A month after that Carnival, one morning near the end of March, Tito descended the marble steps of the Old Palace, bound on a pregnant errand to San Marco. For some reason, he did not choose to take the direct road, which was but a slightly-bent line from the Old Palace; he chose rather to make a circuit by the Piazza di Santa Croce, where the people would be pouring out of the church after the early sermon.

It was in the grand church of Santa Croce that the daily Lenten sermon had of late had the largest audience. For Savonarola’s voice had ceased to be heard even in his own church of San Marco, a hostile Signoria having imposed silence on him in obedience to a new letter from the Pope, threatening the city with an immediate interdict if this ‘wretched worm’ and ‘monstrous idol’ were not forbidden to preach, and sent to demand pardon at Rome. And next to hearing Fra Girolamo himself, the most exciting Lenten occupation was to hear him argued against and vilified. This excitement was to be had in Santa Croce, where the Franciscan appointed to preach the Quaresimal sermons had offered to clench his arguments by walking through the fire with Fra Girolamo. Had not that schismatical Dominican said, that his prophetic doctrine would be proved by a miracle at the fitting time? Here, then, was the fitting time. Let Savonarola walk through the fire, and if he came out unhurt, the Divine origin of his doctrine would be demonstrated; but if the fire consumed him, his falsity would be manifest; and that he might have no excuse for evading the test, the Franciscan declared himself willing to be a victim to this high logic, and to be burned for the sake of securing the necessary minor premiss.

Savonarola, according to his habit, had taken no notice of these pulpit attacks. But it happened that the zealous preacher of Santa Croce was no other than the Fra Francesco di Puglia, who at Prato the year before had been engaged in a like challenge with Savonarola’s fervent follower Fra Domenico, but had been called home by his superiors while the heat was simply oratorical. Honest Fra Domenico, then, who was preaching Lenten sermons to the women in the Via del Cocomero, no sooner heard of this new challenge, than he took up the gauntlet for his master, and declared himself ready to walk through the fire with Fra Francesco. Already the people were beginning to take a strong interest in what seemed to them a short and easy method of argument (for those who were to be convinced), when Savonarola, keenly alive to the dangers that lay in the mere discussion of the case, commanded Fra Domenico to withdraw his acceptance of the challenge and secede from the affair. The Franciscan declared himself content: he had not directed his challenge to any subaltern, but to Fra Girolamo himself.

After that, the popular interest in the Lenten sermons had flagged a little. But this morning, when Tito entered the Piazza di Santa Croce, he found, as he expected, that the people were pouring from the church in large numbers. Instead of dispersing, many of them concentrated themselves towards a particular spot near the entrance of the Franciscan monastery, and Tito took the same direction, threading the crowd with a careless and leisurely air, but keeping careful watch on that monastic entrance, as if he expected some object of interest to issue from it.

It was no such expectation that occupied the crowd. The object they were caring about was already visible to them in the shape of a large placard, affixed by order of the Signoria, and covered with very legible official handwriting. But curiosity was somewhat balked by the fact that the manuscript was chiefly in Latin, and though nearly every man knew beforehand approximately what the placard contained, he had an appetite for more exact knowledge, which gave him an irritating sense of his neighbour’s ignorance in not being able to interpret the learned tongue. For that aural acquaintance with Latin phrases which the unlearned might pick up from pulpit quotations constantly interpreted by the preacher could help them little when they saw written Latin; the spelling even of the modern language being in an unorganised and scrambling condition for the mass of people who could read and write, while the majority of those assembled nearest to the placard were not in the dangerous predicament of possessing that little knowledge.

‘It’s the Frate’s doctrines that he’s to prove by being burned,’ said that large public character Goro, who happened to be among the foremost gazers. ‘The Signoria has taken it in hand, and the writing is to let us know. It’s what the Padre has been telling us about in his sermon.’

‘Nay, Goro,’ said a sleek shopkeeper, compassionately, ‘thou hast got thy legs into twisted hose there. The Frate has to prove his doctrines by not being burned: he is to walk through the fire, and come out on the other side sound and whole.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said a young sculptor, who wore his white-streaked cap and tunic with a jaunty air. ‘But Fra Girolamo objects to walking through the fire. Being sound and whole already, he sees no reason why he should walk through the fire to come out in just the same condition. He leaves such odds and ends of work to Fra Domenico.’

‘Then I say he flinches like a coward,’ said Goro, in a wheezy treble. ‘Suffocation! that was what he did at the Carnival. He had us all in the Piazza to see the lightning strike him, and nothing came of it.’

‘Stop that bleating,’ said a rall shoemaker, who had stepped in to hear part of the sermon, with bunches of slippers hanging over his shoulders. ‘It seems to me, friend, that you are about as wise as a calf with water on its brain. The Frate will flinch from nothing: he’ll say nothing beforehand, perhaps, but when the moment comes he’ll walk through the fire without asking any grey-frock to keep him company. But I would give a shoestring to know what this Latin all is.’

‘There’s so much of it,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘else I’m pretty good at guessing. Is there no scholar to be seen?’ he added, with a slight expression of disgust.

There was a general turning of heads, which caused the talkers to descry Tito approaching in their rear.

‘Here is one,’ said the young sculptor, smiling and raising his cap.

‘It is the secretary of the Ten: he is going to the convent, doubtless; make way for him,’ said the shopkeeper, also doffing, though that mark of respect was rarely shown by Florentines except to the highest officials. The exceptional reverence was really exacted by the splendour and grace of Tito’s appearance, which made his black mantle, with its gold fibula, look like a regal robe, and his ordinary black velvet cap like an entirely exceptional head-dress. The hardening of his cheeks and mouth, which was the chief change in his face since he came to Florence, seemed to a superficial glance only to give his beauty a more masculine character. He raised his own cap immediately and said —

‘Thanks, my friend, I merely wished, as you did, to see what is at the foot of this placard — ah, it is as I expected. I had been informed that the government permits any one who will, to subscribe his name as a candidate to enter the fire — which is an act of liberality worthy of the magnificent Signoria — reserving of course the right to make a selection. And doubtless many believers will be eager to subscribe their names. For what is lit to enter the fire, to one whose faith is firm? A man is afraid of the fire, because he believes it will burn him; but if he believes the contrary?’ — here Tito lifted his shoulders and made an oratorical pause — ‘for which reason I have never been one to disbelieve the Frate, when he has said that he would enter the fire to prove his doctrine. For in his place, if you believed the fire would not burn you, which of you, my friends, would not enter it as readily as you would walk along the dry bed of the Mugnone?’

As Tito looked round him during this appeal, there was a change in some of his audience very much like the change in an eager dog when he is invited to smell something pungent. Since the question of burning was becoming practical, it was not every one who would rashly commit himself to any general view of the relation between faith and fire. The scene might have been too much for a gravity less under command than Tito’s.

‘Then, Messer Segretario,’ said the young sculptor, ‘it seems to me Fra Francesco is the greater hero, for he offcrs to enter the fire for the truth, though he is sure the fire will burn him.’

‘I do not deny it,’ said Tito, blandly. ‘But if it turns out that Fra Francesco is mistaken, he will have been burned for the wrong side, and the Church has never reckoned such victims to be martyrs. We must suspend our judgment until the trial has really taken place.’

‘It is true, Messer Segretario,’ said the shopkeeper, with subdued impatience. ‘But will you favour us by interpreting the Latin?’

‘Assuredly,’ said Tito. ‘It does but express the conclusions or doctrines which the Frate specially teaches, and which the trial by fire is to prove true or false. They are doubtless familiar to you. First, that Florence —’

‘Let us have the Latin bit by bit, and then tell us what it means,’ said the shoemaker, who had been a frequent hearer of Fra Girolamo.

‘Willingly,’ said Tito, smiling. ‘You will then judge if I give you the right meaning.’

‘Yes, yes; that’s fair,’ said Goro.

‘Ecclesia Dei indiget renovatione; that it, the Church of God needs purifying or regenerating.’

‘It is true,’ said several voices at once.

‘That means, the priests ought to lead better lives; there needs no miracle to prove that. That’s what the Frate has always been saying,’ said the shoemaker.

‘Flagellabitur,’ Tito went on. ‘That is, it will be scourged. Renovabitur: it will be purified. Florentia quoque post flagellam renovabitur et prosperabitur: Florence also, after the scourging, shall be purified and shall prosper.’

‘That means we are to get Pisa again,’ said the shop-keeper.

‘And get the wool from England as we used to do, I should hope,’ said an elderly man, in an old-fashioned berretta, who had been silent till now. ‘There’s been scourging enough with the sinking of the trade.’

At this moment, a tall personage, surmounted by a red feather, issued from the door of the convent, and exchanged an indifferent glance with Tito; who, tossing his becchetto carelessly over his left shoulder, turned to his reading again, while the bystanders, with more timidity than respect, shrank to make a passage for Messer Dolfo Spini.

‘Infideles convertentur ad Christum,’ Tito went on. ‘That is, the infidels shall be converted to Christ.’

‘Those are the Turks and the Moors. Well, I’ve nothing to say against that,’ said the shopkeeper, dispassionately.

‘Haec autem omnia erunt temporibus nostris: and all these things shall happen in our times.’

‘Why, what use would they be else?’ said Goro.

‘Excommunicatio nuper lata contra Reverendum Patrem nostrum Fratrem Hieronymum nulla est: the excommunication lately pronounced against our reverend father, Fra Girolamo is null. Non observantes eam non peccant: those who disregard it are not committing a sin.’

‘I shall know better what to say to that when we have had the Trial by Fire,’ said the shopkeeper.

‘Which doubtless will clear up everything,’ said Tito. ‘That is all the Latin — all the conclusions that are to be proved true or false by the trial. The rest you can perceive is simply a proclamation of the Signoria in good Tuscan, calling on such as are eager to walk through the fire, to come to the Palazzo and subscribe their names. Can I serve you further? If not — ’

Tito, as he turned away, raised his cap and bent slightly, with so easy an air that the movement seemed a natural prompting of deference.

He quickened his pace as he left the Piazza, and after two or three turnings he paused in a quiet street before a door at which he gave a light and peculiar knock. It was opened by a young woman whom he chucked under the chin as he asked her if the Padrones was within, and he then passed, without further ceremony, through another door which stood ajar on his right hand. It admitted him into a handsome but untidy room, where Dolfo Spini sat playing with a fine stag-hound which alternately snuffed at a basket of pups and licked his hands with that affectionate disregard of her master’s morals sometimes held to be one of the most agreeable attributes of her sex. He just looked up as Tito entered, but continued his play, simply from that disposition to persistence in some irrelevant actio............