The Friar cast up his eyes to the blinding mist and answered–
“I am here!”
And the voice made reply–
“Come thou and see how the people of Florence love thee!”
With great rejoicing he said, “I come!”
Forward he pressed through the obscurity, and the darkness began to be tinged with red and dispelled as from the spreading glow of flames, and as Frà Girolamo hastened on he found himself suddenly on the Piazza again, standing apart from a vast crowd that was dancing and singing about a huge fire that lit the whole black sky and stained the blank buildings with a lurid colour.
And the voice said, very low and in the Friar’s ear–
“These are the people who sang the songs of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the people who burnt the vanities. Behold what task they perform now!”
Frà Girolamo looked and saw that the crowd was very brilliantly dressed, that the women wore jewels and paints, the men fine silks and rich weapons, and that they danced in a mad profane style; many were masked and all wreathed with flowers, and the heavy scents they were anointed with hung in the thick air; nor did they sing hymns, but the wanton carnival songs of Lorenzo de’ Medici.
And in the midst of their reckless rejoicing flared and blazed the vivid devouring flames, soaring one above the other until they far overtopped the dark palace; the deep crimson glow of them picked out from the darkness the painted, leering faces, the evil masks, the leaping, dancing, abandoned forms.