The Friar staggered to his feet.
“I have had a vision,” he said under his breath. “Methought you were my guide. Who are you?”
The other tore off the mask, snapping the orange ribbons that bound it to his head, and disclosing a superb face framed in clusters of brown curls, flushed with crimson.
“I am Piero!” he cried. “I am the Medici! And after the burning of Girolamo Savonarola I shall rule again in Florence!”
“Then it was no vision,” answered Frà Girolamo, “but a Devil’s fantasy—”
“A fantasy,” said Piero; “but you shall test its truth.”
The Friar leant against the wall of the hospital and closed his eyes to shut out the picture of the wicked face and red eyes he had last seen with that same smiling expression casting hate on him from beside the death-bed of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
“Lord! Lord!” he cried strongly. “Save me from the snares and delusions of evil!”
Now he opened his eyes and saw about him his own cell in St. Mark, and he lay on his bed, and beside him sat his beloved disciple, Frà Domenico, and he shuddered as one waking from a terrible dream.