“Here come Messer Nicolo de’ Lapi, and Francesco Valori!” called out a voice.

The room was soon filled with a confused crowd, consisting of distinguished Florentine citizens, who had gained admittance through a secret passage, and the excited novices and monks.

“The streets outside the convent are packed close with men,” cried one of the citizens; “they have stationed guards everywhere to cut off our friends who might come to help us.”

“I saw them seize a young man who was quietly walking, singing psalms, and slay him on the steps of the Church of the Innocents,” said another; “they cried and hooted, ‘No more psalm-singing!’”

“And there’s Arnolfo Battista,” said a third;—­“he went out to try to speak to them, and they have killed him,—­cut him down with their sabres.”

“Hurry! hurry! barricade the door! arm yourselves!” was the cry from other voices.

“Shall we fight, father? shall we defend ourselves?” cried others, as the monks pressed around their Superior.

When the crowd first burst into the room, the face of the Superior flushed, and there was a slight movement of surprise; then he seemed to recollect himself, and murmuring, “I expected this, but not so soon,” appeared lost in mental prayer.  To the agitated inquiries of his flock, he answered,—­“No, brothers; the weapons of monks must be spiritual, not carnal.”  Then lifting on high a crucifix, he said,—­“Come with me, and let us walk in solemn procession to the altar, singing the praises of our God.”

The monks, with the instinctive habit of obedience, fell into procession behind their leader, whose voice, clear and strong, was heard raising the Psalm, "Quare fremunt gentes":—­

“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his Anointed, saying,

“‘Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.’

“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.:  the Lord shall have them in derision.”

As one voice after another took up the chant, the solemn enthusiasm rose and deepened, and all present, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, fell into the procession and joined in the anthem.  Amid the wild uproar, the din and clatter of axes, the thunders of heavy battering-implements on the stone walls and portals, came this long-drawn solemn wave of sound, rising and falling,—­now drowned in the savage clamors of the mob, and now bursting out clear and full like the voices of God’s chosen amid the confusion and struggles of all the generations of this mortal life.

White-robed and grand the procession moved on, while the pictured saints and angels on the walls seemed to smile calmly down upon them from a golden twilight.  They passed thus into the sacristy, where with all solemnity and composure they arrayed their Father and Superior for the last time in his sacramental robes, and then, still chanting, followed him to the high altar,—­where all bowed in prayer.  And still, whenever there was a pause in the stormy uproar and fiendish clamor, might be heard the clear, plaintive uprising of that strange singing,—­“O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine heritage!”