will, be done.'

At another time he says: 'I remember well that upon one occasion, in
the year 1491, when I was preaching in the Duomo, having composed my
sermon entirely upon these visions, I determined to abstain from all
allusion to them, and in future to adhere to this resolution. God is my
witness that the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeeding night
I lay awake, and could see no other course, no other doctrine. At
daybreak, worn out and depressed by the many hours I had lain awake,
while I was praying I heard a voice that said to me: "Fool that thou
art, dost thou not see that it is God's will that thou shouldst keep to
the same path?" The consequence of which was that on the same day I
preached a tremendous sermon.'

These passages leave upon the mind no doubt of Savonarola's sincerity.
If he deceived others, he was himself the first to be deceived, and that
too not before he had subjected himself to the most searching
examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled
him to play the part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been the
wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and
diffident, within the toils of ecstasy.

Returning to the details of Savonarola's biography, we find him still in
Lombardy in 1486. After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he
made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They
continued intimate till the death of the latter in 1494; it was his
nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote
the Life of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; and by this
time his fame as a prophet in the north of Lombardy was well
established. Now came the turning-point in his life. Fourteen hundred
and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of
power in Italy. Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument
of his recall in this year to Florence. Lorenzo, who, if he could have
foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have
stifled this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and
bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished
so much wealth. He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching
of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could
not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul.
Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as