Tito gave a melancholy shrug. “It is too true, Nello. She has been depriving herself of half her proper food every day during this famine. But what can I do? Her mind has been set all aflame. A husband’s influence is powerless against the Frate’s.”
“As every other influence is likely to be, that of the Holy Father included,” said Domenico Cennini, one of the group at the door, who had turned in with Tito. “I don’t know whether you have gathered anything at Pisa about the way the wind sits at Rome, Melema?”
“Secrets of the council-chamber, Messer Domenico!” said Tito, smiling and opening his palms in a deprecatory manner. “An envoy must be as dumb as a father confessor.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Cennini. “I ask for no breach of that rule. Well, my belief is, that if his Holiness were to drive Fra Girolamo to extremity, the Frate would move heaven and earth to get a General Council of the Church—ay, and would get it too; and I, for one, should not be sorry, though I’m no Piagnone.”
“With leave of your greater experience, Messer Domenico,” said Macchiavelli, “I must differ from you—not in your wish to see a General Council which might reform the Church, but in your belief that the Frate will checkmate his Holiness. The Frate’s game is an impossible one. If he had contented himself with preaching against the vices of Rome, and with prophesying that in some way, not mentioned, Italy would be scourged, depend upon it Pope Alexander would have allowed him to spend his breath in that way as long as he could find hearers. Such spiritual blasts as those knock no walls down. But the Frate wants to be something more than a spiritual trumpet: he wants to be a lever, and what is more, he is a lever. He wants to spread the doctrine of Christ by maintaining a popular government in Florence, and the Pope, as I know, on the best authority, has private views to the contrary.”