se were as good as identical propositions. The Great
Council was the only practicable plan for giving an expression to the
public will large enough to counteract the vitiating influence of party
interests: it was a plan that would make honest impartial public action
at least possible. And the purer the government of Florence would
become--the more secure from the designs of men who saw their own
advantage in the moral debasement of their fellows--the nearer would the
Florentine people approach the character of a pure community, worthy to
lead the way in the renovation of the Church and the world. And Fra
Girolamo's mind never stopped short of that sublimest end: the objects
towards which he felt himself working had always the same moral
magnificence. He had no private malice--he sought no petty
gratification. Even in the last terrible days, when ignominy, torture,
and the fear of torture, had laid bare every hidden weakness of his
soul, he could say to his importunate judges: "Do not wonder if it seems
to you that I have told but few things; for my purposes were few and
great." [Note 1.]

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Note 1. "Se vi pare che io abbia detto poche cose, non ve ne
maravigliate, perche le mie cose erano poche e grandi."

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF.

It was more than three weeks before the contents of the library were all
packed and carried away. And Romola, instead of shutting her eyes and
ears, had watched the process. The exhaustion consequent on violent
emotion is apt to bring a dreamy disbelief in the reality of its cause;
and in the evening, when the workmen were gone, Romola took her
hand-lamp and walked slowly round amongst the confusion of straw and
wooden cases, pausing at every vacant pedestal, every well-known object
laid prostrate, with a sort of bitter desire to assure herself that
there was a sufficient reason why her love was gone and the world was
barren for her. And still, as the evenings came, she went and went
again; no longer to assure herself, but because this vivifying of pain
and despair about her father's memory was the strongest life left to her
affections. On the 23rd of December, she knew that the last packages
were going. She ran to the loggia at the top of the house that she
might not lose the last pang of seeing the slow wheels move across the
bridge.

It was a cloudy day, and nearing dusk.