,
Baccio! Baccio!" hid his face again.

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.

"Was there no one to speak for him,--no one to stand up for the pride of
Italy,--the man of his age?" said Agostino.

"There was one voice raised for him in the council," said Father
Antonio. "There was Agnolo Niccolini: a grave man is this Agnolo, and of
great experience in public affairs, and he spoke out his mind boldly. He
told them flatly, that, if they looked through the present time or the
past ages, they would not meet a man of such a high and noble order as
this, and