That god is self; that law is, in one word,
self-pleasing. Long before the end comes, we feel that Tito Melema is a
lost soul; that for him and in him there is no place for repentance; that
to him we may without any uncharity apply the most fearful words human
language has ever embodied;--he has sinned the "sin which _cannot_ be
forgiven, neither in this world, neither in the world to come."
"Justice," says the author, as the dead Tito is borne past still locked
in the death-clutch of the human avenger--"justice is like the kingdom of
God: it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great
yearning." In these solemn truthful words we have suggested to us how
feebly mere physical death can shadow forth that spiritual corruption,
that "second death," which we have seen hour by hour consummating in him
who has lived for self alone.
Few of the great figures which stand up amid the dimness of medieval
history are more perplexing to historian and biographer than Savonarola.
On a first glance we seem shut up to one or other of two
alternatives--regarding him as an apostle and martyr, or as a charlatan.
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