The Last Silence.
Romola had seemed to hear, as if they had been a cry, the words
repeated to her by many lips—the words uttered by Savonarola when he
took leave of those brethren of San Marco who had come to witness his
signature of the confession: “Pray for me, for God has withdrawn from
me the spirit of prophecy.”
Those words had shaken her with new doubts as to the mode in which he
looked back at the past in moments of complete self-possession. And the
doubts were strengthened by more piteous things still, which soon
reached her ears.
The nineteenth of May had come, and by that day’s sunshine there had
entered into Florence the two Papal Commissaries, charged with the
completion of Savonarola’s trial. They entered amid the acclamations of
the people, calling for the death of the Frate. For now the popular cry
was, “It is the Frate’s deception that has brought on all our
misfortunes; let him be burned, and all things right will be done, and
our evils will cease.”
The next day it is well certified that there was fresh and fresh
torture of the shattered sensitive frame; and now, at the first sight
of the horrible implements, Savonarola, in convulsed agitation, fell on
his knees, and in brief passionate words _retracted his confession_,
declared that he had spoken falsely in denying his prophetic gift, and
that if he suffered, he would suffer for the truth—“The things that I
have spoken, I had them from God.”
But not the less the torture was laid upon him, and when he was under
it he was asked why he had uttered those retracting words. Men were not
demons in those days, and yet nothing but concessions of guilt were
held a reason for release from torture. The answer came: “I said it
that I might seem good; tear me no more, I will tell you the truth.”
There were Florentine assessors at this new trial, and those words of
twofold retraction had soon spread. They filled Romola with dismayed
uncertainty.
“But,”—it flashed across her—“there will come a moment when he may
speak. When there is no dread hanging over him but the dread of
falsehood, when they have brought him into the presence of death, when
he is lifted above the people, and looks on them for the last time,
they cannot hinder him from speaking a last decisive word. I will be
there.”
Three days after, on the 23rd of May 1498, there was again a long
narrow platform stretching across the great piazza, from the Palazzo
Vecchio towards the Tetta de’ Pisani. But there was no grove of fuel as
before: instead of that, there was one great heap of fuel placed on the
circular area which made the termination of the long narrow platform.
And above this heap of fuel rose a gibbet with three halters on it; a
gibbet which, having two arms, still looked so much like a cross as to
make some beholders uncomfortable, though one arm had been truncated to
avoid the resemblance.
On the marble terrace of the Palazzo were three tribunals; one near the
door for the Bishop, who was to perform the ceremony of degradation on
Fra Girolamo and the two brethren who were to suffer as his followers
and accomplices; another for the Papal Commissaries, who were to
pronounce them heretics and schismatics, and deliver them over to the
secular arm; and a third, close to Marzocco, at the corner of the
terrace where the platform began, for the Gonfaloniere, and the Eight
who were to pronounce the sentence of death.
Again the Piazza was thronged with expectant faces: again there was to
be a great fire kindled. In the majority of the crowd that pressed
around the gibbet the expectation was that of ferocious hatred, or of
mere hard curiosity to behold a barbarous sight. But there were still
many spectators on the wide pavement, on the roofs, and at the windows,
who, in the midst of their bitter grief and their own endurance of
insult as hypocritical Piagnoni, were not without a lingering hope,
even at this eleventh hour, that God would interpose, by some sign, to
manifest their beloved prophet as His servant. And there were yet more
who looked forward with trembling eagerness, as Romola did, to that
final moment when Savonarola might say, “O people, I was innocent of
deceit.”
Romola was at a window on the north side of the Piazza, far away from
the marble terrace where the tribunals stood; and near her, also
looking on in painful doubt concerning the man who had won his early
reverence, was a young Florentine of two-and-twenty, named Jacopo
Nardi, afterwards to deserve honour as one of the very few who, feeling
Fra Girolamo’s eminence, have written about him with the simple desire
to be veracious. He had said to Romola, with respectful gentleness,
when he saw the struggle in her between her shuddering horror of the
scene and her yearning to witness what might happen in the last moment—
“Madonna, there is no need for you to look at these cruel things. I
will tell you when he comes out of the Palazzo. Trust to me; I know
what you would see.”
Romola covered her face, but the hootings that seemed to make the
hideous scene still visible could not be shut out. At last her arm was
touched, and she heard the words, “He comes.” She looked towards the
Palace, and could see Savonarola led out in his Dominican garb; could
see him standing before the Bishop, and being stripped of the black
mantle, the white scapulary and long white tunic, till he stood in a
close woollen under-tunic, that told of no sacred office, no rank. He
had been degraded, and cut off from the Church Militant.
The baser part of the multitude delight in degradations, apart from any
hatred; it is the satire they best understand. There was a fresh hoot
of triumph as the three degraded brethren passed on to the tribunal of
the Papal Commissaries, who were to pronounce them schismatics and
heretics. Did not the prophet look like a schismatic and heretic now?
It is easy to believe in the damnable state of a man who stands
stripped and degraded.
Then the third tribunal was passed—that of the Florentine officials who
were to pronounce sentence, and amongst whom, even at her distance,
Romola could discern the odious figure of Dolfo Spini, indued in the
grave black lucco, as one of the Eight.
Then the three figures, in their close white raiment, trod their way
along the platform, amidst yells and grating tones of insult.
“Cover your eyes, Madonna,” said Jacopo Nardi; “Fra Girolamo will be
the last.”
It was not long before she had to uncover them again. Savonarola was
there. He was not far off her now. He had mounted the steps; she could
see him look round on the multitude.
But in the same moment expectation died, and she only saw what he was
seeing—torches waving to kindle the fuel beneath his dead body, faces
glaring with a yet worse light; she only heard what _he_ was
hearing—gross jests, taunts, and curses.
The moment was past. Her face was covered again, and she only knew that
Savonarola’s voice had passed into eternal silence.
Epilogue.
On the evening of the 22nd of May 1509, five persons, of whose history
we have known something, were seated in a handsome upper room opening
on to a loggia which, at its right-hand corner, looked all along the
Borgo Pinti, and over the city gate towards Fiesole and the solemn
heights beyond it.
At one end of the room was an archway opening into a narrow inner room,
hardly more than a recess, where the light fell from above on a small
altar covered with fair white linen. Over the altar was a picture,
discernible at the distance where the little party sat only as the
small full-length portrait of a Dominican Brother. For it was shaded
from the light above by overhanging branches and wreaths of flowers,
and the fresh tapers below it were unlit. But it seemed that the
decoration of the altar and its recess was not complete. For part of
the floor was strewn with a confusion of flowers and green boughs, and
among them sat a delicate blue-eyed girl of thirteen, tossing her long
light-brown hair out of her eyes, as she made selections for the
wreaths she was weaving, or looked up at her mother’s work in the same
kind, and told her how to do it with a little air of instruction.
For that mother was not very clever at weaving flowers or at any other
work. Tessa’s fingers had not become more adroit with the years—only
very much fatter. She got on slowly and turned her head about a good
deal, and asked Ninna’s opinion with much deference; for Tessa never
ceased to be astonished at the wisdom of her children. She still wore
her contadina gown: it was only broader than the old one; and there was
the silver pin in her rough curly brown hair, and round her neck the
memorable necklace, with a red cord under it, that ended mysteriously
in her bosom. Her rounded face wore even a more perfect look of
childish content than in her younger days: everybody was so good in the
world, Tessa thought; even Monna Brigida never found fault with her
now, and did little else than sleep, which was an amiable practice in
everybody, and one that Tessa liked for herself.
Monna Brigida was asleep at this moment, in a straight-backed
arm-chair, a couple of yards off. Her hair, parting backward under her
black hood, had that soft whiteness which is not like snow or anything
else, but is simply the lovely whiteness of aged hair. Her chin had
sunk on her bosom, and her hands rested on the elbow of her chair. She
had not been weaving flowers or doing anything else: she had only been
looking on as usual, and as usual had fallen asleep.
The other two figures were seated farther off, at the wide doorway that
opened on to the loggia. Lillo sat on the ground with his back against
the angle of the door-post, and his long legs stretched out, while he
held a large book open on his knee, and occasionally made a dash with
his hand at an inquisitive fly, with an air of interest stronger than
that excited by the finely-printed copy of Petrarch which he kept open
at one place, as if he were learning something by heart.
Romola sat nearly opposite Lillo, but she was not observing him. Her
hands were crossed on her lap and her eyes were fixed absently on the
distant mountains: she was evidently unconscious of anything around
her. An eager life had left its marks upon her: the finely-moulded
cheek had sunk a little, the golden crown was less massive; but there
was a placidity in Romola’s face which had never belonged to it in
youth. It is but once that we can know our worst sorrows, and Romola
had known them while life was new.
Absorbed in this way, she was not at first aware that Lillo had ceased
to look at his book, and was watching her with a slightly impatient
air, which meant that he wanted to talk to her, but was not quite sure
whether she would like that entertainment just now. But persevering
looks make themselves felt at last. Romola did presently turn away her
eyes from the distance and met Lillo’s impatient dark gaze with a
brighter and brighter smile. He shuffled along the floor, still keeping
the book on his lap, till he got close to her and lodged his chin on
her knee.
“What is it, Lillo?” said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow.
Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more
massive and less regular than his father’s. The blood of the Tuscan
peasant was in his veins.
“Mamma. Romola, what am I to be?” he said, well contented that there
was a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con “Spirto
gentil” any longer.
“What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father
was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason
why I can teach you.”
“Yes,” said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. “But he is old and blind in the
picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?”
“Not much, Lillo. The world was not always very kind to him, and he saw
meaner men than himself put into higher places, because they could
flatter and say what was false. And then his dear son thought it right
to leave him and become a monk; and after that, my father, being blind
and lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his
learning of greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in
his works after he was in his grave.”
“I should not like that sort of life,” said Lillo. “I should like to be
something that would make me a great man, and very happy
besides—something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of
pleasure.”
“That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that
could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We
can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a
great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of
the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings
so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being
what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it
is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world,
that no man can be great—he can hardly keep himself from
wickedness—unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards,
and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the
greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity
rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep
to-morrow sacred: _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent
in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the
highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act
nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men,
you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will
happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose
something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own
pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just
the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which, is
the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a
man say, ‘It would have been better for me if I had never been born.’ I
will tell you something, Lillo.”
Romola paused for a moment. She had taken Lillo’s cheeks between her
hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers.
“There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great
deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was
young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle
and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of
anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from
everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as
his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds—such
as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he
betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep
himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.”
Again Romola paused. Her voice was unsteady, and Lillo was looking up
at her with awed wonder.
“Another time, my Lillo—I will tell you another time. See, there are
our old Piero di Cosimo and Nello coming up the Borgo Pinti, bringing
us their flowers. Let us go and wave our hands to them, that they may
know we see them.”
“How queer old Piero is!” said Lillo as they stood at the corner of the
loggia, watching the advancing figures. “He abuses you for dressing the
altar, and thinking so much of Fra Girolamo, and yet he brings you the
flowers.”
“Never mind,” said Romola. “There are many good people who did not love
Fra Girolamo. Perhaps I should never have learned to love him if he had
not helped me when I was in great need.”