Romola

What object will you serve by injuring me with Messer Bernardo? The event is irrevocable, the library is sold, and you are my wife.” Every word was spoken for the sake of a calculated effect, for his intellect was urged into the utmost activity by the danger of the crisis.

Tito's rise, betrayal of Baldassarre and Florence, Savonarola's claim, and Romola's renunciation form historical intrigue as ethical ordeal, so plot scores 85.

Tito Melema,” said the stranger, slipping the ring from his finger, and presenting it to Cennini, whom Nello, not less rapid with his razor than with his tongue, had now released from the shaving-cloth.

Romola, Tito, Baldassarre, and Savonarola are typed moral forces given novelistic density — conscience, charm, vengeance, prophecy, so cast scores 87.

The infusion of mischief was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the berretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell down over Monna Brigida’s face.

Florentine set-pieces and scholarly digressions slow the middle before political crisis and unmasking accelerate, so pace scores 80.

More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and fluctuating sea.

Proem panorama and Tito's calculated speech carry historical reconstruction on analytic Victorian narration, so prose scores 90.

Spit once, my sons, and pay a white quattrino! This is the whole and sole price of the indulgence. The quattrino is the only difference the Holy Father allows to be put any longer between us and the clergy—who spit and pay nothing.

Barber shops, libraries, Savonarola's Florence, and street indulgences rebuild Quattrocento city life with unusual density, so world scores 92.

More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules… saw nearly the same outline of firm land and fluctuating sea.

Epoch panorama before the shipwrecked stranger is majestic rather than intimate, but spatially commanding, so hook scores 84.

Savonarola, who denounced with a rare boldness the worldliness and vicious habits of the clergy, and insisted on the duty of Christian men not to live for their own ease when wrong was triumphing in high places.

Rebuilding Quattrocento Florence as a laboratory of betrayal and vocation stretches English realism beyond Midlands comfort, so innov scores 88.

Many legends were afterwards told in that valley about the blessed Lady who came over the sea, but they were legends by which all who heard might know that in times gone by a woman had done beautiful loving deeds there, rescuing those who were ready to perish.

Romola's afterlife as valley rescuer replaces marital happiness with ethical legend, so ending scores 86.