For it was the day fixed for the entry of the King of France into Florence, and though he came under the pretence of peace and an invitation to a treaty, he came stained with Italian blood and in the guise of a conqueror. And the Conte della Mirandola had been among the brightest in the bright rule of the resplendent Medici. Giovanni Pico had been at the death-bed of the great Lorenzo, who had spoken almost his last words to the gentle youth who had heard the Friar he had brought to Florence, Frà Girolamo, refuse the haughty ruler absolution unless he gave Florence her liberty. And Lorenzo had turned his face to the wall and refused, and died with his sins on his head, and now his sons were eating the bread of charity in Rome, and Frà Girolamo was the greatest man in Florence, and Charles of France was entering the proud city at the twenty-first hour to-day. Giovanni Pico thought of these things and of his dead friend, Lorenzo dei Medici; he believed that it was better for that Prince to have died, in pain of soul, than to have lived to see Florence to-day, changed indeed as it was since the days of his rule. The Conte della Mirandola was changed also. It would have amazed Lorenzo to know that his most brilliant courtier was yearning for the plain habit of the brotherhood of St. Mark, and that the most learned and splendid noble in Florence wished to leave the world and follow Frà Girolamo Savonarola the steep way to Heaven. But so it was with Giovanni. For some years past the eloquence of the Friar had wrought much with him; and lately, as the fierce politics of Italy sifted and clashed–as all the things he had known and loved fell and were broken–Giovanni Pico turned, as so many of the Florentines, to the shelter offered by the brotherhood of St. Mark. Now, as he gazed down into the empty street, he wished that he had not so long delayed; he wished that he was, even now, in the dark robe of a brother of St. Mark, lying in his cell, face downwards, before the crucifix, praying for mercy for his soul and for those long years he had filled with worldly learning and in following the vain shadows of heathen philosophy. He moved his fair head and sighed and lifted his right hand vaguely and looked at it. On the second finger was a yellow intaglio of a bull wreathed with flowers. It gave him pleasure even now in the midst of his thoughts of God. He watched the liquid light slip in and out of it in glints of amber and gold, and in looking at the exquisite workmanship and reflecting that there was not such another in the world, he forgot the convent of St. Mark in his joy in the heathen jewel. The red hanging was lifted from the doorway and a dark figure entered–a monk in a russet gown, with a thin face and ardent eyes. The young Prince looked up. “Frà Girolamo!” Savonarola approached him, looked at him with some tenderness in his harsh features. “Why are you at the window?” he asked.