The color
of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive
yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily
overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than
by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were
succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization.
From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up
the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power,
filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his
discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips
of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments
and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of
continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings
severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience tears, at another
freezing them with terror, again quickening their souls with prayers
and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very
spirit of Christ. His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they
advanced, the ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the
sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round him,[2] met
and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no
longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece
of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host.
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