elf willing to
be a victim to this high logic, and to be burned for the sake of
securing the necessary minor premiss.

Savonarola, according to his habit, had taken he notice of these pulpit
attacks. But it happened that the zealous preacher of Santa Croce was
no other than the Fra Francesco di Puglia, who at Prato the year before
had been engaged in a like challenge with Savonarola's fervent follower
Fra Domenico, but had been called home by his superiors while the heat
was simply oratorical. Honest Fra Domenico, then, who was preaching
Lenten sermons to the women in the Via del Cocomero, no sooner heard of
this new challenge, than he took up the gauntlet for his master, and
declared himself ready to walk through the fire with Fra Francesco.
Already the people were beginning to take a strong interest in what
seemed to them a short and easy method of argument (for those who were
to be convinced), when Savonarola, keenly alive to the dangers that lay
in the mere discussion of the case, commanded Fra Domenico to withdraw
his acceptance of the challenge and secede from the affair. The
Franciscan declared himself content: he had not directed his challenge
to any subaltern, but to Fra Girolamo himself.

After that, the popular interest in the Lenten sermons had flagged a
little. But this morning, when Tito entered the Piazza di Santa Croce,
he found, as he expected, that the people were pouring from the church
in large numbers. Instead of dispersing, many of them concentrated
themselves towards a particular spot near the entrance of the Franciscan
monastery, and Tito took the same direction, threading the crowd with a
careless and leisurely air, but keeping careful watch on that monastic
entrance, as if he expected some object of interest to issue from it.

It was no such expectation that occupied the crowd. The object they
were caring about was already visible to them in the shape of a large
placard, affixed by order of the Signoria, and covered with very legible
official handwriting. But curiosity was somewhat balked by the fact
that the manuscript was chiefly in Latin, and though nearly every man
knew beforehand approximately what the placard contained, he had an
appetite for more exact knowledge, which gave him an irritating sense of
his neighbour's ignorance in not being able to interpret the learned
tongue. For that aural acquaintance with Latin phrases which the
unlearned might pick up from pulpit quotations