g a wider circuit towards the river, which she
reached at some distance from the Ponte Vecchio. She turned her steps
towards that bridge, intending to hasten to San Stefano in search of
Baldassarre. She dreaded to know more about him, yet she felt as if, in
forsaking him, she would be forsaking some near claim upon her.

But when she approached the meeting of the roads where the Por' Santa
Maria would be on her right-hand and the Ponte Vecchio on her left, she
found herself involved in a crowd who suddenly fell on their knees; and
she immediately knelt with them. The Cross was passing--the Great Cross
of the Duomo--which headed the procession. Romola was later than she
had expected to be, and now she must wait till the procession had
passed. As she rose from her knees, when the Cross had disappeared, the
return to a standing posture, with nothing to do but gaze, made her more
conscious of her fatigue than she had been while she had been walking
and occupied. A shopkeeper by her side said--

"Madonna Romola, you will be weary of standing: Gian Fantoni will be
glad to give you a seat in his house. Here is his door close, at hand.
Let me open it for you. What! he loves God and the Frate as we do. His
house is yours."

Romola was accustomed now to be addressed in this fraternal way by
ordinary citizens, whose faces were familiar to her from her having seen
them constantly in the Duomo. The idea of home had come to be
identified for her less with the house in the Via de' Bardi, where she
sat in frequent loneliness, than with the towered circuit of Florence,
where there was hardly a turn of the streets at which she was not
greeted with looks of appeal or of friendliness. She was glad enough to
pass through the open door on her right-hand and be led by the fraternal
hose-vendor to an upstairs-window, where a stout woman with three
children, all in the plain garb of Piagnoni, made a place for her with
much reverence above the bright hanging draperies. From this corner
station she could see, not only the procession pouring in solemn
slowness between the lines of houses on the Ponto Vecchio, but also the
river and the Lung' Arno on towards the bridge of the Santa Trinita.

In sadness and in stillness came the slow procession. Not even a
wailing chant broke the silent appeal for mercy: there was only the
tramp of footsteps, and the faint sweep of woollen garments. They were
young footsteps that were passing when R