Romola

by George Eliot

  CHAPTER SIXTY.

  THE SCAFFOLD.

  Three days later the moon that was just surmounting the buildings of thepiazza in front of the Old Palace within the hour of midnight, did notmake the usual broad lights and shadows on the pavement. Not ahand's-breadth of pavement was to be seen, but only the heads of aneager struggling multitude. And instead of that background of silencein which the pattering footsteps and buzzing voices, the lute-thrummingor rapid scampering of the many night wanderers of Florence stood out inobtrusive distinctness, there was the background of a roar from mingledshouts and imprecations, tramplings and pushings, and accidentalclashing of weapons, across which nothing was distinguishable but adarting shriek, or the heavy dropping toll of a bell.

  Almost all who could call themselves the public of Florence were awakeat that hour, and either enclosed within the limits of that piazza, orstruggling to enter it. Within the palace were still assembled in thecouncil-chamber all the chief magistracies, the eighty members of thesenate, and the other select citizens who had been in hot debate throughlong hours of daylight and torchlight whether the Appeal should begranted or whether the sentence of death should be executed on theprisoners forthwith, to forestall the dangerous chances of delay. Andthe debate had been so much like fierce quarrel that the noise from thecouncil-chamber had reached the crowd outside. Only within the lasthour had the question been decided: the Signoria had remained divided,four of them standing out resolutely for the Appeal in spite of thestrong argument that if they did not give way their houses should besacked, until Francesco Valori, in brief and furious speech, made thedetermination of his party more ominously distinct by declaring that ifthe Signoria would not defend the liberties of the Florentine people byexecuting those five perfidious citizens, there would not be wantingothers who would take that cause in hand to the peril of all who opposedit. The Florentine Cato triumphed. When the votes were counted again,the four obstinate white beans no longer appeared; the whole nine wereof the fatal affirmative black, deciding the death of the five prisonerswithout delay--deciding also, only tacitly and with much more delay, thedeath of Francesco Valori.

  And now, while the judicial Eight were gone to the Bargello to preparefor the execution, the five condemned men were being led barefoot and inirons through the midst of the council. It was their friends who hadcontrived this: would not Florentines be moved by the visibleassociation of such cruel ignominy with two venerable men like Bernardodel Nero and Niccolo Ridolfi, who had taken their bias long before thenew order of things had come to make Mediceanism retrograde--with twobrilliant popular young men like Tornabuoni and Pucci, whose absencewould be felt as a haunting vacancy wherever there was a meeting ofchief Florentines? It was useless: such pity as could be awakened nowwas of that hopeless sort which leads not to rescue, but to the tardieraction of revenge.

  While this scene was passing upstairs Romola stood below against one ofthe massive pillars in the court of the palace, expecting the momentwhen her godfather would appear, on his way to execution. By the use ofstrong interest she had gained permission to visit him in the evening ofthis day, and remain with him until the result of the council should bedetermined. And now she was waiting with his confessor to follow theguard that would lead him to the Bargello. Her heart was bent onclinging to the presence of the childless old man to the last moment, asher father would have done; and she had overpowered all remonstrances.Giovan Battista Ridolfi, a disciple of Savonarola, who was going inbitterness to behold the death of his elder brother Niccolo, hadpromised that she should be guarded, and now stood by her side.

  Tito, too, was in the palace; but Romola had not seen him. Since theevening of the seventeenth they had avoided each other, and Tito onlyknew by inference from the report of the Frate's neutrality that herpleading had failed. He was now surrounded with official and otherpersonages, both Florentine and foreign, who had been awaiting the issueof the long-protracted council, maintaining, except when he was directlyaddressed, the subdued air and grave silence of a man whom actual eventsare placing in a painful state of strife between public and privatefeeling. When an allusion was made to his wife in relation to thoseevents, he implied that, owing to the violent excitement of her mind,the mere fact of his continuing to hold office under a governmentconcerned in her godfather's condemnation, roused in her a diseasedhostility towards him; so that for her sake he felt it best not toapproach her.

  "Ah, the old Bardi blood!" said Cennini, with a shrug. "I shall not besurprised if this business shakes _her_ loose from the Frate, as well assome others I could name."

  "It is excusable in a woman, who is doubtless beautiful, since she isthe wife of Messer Tito," said a young French envoy, smiling and bowingto Tito, "to think that her affections must overrule the good of theState, and that nobody is to be beheaded who is anybody's cousin; butsuch a view is not to be encouraged in the male population. It seems tome your Florentine polity is much weakened by it."

  "That is true," said Niccolo Macchiavelli; "but where personal ties arestrong, the hostilities they raise must be taken due account of. Manyof these half-way severities are mere hot-headed blundering. The onlysafe blows to be inflicted on men and parties are the blows that are tooheavy to be avenged."

  "Niccolo," said Cennini, "there is a clever wickedness in thy talksometimes that makes me mistrust thy pleasant young face as if it were amask of Satan."

  "Not at all, my good Domenico," said Macchiavelli, smiling, and layinghis hand on the elder's shoulder. "Satan was a blunderer, an introducerof _novita_, who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, weshould all have been worshipping him, and his portrait would have beenmore flattered."

  "Well, well," said Cennini, "I say not thy doctrine is not too cleverfor Satan: I only say it is wicked enough for him."

  "I tell you," said Macchiavelli, "my doctrine is the doctrine of all menwho seek an end a little farther off than their own noses. Ask ourFrate, our prophet, how his universal renovation is to be brought about:he will tell you, first, by getting a free and pure government; andsince it appears that this cannot be done by making all Florentines loveeach other, it must be done by cutting off every head that happens to beobstinately in the way. Only if a man incurs odium by sanctioning aseverity that is not thorough enough to be final, he commits a blunder.And something like that blunder, I suspect, the Frate has committed. Itwas an occasion on which he might have won some lustre by exertinghimself to maintain the Appeal; instead of that, he has lost lustre, andhas gained no strength."

  Before any one else could speak, there came the expected announcementthat the prisoners were about to leave the council-chamber; and themajority of those who were present hurried towards the door, intent onsecuring the freest passage to the Bargello in the rear of theprisoners' guard; for the scene of the execution was one that drew alikethose who were moved by the deepest passions and those who were moved bythe coldest curiosity.

  Tito was one of those who remained behind. He had a native repugnanceto sights of death and pain, and five days ago whenever he had thoughtof this execution as a possibility he had hoped that it would not takeplace, and that the utmost sentence would be exile: his own safetydemanded no more. But now he felt that it would be a welcome guaranteeof his security when he had learned that Bernardo del Nero's head wasoff the shoulders. The new knowledge and new attitude towards himdisclosed by Romola on the day of his return, had given him a new dreadof the power she possessed to make his position insecure. If any act ofhers only succeeded in making him an object of suspicion and odium, heforesaw not only frustration, but frustration under unpleasantcircumstances. Her belief in Baldassarre had clearly determined herwavering feelings against further submission, and if her godfather livedshe would win him to share her belief without much trouble. Romolaseemed more than ever an unmanageable fact in his destiny. But ifBernardo del Nero were dead, the difficulties that would beset her inplacing herself in opposition to her husband would probably beinsurmountable to h
er shrinking pride. Therefore Tito had felt easierwhen he knew that the Eight had gone to the Bargello to order theinstant erection of the scaffold. Four other men--his intimates andconfederates--were to die, besides Bernardo del Nero. But a man's ownsafety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands. Tito felt themto be grim: even in the pursuit of what was agreeable, this paradoxicallife forced upon him the desire for what was disagreeable. But he hadhad other experience of this sort, and as he heard through the opendoorway the shuffle of many feet and the clanking of metal on thestairs, he was able to answer the questions of the young French envoywithout showing signs of any other feeling than that of sad resignationto State necessities.

  Those sounds fell on Romola as if her power of hearing had been exaltedalong with every other sensibility of her nature. She needed no arm tosupport her; she shed no tears. She felt that intensity of life whichseems to transcend both grief and joy--in which the mind seems to itselfakin to elder forces that wrought out existence before the birth ofpleasure and pain. Since her godfather's fate had been decided, theprevious struggle of feeling in her had given way to an identificationof herself with him in these supreme moments: she was inwardly assertingfor him that, if he suffered the punishment of treason, he did notdeserve the name of traitor; he was the victim to a collision betweentwo kinds of faithfulness. It was not given him to die for the noblestcause, and yet he died because of his nobleness. He might have been ameaner man and found it easier not to incur this guilt. Romola wasfeeling the full force of that sympathy with the individual lot that iscontinually opposing itself to the formulae by which actions and partiesare judged. She was treading the way with her second father to thescaffold, and nerving herself to defy ignominy by the consciousness thatit was not deserved.

  The way was fenced in by three hundred armed men, who had been placed asa guard by the orders of Francesco Valori, for among the apparentcontradictions that belonged to this event, not the least striking wasthe alleged alarm on the one hand at the popular rage against theconspirators, and the alleged alarm on the other lest there should be anattempt to rescue them in the midst of a hostile crowd. When they hadarrived within the court of the Bargello, Romola was allowed to approachBernardo with his confessor for a moment of farewell. Many eyes werebent on them even in that struggle of an agitated throng, as the agedman, forgetting that his hands were bound with irons, lifted themtowards the golden head that was bent towards him, and then, checkingthat movement, leaned to kiss her. She seized the fettered hands thatwere hung down again, and kissed them as if they had been sacred things.

  "My poor Romola," said Bernardo, in a low voice, "I have only to die,but thou hast to live--and I shall not be there to help thee."

  "Yes," said Romola, hurriedly, "you _will_ help me--always--because Ishall remember you."

  She was taken away and conducted up the flight of steps that led to theloggia surrounding the grand old court. She took her place there,determined to look till the moment when her godfather laid his head onthe block. Now while the prisoners were allowed a brief interval withtheir confessor, the spectators were pressing into court until the crowdbecame dense around the black scaffold, and the torches fixed in ironrings against the pillars threw a varying startling light at one momenton passionless stone carvings, at another on some pale face agitatedwith suppressed rage or suppressed grief--the face of one among the manynear relatives of the condemned, who were presently to receive theirdead and carry them home.

  Romola's face looked like a marble image against the dark arch as shestood watching for the moment when her godfather would appear at thefoot of the scaffold. He was to suffer first, and Battista Ridolfi, whowas by her side, had promised to take her away through a door behindthem when she would have seen the last look of the man who alone in allthe world had shared her pitying love for her father. And still, in thebackground of her thought, there was the possibility striving to be ahope, that some rescue might yet come, something that would keep thatscaffold unstained by blood.

  For a long while there was constant movement, lights flickering, headsswaying to and fro, confused voices within the court, rushing waves ofsound through the entrance from without. It seemed to Romola as if shewere in the midst of a storm-troubled sea, caring nothing about thestorm, caring only to hold out a signal till the eyes that looked for itcould seek it no more.

  Suddenly there was stillness, and the very tapers seemed to tremble intoquiet. The executioner was ready on the scaffold, and Bernardo del Nerowas seen ascending it with a slow firm step. Romola made no visiblemovement, uttered not even a suppressed sound: she stood more firmly,caring for _his_ firmness. She saw him pause, saw the white head kepterect, while he said, in a voice distinctly audible--

  "It is but a short space of life that my fellow-citizens have taken fromme."

  She perceived that he was gazing slowly round him as he spoke. She feltthat his eyes were resting on her, and that she was stretching out herarms towards him. Then she saw no more till--a long while after, as itseemed--a voice said, "My daughter, all is peace now. I can conduct youto your house."

  She uncovered her head and saw her godfather's confessor standing byher, in a room where there were other grave men talking in subduedtones.

  "I am ready," she said, starting up. "Let us lose no time."

  She thought all clinging was at an end for her: all her strength nowshould be given to escape from a grasp under which she shuddered.