"God will forgive your vanities, your adulterous pleasures, your obscene festivals; so much for your sins.

God will forgive you for promising two thousand florins reward to the man who should bring you the head of Dietisalvi, Nerone Nigi, Angelo Antinori, Niccalo Soderini, and twice the money if they were handed over alive; God will forgive you for dooming to the scaffold or the gibbet the son of Papi Orlandi, Francesco di Brisighella, Bernardo Nardi, Jacopo Frescobaldi, Amoretto Baldovinetti, Pietro Balducci, Bernardo di Banding, Francesco Frescobaldi, and more than three hundred others whose names were none the less dear to Florence because they were less renowned; so much far your crimes." And at each of these names which Savonarala pronounced slowly, his eyes fixed on the dying man, he replied with a groan which proved the monk's memory to be only too true.

Then at last, when he had finished, Lorenzo asked in a doubtful tone: "Then do you believe, my father, that God will forgive me everything, both my sins and my crimes ?" "Everything," said Savonarola, "but on three conditions." "What are they ?" asked the dying man.
"The first," said Savonarola, "is that you feel a complete faith in the power and the mercy of God." "My father," replied Lorenzo eagerly, "I feel this faith in the very depths of my heart." "The second," said Savonarola, "is that you give back the property of others which you have unjustly confiscated and kept." "My father, shall I have time ?" asked the dying man.
"God will give it to you," replied the monk.
Lorenzo shut his eyes, as though to reflect more at his ease; then, after a moment's silence, he replied: "Yes, my father, I will do it." "The third," resumed Savonarola, "is that you restore to the republic her ancient independence end her farmer liberty." Lorenzo sat up on his bed, shaken by a convulsive movement, and questioned with his eyes the eyes of the Dominican, as though he would find out if he had deceived himself and not heard aright.

Savonarola repeated the same words.
"Never! never!" exclaimed Lorenzo, falling back on his bed and shaking his head,--"never!" The monk, without replying a single word, made a step to withdraw.
"My father, my father," said the dying man, "do not leave me thus: have pity on me!" "Have pity on Florence," said the monk.
"But, my father," cried Lorenzo, "Florence is free, Florence is happy." "Florence is a slave, Florence is poor," cried Savonarola, "poor in genius, poor in money, and poor in courage; poor in genius, because after you, Lorenzo, will come your son Piero; poor in money, because from the funds of the republic you have kept up the magnificence of your family and the credit of your business houses; poor in courage, because you have robbed the rightful magistrates of the authority which was constitutionally theirs, and diverted the citizens from the double path of military and civil life, wherein, before they were enervated by your luxuries, they had displayed the virtues of the ancients; and therefore, when the day shall dawn which is not far distant," continued the mark, his eyes fixed and glowing as if he were reading in the future, "whereon the barbarians shall descend from the mountains, the walls of our towns, like those of Jericho, shall fall at the blast of their trumpets." "And do you desire that I should yield up on my deathbed the power that has made the glory of my whole life ?" cried Lorenzo dei Medici.
"It is not I who desire it; it is the Lord," replied Savonarola coldly.
"Impossible, impossible!" murmured Lorenzo.
"Very well; then die as you have lived!" cried the monk, "in the midst of your courtiers and flatterers; let them ruin your soul as they have ruined your body!" And at these words, the austere Dominican, without listening to the cries of the dying man, left the room as he had entered it, with face and step unaltered; far above human things he seemed to soar, a spirit already detached from the earth.
At the cry which broke from Lorenzo dei Medici when he saw him disappear, Ermolao, Poliziano, and Pico delta Mirandola, who had heard all, returned into the room, and found their friend convulsively clutching in his arms a magnificent crucifix which he had just taken dawn from the bed-head.

In vain did they try to reassure him with friendly words.