t he gave to the arts made
Florence the beautiful dream in stone that she is even to this day.

The world needs the Lorenzos and the world needs, too, the
Savonarolas--they form an Opposition of Forces that holds the balance
true. Power left to itself attains a terrific impetus: a governor is
needed, and it was Savonarola who tempered and tamed the excesses of the
Medici.

In Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three Savonarola was appointed Lenten
preacher at the Church of Saint Lorenzo in Florence. His exhortations
were plain, homely, blunt--his voice uncertain, and his ugly features at
times inclined his fashionable auditors to unseemly smiles. When
ugliness forgets itself and gives off the flash of the spirit, it
becomes magnificent--takes upon itself a halo--but this was not yet to
be.

The orator must subdue his audience or it will subdue him.

Savonarola retired to his cloister-cell, whipped and discouraged. He
took no part in the festivals and fetes: the Gardens of Lorenzo were not
for him; the society of the smooth and cultured lovers of art and
literature was beyond his pale. Being incapable by temperament of mixing
in the whirl of pleasure, he found a satisfaction in keeping out of it,
thus proving his humanity. Not being able to have a thing, we scorn it.
Men who can not dance are apt to regard dancing as sinful.

Savonarola saw things as a countryman sees them when he goes to a great
city for the first time.

There is much that is wrong--very much that is wasteful, extravagant,
absurd and pernicious, but it is not all base, and the visitor is apt to
err in his conclusions, especially if he be of an intense and ascetic
type.

Savonarola was sick at heart, sick in body--fasts and vigils had done
their sure and certain work for nerves and digestion. He saw visions and
heard voices, and in the Book of Revelation he discovered the symbols of
prophesy that foretold the doom of Florence. He felt that he was
divinely inspired.

In the outside world he saw only the worst--and this was well.

He believed that he was one sent from God to cleanse the Church of its
iniquities--and he was right.

These madmen are needed--Nature demands them, and so God makes them to
order. They are ignorant of what the many know, and this is their
advantage; they are blind to all but a few things, and therein lies
their power.

The belief in his mission filled the heart of Savonarola. Gradually he
gained ground, made head, and the Pri