nth's
seclusion with good friars before he was brought face to face with
death. At another time he is chiefly anxious to free himself from
classic memories: 'Deh! Luca, cavatemi della testa quel Bruto, accio ch'
io faccia questo passo interamente da Cristiano'.[6] Then again it
grieves him that the tears of compunction, which he has been taught to
regard as the true sign of a soul at one with God, will not flow. About
the mere fact of dying he has no anxiety. The philosophers have
strengthened him upon that point. He is only eager to die piously. When
he tries to pray, he can barely remember the Paternoster and the Ave
Maria. That reminds him how easy it would have been to have spent his
time better, and he bids Luca remember that the mind a man makes for
himself in life, will be with him in death. When they bring him a
picture of Christ, he asks whether he needs _that_ to fix his soul upon
his Saviour. Throughout this long contention of so many varying
thoughts, he never questions the morality of the act for which he is
condemned to die. Luca, however, has his doubts, and privately asks the
confessor whether S. Thomas Aquinas had not discountenanced tyrannicide.
'Yes,' answers the monk, 'in case the people have elected their own
tyrant, but not when he has imposed himself on them by force.' This
casuistical answer satisfies Luca that his friend may reasonably be held
blameless. After confessing, Boscoli received the sacrament with great
piety, and died bravely. The confessor told Luca, weeping, that he was
sure the young man's soul had gone straight to Paradise, and that he
might be reckoned a real martyr. His head after death was like that of
an angel; and Luca was, we know, a connoisseur in angels' heads. Boscoli
was only thirty-two years of age; he had light hair, and was
short-sighted.

[1] For the Italian ethics of tyrannicide, see back, pp. 169,
170.

[2] See p. 166.

[3] See p. 398.

[4] It is printed in _Arch. Stor_, vol. i.

[5] 'I am over-burdened with food, and I have eaten salt meats;
so that I do not seem able to join my spirit to God.... God
have pity on me, for they have burdened me with food. Oh, how
thoughtless of them!' His words cannot be translated. Naif in
the extreme, they become ludicrous in English.

[6] 'Ah, Luca, turn that Brutus out of my head, in order that I
may take this last step wholly as a Christian man!'

To this narrative might