ll strengthen your
own party."

"And that is true!" said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola's voice
had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. "The cause
of my party _is_ the cause of God's kingdom."

"I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole frame shaken with
passionate repugnance. "God's kingdom is something wider--else let
me stand outside it with the beings that I love."

The two faces were lit up, each with an opposite emotion, each with an
opposite certitude. Further words were impossible. Romola hastily
covered her head and went out in silence. [Footnote: Chapter LIX.]

Savonarola forgot the better spirit of his own teachings, he sought to
become a political leader. It was his ruin, for his purpose was vitiated,
and his influence waned. George Eliot well says that "no man ever struggled
to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his
standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight." This was
the sad fate of the great Florentine preacher and reformer. He lost his
faith, and he spoke without the moment's conviction. When this result came
about, all hope for Savonarola as a reformer was gone. He was then only the
leader of a party. George Eliot has well painted the effect upon Romola of
this fall, and given deep insight into the results of losing our trust in
those great souls who have been our guides. All the ties of life had
snapped for Romola; her marriage had proved a failure, her friend had
become unworthy of her confidence; and she fled.

Romola went away, found herself in the midst of a plague-stricken people,
gave her life to an assuagement of suffering and sorrow. Then she could
come back to her home purified, calm and noble. In the "Epilogue," we find
her speaking the word which gives meaning to the whole book. Tessa's child,
whom she had rescued, says to her that he would like to lead a life which
would give him a good deal of pleasure. Romola says to him,--

"That is not easy, my Lille. 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