“And not before there is need,” said Cronaca, gravely. “We have had the best testimony to his words since the last Quaresima; for even to the wicked wickedness has become a plague; and the ripeness of vice is turning to rottenness in the nostrils even of the vicious. There has not been a change since the Quaresima, either in Rome or at Florence, but has put a new seal on the Frate’s words—that the harvest of sin is ripe, and that God will reap it with a sword.”
“I hope he has had a new vision, however,” said Francesco Cei, sneeringly. “The old ones are somewhat stale. Can’t your Frate get a poet to help out his imagination for him?”
“He has no lack of poets about him,” said Cronaca, with quiet contempt, “but they are great poets and not little ones; so they are contented to be taught by him, and no more think the truth stale which God has given him to utter, than they think the light of the moon is stale. But perhaps certain high prelates and princes who dislike the Frate’s denunciations might be pleased to hear that, though Giovanni Pico, and Poliziano, and Marsilio Ficino, and most other men of mark in Florence, reverence Fra Girolamo, Messer Francesco Cei despises him.”
“Poliziano?” said Cei, with a scornful laugh. “Yes, doubtless he believes in your new Jonah; witness the fine orations he wrote for the envoys of Sienna, to tell Alexander the Sixth that the world and the Church were never so well off as since he became Pope.”
“Nay, Francesco,” said Macchiavelli, smiling, “a various scholar must have various opinions. And as for the Frate, whatever we may think of his saintliness, you judge his preaching too narrowly. The secret of oratory lies, not in saying new things, but in saying things with a certain power that moves the hearers—without which, as old Filelfo has said, your speaker deserves to be called, ‘non oratorem, sed aratorem.’ And, according to that test, Fra Girolamo is a great orator.”
“That is true, Niccolò,” said Cennini, speaking from the shaving-chair, “but part of the secret lies in the prophetic visions. Our people—no offence to you, Cronaca—will run after anything in the shape of a prophet, especially if he prophesies terrors and tribulations.”
“Rather say, Cennini,” answered Cronaca, “that the chief secret lies in the Frate’s pure life and strong faith, which stamp him as a messenger of God.”
“I admit it—I admit it,” said Cennini, opening his palms, as he rose from the chair. “His life is spotless: no man has impeached it.”
“He is satisfied with the pleasant lust of arrogance,” Cei burst out, bitterly. “I can see it in that proud lip and satisfied eye of his. He hears the air filled with his own name—Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara; the prophet, the saint, the mighty preacher, who frightens the very babies of Florence into laying down their wicked baubles.”
“Come, come, Francesco, you are out of humour with waiting,” said the conciliatory Nello. “Let me stop your mouth with a little lather. I must not have my friend Cronaca made angry: I have a regard for his chin; and his chin is in no respect altered since he became a Piagnone. And for my own part, I confess, when the Frate was preaching in the Duomo last Advent, I got into such a trick of slipping in to listen to him that I might have turned Piagnone too, if I had not been hindered by the liberal nature of my art; and also by the length of the sermons, which are sometimes a good while before they get to the moving point. But, as Messer Niccolò here says, the Frate lays hold of the people by some power over and above his prophetic visions. Monks and nuns who prophesy are not of that rareness. For what says Luigi Pulci? ‘Dombruno’s sharp-cutting scimitar had the fame of being enchanted; but,’ says Luigi, ‘I am rather of opinion that it cut sharp because it was of strongly-tempered steel.’ Yes, yes; Paternosters may shave clean, but they must be said over a good razor.”