Part 18

He sank into it in his old attitude–his hands on the arms, his head resting against the back; only now his eyes were closed, and the steady sound of the passing army was in his ears.

Girolamo Savonarola stood in the corner of the chamber; he also was listening to the sounds of the French entering Florence, and though he stood very still, with his hands on his breast, there was something triumphant in his face.

“Frà Girolamo,” said Giovanni under his breath, “if I–should not live to enter your order, will you bury me in the habit of it?”

The Friar made no answer to this; he moved nearer the window and remarked, “Angelo Poliziano died this morning.”

“Ah!” A half-breath parted the young man’s full, pale lips, and a deeper look of sadness troubled the smooth calm of his gentle features. Poliziano was a name nearly as brilliant as his own, a man who had also been present at il Magnifico’s death-bed. It seemed as if all the friends of the old dynasty were following that dynasty’s fate.

“No one to-day will remember Poliziano,” said Giovanni, following out his thoughts; “and no one would remember Pico–if I were to die to-day.” He added instantly, turning his head towards the Friar, “Save only you, Frà Girolamo.”

Savonarola approached his chair and looked down at him with deep, sparkling eyes.

“Are you very ill?” he asked earnestly.

The young Prince smiled sweetly up at him.

“I am dying,” he said.

Frà Girolamo was startled; he lifted his right hand and let it fall on his heart.

“I received the viaticum this morning,” said Pico della Mirandola. “I have been surprised by death … too soon.… I would have died a Friar, and I would have died before I heard yonder army crossing the Arno.”

Savonarola still did not speak; his dark face was stained by a dusky flush of pain. He loved this beautiful young man who was so devoted and humble a follower of his doctrines–this prince whom neither great birth, great gifts, great fortune nor great praise had spoiled, and he hoped that he would not die. It was a marvellous thing if he, broken and ill, was to be spared and this youth to be taken in the flower of his days.

“Oh, what have I done with my life!” whispered Giovanni, and the tears sparkled in his long clear eyes.

“Are you at peace?” asked the Friar abruptly.

“Nay, not quite at peace, for I love the things of this world and cannot wholly forget them, even while every breath I draw brings me nearer the Judgment of God.”

The Friar looked at him earnestly.

“Why should you die, Giovanni? I think you will live.”

“No; death entered my chamber this morning and is here now, waiting his time.”

“Should I bring your friends or your physician?”

“Let me die alone,” answered Giovanni. “I have been too much in crowds all my life.”

“You have no great sins to answer for,” returned the Friar. “You need not be afraid to appear before God, Conte.”

“I am not afraid,” replied the young man faintly. “But I am very loth to leave the world, and that troubles me.”

A light of enthusiasm and joy sprang into the Friar’s eyes. He clasped his thin, nervous hands convulsively together.

“Could I but have brought you within the walls of St. Mark’s–into that great peace where the spirit of St. Antonine still dwells, where it is indeed like Heaven for the great company of angels painted by Frà Beato Angelico that beam from the walls!”

“Alas!” said the Conte della Mirandola; “such joy is not for me!”

Clouds had crept over the perfect blue; faint silver veils they were, and a pale rain descended and a low wind rose, stirring the boughs of the cypresses and the arras hanging before the houses.

Still could be heard the shouting, the tramp, the jostle of arms, the running to and fro, the tap of the drums, the whistle of the pipes.

And Pico della Mirandola could not close his ears to these sounds; he was thinking more of Florence than of God, and because of this the tears ran down his cheeks.

The Friar seemed to guess his thoughts.

“Florence is in God’s hands, and I am his instrument to preserve her people.”

Giovanni took his eyes from the rain and the cypresses and the soft grey sky, and looked at the Friar.

“Can you preserve Florence against a Borgia Pope and a French Conqueror?” he whispered.

“As God’s lieutenant, I can,” said Frà Girolamo in a firm and splendid voice.

Giovanni closed his eyes.

“I must forget Florence,” he answered. “I must forget the world.”

He drew the yellow intaglio from his finger and, still with his eyes closed, dropped it on the floor; it rolled away against the wall.

With slow movements he unwound the chain from his neck and cast that down too.

Then he opened his eyes.

“Bury me in your holy and humble habit,” he asked. “I have longed to wear it in life, and in death maybe I might be thought not unworthy–and lay me in St. Mark’s Church.”

“Giovanni, both these things will I do–yet I still think that you will not die.”

The Prince shook his head and called one of his pages, who came with his eyes red from weeping for this sickness of his master.

And Giovanni bade the boy take away the figure of Tanagra and all the heathen vanities of the room and bring him the crucifix above the bed.

Sadly the youth obeyed, and when he brought the crucifix Giovanni clasped it gladly in his two slim white hands and pressed it to his heart, murmuring some prayers in his throat.

The rain drifted in through the open window, a slight, sweet spray, and the perfumes of the chamber were lost in the freshness of it. Giovanni gazed at the lightly blowing clouds and the dark tops of the cypresses stirring against them, and he thought that these trees were like souls–rooted to the earth, yet striving to be free, bending and moaning in their efforts heavenwards.

“Will you not rest in your bed?” asked Frà Girolamo, for he saw a slow pallor coming over the young man’s face.

“No,” said Giovanni; “but out of your great goodness, pray for me now.”

And Savonarola knelt down and began to recite the penitential psalms in a low but strong voice.

And Giovanni Pico listened, but there was a languor and a weakness in his heart and in his mind, and he began to think of spring flowers, white and scented; of long galleries, cool with shade, looking into square courtyards full of orange trees with a fountain in the centre; of heathen statues, broken and white against a background of ilex and laurel; of the sea heated by the sun and sparkling with violet and blue; of engraved gems, yellow, tawny and orange; of alabaster heads of women, tinted faintly on the cheeks and lips and gilded in the hair-net. And none of these things were of Heaven, yet they occupied the whole of Giovanni Pico’s thoughts, and he forgot the crucifix in his slack hands; he forgot the Friar reciting the psalms; he forgot the army passing without, and his spirit turned backwards to the delights of dead springs and summers.

The Friar continued praying.

Giovanni closed his eyes; he thought that he was walking by a fountain round which little close violets grew beneath their leaves, and that a woman in a long green gown was plucking these violets and giving them to him till his hands were over-full, and the little flowers fell down in a shower on the surface of the water of the fountain and floated there above the reflection of the blue sky; and he stretched out his hands to regain them, and as he did so he noticed that his hands were bare, and with a cry he started up, crying, “Where is my intaglio ring?” And the crucifix fell to the floor.

Frà Girolamo picked up the holy symbol, and his glance was red with bitter fire.

“What are your thoughts in this hour?” he cried. “Do you still dream of the lusts and pleasures of the world?”

Giovanni bent his head and wept.

“Speak to me of God,” he whispered. “I am a great sinner.”

Savonarola placed the crucifix again in his hands, and now he grasped it so hard that the sharp edges of it entered his flesh, and at the pain he groaned, and was glad, for he felt his mind quickened with thoughts of God. Resolutely he drove all soft and beautiful images from him–all memories, all philosophies and learning, and they faded like snow before fire in front of the awful visage of God that began to rise slowly and terribly before Giovanni Pico.

The world turned the colour of dark smoke, and One with a long spear of living flame strode across the Heavens calling Judgment, and there was a drum beating and a trumpet calling.

He thought that he heard the voice of Lorenzo whispering in Hell, and he tried to lift his head to look for his friend, but it was so heavy that it would not move, and he cried out–

“There is a great change in him,” said Frà Girolamo, rising from his knees. “Surely he is dying.”

The cypress trees shook in the veil of the rain and the low clouds sailed more swiftly above the pink-fronted houses. Steadily the French knights went past the street, and the chamber was full of the sound of their armour and horses; but Giovanni Pico was in darkness, labouring up to God.

He rose up from his chair and stood erect a moment, the pale light of the fading afternoon clear on his blood-red gown and his fair locks and the dark crucifix he held, as with blind eyes he stared across the room.

“Death is terrible,” he said. He fell on his knees. “Friar, death is terrible.” He fell on his face. “Death is very terrible.”

They raised him up and laid him on his bed in the shadow, and as they lifted him his crimson gown fell apart and showed his striped hose and his pearl embroidered garters and the cross-work of jewels on his shoes; and his bed was very rich and lovely and carved with little dancing figures of fauns; and Frà Girolamo was grieved that he should die amid all this vanity, and prayed heartily to the Lord to forgive it. Then he bethought him that the Prince had wished to die in the habit of his own order, and feeling assured that he was yet many hours off death, he bid the pages watch by their master and left them to go himself to the convent of St. Mark to fetch a friar’s robe.

Giovanni Pico lay very still; his face was white and fallen and his eyes closed. The two boys looked at him and whispered together; they greatly loved their master, and they did not love, though they feared, Frà Girolamo.

One of them tip-toed out of the room and brought back the figure of Tanagra; the other took from a press a lustre dish of peaches and late white roses opening on to golden hearts, and took them to his master, who was muttering prayers with a feeble voice.

The boy held up the dish and said softly: “My noble lord, do not grieve so at what the Friar says, for surely Heaven is beautiful as Tuscany when the blossoms come out, and there is a pleasant company there seated on the grass and plaiting roses into crowns while God walks among them, very splendid and gentle.”

Giovanni opened his eyes and saw the flowers and fruit and smelt the rich perfume of them and faintly smiled; then he saw the figure of Tanagra, and his smile deepened, and all the world rushed round him again.

“There is great comfort in these things,” said the second page; “and wherefore should a Prince die like a poor Friar?”

He picked up the long chain Giovanni had flung down and brought it to the bed.

“My ring,” said the dying man: “the yellow intaglio—”

They found it where it had spun away against the wall, and tenderly brought it to him and slipped it on his finger, and he looked at it, still smiling.

Then one of them fetched a psalter, illuminated in colour and gold, with knobs of turkis on the cover, and put that in his right hand; and the other brought a casket showing a painting of Venus and Adonis on the lid and opened it, and from it took long locks of fair and dark hair that had once belonged to all the women Giovanni Pico had loved.

This casket he laid on the bed, and Giovanni looked at it; and God receded very far away again.

“What are those bells?” he asked.

“King Charles is being received in the Duomo by the Signorie, my lord.”

Pico della Mirandola moved his pale lips slowly.

“I hope Piero Capponi will know how to–deal with–these French–I hope–Frà Girolamo will save Florence–I wish Lorenzo had lived—”

He lifted the yellow ring to his cheek and fell, as they thought, asleep.

But when Frà Girolamo returned with the humble robe of a brother of St. Mark’s, Pico della Mirandola was dead amid his vanities, with the rare intaglio on his finger.

And Savonarola used no word of reproach, but permitted him to be buried in the friar’s habit and in the Church of St. Mark.

THE END

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