The following year the Signori looked down from the windows of the old palace upon the bonfires, in the Piazza, of “vanities and obscenities,” as playing cards, masks and dominoes, drawings, pictures, illustrated books and the like, were called by the partisans of Savonarola, and on the 20th August he preached before the magistrates and principal citizens in the great hall. But a few years later the friar was a prisoner in the old palace, confined in the small, dark Alberghettino where Cosimo de’ Medici had passed so many anxious weeks. On the evening of Sunday, the 8th April, 1498, he was arrested by order of the Signoria, and with his faithful Fra Domenico passed through the surging mob which once hung upon his words and now insulted, taunted and even struck him. Fra Silvestro had hidden himself when the convent was attacked and was only taken prisoner next day. In the great hall, built but a few years before by Savonarola’s advice, a few lines of the accusations against him were read in his absence, the chancellor of the “Otto” declaring to the people that he had refused to appear because he was afraid of being stoned. On the 22nd May the Apostolic Commissaries decided the fate of Fra Girolamo and his followers. Only one man, Agnolo Niccolini, raised a warning voice. “This man,” he exclaimed, “could not only give faith anew to the world, in case it died out, but also science. Keep him in prison if you will; but let him live and give him leave to write, so that the world may not lose the fruits of his genius.” In the great hall the three friars met once more after forty days of rigorous imprisonment and horrible torture, and next morning Savonarola was allowed to say mass in the chapel and to communicate himself and his two companions before going to the stake. In the eloquent pages of Pasquale Villari’s _Life of Savonarola_ the reader has this episode, but it must be added that the “pious women” mentioned by Luca Landucci in his Diary still have many imitators, for every year in the Piazza della Signoria there is a _fiorita_ on the 23rd May in memory of the great friar; rose leaves are scattered, and garlands are laid, upon the place of his martyrdom, and many a poor woman kneels in prayer.