interest in the progress of public affairs that she
had begun to court ignorance rather than knowledge. The threatening
German Emperor was gone again; and, in other ways besides, the position
of Florence was alleviated; but so much distress remained that Romola's
active duties were hardly diminished, and in these, as usual, her mind
found a refuge from its doubt.

She dared not rejoice that the relief which had come in extremity and
had appeared to justify the policy of the Frate's party was making that
party so triumphant, that Francesco Valori, hot-tempered chieftain of
the Piagnoni, had been elected Gonfaloniere at the beginning of the
year, and was making haste to have as much of his own liberal way as
possible during his two months of power. That seemed for the moment
like a strengthening of the party most attached to freedom, and a
reinforcement of protection to Savonarola; but Romola was now alive to
every suggestion likely to deepen her foreboding, that whatever the
present might be, it was only an unconscious brooding over the mixed
germs of Change which might any day become tragic. And already by
Carnival time, a little after mid-February, her presentiment was
confirmed by the signs of a very decided change: the Mediceans had
ceased to be passive, and were openly exerting themselves to procure the
election of Bernardo del Nero as the new Gonfaloniere.

On the last day of the Carnival, between ten and eleven in the morning,
Romola walked out, according to promise, towards the Corso degli
Albizzi, to fetch her cousin Brigida, that they might both be ready to
start from the Via de' Bardi early in the afternoon, and take their
places at a window which Tito had had reserved for them in the Piazza
della Signoria, where there was to be a scene of so new and striking a
sort, that all Florentine eyes must desire to see it. For the Piagnoni
were having their own way thoroughly about the mode of keeping the
Carnival. In vain Dolfo Spini and his companions had struggled to get
up the dear old masques and practical jokes, well spiced with indecency.
Such things were not to be in a city where Christ had been declared
king.

Romola set out in that languid state of mind with which every one enters
on a long day of sight-seeing purely for the sake of gratifying a child,
or some dear childish friend. The day was certainly an epoch in
carnival-keeping; but this phase of reform had not touched her
enthusiasm: and she did