specially want your favour. Here, without more ado, is

SAVONAROLA

A TRAGEDY

By L. Brown

ACT I

SCENE: A Room in the Monastery of San Marco, Florence.
TIME: 1490, A.D. A summer morning.

Enter the SACRISTAN and a FRIAR.

SACR.
Savonarola looks more grim to-day
Than ever. Should I speak my mind, I'd say
That he was fashioning some new great scourge
To flay the backs of men.

FRI.
'Tis even so.
Brother Filippo saw him stand last night
In solitary vigil till the dawn
Lept o'er the Arno, and his face was such
As men may wear in Purgatory--nay,
E'en in the inmost core of Hell's own fires.

SACR.
I often wonder if some woman's face,
Seen at some rout in his old worldling days,
Haunts him e'en now, e'en here, and urges him
To fierier fury 'gainst the Florentines.

FRI.
Savonarola love-sick! Ha, ha, ha!
Love-sick? He, love-sick? 'Tis a goodly jest!
The CONfirm'd misogyn a ladies' man!
Thou must have eaten of some strange red herb
That takes the reason captive. I will swear
Savonarola never yet hath seen
A woman but he spurn'd her. Hist! He comes.

[Enter SAVONAROLA, rapt in thought.]

Give thee good morrow, Brother.

SACR.
And therewith
A multitude of morrows equal-good
Till thou, by Heaven's grace, hast wrought the work
Nearest thine heart.

SAV.
I thank thee, Brother, yet
I thank thee not, for that my thankfulness
(An such there be) gives thanks to Heaven alone.

FRI. [To SACR.]
'Tis a right answer he hath given thee.
Had Sav'narola spoken less than thus,
Methinks me, the less Sav'narola he.
As when the snow lies on yon Apennines,
White as the hem of Mary Mother's robe,
And insusceptible to the sun's rays,
Being harder to the touch than temper'd steel,
E'en so this great gaunt monk white-visaged
Upstands to Heaven and to Heav'n devotes
The scarped thoughts that crown the upper slopes
Of his abrupt and AUStere nature.

SACR.
Aye.

[Enter LUCREZIA BORGIA, ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, and LEONARDO
DA VINCI. LUC. is thickly veiled.]

ST. FRAN.
This is the place.

LUC. [Pointing at SAV.]
And this the man! [Aside.] And I--
By the hot blood that courses i' my veins
I swear it ineluctably--the woman!

SAV.