Two more hours passed, while his partisans tried in vain to combat his refusals.  At last, as night was coming on and the people grew ever more and more impatient and their murmurs began to assume a threatening tone, Bonvicini declared that he was ready to walk through the fire, holding nothing in his hand but a crucifix.  No one could refuse him this; so Fra Rondinelli was compelled to accept his proposition.  The announcement was made to the populace that the champions had come to terms and the trial was about to take place.  At this news the people calmed down, in the hope of being compensated at last for their long wait; but at that very moment a storm which had long been threatening brake over Florence with such fury that the faggots which had just been lighted were extinguished by the rain, leaving no possibility of their rekindling.  From the moment when the people suspected that they had been fooled, their enthusiasm was changed into derision.  They were ignorant from which side the difficulties had arisen that had hindered the trial, so they laid the responsibility on both champions without distinction.  The Signoria, foreseeing the disorder that was now imminent, ordered the assembly to retire; but the assembly thought otherwise, and stayed on the piazza, waiting for the departure of the two champions, in spite of the fearful rain that still fell in torrents.  Rondinelli was taken back amid shouts and hootings, and pursued with showers of stones.  Savonarola, thanks to his sacred garments and the host which he still carried, passed calmly enough through the midst of the mob—­a miracle quite as remarkable as if he had passed through the fire unscathed.

But it was only the sacred majesty of the host that had protected this man, who was indeed from this moment regarded as a false prophet:  the crowd allowed Savonarola to return to his convent, but they regretted the necessity, so excited were they by the Arrabbiati party, who had always denounced him as a liar and a hypocrite.  So when the next morning, Palm Sunday, he stood up in the pulpit to explain his conduct, he could not obtain a moment’s silence for insults, hooting, and loud laughter.  Then the outcry, at first derisive, became menacing:  Savonarola, whose voice was too weak to subdue the tumult, descended from his pulpit, retired into the sacristy, and thence to his convent, where he shut himself up in his cell.  At that moment a cry was heard, and was repeated by everybody present: 

“To San Marco, to San Marco!” The rioters, few at first, were recruited by all the populace as they swept along the streets, and at last reached the convent, dashing like an angry sea against the wall.

The doors, closed on Savonarala’s entrance, soon crashed before the vehement onset of the powerful multitude, which struck down on the instant every obstacle it met:  the whole convent was quickly flooded with people, and Savonarola, with his two confederates, Domenico Bonvicini and Silvestro Maruffi, was arrested in his cell, and conducted to prison amid the insults of the crowd, who, always in extremes, whether of enthusiasm or hatred, would have liked to tear them to pieces, and would not be quieted till they had exacted a promise that the prisoners should be forcibly compelled to make the trial of fire which they had refused to make of their own free will.