ose louder and higher as
she narrated her vision, and ended by exhorting Romola to obey the
command of her Angel, and separate herself from the enemy of God.

Romola's impetuosity was that of a massive nature, and, except in
moments when she was deeply stirred, her manner was calm and
self-controlled. She had a constitutional disgust for the shallow
excitability of women like Camilla, whose faculties seemed all wrought
up into fantasies, leaving nothing for emotion and thought. The
exhortation was not yet ended when she started up and attempted to
wrench her arm from Camilla's tightening grasp. It was of no use. The
prophetess kept her hold like a crab, and, only incited to more eager
exhortation by Romola's resistance, was carried beyond her own intention
into a shrill statement of other visions which were to corroborate this.
Christ himself had appeared to her and ordered her to send his commands
to certain citizens in office that they should throw Bernardo del Nero
from the window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Fra Girolamo himself knew of
it, and had not dared this time to say that the vision was not of Divine
authority.

"And since then," said Camilla, in her excited treble, straining upward
with wild eyes towards Romola's face, "the Blessed Infant has come to me
and laid a wafer of sweetness on my tongue in token of his pleasure that
I had done his will."

"Let me go!" said Romola, in a deep voice of anger. "God grant you are
mad! else you are detestably wicked!"

The violence of her effort to be free was too strong for Camilla now.
She wrenched away her arm and rushed out of the room, not pausing till
she had hurriedly gone far along the street, and found herself close to
the church of the Badia. She had but to pass behind the curtain under
the old stone arch, and she would find a sanctuary shut in from the
noise and hurry of the street, where all objects and all uses suggested
the thought of an eternal peace subsisting in the midst of turmoil.

She turned in, and sinking down on the step of the altar in front of
Filippino Lippi's serene Virgin appearing to Saint Bernard, she waited
in hope that the inward tumult which agitated her would by-and-by
subside.

The thought which pressed on her the most acutely was that Camilla could
allege Savonarola's countenance of her wicked folly. Romola did not for
a moment believe that he had sanctioned the throwing of Bernardo del
Nero from the window as a Divine sugge