impulses which had been at work within him for the last
hour were too imperious; and while he pressed his hands against his
face, and while his lips were uttering audibly. "_Cor mundum crea in
me_" his mind was still filled with the images of the snare his enemies
had prepared for him, was still busy with the arguments by which he
could justify himself against their taunts and accusations.

And it was not only against his opponents that Savonarola had to defend
himself. This morning he had had new proof that his friends and
followers were as much inclined to urge on the Trial by Fire as his
enemies: desiring and tacitly expecting that he himself would at last
accept the challenge and evoke the long-expected miracle which was to
dissipate doubt and triumph over malignity. Had he not said that God
would declare himself at the fitting time? And to the understanding of
plain Florentines, eager to get party questions settled, it seemed that
no time could be more fitting than this. Certainly, if Fra Domenico
walked through the fire unhurt, _that_ would be a miracle, and the faith
and ardour of that good brother were felt to be a cheering augury; but
Savonarola was acutely conscious that the secret longing of his
followers to see him accept the challenge had not been dissipated by any
reasons he had given for his refusal.

Yet it was impossible to him to satisfy them; and with bitter distress
he saw now that it was impossible for him any longer to resist the
prosecution of the trial in Fra Domenico's case. Not that Savonarola
had uttered and written a falsity when he declared his belief in a
future supernatural attestation of his work; but his mind was so
constituted that while it was easy for him to believe in a miracle
which, being distant and undefined, was screened behind the strong
reasons he saw for its occurrence, and yet easier for him to have a
belief in inward miracles such as his own prophetic inspiration and
divinely-wrought intuitions; it was at the same time insurmountably
difficult to him to believe in the probability of a miracle which, like
this of being carried unhurt through the fire, pressed in all its
details on his imagination and involved a demand not only for belief but
for exceptional action.

Savonarola's nature was one of those in which opposing tendencies
co-exist in almost equal strength: the passionate sensibility which,
impatient of definite thought, floods every idea with emotion and te