the
shouts of the multitude, who had been worked up to a share of
Savonarola's zeal.

But the wiser people were distressed by the mistakes of judgment which
he had shown in setting children to search out the faults of their
elders, and in mixing up harmless things in the same destruction with
those which were connected with deep sinfulness and vice. And this want
of judgment was still more shown a year later, when, after having
repeated the bonfire of vanities, Savonarola's followers danced wildly
in three circles around a cross set up in front of St. Mark's, as if
they had been so many crazy dervishes of the East.

PART II.

Savonarola had raised up a host of enemies, and some of them were
eagerly looking for an opportunity of doing him some mischief. At length
one Francis of Apulia, a Franciscan friar, challenged him to what was
called the _ordeal_ (or judgment) of fire, as a trial of the truth of
his doctrine; and after much trouble it was settled that a friend of
each should pass through this trial, which was supposed to be a way of
finding out God's judgment as to the truth of the matter in dispute. Two
great heaps of fuel were piled up in a public place at Florence. They
were each forty yards long and two yards and a half high, with an
opening of a yard's width between them; and it was intended that these
heaps should be set on fire, and that the champions should try to pass
between the two, as a famous monk had done at Florence in Hildebrand's
time, hundreds of years before. But when a vast crowd had been brought
to see the ordeal, they were much disappointed at finding that it was
delayed, because Savonarola's enemies fancied that he might perhaps make
use of some magical charms against the flames. There was a long dispute
about this, and, while the parties were still wrangling, a heavy shower
came down on the crowd. The magistrates then forbade the trial; the
people, tired and hungry from waiting, drenched by the rain, provoked by
the wearisome squabble which had caused the delay, and after all balked
of the expected sight, broke out against Savonarola; and he had great
difficulty in reaching St. Mark's under the protection of some friends,
who closed around him and kept off the angry multitude. Two days later,
the convent was besieged; and when the defenders were obliged to
surrender it, Savonarola and the friar who was to have undergone the
ordeal on his side were sent to prison.

Savonarola had a lon