The eyes of the other filled with tears, as he answered gently,—
"Nay, but, my brother, you are killing yourself. They tell me that you have eaten nothing for three days, and slept not for weeks; you will die of this grief."
"Would that I might! Why could not I die with him as well as Fra
Domenico? Oh, my master! my dear master!"
"It is indeed a most heavy day to us all," said Baccio della Porta, the amiable and pure-minded artist better known to our times by his conventual name of Fra Bartolommeo. "Never have we had among us such a man; and if there be any light of grace in my soul, his preaching first awakened it, brother. I only wait to see him enter Paradise, and then I take farewell of the world forever. I am going to Prato to take the Dominican habit, and follow him as near as I may."
"It is well, Baccio, it is well," said Father Antonio; "but you must not put out the light of your genius in those shadows,—you must still paint for the glory of God."
"I have no heart for painting now," said Baccio, dejectedly. "He was my inspiration, he taught me the holier way, and he is gone."
At this moment the conference of the two was interrupted by a knocking at the door, and Agostino Sarelli entered, pale and disordered.
"How is this?" he said, hastily. "What devils' carnival is this which hath broken loose in Florence? Every good thing is gone into dens and holes, and every vile thing that can hiss and spit and sting is crawling abroad. What do the princes of Europe mean to let such things be?"
"Only the old story," said Father Antonio,—"Principes convenerunt in unum adversus Dominum, adversus Christum ejus."
So much were all three absorbed in the subject of their thoughts, that no kind of greeting or mark of recognition passed among them, such as is common when people meet after temporary separation. Each spoke out from the fulness of his soul, as from an overflowing bitter fountain.