eleven in the morning
She dared not rejoice that the relief which had come in extremity and had appeared to justify the policy of the Frate 's party was making that party so triumphant , that Francesco Valori , hot-tempered chieftain of the Piagnoni , had been elected Gonfaloniere at the beginning of the year , and was making haste to have as much of his own liberal way as possible during his two months of power . That seemed for the moment like a strengthening of the party most attached to freedom , and a reinforcement of protection to Savonarola ; but Romola was now alive to every suggestion likely to deepen her foreboding , that whatever the present might be , it was only an unconscious brooding over the mixed germs of Change which might any day become tragic . And already by Carnival time , a little after mid-February , her presentiment was confirmed by the signs of a very decided change : the Mediceans had ceased to be passive , and were openly exerting themselves to procure the election of Bernardo del Nero as the new Gonfaloniere . On the last day of the Carnival , between ten and eleven in the morning , Romola walked out , according to promise , towards the Corso degli Albizzi , to fetch her cousin Brigida , that they might both be ready to start from the Via de ' Bardi early in the afternoon , and take their places at a window which Tito had had reserved for them in the Piazza della Signoria , where there was to be a scene of so new and striking a sort , that all Florentine eyes must desire to see it . For the Piagnoni were having their own way thoroughly about the mode of keeping the Carnival . In vain Dolfo Spini and his companions had struggled to get up the dear old masques and practical jokes , well spiced with indecency . Such things were not to be in a city where Christ had been declared king .