“This is no time to turn monk,” she cried. “Why are you not a soldier, and consecrated to vengeance? Will the Church help you kill the tyrant?”
“What a lot of killing and fury there is here in Florence,” said Rose. “I wonder how any of you escape.”
“The strong escape,” muttered the boy, fingering his cross. “But the mighty will be brought low ... there is One even now, though men know him not....” He stopped.
Quick, light footsteps were approaching the door opposite that by which the boy had brought the girls into the chamber. It was thrown open, and a man in monk’s garb stood on the threshold. He was of middling stature, dark-skinned, with eyes of amazing brilliance under heavy, dark brows.
A look of astonishment spread over his face as his eyes fell on the young girls.
“What is this?” he exclaimed, in a deep and musical voice. “How come these maidens here, Francesco?”
In a few words Francesco told of the escape, and that he was waiting to take the girls back to Romola’s house. The monk shook his head with a denunciatory gesture.
“The time is coming when the word must be spoken,” he said. “You have done well, Francesco, in rescuing these maids. The throng has dispersed, and it will be safe—safe as it ever is,—to return. Come with me.”
He led them out of the room and up a spiral staircase, finally bringing them out through a small door into the body of a church. The next moment they stepped once more into the street, a short, twisted way that was deserted by all except a begger or two.
“Go as swiftly as may be,” he told Francesco, “and keep to the meaner streets. Bless you, my daughters,” he added, making the sign of the cross, and fixing his strangely luminous eyes on the girls for a moment, “peace be with you.”