stion; she felt certain that there
was falsehood or mistake in that allegation. Savonarola had become more
and more severe in his views of resistance to malcontents; but the ideas
of strict law and order were fundamental to all his political teaching.
Still, since he knew the possibly fatal effects of visions like
Camilla's, since he had a marked distrust of such spirit-seeing women,
and kept aloof from them as much as possible, why, with his readiness to
denounce wrong from the pulpit, did he not publicly denounce these
pretended revelations which brought new darkness instead of light across
the conception of a Supreme Will? Why? The answer came with painful
clearness: he was fettered inwardly by the consciousness that such
revelations were not, in their basis, distinctly separable from his own
visions; he was fettered outwardly by the foreseen consequence of
raising a cry against himself even among members of his own party, as
one who would suppress all Divine inspiration of which he himself was
not the vehicle--he or his confidential and supplementary seer of
visions, Fra Salvestro.

Romola, kneeling with buried face on the altar-step, was enduring one of
those sickening moments, when the enthusiasm which had come to her as
the only energy strong enough to make life worthy, seemed to be
inevitably bound up with vain dreams and wilful eye-shutting. Her mind
rushed back with a new attraction towards the strong worldly sense, the
dignified prudence, the untheoretic virtues of her godfather, who was to
be treated as a sort of Agag because he held that a more restricted form
of government was better than the Great Council, and because he would
not pretend to forget old ties to the banished family.

But with this last thought rose the presentiment of some plot to restore
the Medici; and then again she felt that the popular party was half
justified in its fierce suspicion. Again she felt that to keep the
Government of Florence pure, and to keep out a vicious rule, was a
sacred cause; the Frate was right there, and had carried her
understanding irrevocably with him. But at this moment the assent of
her understanding went alone; it was given unwillingly. Her heart was
recoiling from a right allied to so much narrowness; a right apparently
entailing that hard systematic judgment of men which measures them by
assents and denials quite superficial to the manhood within them. Her
affection and respect were clinging with