The doctrine of renunciation has been presented again and again by George Eliot; her books are full of it.  It is undoubtedly the central theme of all her teaching.  In the conversation between Romola and Savonarola when she is escaping from her home and is met by him, it is vividly expressed.  Savonarola speaks as a Christian, as a Catholic, as a monk; but the words he uses quite as well serve to express George Eliot’s convictions.  The Christian symbolism laid aside, and all was true to her; yet her feelings, her sense of corporate unity with the past, would not even suffer her to lay aside the symbolism in presenting her thoughts on this subject.  Romola pleads that she would not have left Florence as long as she could fulfil a duty to her father:  but Savonarola reminds her that there are other duties, other ties, other burdens.

“If your own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, instead of struggling with them to lighten it?  There is hunger and misery in our streets, yet you say, ’I care not; I have my own sorrows; I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.’  The servants of God are struggling after a law of justice, peace and charity, that the hundred thousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed righteously; but you think no more of that than if you were a bird, that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to its liking.  And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my daughter.  As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbor who kneels beside her, and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God has for Florence; and waits and endures because the promised work is great, and she feels herself little.”

She then asserts her purpose not to go away to a life of ease and self-indulgence, but rather to one of hardship; but that plea is not suffered to pass.

“You are seeking your own will, my daughter.  You are seeking some good other than the law you are bound to obey.  But how will you find good?  It is not a thing of choice:  it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience.  I say again, man cannot choose his duties.  You may choose to forsake your duties, and choose not to have the sorrow they bring.  But you will go forth; and what will you find, my daughter?  Sorrow without duty—­bitter herbs, and no bread with them.”

Savonarola bids her draw the crucifix from her bosom, which she secretly carries, and appeals to her by that symbol of devotion and self-sacrifice to remain true to her duties, to accept willingly the burdens given her to bear, not to think of self, but only of others.  He condemns the pagan teaching she had received, of individual self-seeking, and the spirit of culture, refinement and ease which accompanied that teaching.  She looks on the image of a suffering life, a life offered willingly as a sacrifice for others’ good, and he says,—­