lts of the cathedral with his antagonist, and there
bring a dead man to life again, to prove that his doctrine was true,
promising to declare himself vanquished if the miracle were performed by
his adversary. These rumours reached the ears of Fra Francesco, and as
he was a man of warm blood, who counted his own life as nothing if it
might be spent to help his cause, he declared in all humility that he
felt he was too great a sinner for God to work a miracle in his behalf;
but he proposed another challenge: he would try with Savonarola the
ordeal of fire. He knew, he said, that he must perish, but at least he
should perish avenging the cause of religion, since he was certain to
involve in his destruction the tempter who plunged so many souls beside
his own into eternal damnation.

The proposition made by Fra Francesco was taken to Savanarola; but as
he had never proposed the earlier challenge, he hesitated to accept the
second; hereupon his disciple, Fra Domenico Bonvicini, more confident
than his master in his own power, declared himself ready to accept the
trial by fire in his stead; so certain was he that God would perform a
miracle by the intercession of Savonarola, His prophet.

Instantly the report spread through Florence that the mortal challenge
was accepted; Savonarola's partisans, all men of the strongest
convictions, felt no doubt as to the success of their cause. His enemies
were enchanted at the thought of the heretic giving himself to the
flames; and the indifferent saw in the ordeal a spectacle of real and
terrible interest.

But the devotion of Fra Bonvicini of Pescia was not what Fra Francesco
was reckoning with. He was willing, no doubt, to die a terrible death,
but on condition that Savanarola died with him. What mattered to him the
death of an obscure disciple like Fra Bonvicini? It was the master he
would strike, the great teacher who must be involved in his own ruin.
So he refused to enter the fire except with Savonarola himself, and,
playing this terrible game in his own person, would not allow his
adversary to play it by proxy.

Then a thing happened which certainly no one could have anticipated. In
the place of Fra Francesco, who would not tilt with any but the master,
two Franciscan monks appeared to tilt with the disciple. These were Fra
Nicholas de Pilly and Fra Andrea Rondinelli. Immediately the partisans
of Savonarala, seeing this arrival of reinforcements for their
antagonist, came forw