vest
in the years to come.

But that mighty music which stirred her in the Duomo was not without its
jarring notes. Since those first days of glowing hope when the Frate,
seeing the near triumph of good in the reform of the Republic and the
coming of the French deliverer, had preached peace, charity, and
oblivion of political differences, there had been a marked change of
conditions: political intrigue had been too obstinate to allow of the
desired oblivion; the belief in the French deliverer, who had turned his
back on his high mission, seemed to have wrought harm; and hostility,
both on a petty and on a grand scale, was attacking the Prophet with new
weapons and new determination.

It followed that the spirit of contention and self-vindication pierced
more and more conspicuously in his sermons; that he was urged to meet
the popular demands not only by increased insistance and detail
concerning visions and private revelations, but by a tone of defiant
confidence against objectors; and from having denounced the desire for
the miraculous, and declared that miracles had no relation to true
faith, he had come to assert that at the right moment the Divine power
would attest the truth of his prophetic preaching by a miracle. And
continually, in the rapid transitions of excited feeling, as the vision
of triumphant good receded behind the actual predominance of evil, the
threats of coming vengeance against vicious tyrants and corrupt priests
gathered some impetus from personal exasperation, as well as from
indignant zeal.

In the career of a great public orator who yields himself to the
inspiration of the moment, that conflict of selfish and unselfish
emotion which in most men is hidden in the chamber of the soul, is
brought into terrible evidence: the language of the inner voices is
written out in letters of fire.

But if the tones of exasperation jarred on Romola, there was often
another member of Fra Girolamo's audience to whom they were the only
thrilling tones, like the vibration of deep bass notes to the deaf.
Baldassarre had found out that the wonderful Frate was preaching again,
and as often as he could, he went to hear the Lenten sermon, that he
might drink in the threats of a voice which seemed like a power on the
side of justice. He went the more because he had seen that Romola went
too; for he was waiting and watching for a time when not only outward
circumstances, but his own varying mental state, would ma