pulsion from the aberrations and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision that causes the eye to explore the warts on a face bright with human expression; it is simply the negation of high sensibilities. Romola was so deeply moved by the grand energies of Savonarola's nature, that she found herself listening patiently to all dogmas and prophecies, when they came in the vehicle of his ardent faith and believing utterance.[1]
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. Romola's trust in Savonarola was something like a rope suspended securely by her path, making her step elastic while she grasped it; if it were suddenly removed, no firmness of the ground she trod could save her from staggering, or perhaps from falling.
- ↑ He himself had had occasion enough to note the efficacy of that vehicle. "If," he says in the Compendium Revelationum, "you speak of such as have not heard these things from me, I admit that they who disbelieve are more than they who believe, because it is one thing to hear him who inwardly feels these things, and another to hear him who feels them not; . . . . and, therefore, it is well said by St. Jerome, 'Habet nescio quid latentis energiæ vivæ vocis actus, et in aures discipuli de auctoris ore transfusa fortis sonat.'"
