'I beseech you to consider—perhaps even a part——'
'You are wasting your breath, messere. My decision is unalterable.'
Again Messer Cipriano's old lips moved, but Savonarola heard only one word—'Madness!'
'Madness?' he echoed, his eyes flashing; 'and the golden calf of the Borgias offered to the pope in his sacrilegious festivals—is that not madness? And the elevation of the Holy Nail, to the glory of God, by a diabolical machine at the command of an impious assassin and usurper—is that not madness? You dance madly round the golden calf in honour of your God, which is Mammon; let us, then, who are poor in spirit, be mad in honour of our God, who is Christ Jesus the Crucified. You bemock the monks who on the piazza dance around the cross. Wait! There are other spectacles which wait for you. What will you wise men say when I lead not only the monks, but the whole people of Florence, adults as well as children, men and women, to dance around the Cross-Tree of Salvation, as of old David danced before the Ark of the Covenant to the glory of the Most High!'
VI
Leaving the prior's cell, Giovanni Boltraffio turned his steps towards the Piazza della Signoria. In Via Larga he met the sacred troop. The children had stopped a palanquin carried by black slaves, in which reclined a woman gorgeously attired. A lapdog slept on her knee, a parrot and a monkey were on perches by her side, the litter was followed by servants and by guards. She was a courtesan, Lena Griffi, not long come from Venice, one of those whom the most Serene Republic called 'meretrix honesta,' or playfully 'Mammola' (little dear); and whose name in the placard, drawn up for the convenience of travellers, was set down in large characters and in a place of honour at the top of the list.
Lolling on her cushions like Cleopatra, or a Queen of Sheba, Lena was reading a love-missive from a youthful bishop. Its postscript was a song ending thus:—
'Listening to thy voice I rise
From this globe towards the skies,