st differ from you--not in your wish to see a General
Council which might reform the Church, but in your belief that the Frate
will checkmate his Holiness. The Frate's game is an impossible one. If
he had contented himself with preaching against the vices of Rome, and
with prophesying that in some way, not mentioned, Italy would be
scourged, depend upon it Pope Alexander would have allowed him to spend
his breath in that way as long as he could find hearers. Such spiritual
blasts as those knock no walls down. But the Frate wants to be
something more than a spiritual trumpet: he wants to be a lever, and
what is more, he _is_ a lever. He wants to spread the doctrine of
Christ by maintaining a popular government in Florence, and the Pope, as
I know, on the best authority, has private views to the contrary."

"Then Florence will stand by the Frate," Cennini broke in, with some
fervour. "I myself should prefer that he would let his prophesying
alone, but if our freedom to choose our own government is to be
attacked--I am an obedient son of the Church, but I would vote for
resisting Pope Alexander the Sixth, as our forefathers resisted Pope
Gregory the Eleventh."

"But pardon me, Messer Domenico," said Macchiavelli, sticking his thumbs
into his belt, and speaking with that cool enjoyment of exposition which
surmounts every other force in discussion. "Have you correctly seized
the Frate's position? How is it that he has become a lever, and made
himself worth attacking by an acute man like his Holiness? Because he
has got the ear of the people: because he gives them threats and
promises, which they believe come straight from God, not only about
hell, purgatory, and paradise, but about Pisa and our Great Council.
But let events go against him, so as to shake the people's faith, and
the cause of his power will be the cause of his fall. He is
accumulating three sorts of hatred on his head--the hatred of average
mankind against every one who wants to lay on them a strict yoke of
virtue; the hatred of the stronger powers in Italy who want to farm
Florence for their own purposes; and the hatred of the people, to whom
he has ventured to promise good in this world, instead of confining his
promises to the next. If a prophet is to keep his power, he must be a
prophet like Mahomet, with an army at his back, that when the people's
faith is fainting it may be frightened into life again."

"Rather sum up the three sorts of hatr