The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter its doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young, Savonarola surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments and exercises. To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in its gaieties, became utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he listened from an Augustinian friar determined him to adopt the monastic life. April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at the Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the most menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to prepare for his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the severest penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and devotion as to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed him to be rapt in a holy trance. _II.--1475-1481_ Savonarola's sojourn at Bologna in the Dominican Monastery lasted for seven years, during which his spirit was occupied not only with faith and prayer, but with deep meditation on the miserable condition of the Church. His soul was stirred to wrathful indignation. The shocking corruption of the Papacy, dating from the death of Pius II. in 1464, was to reach its climax under Alexander VI. The avarice of Paul II. was soon noted by all the world, and so boundless was the profligacy of his successor, Sixtus IV., that no deed was too scandalous for him to commit. The state of Italy as well as of the Church was miserable, and the soul of the young monk was filled with horror-stricken grief, relieved only by study and prayer. He had been much occupied in instructing the novices, but now he was promoted to the function of preacher. In 1481 he was sent by his superiors to preach in Ferrara. Nothing is known of the effect of the sermons he delivered at that time and place. Savonarola had not yet developed his gifts of oratory. He was driven from Ferrara by an outbreak of war with the Venetians, and repaired to Florence, where, in the Monastery of St. Mark the brightest as well as the saddest years of his life were to be spent. The Monastery contained the first public library established in Italy, which was kept in excellent order by the monks.