in the time of lilies--prematurely, that is, like the field-flowers
which are withered by the scorching sun almost as soon as they are
sprung up. It was now that he wrote down those thoughts on the religious
life which Sir Thomas More turned into English, and which another
English translator thought worthy to be added to the books of the
Imitation. "It is not hard to know God, provided one will not force
oneself to define Him":--has been thought a great saying of Joubert's.
"Love God," Pico writes to Angelo Politian, "we rather may, than either
know Him, or by speech utter Him. And yet had men liefer by knowledge
never find that which they seek, than by love possess that thing, which
also without love were in vain found."

Yet he who had this fine touch for spiritual things did not--and in this
is the enduring interest of his story--even after his conversion, forget
the old gods. He is one of the last who seriously and sincerely
entertained the claims on men's faith of the pagan religions; he is
anxious to ascertain the true significance of the obscurest legend, the
lightest tradition concerning them. With many thoughts and many
influences which led him in that direction, he did not become a monk;
only he became gentle and patient in disputation; retaining "somewhat of
the old plenty, in dainty viand and silver vessel," he gave over the
greater part of his property to his friend, the mystical poet Beniveni,
to be spent by him in works of charity, chiefly in the sweet charity of
providing marriage-dowries for the peasant girls of Florence. His end
came in 1494, when, amid the prayers and sacraments of Savonarola, he
died of fever, on the very day on which Charles the Eighth entered
Florence, the seventeenth of November, yet in the time of lilies--the
lilies of the shield of France, as the people now said, remembering
Camilla's prophecy. He was buried in the cloister at Saint Mark's, in
the hood and white frock of the Dominican order.