to all
dogmas and prophecies, when they came in the vehicle of his ardent faith
and believing utterance. [Note.]

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can
feel trust and reverence. Romola's trust in Savonarola was something
like a rope suspended securely by her path, making her step elastic
while she grasped it; if it were suddenly removed, no firmness of the
ground she trod could save her from staggering, or perhaps from falling.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note. He himself had had occasion enough to note the efficacy of that
vehicle. "If," he says in the _Compendium Revelationum_, "you speak of
such as have not heard these things from me, I admit that they who
disbelieve are more than they who believe, because it is one thing to
hear him who inwardly feels these things, and another to hear him who
feels them not; ... and, therefore, it is well said by Saint Jerome,
`Habet nescio quid latentis energiae vivae vocis actus, et in aures
discipuli de auctoris ore transfusa fortis sonat.'"

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE.

AT THE BARBER'S SHOP.

After that welcome appearance as the messenger with the olive-branch,
which was an unpromised favour of fortune, Tito had other commissions to
fulfil of a more premeditated character. He paused at the Palazzo
Vecchio, and awaited there the return of the Ten, who managed external
and war affairs, that he might duly deliver to them the results of his
private mission to Pisa, intended as a preliminary to an avowed embassy
of which Bernardo Rucellai was to be the head, with the object of
coming, if possible, to a pacific understanding with the Emperor
Maximilian and the League.

Tito's talents for diplomatic work had been well ascertained, and as he
gave with fulness and precision the results of his inquiries and
interviews, Bernardo del Nero, who was at that time one of the Ten,
could not withhold his admiration. He would have withheld it if he
could; for his original dislike of Tito had returned, and become
stronger, since the sale of the library. Romola had never uttered a
word to her godfather on the circumstances of the sale, and Bernardo had
understood her silence as a prohibition to him to enter on the subject,
but he felt sure that the breach of her father's wish had been a
blighting grief to her, and the old man's observant eyes discerned other
indications that her married life was not happy.