Tension Rises: Savonarola Hemmed In, late March 1498

So much had happened and so much more, and so quickly, even with so many sources, any survey could be blamed for losing some details. But then there is Donald Weinstein who gives us such a realistic picture of so many of these happenings in Florence, in late March 1498. From the ordinary language in the last sermons to the procession of priests and acolytes, the arguments over who would walk the fire, or, the building materials along the length of the fire's path. In letters, Savonarola was still writing of church reform, his own prophecies, and God's miracles. How these might be made manifested, the friar emphasized, was only up to God himself.

He wrote letters now, in March, to various sovereigns in Europe just as he still wrote to the ambassaor and advocates in Rome. In them he questioned if Rodrigo Borgia was an illegitimate pope. To Maximilian in Austria, to Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, and Charles VIII in France (and, planning more to Henry the Tudor in England and the nearer King of Hungary), Savonarola fretted that this pope would not allow a true reform, or carry out what to him God seemed to say.

Whether the rumours were true or not, he thought, whether the pope was secretly of Moorish decent, or a 'secret-Jew' or not, perhaps at last it was time, that a new Church Council be called to depose this one and get on with real reform. There were lots of stories and conspiracies then, too. But this last idea, that the Pope might not be Christian, and might be born of some other lineage, Savonarola had hyped in sermons in February and March by calling it 'his little key', which when used, would stun the world. [p.261]

March 17, 18: Savonarola preaches, taking up Psalms 83/4. [pp. 263-6]

March 25: Francesco di Puglia announces to the congregation assembled in Santa Croce that he will withstand a trial by fire against anyone that the Dominicans send in order to force the issue about friar Savonarola.

The following weeks the City built itself into a rage anticipating this ancient ordeal that (had long since been left behind as barbaric but) was brought back this time to settle this issue once and for all. Mere mention in church with an opposing congregation would set this fire ablaze. [p.267]

April 7 date set for trial in the Piazza. This was also the day that Charles VIII in France died by hitting his head on a doorpost. It would take days for news of this to reach the city. [p.276]
April 8: trial by fire in the city center. There were more arguments. The cathedral was barricaded and set fire. Then finally, at long last, Savonarola and others were arrested there late that night. [pp.272-6]

Then would begin the interrogation and trial followed by the public burning of friar Savonarola. But it should be stressed no one knew that would be coming.
____________________________________
pagination in Donald Weinstein: Savonarola: the rise and fall of a renaissance prophet ; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011

Consulte fiorentina: Notes & Arguments from Martines & Fachard: mid March 1498

In the arguments in the pratiche held in Florence on March 14, 1498, both the health of its Republic and the tumult of its passions could be seen. Despite this intense and prolonged, but reasonable 'venting' in the City's traditional practice of discussion, the collective fever would soon boil over.

March 13: as late as this date, Savonarola could write to Pope Alexander VI: 'you should worry about the state of your immortal soul': [Lettere (1984) 226-7]

March 14: Another pratica held by the Signory; Papal briefs read out; [Fachard, Denis: Consulte 1993: I, 42-61]. Martines summarizes:

"The threat of a papal interdict had widened the splits in the political class, and many citizens while revering the Friar, were now ready to see him temporarily silenced, in the hope that Rome would refrain from imposing the city-wide anathema. Their feeling that all Italy was against Florence made the threatened interdict all the more ominous." [p. 209]

Three of the sixteen Gonfalonieres changed their view and now thought the Signory and Florence should listen to the pope. As recently as the third of March, ten of them had been still willing to resist the Papal declaration that S suspend preaching. Now only seven, and less than the majority of this group, thought so.
The previous elected Twelve Good Men were still in near unanimous agreement to let the friar continue. But the next group of Twelve that had been elected but not assumed office yet, were for listening to the pope instead. So here was a clear shift.

"Speaking for the new Twelve, Giovanni Canacci made one of the most hostile speeches ever recorded against Savonarola... up to that point." [p. 209]

The Captains of the Guelfs who had been praiseworthy now thought they should seek to satisfy the pope.
The Ten were of the same opinion as last time. Savonarola was a jewel and should continue with his sermons for Lent.
The Eight still stood in favor of the Friar as well. They too had nothing new to add to the discussion. What would turn out to be the new growing consensus was allowed greater room this day to speak. As Martines says:

"The debate had turned into a revealing performance. Something subtle was taking place. The Savonarolans were beginning to lose the initiative and vigour, not because their belief in the Friar or in the Republic was failing, but because the papal threat was now so strong, so urgent, that it was changing the Florentine political atmosphere. In short, action and fresh arguments were required, if the leaders of the Frateschi were to retain forcefulness in their ranks." [p. 211]

The Monte Officials who oversaw the Treasury and trade sided with the Friar and, to let him preach. 'There had been interdicts before...'. [p.211]

Another speaker, this time speaking for the collected corps of doctors of law, one Guidantonio Vespucci stepped forward. He was both a lawyer defending those who were executed the previous August, and a diplomat with alliances in the anti-Savonarolan camps. His argument (slightly condensed from Martines' sharp exposition) was straight-forward and practical: "We are what we are in Italy."

Vespucci said, the ambassador was in Rome to get absolution from the Pope, and a decima. This was that special papal permission for the City to be allowed to collect a tenth of clerical income (in that City and her territorities) as a tax. If that could not be accomplished, he said, then the City could not cover its expenses. Since the City still desired control of Pisa and its incomes, it made no sense, and seemed counterproductive, to do or encourage things that were offensive to the Pope. Whether the Friar is in the wrong or not, the Pope thinks so, and if an interdict goes through, many there in the City would lose their things. Already merchants couldn't send their stuff to markets elsewhere. At least the Papacy he reminded them had the power to stop a thing through censure. Anyway, there was not even agreement in the City if the Friar actually did speak for God. If he did for certain, by all means, he should go ahead and preach. But we can't agree on that, so better to let him lay off for awhile, to see if that makes better relations with the See in Rome. Then the City might ask for more favorable conditions about Pisa from Rome. [p.212]

Those law doctors that still supported the Friar were represented by Antonio Malegonnelli who could admit the Pope was the supreme religious leader and understandably might think he could give out orders. The problem as he saw it was that other states in Italy had long been assailing the Friar, for years. It was these forces who attacked the Friar and thus divided the Florentine population against itself so dangerously. Because of this, the independence of the Friar should be supported and upheld. [p.212]

There were many who still thought he was a holy man that had saved the city from take-over, from civil war istelf, maybe even from the sword of God, by his form of impassioned shepherding. But to cut him off might open an avenue for some external force to sieze such an influential rudder to popular opinion, or rush in to fill the void left from his absence. On the other hand, if the City allowed the Pope to order them to deliver Savonarola up, then they were acting as hired police for the Pope. This was simply unseemly, using temporal, physical force to test or contain a spiritual force like the Friar or his movement's adherents. Next time, this Pope would ask for something else once this concession was granted. After all, another said, Pisa was already in the hands of Venice and Milan. [p. 213]

Giuliano Gondi, international merchant sided firmly against Savonarola. [p. 214]
There are still a couple more pages of these attitudes expressed in Martines gathered from those collected and edited by Denis Fachard, in Consulte e pratiche della repubblcca fiorentina 1498-1505, Geneva, 1993.
________________________________

quotes, notes, pagination from Martines, Lauro:  Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence; Oxford University Press, Inc.,NY 2006 

March 16: Signory summons leaders to again state their views - this time a majority say S should stop preaching
March 17: S informed of papal brief of Mar 9
March 18: S preaches for last time

news mid March 2018

ummm...

Mood Shift Amid Papal Vitriol Against Savonarola: early March 1498

If there was a time to pinpoint when the mood changed among the leadership in Florence concerning the Domenican friar Girolamo Savonarola, it would be difficult to find one more markedly clear than early March of 1498. At the first of the month, the Signory met and, at least, could well recognize that the city and its leadership was utterly divided over the implications of the friar and his preaching. Twice they met and heard extensive arguments for and against the preacher, the papal excommunication, the issue of the war over control of Pisa, and Florentine pride over sovereignty and autonomy, both within itself and regarding the power in Rome.

In a season of letters sent back and forth, and bold declarations, there were also warnings and attacks. As with the year before, Florence's new envoy to Rome was having problems. Two years before (June 1496) messer Domenico Bonsi had been accused in Florence of 'beastliness and lies' by what turned out to be seen as a Savonarolan-allied attorney working from the office of the Archbishop of Florence. The man, ser Giuliano da Ripa had attacked Bonsi for playing with people's fears of higher taxes, all with an aim of driving people along to support their agendas. The accuser himself was atacked and took refuge in San Marco. Then he was captured, tortured, and interrogated over the inner workings of the network against San Marco. Found sufficiently guilty for the day, he was banished for two years.

By late February 1498, Bonsi had only bad things to tell regarding the opinions at the court in Rome. Another strongly foreboding warning was felt when Bonsi himself was attacked. As Lauro Martines tells us in his Fire In The City:

"On the night of the 21st, at about 3:00am, three men, armed with swords and an axe, had smashed their way into his garden and courtyard, where one of them had mounted the wall to get up to his terrace, to force an entry into the house. In the event, he toppled into the courtyard and broke a leg, whereupon the others fled. Bonsi concluded that their aim had not been robbery but murder, because the injured man came from Montepulciano, an attractive Tuscan town... that had rebelled against its Florentine masters with the help of Siena." [p. 202] 

After this, a strongly worded statement came out that the Pope was so incensed with Florence that he refused audience with her envoy, Bonsi himself, despite (disbelieving?) the attack.

February 22: messer Bonsi survives intruder attack: p. 202, 207 in Martines, source: [Gherardi, 178-9, 201]
February 26: Pope sends breve to Signory in Florence for them to arrest and send S to Rome in chains; [Gherardi, 183-5; Sanudo, Diarii i, 899-900, 905, 920; Villari II, lxvi-lxvii] ...
But by the next day His Holiness was willing 'to absolve Savonarola if the Friar would stop preaching'. [Martines, p.203]

March 01: Savonarola [S] changed venues from San Reparata to San Marco 'for his protection' he said later, as he continued to preach on Exodus. The new Signory was being sworn in.

March 03: the new Signoria begins talks on what to do about the Friar; the Sixteen were divided 10-6, the Twelve were all for him, as were the Ten. This meant a majority still backed him so they decided at that point to wait and see. Thus the Ten resolved to write to messer Domenico Bonsi in Rome that S was 'preaching to produce good fruit' in the City; Martines, p. 208 [in Gherardi, 187-8].

March 04: Receiving letters from Pope and Bonsi, the Priors wrote to the Pope stung that he could not see S was merely defending what they saw as goodness and correct doctrine [Marchese, Documenti intorno al S, 165-7]
March 07: Bonsi back to the Signory and Ten: S must stop; [Gherardi, 192]

March 09: Papal brief ('as a spreader of poison' S should be arrested) and Bonsi cover letter sent to Signory [in Gherardi, 192-6]
March 10: letter from the Ten to the Pope explaining S's sermons should be seen as allegory, even trying with different words to say the same things [Gherardi, 198]. When they received they couldn't hardly believe it. They already knew how to read.

________________________________

from Martines, Lauro:  Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence Oxford University Press, Inc.,NY 2006 

March 13: S to Pope: 'you should worry about the state of your immortal soul': [Lettere (1984) 226-7]

March 14: pratiche held by the Signory; Papal briefs read out; [Fachard, Denis: Consulte 1993: I, 42-61]
March 16: Signory summons leaders to again state their views - this time a majority say S should stop preaching
March 17: S informed of papal brief of Mar9
March 18: S preaches for last time

Savonarola Makes Last Stand: Jan-Feb 1498

The Feast of Epiphany, the celebrations marking the appearance of the divine Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi, is the chief Catholic Festival in January. In Florence, Italy, in the year 1498, there was a private ceremony held at San Marco where friar Savonarola received visitors from the city's Signoria who came to kiss his hand. But Savonarola had been excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, and all who heard or worked with him were putting themselves at risk of such ostracism as well. He had been forbidden from preaching, but, the little friar himself said he answered to God's will, not the Pope's. His critics were outraged by the performance at San Marco but his followers patiently worked for a motion by the Great Council for word that the friar could preach again.

By the first of February, Savonarola himself was telling Manfredi, the Ambassador to Ferrara, that he was ready to preach, if he could only get a sign. He told others he was waiting for a reprieve from the Papal See. But, when it became clear in those first couple weeks there would be no absolution or reparation with the Church without the matter of Pisa being resolved, Savonarola once again took to the podium.

This matter of Pisa, of course, was Florence's recent alliance with France and Charles VIII, for control of interests over Pisa. The Pope and Venice had created a League trying to secure Pisa against its control by France or Florence. The war had not been trivial and would continue to rage. Born from the disaster when Piero de' Medici had given Pisa away to the French King in his 1494 march down the length of Italy, the French had quickly assumed control and Florence then, quickly threw Piero and all his family (and several of his closest allies) out of the city. Savonarola had been the one then preaching that  the French incursion was God's agent of 'scourge and renewal', and the King was a New Cyrus, a Second Charlemagne.  Everyone in Italy had taken sides or could be paid to do so, and now, the Pope's minions were saying flatly "that Florence had to abandon its alliance with Charles VIII and join the League to keep him out of Italy." [p.249] But Savonarola said in the new year that his followers were dying of spiritual hunger.

On the morning of February 11, Savonarola and his men returned.

"From San Marco he and his friars walked in stately procession but without his usual armed escort, through streets bordered by the devout, the curious, and the hostile, to the Cathedral. Entering he made his way along the enormous nave, less crowded than in former times, and mounted to the pulpit. When the congregation had finished singing the Te Deum Laudamus he recited the Third Psalm, "O Lord, why are my foes so many?" then took up his text." [p.249]

His sermon was on Exodus and the story of Hebrew liberation from their captivity in Egypt. So too, would the present-day Florentines be liberated from their current enemies. He would be their Moses and lead them across the Red Sea. Pharoah had ordered him to be silent, but he could not. He instead would be their prophet, lawgiver, protector, and champion. He could accept Pharoah's authority, His Holiness in Rome, but the Pope's pronouncements did not apply to him, as his orders came from God. If his detractors denied his message then they should should come and see him hold the sacrament and hear his sermon. If he was not telling the word of God then, may the fire of God come down and consume him. [p.252]

The following Sunday, 18 February he continued his sermon on Exodus. By the following Sunday, he announced plans for a return to the great bonfires over Carneval as in previous years. Clearly, the 'little' Dominican friar, Savonarola was not backing down. So fiery were his words, that many believed he would perform a miracle by the following Shrove Tueday. It didn't happen, and he wasn't struck down, so his followers would defend him anyway. The bonfire this year included copies of Pulci's Il Morgante, nude sculptures, and even looking glasses. Twelve boys dressed in white carrying crosses made their way to the Piazza to start the blaze. And then they danced and the fervent crowd joined in. [p.253] An independent writer said the friar watched from a distance.

Meanwhile, in a letter to his friend Ricciardo Becchi, Nicolo Macchiavelli reported that a new Signoria and Gonfaolniere had been selected on 26 February, and which Savonarola feared was nearly two-thirds hostile to him. So, in a change Macchiavelli notes, the friar was instead warning about tyranny from Rome and that the time had come for Florentines to unite against the hostile forces that were then trying to undermine him from within the city. [p.258]

Almost immediately, the new government began to act. By the 14th of March another pratica had been assembled to finally, after numerous attempts, to settle what should be done. By the end of the month the mob would decide it needed proof, in order to confirm their faith, one way or another.
____________________________________
quotes and pagination in Donald Weinstein: Savonarola: the rise and fall of a renaissance prophet , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011

pageturner chronicles iii: 1914, 1434, c. 1908

Since the other day was called #WorldBookDay, on twitter, perhaps a different alignment may be indulged in for this chapter. Rather than a mere gathering of different stories in some place, or signposts connected with highpoints in historical circumstances (or scattered across this blog), here today, a number of quotes from fiction will follow. These are plucked from the list of things I'm currently reading and show the twist and tug of so many central tensions, now and then, here and there, fiction and too real. Revealing further examples still held in suspense for today's audience.
___________________________________
...

"The clean, cozy cubicles of the regional criminal court made the most favourable impression on Švejk -- the white washed walls, the black-painted bars and the fat Mr Demartini, the chief warder for the prisoners on remand, with his purple facings and purple braid on his government-supplied cap. Purple is the colour prescribed not only here, but also at religious services on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

The glorious times of Roman rule over Jerusalem were coming back. The prisoners were led out and brought before the Pontius Pilates of 1914 down on the ground floor. And the examining magistrates, the Pilates of modern times, instead of honourably washing their hands, sent to Teissig's for goulash and Pilsen beer and passed more and more indictments to the Director of Prosecutions.

Here all logic mostly disappeared and the § triumphed. The § strangled, went mad, fumed, laughed, theatened, murdered and gave no quarter. The magistrates were jugglers with the law, high priests of its letter, devourers of the accused, tigers of the Austrian jungle, who measured their spring on the accused by the number of clauses." ... [p.24]

Oh! you don't know Švejk? You're in for a treat then! Written in Czech in the years during and following World War I  - for those who lived it, it was The Great War, and for those who did not survive, the only World War - its author Jaroslav Hašek was an anarchist. A traveller thru East Europe, a soldier, a drunkard, accustomed to sleep off nights or months in a cell, he had practice as a rabble-rouser. Both intense and silly, hilarious and at times violent, he took to writing stories in serial fashion during the war and the years after, sending manuscripts off without correction, often after deadline.  Later twentieth century luminaries like Bertolt Brecht were to find inspiration in these stories of a common, simple man caught up in the absurd affectations of Empire about to fall. Joseph Heller has said his Catch-22 would not have been written without the precedent of Hašek's Švejk. Turns out to be both warning and balm in today's times. Go find it!

Jaroslav Hašek: The Good Soldier Švejk : translated by Cecil Parrott,  published by William Heinemann in association with Penguin Books, 1973
____________________________________

After a long discussion about Christian virtue and championing various aspects of that as found under the traditional umbrella of what they remembered, and its people in its long history, the narrator turns to what it is not. Palla Strozzi, instructing his son Onofrio reminds that despite what others may say or think, there are still those who justify their own acts based on erroneous assumptions. Relative to such things, this parent counsels that exile should not be considered the worst of his son's worries. The real topic of merit he insists is what a chaste man with high standards might think and act upon. Nearing the end of that night's discussion, he then has to return to and remind of basic elements.
 ...

"But what is the point of my discourse? That we understand that there is something disgraceful and evil by nature, which in the eyes of some is neither disgraceful nor evil; that some things are held to be disgraceful and evil that are not such by nature; and the same thing is disgraceful and evil in the eyes of some that others regard as honorable and good. Therefore we must take pains that it not escape us which things are honorable and good by nature and which are otherwise. For if we err in these matters, even if no disgrace attaches to us, we are dishonorable." [i,230]

These notions are couched in fifteenth-century Italo-Christian notions of evil and honor and disgrace and good actions. That there is evil that some think is not evil. That there are things held as evil that are not by nature. And, that these same things, that may not be evil by nature, are still proclaimed as evil by some, and honorable and good by others. He is making pains to show that all these judging notions are actually separate and distinct. The son Onofrio thinks exile is evil as it is a dishonor. The father Palla disavows this notion, saying the distinction between evil and good is more basic. First one must be able to distinguish between what is evil and good on one's own, and before other men's opinions affect our judgment.

"But we should not altogether despise the things that are merely judged to be such [evil or good by nature] by men's opinion. For to do so shows an overfastidious and immoderate character. But we must earnestly consider by whose opinion the judgment is made. For we ought to be influenced by what good and wise men think of us, not fools and scoundrels."

Onofrio: "But, father, the public magistrates are inflicting this disgrace upon us." [i, 231]
Palla: ""The magistracy," as Bias remarked, "shows the man.""

Here Palla agrees, on principle, with Onofrio. This, he counters, is why their opinion should not matter to him, regardless of their pronouncements of exile or, power in office. Palla (and Filelfo, the author of this fictional dialogue) is quoting from Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (1130a1-2) in his discussion of justice, showing a clear understanding of the difference between one's own kept virtue (or not), and how one practices that virtue (or not) toward others.

"At Florence currently men exercise magistracies who do not understand either in practice or in theory, the meaning and extent of a magistrate's power. For what correct or sound principle would men understand whose god is their belly and their boundless lust? They think and care about nothing else than to act intemperately, greedily, disgracefully, insultingly, and dishonorably. Should you, then, fear disgrace inflicted by beasts of such a nature that it would be a dishonor to be honored by them? I think the good man should make no more of the judgment of such wastrels than if Galileo Bufonio, who, though an ignoramus in medicine, claims to be the most skilled physician, judges that a man of excellent constitution and health is feeble and sickly. [i, 232] Therefore such disgrace is not by its own nature an evil, nor can there be any evil in exile."

Francesco Filelfo, On Exile, i, 230-3; edited by Jeroen de Keyser, translated by W. Scott Blanchard, published by The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2013
________________________________

record skip

Taking a number of leaps to Old El Paso, and to Thomas Pynchon's fictional World Against The Day, Frank Traverse and Estrella Briggs stroll back from the river when two men approach quickly from behind. Estrella, aka "Stray", affirms this is "Hatch" and "his saddle pal of the day." Of course, Frank is there to help facilitate an arms deal pre-arranged with Ewball Oust, making quick profit on the misfortune of others and, who had just happened to run into his old pal. This takes place c. 1906-10 and before the armed uprisings and the Revolution of Mexico. People protecting their interests on multiple levels.

    "She didn't turn around to look, but had reached casually beneath her duster and come out with a little over-and-under. Twirling the parasol for, he guessed, distraction. "Well," Frank checking his own outfit, "I was hoping for more caliber there, but happy to see you're heeled, and say -- let's figure on one apiece, how's that? They don't look too professional."
    "Nice to see you out in public again, Miss Estrella. This here your beau?"
    "This yours, Hatch?"
    "Wasn't lookin for no round and round," advised the other one, "just being neighborly."
    "Well, neighbors," her voice maintaining a smooth contralto, "you're a long way from the old neighborhood, hate to see you come all this distance for nothin."
     "Be easy to fix that, I would guess." 
    "Sure, if it was anythin but simple damn thievery."
    "Oh? Somebody around here's a damn thief?" inqured Hatch in what he must have been told was a menacing voice. Frank, who'd been watching the men's feet, took a short off-angle step so as to have speedier access to his Police Special. Coat buttons meantime were being undone, hatbrims realigned for the angle of the sun, amid a noticeable drop-off in pedestrian traffic around the little group.
    Though having been obliged not long ago to gun Sloat Fresno into the Beyond... Frank still harbored too many doubts about triggerplay to be out looking to repeat it with just anybody -- still, there was no denying he'd lost a whole ensemble of hesitancies back down the trail, and Hatch here, though perhaps enjoying even less acquaintance with the homicidal, might have detected this edge, raising the interesting question of how eager he might be to back up his sidekick.
    For really it was the sidekick who presented the problem. Restless type. Fair hair, hat back on his head so the big brim sort of haloed his face, shiny eyes and low-set, pointed ears like an elf's. Frank understood this was to be his playfellow -- Stray meantime having slowly drifted into a pose that only the more heedless of their safety would've read as demure. The daylight had somehow thickened, as before a tempest on the prairie. Nobody was saying much, so Frank figured the verbal part of this was done, and the practical matter nearly upon them. The elfin sidekick was whistling softly through his teeth the popular favorite "Daisy, Daisy," ...[a] sort of telegraphic code among gun-handlers for Boot Hill. Frank gazed brightly, all but sympathetically, into the eyes of his target, waiting for a fateful tell.
    Out of nowhere, "Well, hi everybody," a cheerful voice broke in, "watch-y'all doin?" It was Ewball Oust, pretnding not to be a cold, bleak-eyed Anarchist who'd left all operational doubt miles back in the romantic mists of youth, whenever that was.
    "Damn," breathed the pointy-eared gent, in a long, unrequited sigh. Everybody at their own pace went about relocating their everyday selves.
    "So nice runnin into you again," Hatch as if preparing to kiss Stray's hand, "and don't you be a stranger, now."
    "Next time," nodded the sidekick with a poignant smile at Ewball. "Maybe in church. What church y'all go to?" he seemed to want to know, in an oily voice.
    "Me?" Ewball laughed, far exceeding the humor of the moment. "I'm Mexican Orthodox. How about you? Amigo?"
    Whereupon the sidekick was observed to take a hesitant step or two backward. Stray and Hatch over his hat crown exchanging a look.
    "Sorry I'm late," said Ewball.
    "You're right on time," said Frank."

 from Against The Day pp. 646-8, by Thomas Pynchon and published by Penguin Press, 2006.