l pain, and
once more retracted. But scarcely was he unbound, and was still lying on
the bed of torture, when he declared that his confessions were the fault
of his torturers, and the vengeance would recoil upon their heads;
and he protested yet once mare against all he had confessed and might
confess again. A third time the torture produced the same avowals, and
the relief that followed it the same retractions. The judges therefore,
when they condemned him and his two disciples to the flames, decided
that his confession should not be read aloud at the stake, according to
custom, feeling certain that an this occasion also he would give it the
lie, and that publicly, which, as anyone must see who knew the versatile
spirit of the public, would be a most dangerous proceeding.

On the 23rd of May, the fire which had been promised to the people
before was a second time prepared on the Piazza del Palazzo, and
this time the crowd assembled quite certain that they would not be
disappointed of a spectacle so long anticipated. And towards eleven
o'clock in the morning, Girolamo Savonarola, Domenico Bonvicini, and
Silvestro Maruffi were led to the place of execution, degraded of their
orders by the ecclesiastical judges, and bound all three to the
same stake in the centre of an immense pile of wood. Then the bishop
Pagnanoli told the condemned men that he cut them off from the Church.
"Ay, from the Church militant," said Savonarola, who from that very
hour, thanks to his martyrdom, was entering into the Church triumphant.
No other words were spoken by the condemned men, for at this moment one
of the Arrabbiati, a personal enemy of Savonarola, breaking through
the hedge of guards around the scaffold, snatched the torch from the
executioner's hand and himself set fire to the four corners of the pile.
Savonarola and his disciples, from the moment when they saw the smoke
arise, began to sing a psalm, and the flames enwrapped them on all sides
with a glowing veil, while their religious song was yet heard mounting
upward to the gates of heaven.

Pope Alexander VI was thus set free from perhaps the most formidable
enemy who had ever risen against him, and the pontifical vengeance
pursued the victims even after their death: the Signoria, yielding to
his wishes, gave orders that the ashes of the prophet and his disciples
should be thrown into the Arno. But certain half-burned fragments were
picked up by the very soldiers whose business it