MihaElla ’s Reviews > Romola > Status Update

“What is it, Lillo?” said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more massive and less regular than his father’s. The blood of the Tuscan peasant was in his veins.

“Mamma. Romola, what am I to be?” he said, well contented that there was a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con “Spirto gentil” any longer.

“Then she became distinctly conscious that she was lying in the boat which had been bearing her over the waters all through the night. Instead of bringing her to death, it had been the gently lulling cradle of a new life. And in spite of her evening despair she was glad that the morning had come to her again: glad to think that she was resting in the familiar sunlight rather than in the unknown regions of death.

“No one who has ever known what it is thus to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought;

“Many eyes were bent on them even in that struggle of an agitated throng, as the aged man, forgetting that his hands were bound with irons, lifted them towards the golden head that was bent towards him, and then, checking that movement, leaned to kiss her. She seized the fettered hands that were hung down again, and kissed them as if they had been sacred things.

“Well! a little patience, and in another year, or perhaps in half a year, he might turn his back on these hard, eager Florentines, with their futile quarrels and sinking fortunes. His brilliant success at Florence had had some ugly flaws in it: he had fallen in love with the wrong woman, and Baldassarre had come back under incalculable circumstances.

She went up to her room,threw off her serge, destroyed the parting letters,replaced all her precious trifles,unbound her hair,& put on her usual black dress.Instead of taking a long exciting journey, she was to sit down in her usual place.The snow fell against the windows,&she was alone.
She felt the dreariness,yet her courage was high,like that of a seeker who has come on new signs of gold.

She started up with anger in her eyes,&faced the speaker.It was Fra Girolamo:she knew that well enough before.She was nearly as tall as he was,& their faces were almost on a level.She had started up with defiant words ready to burst from her lips,but they fell back again without utterance.She had met Fra Girolamo’s calm glance,&the impression from it was so new to her,her anger sank ashamed as something irrelevant

He paid a heavier price than ever to make himself safe.He did not like the price, yet it was inevitable that he should be glad of the purchase.He led the chorus.He was in a state of excitement in which oppressive sensations,& the wretched consciousness of something hateful but irrevocable,were mingled with a feeling of triumph which seemed to assert itself as the feeling that would subsist and be master of the morrow

The Frate is preparing us.He is telling the people that God will not have silver crucifixes & starving stomachs;& that the church is best adorned with the gems of holiness & the fine gold of brotherly love.A very useful doctrine of war-finance,as many a Condottiere has found,But politics come on after the confetti,when we can drink wine enough to wash them down;they are too solid to be taken with roast and boiled

“This was the tangled web that Romola had in her mind as she sat weary in the darkness. No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision—