Bardi, Romola de'

Bardo Bardi's daughter, later Tito Melema's wife ; a beautiful and noble girl who makes a disastrous marriage, but, under Savonarola's influence, subordinates her personal unhappiness to the service of others. She has led secluded life, devoted entirely to her blind father, whose secretary she is. She falls in love with Tito Melema almost at first sight, gives him her entire
trust as well as her love, and marries him, believing that he has the same high ideals as herself. Aside from her love for Tito, her devotion to her father is the strongest feeling in her life, and after his death she feels it a sacred obligation to carry out his wish to have his library preserved for the city of Florence. Although several things disturb her confidence in Tito, her eyes are not opened to his real character until he sells her father's library to the Duke of Milan in violation of what she considers a sacred trust. Believing that this shattering of her love releases her from her marriage vows, she decides to leave her husband, and is leaving Florence in disguise when she is stopped by Savonarola, who tells her that she can not thus break a sacred bond, and exhorts her to return and take up work for others if her personal happiness is gone. She yields to his influence, becomes one of his devoted followers, even though she does not accept all of his religious beliefs, and for several years spends herself in good works, staying with Tito, although their real separation in character and ideals becomes constantly more evident as Tito drifts from one treachery to another. When her godfather, Bernardo del Nero, is arrested, as she fears through Tito's treachery, and is executed in spite of her efforts to persuade Savonarola to save him, the limit of her endurance is reached. Disappointed in Savonarola and grief-stricken at her godfather's death, she flees from Florence. By chance she reaches a plague-stricken village, and wins back peace and spiritual health by working among the sufferers. She returns to Florence just after Tito's death, and finds and cares for his two natural children and their mother. She is present at Savonarola's execution, and both then and during the rest of her life reveres him as a great religious leader who had helped her at a critical moment of her life. Romola, though nominally an Italian of the Renaissance, is so essentially an English Puritan that the suggestion has been made that some things in her character represent experiences of George Eliot's spiritual life. There is probably no ground for tracing a general resemblance, but in one respect, Romola's devotion to her father, there is, perhaps, a suggestion of a picture of George Eliot's affection for her father.

<em>Romola</em>

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