Now an excited and trembling silence of expectancy fell upon the crowd; four of the soldiers of the Signori stepped forward with flaming torches that showed pale and smoky in the daylight, and as Frà Girolamo raised his hand they lit the four corners of the pile, the interior of which was filled with combustibles.
As the flames hesitated, crouched, then seized hold and caught their prey, the trumpeters of Florence blew a blast of triumph, the bells broke out from the palace and the people gave free vent to their wild enthusiasm.
The Friar did not move nor even lift his eyes to the opulent sacrifice; the thick soft smoke spread sideways in a sudden little gust of wind and half obscured his figure.
The people burst out of their ordered ranks; they laughed, shouted, sang their spiritual lauds and crowded about the huge costly bonfire in a press of delirious pleasure; the Piangoni stood near and by the aid of long poles thrust the vanities deeper into the flames and cast back any that had slipped, chanting the while the hymns of Girolamo Benivieni.
The Friar maintained his position; his lips moved as if he ardently communed with himself; so absorbed was he in his own meditations that he did not notice a man standing close, and also motionless amid the circling and excited throng, who was observing him with intense and peculiar attention.
This man, although he wore the sober mantle of an ordinary citizen, and though he appeared to be there in sympathy with the general religious enthusiasm, was nevertheless in air and appearance one of the Arrabbiati or Compagnacci, who intrigued with the outcast Medici and hated the Friar, though they submitted to a force they could not withstand with safety as yet.
He was wrapped so completely in his dark cloak, the hood of which was well drawn over his face, that had any been free enough to observe him they would have had difficulty in judging of his person and character; the thick folds of the common stuff, however, could not disguise the virile grace of his figure, the beautiful poise of his head and the delicate shape of his feet and of the hand that clasped his hood at the chin.
The excited people and friars, breaking into a kind of religious dance, ran round and about this man, and in between him and Frà Girolamo; but he did not move nor once take his eyes from the equally still figure of the Friar, save to occasionally lift them to the pyre of the Vanities, now a burning cone of flames from base to apex, from which rose thick columns of sweet, heavy-scented smoke.
The slow Italian dusk was closing in; the sky deepened above the palace and the towers, the roofs and domes of Florence. The smoke, spreading, filled the Piazza and gave a cloudy unreality to the moving crowd who circled the strengthening light of the fire.
On the upper part of the buildings a pale sun-glow lingered; but the Lion on the Palace steps was absorbed in shade save for the flickering unearthly glow that the burning vanities emitted and that now and then touched the surroundings with a murky crimson reflection.