unlearned might pick up from pulpit quotations constantly interpreted by the preacher could help them little when they saw written Latin; the spelling even of the modern language being in an unorganised and scrambling condition for the mass of people who could read and write, while the majority of those assembled nearest to the placard were not in the dangerous predicament of possessing that little knowledge.
“It’s the Frate’s doctrines that he’s to prove by being burned,” said that large public character Goro, who happened to be among the foremost gazers. “The Signoria has taken it in hand, and the writing is to let us know. It’s what the Padre has been telling us about in his sermon.”
“Nay, Goro,” said a sleek shopkeeper, compassionately, “thou hast got thy legs into twisted hose there. The Frate has to prove his doctrines by not being burned: he is to walk through the fire, and come out on the other side sound and whole.”
“Yes, yes,” said a young sculptor, who wore his white-streaked cap and tunic with a jaunty air. “But Fra Girolamo objects to walking through the fire. Being sound and whole already, he sees no reason why he should walk through the fire to come out in just the same condition. He leaves such odds and ends of work to Fra Domenico.”
“Then I say he flinches like a coward,” said Goro, in a wheezy treble. “Suffocation! that was what he did at the Carnival. He had us all in the Piazza to see the lightning strike him, and nothing came of it.”
“Stop that bleating,” said a tall shoemaker, who had stepped in to hear part of the sermon, with bunches of slippers hanging over his shoulders. “It seems to me, friend, that you are about as wise as a calf with water on its brain. The Frate will flinch from nothing: he’ll say nothing beforehand, perhaps, but when the moment comes he’ll walk through the fire without asking any grey-frock to keep him company. But I would give a shoestring to know what this Latin all is.”