Part 24 (1/2)
”For the sword is hanging from the sky; it is quivering; it is about to fall! _The sword of G.o.d upon the earth, swift and sudden_! Did I not tell you, years ago, that I had beheld the vision and heard the voice?
And behold, it is fulfilled! Is there not a king with his army at your gates? Does not the earth shake with the tread of horses and the wheels of swift cannon? Is there not a fierce mult.i.tude that can lay bare the land as with a sharp razor? I tell you the French king with his army is the minister of G.o.d: G.o.d shall guide him as the hand guides a sharp sickle, and the joints of the wicked shall melt before him, and they shall be mown down as stubble: he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered. And the tyrants who have made to themselves a throne out of the vices of the mult.i.tude, and the unbelieving priests who traffic in the souls of men and fill the very sanctuary with fornication, shall be hurled from their soft couches into burning h.e.l.l; and the pagans and they who sinned under the old covenant shall stand aloof and say: 'Lo, these men have brought the stench of a new wickedness into the everlasting fire.'
”But thou, O Florence, take the offered mercy. See! the Cross is held out to you: come and be healed. Which among the nations of Italy has had a token like unto yours? The tyrant is driven out from among you: the men who held a bribe in their left-hand and a rod in the right are gone forth, and no blood has been spilled. And now put away every other abomination from among you, and you shall be strong in the strength of the living G.o.d. Wash yourselves from the black pitch of your vices, which have made you even as the heathens: put away the envy and hatred that have made your city as a nest of wolves. And there shall no harm happen to you: and the pa.s.sage of armies shall be to you as a flight of birds, and rebellious Pisa shall be given to you again, and famine and pestilence shall be far from your gates, and you shall be as a beacon among the nations. But, mark! while you suffer the accursed thing to lie in the camp you shall be afflicted and tormented, even though a remnant among you may be saved.”
These admonitions and promises had been spoken in an incisive tone of authority; but in the next sentence the preacher's voice melted into a strain of entreaty.
”Listen, O people, over whom my heart yearns, as the heart of a mother over the children she has travailed for! G.o.d is my witness that but for your sakes I would willingly live as a turtle in the depths of the forest, singing low to my Beloved, who is mine and I am his. For you I toil, for you I languish, for you my nights are spent in watching, and my soul melteth away for very heaviness. O Lord, thou knowest I am willing--I am ready. Take me, stretch me on thy cross: let the wicked who delight in blood, and rob the poor, and defile the temple of their bodies, and harden themselves against thy mercy--let them wag their heads and shoot out the lip at me: let the thorns press upon my brow, and let my sweat be anguish--I desire to be made like thee in thy great love. But let me see the fruit of my travail--let this people be saved!
Let me see them clothed in purity: let me hear their voices rise in concord as the voices of the angels: let them see no wisdom but in thy eternal law, no beauty but in holiness. Then they shall lead the way before the nations, and the people from the four winds shall follow them, and be gathered into the fold of the blessed. For it is thy will, O G.o.d, that the earth shall be converted unto thy law: it is thy will that wickedness shall cease and love shall reign. Come, O blessed promise; and behold, I am willing--lay me on the altar: let my blood flow and the fire consume me; but let my witness be remembered among men, that iniquity shall not prosper for ever.” [See note at the end.]
During the last appeal, Savonarola had stretched out his arms and lifted up his eyes to heaven; his strong voice had alternately trembled with emotion and risen again in renewed energy; but the pa.s.sion with which he offered himself as a victim became at last too strong to allow of further speech, and he ended in a sob. Every changing tone, vibrating through the audience, shook them into answering emotion. There were plenty among them who had very moderate faith in the Frate's prophetic mission, and who in their cooler moments loved him little; nevertheless, they too were carried along by the great wave of feeling which gathered its force from sympathies that lay deeper than all theory. A loud responding sob rose at once from the wide mult.i.tude, while Savonarola had fallen on his knees and buried his face in his mantle. He felt in that moment the rapture and glory of martyrdom without its agony.
In that great sob of the mult.i.tude Balda.s.sarre's had mingled. Among all the human beings present, there was perhaps not one whose frame vibrated more strongly than his to the tones and words of the preacher; but it had vibrated like a harp of which all the strings had been wrenched away except one. That threat of a fiery inexorable vengeance--of a future into which the hated sinner might be pursued and held by the avenger in an eternal grapple, had come to him like the promise of an unquenchable fountain to unquenchable thirst. The doctrines of the sages, the old contempt for priestly Superst.i.tions, had fallen away from his soul like a forgotten language: if he could have remembered them, what answer could they have given to his great need like the answer given by this voice of energetic conviction? The thunder of denunciation fell on his pa.s.sion-wrought nerves with all the force of self-evidence: his thought never went beyond it into questions--he was possessed by it as the war-horse is possessed by the clash of sounds. No word that was not a threat touched his consciousness; he had no fibre to be thrilled by it.
But the fierce exultant delight to which he was moved by the idea of perpetual vengeance found at once a climax and a relieving outburst in the preacher's words of self-sacrifice. To Balda.s.sarre those words only brought the vague triumphant sense that he too was devoting himself-- signing with his own blood the deed by which he gave himself over to an unending fire, that would seem but coolness to his burning hatred.
”I rescued him--I cherished him--if I might clutch his heart-strings for ever! Come, O blessed promise! Let my blood flow; let the fire consume me!”
The one cord vibrated to its utmost. Balda.s.sarre clutched his own palms, driving his long nails into them, and burst into a sob with the rest.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
OUTSIDE THE DUOMO.
While Balda.s.sarre was possessed by the voice of Savonarola, he had not noticed that another man had entered through the doorway behind him, and stood not far off observing him. It was Piero di Cosimo, who took no heed of the preaching, having come solely to look at the escaped prisoner. During the pause, in which the preacher and his audience had given themselves up to inarticulate emotion, the new-comer advanced and touched Balda.s.sarre on the arm. He looked round with the tears still slowly rolling down his face, but with a vigorous sigh, as if he had done 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 made prisoner.”
Balda.s.sarre did not reply immediately; he glanced suspiciously at the officious stranger. At last he said, ”If you will.”
”Better come outside,” said Piero.
Balda.s.sarre again looked at him suspiciously; and Piero, partly guessing his thought, smiled, took out a knife, and cut the cords. He began to think that the idea of the prisoner's madness was not improbable, there was something so peculiar in the expression of his face. ”Well,” he thought, ”if he does any mischief, he'll soon get tied up again. The poor devil shall have a chance, at least.”
”You are afraid of me,” he said again, in an undertone; ”you don't want to tell me anything about yourself.”
Balda.s.sarre was folding his arms in enjoyment of the long-absent muscular sensation. He answered Piero with a less suspicious look and a tone 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 not know how hospitable we Florentines are to visitors with torn doublets and empty stomachs. There's an hospital for poor travellers outside all our 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.”
Balda.s.sarre nodded, and turned in silent acceptance of the offer, and he and Piero left the church together.
”You wouldn't like to sit to me for your portrait, should you?” said Piero, as they went along the Via dell' Oriuolo, on the way to the gate of Santa Croce. ”I am a painter: I would give you money to get your portrait.”
The suspicion returned into Balda.s.sarre's glance, as he looked at Piero, and said decidedly, ”No.”
”Ah!” said the painter, curtly. ”Well, go straight on, and you'll find the Porta Santa Croce, and outside it there's an hospital for travellers. So you'll not accept any service from me?”
”I give you thanks for what you have done already. I need no more.”