The Prince shook his head and called one of his pages, who came with his eyes red from weeping for this sickness of his master.
And Giovanni bade the boy take away the figure of Tanagra and all the heathen vanities of the room and bring him the crucifix above the bed.
Sadly the youth obeyed, and when he brought the crucifix Giovanni clasped it gladly in his two slim white hands and pressed it to his heart, murmuring some prayers in his throat.
The rain drifted in through the open window, a slight, sweet spray, and the perfumes of the chamber were lost in the freshness of it. Giovanni gazed at the lightly blowing clouds and the dark tops of the cypresses stirring against them, and he thought that these trees were like souls–rooted to the earth, yet striving to be free, bending and moaning in their efforts heavenwards.
“Will you not rest in your bed?” asked Frà Girolamo, for he saw a slow pallor coming over the young man’s face.
“No,” said Giovanni; “but out of your great goodness, pray for me now.”
And Savonarola knelt down and began to recite the penitential psalms in a low but strong voice.
And Giovanni Pico listened, but there was a languor and a weakness in his heart and in his mind, and he began to think of spring flowers, white and scented; of long galleries, cool with shade, looking into square courtyards full of orange trees with a fountain in the centre; of heathen statues, broken and white against a background of ilex and laurel; of the sea heated by the sun and sparkling with violet and blue; of engraved gems, yellow, tawny and orange; of alabaster heads of women, tinted faintly on the cheeks and lips and gilded in the hair-net. And none of these things were of Heaven, yet they occupied the whole of Giovanni Pico’s thoughts, and he forgot the crucifix in his slack hands; he forgot the Friar reciting the psalms; he forgot the army passing without, and his spirit turned backwards to the delights of dead springs and summers.
The Friar continued praying.
Giovanni closed his eyes; he thought that he was walking by a fountain round which little close violets grew beneath their leaves, and that a woman in a long green gown was plucking these violets and giving them to him till his hands were over-full, and the little flowers fell down in a shower on the surface of the water of the fountain and floated there above the reflection of the blue sky; and he stretched out his hands to regain them, and as he did so he noticed that his hands were bare, and with a cry he started up, crying, “Where is my intaglio ring?” And the crucifix fell to the floor.