VI
They started. The morning was calm and exquisite; the air, still freezing in the shade, was in the sunshine almost spring-like in its warmth. The deep blue-shadowed snow crackled under the feet of the beasts. Between the white hills shone the pale green of the winter sea, and yellow lateen sails glanced here and there like poised butterflies.
Niccolò talked, jested, and laughed. Every trifle excited him to some amusing or cynical reflection.
Passing a fishing village the travellers saw a group of fat and jolly friars on the church steps selling rosaries to the women, whose husbands and brothers stood aloof staring stupidly.
'Fools!' shouted Messer Niccolò, 'know you not that fat easily goes aflame; and that holy fathers like pretty women not only to call them fathers but to make them so?'
Leonardo asked him what he had thought of Savonarola. Niccolò replied that at one time he had been Fra Girolamo's zealous partisan, hoping to find him the saviour of his country; but too soon he had begun to see the weakness of the prophet.
'The whole splenetic gang became nauseous to me,' he mused. 'I detest even to think of it. The devil take them!' he added energetically.