In front of the dark and slender tower of the Palazzo Vecchio the pyre stood ready. It was thirty cubits in height, one hundred and twenty in circumference; an octagonal pyramid with at least fifteen steps. On the lowest were the comic masks, dresses, wigs, and other carnival properties; on the next three, profane books from Anacreon and Ovid to the Decameron, and the Morgante Maggiore of Messer Luigi Pulci. Above the books were the instruments of female beauty—washes, essences, mirrors, puffs, curling-tongs, hair-pins, nail-nippers. Still higher were lutes and mandolines, cards, chessmen, balls, dice—all the games by means of which men serve the devil. Then came drawings, voluptuous pictures, portraits of light women; lastly, on the summit of the pyramid, the gods, heroes and sages of pagan antiquity, made of wood and of coloured wax. Above the pile, towering higher than anything else, the figure of Satan was enthroned, the lord of all 'vanities and things accursed,' a monstrous puppet, filled with gunpowder and sulphur, with goat's legs and a hairy skin, like Pan, the ancient god of the woods.
It was evening: the air was cold, but serene and clear, and one by one the stars were beginning their nightly shining. The crowd in the piazza surged and swayed, and pious murmurings filled the air. Hymns went up from Savonarola's followers—Laudi spirituali—which retaining the rhymes, the metre, and the air of carnival songs, had been radically changed in words and sense. Giovanni listened, and the incongruity between the lively music and the gloomy words resounded in his ears like some barbarous funeral chant.
'Hope with Faith and Love agrees,
Take three ounces each of these;
Two of tears, and mix them well
On the fire of Fear.
Let them boil for minutes three,
Spice them with Humility,
Adding Grief to make the spell
Of this madness clear;