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Updated: June 1, 2025
Lillo, conscious that his legs were in question, pulled his shirt up a little higher, and looked down at their olive roundness with a dispassionate and curious air. Romola laughed, and stooped to give him a caressing shake and a kiss, and this action helped the reassurance that Tessa had already gathered from Monna Lisa's address to Romola.
Romola stretched out her hand to the crucifix, and this act appeared to relieve the tension of her mind. A great sob burst from her. She bowed her head by the side of her dead brother, and wept aloud. It seemed to her as if this first vision of death must alter the daylight for her for evermore. Fra Girolamo moved towards the door, and called in a lay Brother who was waiting outside.
Tito, too, was in the palace; but Romola had not seen him. Since the evening of the seventeenth they had avoided each other, and Tito only knew by inference from the report of the Frate's neutrality that her pleading had failed.
They found a few lobworms and re-baited their hooks and cast their lines afresh, but met with no better success than before. "I'm fed up with fishing!" announced Romola at last. "Let's go home!" She had voiced the general opinion of the party. All immediately began to wind up their lines. "The tide's coming in fast, and we're close to the blow-hole," said Mavis.
"No need of fresh ones, my Romola. There are three strong parties in the city, all ready to fly at each other's throats. And if the Frate's party is strong enough to frighten the other two into silence, as seems most likely, life will be as pleasant and amusing as a funeral.
Far on in the hot days of June the Excommunication, for some weeks arrived from Rome, was solemnly published in the Duomo. Romola went to witness the scene, that the resistance it inspired might invigorate that sympathy with Savonarola which was one source of her strength. It was in memorable contrast with the scene she had been accustomed to witness there.
"And you are certain that he is not going?" she insisted. "I am certain that he is not going." "That is enough," said Romola, and she turned up the steps, to take refuge in the Duomo, till she could recover from her agitation. Tito never had a feeling so near hatred as that with which his eyes followed Romola retreating up the steps.
Romola thought she discerned an effort in his liveliness, and attributing it to the consciousness in him that she had been wounded in the morning, accepted the effort as an act of penitence, inwardly aching a little at that sign of growing distance between them that there was an offence about which neither of them dared to speak. The next day Tito remained away from home until late at night.
This last, however, was the risk he chose, trusting to his power of soothing Spini by assuring him that the failure was due only to the Frate's caution. Tito was annoyed. If he had had to smile it would have been an unusual effort to him. He was determined not to encounter Romola again, and he did not go home that night. She watched through the night, and never took off her clothes.
The incidents of that Carnival day seemed to Romola to carry no other personal consequences to her than the new care of supporting poor cousin Brigida in her fluctuating resignation to age and grey hairs; but they introduced a Lenten time in which she was kept at a high pitch of mental excitement and active effort. Bernardo del Nero had been elected Gonfaloniere.
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