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 death the master
who should do it for him. His was the true artist nature, as unfit to
deal with rough human forces as a bird that flies through the air is
unfitted to a hand-to-hand grapple with the armed forces of the lower
world. There is strength in these artist natures. Curious computations
have been made of the immense muscular power that is brought into
exercise when a swallow skims so smoothly through the blue sky; but the