position with his revered master,--as nearly so as
the position of a layman was likely to resemble that of an ecclesiastic.
His denial of the Visible Church, as represented by the Pope and
Cardinals, sprang not from an irreverent, but from a reverent spirit. To
accept _them_ as exponents of Christ and Christianity was to blaspheme
and traduce both, and therefore he only could be counted in the highest
degree Christian who stood most completely opposed to them in spirit and
practice.

His kind and fatherly heart was interested in the brave young nobleman.
He sympathized fully with the situation in which he stood, and he even
wished success to his love; but then how was he to help him with Agnes,
and above all with her old grandmother, without entering on the awful
task of condemning and exposing that sacred authority which all the
Church had so many years been taught to regard as infallibly inspired?
Long had all the truly spiritual members of the Church who gave ear to
the teachings of Savonarola felt that the nearer they followed Christ
the more open was their growing antagonism to the Pope and the
Cardinals; but still they hung back from the responsibility of inviting
the people to an open revolt.

Father Antonio felt his soul deeply stirred with the news of the
excommunication of his saintly master; and he marvelled, as he tossed
on his restless bed through the night, how he was to meet the storm. He
might have known, had he been able to look into a crowded assembly in
Florence about this time, when the unterrified monk thus met the news of
his excommunication:--

"There have come decrees from Rome, have there? They call me a son of
perdition. Well, thus may you answer:--He to whom you give this name
hath neither favorites nor concubines, but gives himself solely to
preaching Christ. His spiritual sons and daughters, those who listen
to his doctrine, do not pass their time in infamous practices. They
confess, they receive the communion, they live honestly. This man gives
himself up to exalt the Church of Christ: you to destroy it. The time
approaches for opening the secret chamber: we will give but one turn of
the key, and there will come out thence such an infection, such a
stench of this city of Rome, that the odor shall spread through all
Christendom, and all the world shall be sickened."

But Father Antonio was of himself wholly unable to come to such a
courageous result, though capable of following to the d