shown a great heart in this urgent need,
meeting losses and defeats with vigorous effort, raising fresh money,
raising fresh soldiers, but not neglecting the good old method of
Italian defence--conciliatory embassies. And while the scarcity of food
was every day becoming greater, they had resolved, in opposition to old
precedent, not to shut out the starving country people, and the
mendicants driven from the gates of other cities, who came flocking to
Florence like birds from a land of snow.

These acts of a government in which the disciples of Savonarola made the
strongest element were not allowed to pass without criticism. The
disaffected were plentiful, and they saw clearly that the government
took the worst course for the public welfare. Florence ought to join
the League and make common cause with the other great Italian States,
instead of drawing down their hostility by a futile adherence to a
foreign ally. Florence ought to take care of her own citizens, instead
of opening her gates to famine and pestilence in the shape of starving
contadini and alien mendicants.

Every day the distress became sharper: every day the murmurs became
louder. And, to crown the difficulties of the government, for a month
and more--in obedience to a mandate from Rome--Fra Girolamo had ceased
to preach. But on the arrival of the terrible news that the ships from
Marseilles had been driven back, and that no corn was coming, the need
for the voice that could infuse faith and patience into the people
became too imperative to be resisted. In defiance of the Papal mandate
the Signoria requested Savonarola to preach. And two days ago he had
mounted again the pulpit of the Duomo, and had told the people only to
wait and be steadfast and the divine help would certainly come.

It was a bold sermon: he consented to have his frock stripped off him
if, when Florence persevered in fulfilling the duties of piety and
citizenship, God did not come to her rescue.

Yet at present, on this morning of the thirtieth, there were no signs of
rescue. Perhaps if the precious Tabernacle of the Madonna dell'
Impruneta were brought into Florence and carried in devout procession to
the Duomo, that Mother, rich in sorrows and therefore in mercy, would
plead for the suffering city? For a century and a half there were
records how the Florentines, suffering from drought, or flood, or
famine, or pestilence, or the threat of wars, had fetched the potent
imag