your privilege now.”
“It is true,” said Romola, with an air of abstraction. “I cannot
believe that the Frate would approve denying the Appeal.”
“I heard it said by more than one person in the court of the Palazzo,
before I came away, that it would be to the everlasting discredit of
Fra Girolamo if he allowed a government which is almost entirely made
up of his party, to deny the Appeal, without entering his protest, when
he has been boasting in his books and sermons that it was he who got
the law passed.[1] But between ourselves, with all respect for your
Frate’s ability, my Romola, he has got into the practice of preaching
that form of human sacrifices called killing tyrants and wicked
malcontents, which some of his followers are likely to think
inconsistent with lenity in the present case.”
[1] The most recent, and in some respects the best, biographer of
Savonarola, Signor Villari, endeavours to show that the Law of Appeal
ultimately enacted, being wider than the law originally contemplated
by Savonarola, was a source of bitter annoyance to him, as a
contrivance of the aristocratic party for attaching to the measures of
the popular government the injurious results of licence. But in taking
this view the estimable biographer lost sight of the fact that, not
only in his sermons, but in a deliberately prepared book (the
_Compendium Revelationum_) written long after the Appeal had become
law, Savonarola enumerates among the benefits secured to Florence,
“_the Appeal from the Six Votes, advocated by me, for the greater
security of the citizens_.”
“I know, I know,” said Romola, with a look and tone of pain. “But he is
driven into those excesses of speech. It used to be different. I _will_
ask for an interview. I cannot rest without it. I trust in the
greatness of his heart.”
She was not looking at Tito; her eyes were bent with a vague gaze
towards the ground, and she had no distinct consciousness that the
words she heard came from her husband.
“Better lose no time, then,” said Tito, with unmixed suavity, moving
his cap round in his hands as if he were about to put it on and depart.
“And now, Romola, you will perhaps be able to see, in spite of
prejudice, that my wishes go with yours in this matter. You will not
regard the misfortune of my safety as an offence.”
Something like an electric shock passed through Romola: it was the full
consciousness of her husband’s presence returning to her. She looked at
him without speaking.
“At least,” he added, in a slightly harder tone, “you will endeavour to
base our intercourse on some other reasonings than that because an evil
deed is possible, _I_ have done it. Am I alone to be beyond the pale of
your extensive charity?”
The feeling which had been driven back from Romola’s lips a fortnight
before rose again with the gathered force of a tidal wave. She spoke
with a decision which told him that she was careless of consequences.
“It is too late, Tito. There is no killing the suspicion that deceit
has once begotten. And now I know everything. I know who that old man
was: he was your father, to whom you owe everything—to whom you owe
more than if you had been his own child. By the side of that, it is a
small thing that you broke my trust and my father’s. As long as you
deny the truth about that old man, there is a horror rising between us:
the law that should make us one can never be obeyed. I too am a human
being. I have a soul of my own that abhors your actions. Our union is a
pretence—as if a perpetual lie could be a sacred marriage.”
Tito did not answer immediately. When he did speak it was with a
calculated caution, that was stimulated by alarm.
“And you mean to carry out that independence by quitting me, I
presume?”
“I desire to quit you,” said Romola, impetuously.
“And supposing I do not submit to part with what the law gives me some
security for retaining? You will then, of course, proclaim your reasons
in the ear of all Florence. You will bring forward your mad assassin,
who is doubtless ready to obey your call, and you will tell the world
that you believe his testimony because he is so rational as to desire
to assassinate me. You will first inform the Signoria that I am a
Medicean conspirator, and then you will inform the Mediceans that I
have betrayed them, and in both cases you will offer the excellent
proof that you believe me capable in general of everything bad. It will
certainly be a striking position for a wife to adopt. And if, on such
evidence, you succeed in holding me up to infamy, you will have
surpassed all the heroines of the Greek drama.”
He paused a moment, but she stood mute. He went on with the sense of
mastery.
“I believe you have no other grievance against me—except that I have
failed in fulfilling some lofty indefinite conditions on which you gave
me your wifely affection, so that, by withdrawing it, you have
gradually reduced me to the careful supply of your wants as a fair
Piagnone of high condition and liberal charities. I think your success
in gibbeting me is not certain. But doubtless you would begin by
winning the ear of Messer Bernardo del Nero?”
“Why do I speak of anything?” cried Romola, in anguish, sinking on her
chair again. “It is hateful in me to be thinking of myself.”
She did not notice when Tito left the room, or know how long it was
before the door opened to admit Monna Brigida. But in that instant she
started up and said—
“Cousin, we must go to San Marco directly. I must see my confessor, Fra
Salvestro.”