“On such a day as this can you find time for me?” he murmured.
Frà Girolamo’s eyes were flaming and troubled with many thoughts.
“It was you who persuaded the Medici to summon me to Florence,” he said. “But for you I should never have been here, doing what I can to save the city. Judge, then, if I cannot find time to come and watch with you a little when you are sick.”
“So sick!” smiled Giovanni. “I feel as if I was very old and had outlived all that I ever loved. What are my attainments now, or the praises I garnered? Where is the Prince who flattered me and the courtiers who bowed down? Gone, leaving a great emptiness; and you are the one person now who can bring me peace.”
“Will you follow the Lord?” asked Frà Girolamo quickly.
“I will. I will leave the world; though I am ‘lighter than vanity,’ I have the strength to do that. I will be one of your humble friars. Hark, what was that?”
A sound of trumpets quivered in the gentle stillness, and the sick man leant forward, gripping the arms of his chair.
“The French,” said Savonarola, and stepped out on to the balcony. “We have no fear of them; they come to treat with the Republic, not to conquer her, and Capponi is stronger than King Charles.”
He might have added that he was himself stronger than either, and that when he had walked into the French camp to warn the King of the Lord’s wrath if he behaved dishonourably to Florence that monarch had cowered before him.
Still, the fact was that King Charles had come as a conqueror into Italy, and that a foreign army was entering Florence, and this fact rankled in the mind of both Dominican and noble.