adeth more eloquently than I. His dead lips shake your souls. Go
home, go home from this Pagan mirth, and sit on the ground in
sackcloth and ashes, and pray God He make you better Christians."

There was an uneasy stir in the crowd: the fantastic mud-stained
tinsel cloak, the bare legs of the speaker, did but add to his
impressiveness; he seemed some strange antique prophet, come from the
far ends of the world and time.

"Be silent, blasphemer," said the Judge. "The sports have the
countenance of the Holy Father. Heaven itself hath cursed these
stinking heretics. Pah!" he spurned the dead Jew with his foot. The
Friar's bosom swelled. His head was hot with blood.

"Not Heaven but the Pope hath cursed them," he retorted vehemently.
"Why doth he not banish them from his dominions? Nay, he knows how
needful they are to the State. When he exiled them from all save the
three cities of refuge, and when the Jewish merchants of the seaports
of the East put our port of Ancona under a ban, so that we could not
provision ourselves, did not his Holiness hastily recall the Jews,
confessing their value? Which being so, it is love we should offer
them, not hatred and a hundred degrading edicts."

"Thou shalt burn in the Forum for this," spluttered the Judge. "Who
art thou to set thyself up against God's Vicar?"

"He God's Vicar? Nay, I am sooner God's Vicar. God speaks through me."

His wan, emaciated face had grown rapt and shining; to the awed mob he
loomed gigantic.

"This is treason and blasphemy. Arrest him!" cried the Judge.

The Friar faced the soldiers unflinchingly, though only the body of
the old Jew divided him from their prancing horses.

"Nay," he said softly, and a sweet smile mingled with the mystery of
his look. "God is with me. He hath set this bulwark of death between
you and my life. Ye will not fight under the banner of the
Anti-Christ."

"Death to the renegade!" cried a voice in the crowd. "He calls the
Pope Anti-Christ."

"Ay, he who is not for us is against us. Is it for Christ that he
rules Rome? Is it only the Jews whom he vexes? Hath not his rage for
power brought the enemy to the gates of Rome? Have not his companies
of foreign auxiliaries flouted our citizens? Ye know how Rome hath
suffered through the machinations of his bastard son, with his
swaggering troop of cut-throats. Is it for Christ that he hath
begotten this terror of our streets?"

"Down with Baccio Valori!" cried a stentorian voic