and a third, close to Marzocco, at the corner of the
terrace where the platform began, for the Gonfaloniere, and the Eight
who were to pronounce the sentence of death.

Again the Piazza was thronged with expectant faces: again there was to
be a great fire kindled. In the majority of the crowd that pressed
around the gibbet the expectation was that of ferocious hatred, or of
mere hard curiosity to behold a barbarous sight. But there were still
many spectators on the wide pavement, on the roofs, and at the windows,
who, in the midst of their bitter grief and their own endurance of
insult as hypocritical Piagnoni, were not without a lingering hope, even
at this eleventh hour, that God would interpose, by some sign, to
manifest their beloved prophet as His servant. And there were yet more
who looked forward with trembling eagerness, as Romola did, to that
final moment when Savonarola might say, "O people, I was innocent of
deceit."

Romola was at a window on the north side of the Piazza, far away from
the marble terrace where the tribunals stood; and near her, also looking
on in painful doubt concerning the man who had won his early reverence,
was a young Florentine of two-and-twenty, named Jacopo Nardi, afterwards
to deserve honour as one of the very few who, feeling Fra Girolamo's
eminence, have written about him with the simple desire to be veracious.
He had said to Romola, with respectful gentleness, when he saw the
struggle in her between her shuddering horror of the scene and her
yearning to witness what might happen in the last moment--

"Madonna, there is no need for you to look at these cruel things. I
will tell you when he comes out of the Palazzo. Trust to me; I know
what you would see."

Romola covered her face, but the hootings that seemed to make the
hideous scene still visible could not be shut out. At last her arm was
touched, and she heard the words, "He comes." She looked towards the
Palace, and could see Savonarola led out in his Dominican garb; could
see him standing before the Bishop, and being stripped of the black
mantle, the white scapulary and long white tunic, till he stood in a
close woollen under-tunic, that told of no sacred office, no rank. He
had been degraded, and cut off from the Church Militant.

The baser part of the multitude delight in degradations, apart from any
hatred; it is the satire they best understand. There was a fresh hoot
of triumph as the three degraded brethren