Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/48

58 he would have converted the whole world into a house of prayer. The people flocked to him, bringing to him many precious books, instruments, pictures, &c., which were burned by his orders. He combated against the Pope, but the Pope was stronger than the Reformers, and Savonarola's pile was raised on the same place, Piazza del gran Duca, in Florence, where he had burned the trophies of worldly art. Even at the close of the last century, the place where he suffered martyrdom, might be seen covered with garlands of flowers. Not fifty years after him, another monk, Luther, was to rise, who should carry out his protest to victory; yet, with a more enlightened zeal, and sustained by princes and people, awakening to the knowledge of the right of conscience and of truth.

The custodian who showed us through the house, was an old servant in the Buonarotti family, and a true type of those old family dependents who make the honor of the family their own. He had a deep feeling of the honor and grandeur of the Buonarotti family, and was quite angry if he thought it was not fully recognized.

“The Buonarotti had been great men in all ages; they had in all ages been rulers and governors as gonfalonieri or artists; and so are they still, because the present Buonarotti is Minister, and rules the state.”

A marble bust of this latter, together with one of his wife, shows a head of considerably more beauty than that of the great ancestor.

Piazza del gran Duca! Let us pause here a moment, for it is the scene of the great historical memories of