When
that hope is gone, no thought of Tessa as a successful rival presents
itself. She thinks of her only as another victim of Tito's
wrong-doing--as a weak, simple, helpless child, innocent of all conscious
fault, to be shielded and cared for in the hour of need.
At last, after the foulest of Tito's treasons, which purchases safety and
advancement for himself by the betrayal and death of her noble old
godfather, her last living link to the past, the burden of her life
becomes beyond her bearing, and again she attempts to lay it down by
fleeing. There is no Savonarola now to meet and turn her back.
Savonarola has lost the power, has forfeited the right, to do so. The
pupil has outgrown the teacher; her self-renunciation has become simpler,
purer, deeper, more entire than his. The last words exchanged between
these two bring before us the change that has come over the spiritual
relations between them. "The cause of my party," says Savonarola, "_is_
the cause of God's kingdom." "I do not believe it," is the reply of
Romola's "passionate repugnance." "God's kingdom is something wider,
else let me stand without it with the beings that I love.
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