'And an excellent homicide, too! Two fools less on earth.'
'But they must be burned according to the rule and canon of the Holy Church. It's a delicate theological question.'
'Well, then, propose the question to the pope.'
'What have we to do with the pope? We are concerned with the people. If by such means one could restore the people to sanity, there would be no great evil in sending all the priests and friars in the world, not only into the fire, but into the water and under the ground likewise.'
'Water will serve. Throw them both into a tub of water, and let him who comes forth dry be the victor. 'Twould be a thought less dangerous than these pranks.'
'Have you heard, most honourable signiors,' said Messer Paolo with deep reverences, 'that poor Fra Giuliano has fallen sick in his stomach? 'Tis a malady caused by fear, and he has been bled for it.'
'Sir,' exclaimed an old man of imposing aspect, his face showing at once distress and intelligence, 'you make a jest of everything. But I, when I hear such talk from the men highest in the state, I ask myself whether it were not better to die. Truly, if the founders of this city could rise from the dead and see the folly and the infamy of this day's proceedings, they would flee back into their graves for shame.'
The judges, meanwhile, came and went incessantly from the Loggia to the Palazzo, from the Palazzo to the Loggia, and it seemed as if the deliberations were to have no end.
The Franciscans first accused Savonarola of having enchanted Fra Domenico's habit; he therefore removed it, but it was alleged that sorcery might have influenced his under garments. He retired into the Palazzo Vecchio, stripped himself naked, and donned the vesture of another. Then the Franciscans demanded that he should hold aloof from Savonarola, lest his new garments should be enchanted; and that he should give up the cross which he held. To this Domenico consented, but protested that he would not enter the flames without the Holy Sacrament in his hands. The Franciscans at this swore that Savonarola's disciple wished sacrilegiously to burn the body and blood of Christ. In vain Domenico and Girolamo replied that the Holy Sacrament could not be reduced to ashes; the material part (modus) might indeed be burned, but not the eternal and incorruptible part (substantia). An interminable scholastic dispute now began between the two parties.
The crowd in the piazza was beginning to murmur, and dense black clouds were spreading over the sky. Suddenly from behind the Palazzo Vecchio and the Via de' Leoni where the lions of Florence were kept in cages, a prolonged and hungry roar was heard. The mob imagined that the bronze Marzocco, indignant with his city, was roaring out his wrath. They responded with a sound no less furious, no less hungry.