Almost all who could call themselves the public of Florence were awake at that hour, and either enclosed within the limits of that piazza, or struggling to enter it. Within the palace were still assembled in the council chamber9 all the chief magistracies, the eighty members of the senate, and the other select citizens who had been in hot debate through long hours of daylight and torchlight whether the Appeal should be granted or whether the sentence of death should be executed on the prisoners forthwith, to forestall10 the dangerous chances of delay. And the debate had been so much like fierce quarrel that the noise from the council chamber had reached the crowd outside. Only within the last hour had the question been decided11: the Signoria had remained divided, four of them standing12 out resolutely13 for the Appeal in spite of the strong argument that if they did not give way their houses should be sacked, until Francesco Valori, in brief and furious speech, made the determination of his party more ominously14 distinct by declaring that if the Signoria would not defend the liberties of the Florentine people by executing those five perfidious15 citizens, there would not be wanting others who would take that cause in hand to the peril16 of all who opposed it. The Florentine Cato triumphed. When the votes were counted again, the four obstinate17 white beans no longer appeared; the whole nine were of the fatal affirmative black, deciding the death of the five prisoners without delay — deciding also, only tacitly and with much more delay, the death of Francesco Valori.
And now, while the judicial18 Eight were gone to the Bargello to prepare for the execution, the five condemned19 men were being led barefoot and in irons through the midst of the council. It was their friends who had contrived20 this: would not Florentines be moved by the visible association of such cruel ignominy with two venerable men like Bernardo del Nero and Niccolo Ridolfi, who had taken their bias21 long before the new order of things had come to make Mediceanism retrograde — with two brilliant popular young men like Tornabuoni and Pucci, whose absence would be felt as a haunting vacancy22 wherever there was a meeting of chief Florentines? It was useless: such pity as could be awakened23 now was of that hopeless sort which leads not to rescue, but to the tardier24 action of revenge.
While this scene was passing up-stairs Romola stood below against one of the massive pillars in the court of the palace, expecting the moment when her godfather would appear, on his way to execution. By the use of strong interest she had gained permission to visit him in the evening of this day, and remain with him until the result of the council should be determined25. And now she was waiting with his confessor to follow the guard that would lead him to the Bargello. Her heart was bent26 on clinging to the presence of the childless old man to the last moment, as her father would have done; and she had overpowered all remonstrances27. Giovan Battista Ridolfi, a disciple28 of Savonarola, who was going in bitterness to behold29 the death of his elder brother Niccolo, had promised that she should be guarded, and now stood by her side.
Tito, too, was in the palace; but Romola had not seen him. Since the evening of the seventeenth they had avoided each other, and Tito only knew by inference from the report of the Frate’s neutrality that her pleading had failed. He was now surrounded with official and other personages, both Florentine and foreign, who had been awaiting the issue of the long-protracted council, maintaining, except when he was directly addressed, the subdued30 air and grave silence of a man whom actual events are placing in a painful state of strife31 between public and private feeling. When an allusion32 was made to his wife in relation to those events, he implied that, owing to the violent excitement of her mind, the mere33 fact of his continuing to hold office under a government concerned in her godfather’s condemnation34, roused in her a diseased hostility35 towards him; so that for her sake he felt it best not to approach her.
‘Ah, the old Bardi blood!’ said Cennini, with a shrug36. ‘I shall not be surprised if this business shakes her loose from the Frate, as well as some others I could name.’
‘It is excusable in a woman, who is doubtless beautiful, since she is the wife of Messer Tito,’ said a young French envoy37, smiling and bowing to Tito, ‘to think that her affections must overrule the good of the State, and that nobody is to be beheaded who is anybody’s cousin; but such a view is not to be encouraged in the male population. It seems to me your Florentine polity is much weakened by it.’
‘That is true,’ said Niccolo Macchiavelli; ‘but where personal ties are strong, the hostilities39 they raise must be taken due account of. Many of these half-way severities are mere hot-headed blundering. The only safe blows to be inflicted40 on men and parties are the blows that are too heavy to be avenged41.’
‘Niccolo,’ said Cennini, ‘there is a clever wickedness in thy talk sometimes that makes me mistrust thy pleasant young face as if it were a mask of Satan.’
‘Not at all, my good Domenico,’ said Macchiavelli, smiling, and laying his hand on the elder’s shoulder. ‘Satan was a blunderer, an introducer of novita, who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him, and his portrait would have been more flattered.’
‘Well, well,’ said Cennini, ‘I say not thy doctrine42 is not too clever for Satan: I only say it is wicked enough for him.’
‘I tell you,’ said Macchiavelli, ‘my doctrine is the doctrine of all men who seek an end a little farther off than their own noses. Ask our Frate, our prophet, how his universal renovation43 is to be brought about: he will tell you, first, by getting a free and pure government; and since it appears that this cannot be done by making all Florentines love each other, it must be done by cutting off every head that happens to be obstinately45 in the way. Only if a man incurs46 odium by sanctioning a severity that is not thorough enough to be final, he commits a blunder. And something like that blunder, I suspect, the Frate has committed. It was an occasion on which he might have won some lustre48 by exerting himself to maintain the Appeal; instead of that, he has lost lustre, and has gained no strength.’
Before any one else could speak, there came the expected announcement that the prisoners were about to leave the council chamber; and the majority of those who were present hurried towards the door, intent on securing the freest passage to the Bargello in the rear of the prisoners’ guard; for the scene of the execution was one that drew alike those who were moved by the deepest passions and those who were moved by the coldest curiosity.
Tito was one of those who remained behind. He had a native repugnance49 to sights of death and pain, and five days ago whenever he had thought of this execution as a possibility he had hoped that it would not take place, and that the utmost sentence would be exile: his own safety demanded no more. But now he felt that it would be a welcome guarantee of his security when he had learned that Bernardo del Nero’s head was off the shoulders. The new knowledge and new attitude towards him disclosed by Romola on the day of his return, had given him a new dread50 of the power she possessed51 to make his position insecure. If any act of hers only succeeded in making him an object of suspicion and odium, he foresaw not only frustration52, but frustration under unpleasant circumstances. Her belief in Baldassarre had clearly determined her wavering feelings against further submission53, and if her godfather lived she would win him to share her belief without much trouble. Romola seemed more than ever an unmanageable fact in his destiny. But if Bernardo del Nero were dead, the difficulties that would beset54 her in placing herself in opposition55 to her husband would probably be insurmountable to her shrinking pride. Therefore Tito had felt easier when he knew that the Eight had gone to the Bargello to order the instant erection of the scaffold. Four other men — his intimates and confederates — were to die, besides Bernardo del Nero. But a man’s own safety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands. Tito felt them to be grim: even in the pursuit of what was agreeable, this paradoxical life forced upon him the desire for what was disagreeable. But he had had other experience of this sort, and as he heard through the open doorway57 the shuffle58 of many feet and the clanking of metal on the stairs he was able to answer the questions of the young French envoy without showing signs of any other feeling than that of sad resignation to State necessities.
Those sounds fell on Romola as if her power of hearing had been exalted59 along with every other sensibility of her nature. She needed no arm to support her; she shed no tears. She felt that intensity60 of life which seems to transcend61 both grief and joy — in which the mind seems to itself akin44 to elder forces that wrought62 out existence before the birth of pleasure and pain. Since her godfather’s fate had been decided, the previous struggle of feeling in her had given way to an identification of herself with him in these supreme63 moments: she was inwardly asserting for him that, if he suffered the punishment of treason, he did not deserve the name of traitor64; he was the victim to a collision between two kinds of faithfulness. It was not given him to die for the noblest cause, and yet he died because of his nobleness. He might have been a meaner man and found it easier not to incur47 this guilt65. Romola was feeling the full force of that sympathy with the individual lot that is continually opposing itself to the formulae by which actions and parties are judged. She was treading the way with her second father to the scaffold, and nerving herself to defy ignominy by the consciousness that it was not deserved.
The way was fenced in by three hundred armed men, who had been placed as a guard by the orders of Francesco Valon, for among the apparent contradictions that belonged to this event, not the least striking was the alleged66 alarm on the one hand at the popular rage against the conspirators67, and the alleged alarm on the other lest there should be an attempt to rescue them in the midst of a hostile crowd. When they had arrived within the court of the Bargello, Romola was allowed to approach Bernardo with his confessor for a moment of farewell. Many eyes were bent on them even in that struggle of an agitated68 throng69, as the aged38 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 fettered70 hands that were hung down again, and kissed them as if they had been sacred things.
‘My poor Romola,’ said Bernardo, in a low voice, ‘I have only to die, but thou hast to live — and I shall not be there to help thee.’
‘Yes,’ said Romola, hurriedly, ‘you will help me — always — because I shall remember you.’
She was taken away and conducted up the flight of steps that led to the loggia surrounding the grand old court. She took her place there, determined to look till the moment when her godfather laid his head on the block. Now while the prisoners were allowed a brief interval71 with their confessor, the spectators were pressing into the court until the crowd became dense72 around the black scaffold, and the torches fixed73 in iron rings against the pillars threw a varying startling light at one moment on passionless stone carvings74, at another on some pale face agitated with suppressed rage or suppressed grief — the face of one among the many near relatives of the condemned, who were presently to receive their dead and carry them home.
Romola’s face looked like a marble image against the dark arch as she stood watching for the moment when her godfather would appear at the foot of the scaffold. He was to suffer first, and Battista Ridolfi, who was by her side, had promised to take her away through a door behind them when she would have seen the last look of the man who alone in all the world had shared her pitying love for her father. And still, in the background of her thought, there was the possibility striving to be a hope, that some rescue might yet come, something that would keep that scaffold unstained by blood.
For a long while there was constant movement, lights flickering75, heads swaying to and fro, confused voices within the court, rushing waves of sound through the entrance from without. It seemed to Romola as if she were in the midst of a storm-troubled sea, caring nothing about the storm, caring only to hold out a signal till the eyes that looked for it could seek it no more.
Suddenly there was stillness, and the very tapers76 seemed to tremble into quiet. The executioner was ready on the scaffold, and Bernardo del Nero was seen ascending77 it with a slow firm step. Romola made no visible movement, uttered not even a suppressed sound: she stood more firmly, caring for his firmness. She saw him pause, saw the white head kept erect56, while he said, in a voice distinctly audible —
‘It is but a short space of life that my fellow citizens have taken from me.’
She perceived that he was gazing slowly round him as he spoke78. She felt that his eyes were resting on her, and that she was stretching out her arms towards him. Then she saw no more till — a long while after, as it seemed — a voice said, ‘My daughter, all is peace now. I can conduct you to your house.’
She uncovered her head and saw her godfather’s confessor standing by her, in a room where there were other grave men talking in subdued tones.
‘I am ready,’ she said, starting up. ‘Let us lose no time.’
She thought all clinging was at an end for her: all her strength now should be given to escape from a grasp under which she shuddered79.
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收听单词发音
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1
surmounting
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| 战胜( surmount的现在分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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2
piazza
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| n.广场；走廊 | |
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scampering
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的现在分词 ) | |
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obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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10
forestall
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| vt.抢在…之前采取行动；预先阻止 | |
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11
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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12
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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13
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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14
ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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15
perfidious
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| adj.不忠的，背信弃义的 | |
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16
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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17
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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18
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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19
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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20
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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21
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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22
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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23
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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24
tardier
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| adj.行动缓慢的( tardy的比较级 )；缓缓移动的；晚的；迟的 | |
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25
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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27
remonstrances
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| n.抱怨，抗议( remonstrance的名词复数 ) | |
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28
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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29
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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30
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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33
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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35
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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envoy
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| n.使节，使者，代表，公使 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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hostilities
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| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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40
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
avenged
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
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42
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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43
renovation
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| n.革新，整修 | |
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44
akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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45
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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46
incurs
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| 遭受，招致，引起( incur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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47
incur
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| vt.招致，蒙受，遭遇 | |
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48
lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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49
repugnance
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| n.嫌恶 | |
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50
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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51
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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52
frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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53
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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54
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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55
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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56
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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57
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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58
shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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59
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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60
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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61
transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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62
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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63
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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65
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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66
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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67
conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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68
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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70
fettered
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| v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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72
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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73
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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74
carvings
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| n.雕刻( carving的名词复数 )；雕刻术；雕刻品；雕刻物 | |
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75
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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76
tapers
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| （长形物体的）逐渐变窄( taper的名词复数 )； 微弱的光； 极细的蜡烛 | |
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77
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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78
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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79
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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