 CHAPTER XIV. The Peasant's Fair. The moving crowd and the strange mixture of noises that burst in on him at the entrance of the piazza reminded Tito of what Nello had said to him about the Furcoloni, and he pushed his way into the crowd with the sort of pleasure in the hooting-head elbowing which filled the empty moments and dulled that calculation of the future, which had so new adreariness for him, as he foresaw himself wandering away solitary in pursuit of some unknown fortune that his thought had even glanced towards going in search of Balthasari after all. At each of the opposite inlets he saw people struggling into the piazza, while above them paper lanterns held aloft on sticks were waving to and fro. A rude monotonous chant made a distinctly traceable strand of noise, across which screams, whistles, jibing chants in piping boyish voices, the beating of drums, and the ringing of little bells met each other in confused din. Every now and then one of the dim floating lights disappeared with a smash from a stone launched, more or less vaguely in the pursuit of mischief, followed by a scream and renewed shouts. But on the outskirts of the whirling tumult there were groups who were keeping this vigil of the nativity of the Virgin in a more methodical manner than by fitful stone-throwing and jibing. Certain ragged men, darting a hard, sharp blance around them while their tongues rattled merrily, were inviting country people to game with them on fair and open-handed terms. Two masquerading figures on stilts, who had snatched lanterns from the crowd, were swaying the lights to and fro in meteoric fashion, as they strode hither and thither. A sage-trader was doing a profitable business at a small covered stall in hot Berlingrozi, a favourite for a natious delicacy. One man standing on a brow, with his back firmly planted against a pillar of the Lodger in front of the Foundling Hospital, Spadali del Inocenti, was selling efficacious pills invented by a doctor of Salerno, warranted to prevent toothache and death by drowning. And not far off against another pillar, a tumbler was showing off his tricks on a small platform, while a handful of apprentices, despising the slack entertainment of guerrilla stone-throwing, were having a private concentrated match of that favourite Florentine sport at the narrow entrance of the Via del Vibrai. Tito, obliged to make his way through chance openings in the crowd, found himself, at one moment, close to the trotting procession of bare-footed, hard-heeled conterdine, and could see their sun-dried, bronzed faces, and their strange, fragmentary garb, dim with hereditary dirt, and of obsolete stuffs of fattens that made them look, in the eyes of the city-people, like a way-worn ancestry returning from a pilgrimage on which they had set out centuries ago. Just then it was the hardy, scant-feeding peasant women from the mountains of Pistoia, who were entering with a year's labour in a moderate bundle of yarn on their backs, and in their hearts that meager hope of good, and that wide-dim fear of harm which was somehow to be cared for by the Blessed Virgin, whose miraculous image, painted by the angels, was to have the curtain drawn away from it, on this eve of her nativity, that her potency might stream forth without obstruction. At another moment he was forced away towards the boundary of the piazza, where the more stationary candidates for attention and small coin had judiciously placed themselves, in order to be safe in their rear. Among these Tito recognized his acquaintance, Plati, who stood with his back against a pillar, and his mouth per-stop in disdainful silence, eyeing everyone who approached him with a cold glance of superiority, and keeping his hand fast on the surge-covering which concealed the contents of the baskets slung before him. Rather surprised at a deportment so unusual in an anxious trader, Tito went nearer, and saw two women go up to Brattis' basket, with a look of curiosity, whereupon the peddler drew his coverant tighter, and looked another way. It was quite too provoking, and one of the women was famed to ask what there was in his basket. Before I answer that, Mona, I must know whether you mean to buy. I can't show such wares as mine in this fair for every flight to settle on and pay nothing. My goods are a little too choice for that. Besides, I've only two left, and I've no mind to sell them. With the chance of the pestilence that wise men talk of, there is likelihood of their being worth their weight in gold. Not, not, and that, I convia. The two women looked at each other. And what may be the price? said the second. Not within what you are likely to have in your purse of one a donna, said Brattis in a compassionately supercilious tone. I recommend you trust in Mesodominendio and the saints. Poor people can do no better for themselves. Not so poor, said the second woman indignantly. Drawing out her money-bag? Come now. What do you say too grosso? I say you may get twenty-one quattrini for it, said Brattis cruelly. But not of me, for I haven't got that small change. Come, to then, said the woman getting exasperated, while her companion looked at her with some envy. It will hardly be above two, I think. After further bidding, and further mercantile cockatry, Brattis put on an air of concession. Since you've set your mind on it, he said slowly, raising the cover. I should be loath to do you mischief. For Maestro Gabideo used to say, When a woman sets her mind on a thing, and doesn't get it, she's in more danger of the pestilence than before. Echo! I have but two left, and let me tell you, the fellow to them is on the finger of Maestro Gabideo, who is gone to Bologna, as wise a doctor as sits at any door. The precious objects were two clumsy iron rings, beaten into the fashion of old Roman rings, such as were sometimes disinterred. The rust on them, and the entirely hidden character of their potency, were so satisfactory that the grossing were paid without grumbling, and the first woman, destitute of those handsome coins, succeeded after much show of reluctance on Brattis' part, in driving a bargain with some of her yarn, and carried off the remaining ring in triumph. Bratti covered up his basket, which was now filled with miscellanies, probably obtained under the same circumstances as the yarn. And, moving from his pillar, came suddenly upon Tito, who, if he had had time, would have chosen to avoid recognition. By the head of San Giovanni now, said Bratti, drawing Tito back to the pillar. This is a piece of luck, for I was talking of you this morning, Mesa Greco. But, I said, he is mounted up among the Signori now, and I'm glad of it, for I was at the bottom of his fortune, but I can rarely get speech of him. For he is not to be caught lying on the stones now, not he. But it's your luck, not mine, Mesa Greco. Save, and accept some small trifle to satisfy me for my trouble in the transaction. You speak in riddles, Bratti, said Tito. Remember, I don't sharpen my wits as you do, by driving bargains for iron rings, you must be plain. By the holy vangels, it was an easy bargain I gave them. If a Hebrew gets thirty-two percent, I hope a Christian can get a little more. If I had not borne a conscience, I should have got twice the money, and twice the yarn. But, talking of rings, it is your ring, that very ring you've got on your finger, that I could get to you a purchaser for, I, and a purchaser with a deep money bag. Truly, said Tito, looking at his ring and listening. A Genozo is going straight away into Hungary, as I understand. He came and looked all over my shop, to see if I had any old things I didn't know the price of. I warned you, he thought I had a pumpkin on my shoulders. He had been rummaging all the shops in Florence, and he had a ring on, not like yours, but something of the same fashion. And, as he was talking of rings, I said, I knew a fine young man, a particular acquaintance of mine, who had a ring of that sort. And he said, Who is he, pray? Tell him, I'll give him his price for it. And I thought of going after you to Nela's tomorrow, for it's my opinion of you, Mesa Greco, that you're not one who'd see the ardent run broth, and stand by without dipping your finger. Tito had lost no word of what Prati had said, yet his mind had been very busy all the while. Why should he keep the ring? It had been a mere sentiment, a mere fancy, that had prevented him from selling it with the other gems. If he had been wiser, and had sold it, he might perhaps have escaped that identification by Freluca. It was true that it had been taken from Balthasar's finger, and put on his own as soon as his young hand had grown to the needful size. But there was really no valid good to anybody in those superstitious scruples about inanimate objects. The ring had helped towards the recognition of him. Tito had begun to dislike recognition, which was acclaimed to the past. This foreigner's offer, if he would really give a good price, was an opportunity for getting rid of the ring without the trouble of seeking a purchaser. You speak with your usual wisdom, Prati, said Tito. I have no objection to hear what your general is or will offer, but when and where shall I have speech of him? Tomorrow, at three hours after sunrise, he will be at my shop, and if your wits are of that sharpness I have always taken them to be, Mesa Greco, you will ask him a heavy price, for he might stop money. It's my belief. He's buying for somebody else, and not himself, perhaps for some great senior. It is well, said Tito. I will be at your shop, if nothing hinders. And you will doubt this deal nobly by me, for old acquaintance's sake, Mesa Greco. So I will not stay to fix the small sum you will give me, in token of my service, in this matter. It seems to me a thousand years now, till I get out of the piazza, for a fair is a dull, not to say a wicked thing, when one has no more goods to sell. Tito made a hasty sound of a scent and a dew, and, moving away from the pillar, again found himself pushed towards the middle of the piazza, and back again, without the power of determining his own cause. In this zigzag way, he was carried along to the end of the piazza opposite the church, where, in a deep process, formed by an irregularity in the line of houses, an entertainment was going forward, which seemed especially attractive to the crowd. Loud burst of laughter interrupted a monologue, which was sometimes slow and oratorical, at others rattling and buffoonish. Here a girl was being pushed forward into the inner circle with apparent reluctance, and there a loud laughing minks was finding away with her own elbows. It was a strange light that was spread off the piazza. There were the pale stars breaking out above, and the dim waving lanterns below, leaving all objects indistinct, except when they were seen close under the fitfully moving lights. But in this recess, there was a stronger light, against which the heads of the encircling spectators stood in dark relief, as Tito was gradually pushed towards them, while above them rose the head of a man wearing a white mitre with yellow cabalistic figures upon it. Behold, my children, Tito heard him sing. Behold your opportunity! Neglect not the holy sacrament of matrimony, when it can be had for the small sum of a white quatrino, the cheapest matrimony ever offered, and dissolved by special bull beforehand at every man's own will and pleasure. Behold the bull! Here the speaker held up a piece of parchment with huge seals attached to it. Behold the indulgence! Granted by his holiness, Alexander VI, who, being newly elected pope for his peculiar piety, intends to reform and purify the chet, and wisely begins by abolishing that priestly abuse which keeps too large a share of this privileged matrimony to the clergy and stints the laity. Spit once, my sons, and pay a white quatrino. This is the whole and sole price of the indulgence. The quatrino is the only difference the Holy Father allows to be put any longer between us and the clergy whose spit and pay nothing. Tito thought he knew the voice which had a peculiarly sharp ring, but the face was too much in shadow from the lights behind for him to be sure of the features. Stepping as near as he could, he saw within the circle behind the speaker an altar-like table raised on a small platform, and, covered with a red drapery, stitched all over with yellow cabalistic figures. Half a dozen thin tapers burnt at the back of this table, which had a cundring apparatus scattered over it, a large open book in the centre, and at one of the front angles a monkey fastened by a cord to a small ring, and holding a small taper which, in his incessant fidgety movements, felt more or less a slant, whilst an impish boy in a white surplus occupied himself chiefly in cuffing the monkey and adjusting the taper. The man in the mitre also wore a surplus, and over it a chassable on which the signs of the zodiac were rudely marked in black upon a yellow ground. Tito was sure now that he recognised the sharp upward-tending angles of the face under the mitre. It was that of Maestro Vellano, the mant-bank, from whom he had rescued Tessa, pretty little Tessa. Perhaps she too had come in among the troops of Contadine. Come, my maidens, this is the time for the pretty who can have many chances, and for the ill-favoured who have few. Matrimony to be had hot, eaten, and done with as easily as Berlingrozzi, and sea. Here the conjure held up a cluster of tiny bags. To every bride I give a brevet with a secret in it. The secret alone worth the money you pay for the matrimony. The secret how to- no, no, I will not tell you what the secret is about, and that makes it a double secret. Hang it round your neck if you like, and never look at it. I don't say that will not be the best, for then you will see many things you don't expect. Though if you open it, you may break your leg, Everon, but you will know a secret, something nobody knows but me. And Mark, I give you the brevet. I don't sell it as many another holy man would. The quaterino is for the matrimony, and the brevet you get for nothing. Orso Giovanetti come like dutiful sons of the church, and by the indulgence of his holiness, Alexander VI. This profunery just fitted the taste of the audience. The fiorcalona was but a small occasion, so the townsmen might be contented with jokes that were rather less indecent than those they were accustomed to hear at every carnival, put into easy rhythm by the magnifical and his poetic satellites, while the women, over and above any relative to fun, really began to have an itch for the brevi. Several couples had already gone through the ceremony, in which the chondrous solemn gibberish and grimaces over the open book, the antics of the monkey, and even preliminary spitting, had called forth peals of laughter, and now a well-looking, merry-eyed youth of seventeen, in a loose tunic and red cap, pushed forward, holding by the hand a plump brunette, whose scanty ragged dress displayed her round arms and legs very picturesquely. Veteros without delay, maestro, said the youth, for I have got to take my bride home and paint her under the light of a lantern. Ha, Mariota, my son! I commend your pious observance! The conjurer was going on, when a loud chattering behind warned him that an unpleasant crisis has arisen with his monkey. The temper of that imperfect acholet was a little tried by the overactive discipline of his colleague in the surplus, and a sudden cuff administered as his taper fell to a horizontal position, caused him to leap back with the violence that proved too much for the slackened knot by which his cord was fastened. His first leap was to the other end of the table, from which position his remonstrances were so threatening that the imp in the surplus took up a wand by way of an equivalent threat, whereupon the monkey leapt on the head of a tall woman in the foreground, dropping his taper by the way, and chattering with increased emphasis from that eminence. Great was the screaming and confusion, not a few of the spectators, having a vague dread of the maestro's monkey, as capable of more hidden mischief than mere teeth and claws could inflict. And the conjurer himself was in some alarm, lest any harm should happen to his familiar. In this scuffle to seize the monkey's string, Tito got out of the circle, and, not caring to contend for his place again, he allowed himself to be gradually pushed toward the Church of the Nunciata, and to enter amongst the worshippers. The brilliant illumination within seemed to press upon his eyes with palpable force after the pale scattered lights and broad shadows of the piazza, and for the first minute or two he could see nothing distinctly. That yellow splendour was in itself something supernatural and heavenly to many of the peasant women, for whom half the sky was hidden by mountains, and who went to bed in the twilight. And the uninterrupted chant of the choir was reposed to the ear after the hellish hubbub of the crowd outside. Gradually, the scene became clearer, though still there was a thin yellow haze from incense mingling with the breath of the multitude. In a chapel on the left hand side of the nave, wreathed with silver lamps, was seen unveiled the miraculous fresco of the Nunciata, which in Tito's oblique view of it from the right hand side of the nave, seemed dark with the excess of light around it. The whole area of the great church was filled with peasant women, some kneeling, some standing, the coarse bronzed skins, and the dingy clothing of the rougher dwellers on the mountains, contrasting with the soft aligned faces, and white or red-haired drapery of the well-to-do dwellers in the valley, who were scattered in irregular groups. And spreading high and far over the walls and ceiling, there was another multitude also pressing close against each other, that they might be nearer the potent virgin. It was the crowd of votive waxen images, the effigies of great personages clothed in their habit as they lived. Florentines of high name in their black silk luka, as when they sat in council. Popes, emperors, kings, cardinals, and famous con dottieri, with plump marions seated on their charges. All notable strangers who passed through Florence, or had ought to do with its affairs, Mohammedans, even in well-tolerated companionship with Christian cavaliers, some of them with faces blackened and robes tattered by the corroding breath of centuries, others fresh and bright in new-red mantel or steel corselet. The exact doubles of the living, and wedged in with all these, were detached arms, legs, and other members with only here and there a gap where some image had been removed for public disgrace, or had fallen ominously as Lorenzo's had done six months before. It was a perfect resurrection swung of remote mortals and fragments of mortals, reflecting in their varying degrees of freshness the somber dinginess and sprinkled brightness of the crowd below. Tito's glance wandered over the wild multitude in search of something. He had already thought of Tessa, and the White Hood suggested the possibility that he might detect her face under one of them. It was at least a thought to be courted, rather than the vision of Ramola looking at him with changed eyes. But he searched in vain, and he was leaving the church, wary of the scene which had no variety, when, just against the doorway, he caught sight of Tessa, only two yards off from him. She was kneeling with her back against the wall, behind a group of peasant women who were standing and looking for a spot nearer to the sacred image. Her head hung a little aside with a look of weariness, and her blue eyes were directed rather absently towards an altarpiece, where the archangel Michael stood in his armour, with young face and floating hair amongst bearded and tonsured saints. Her right hand, holding a bunch of cocoons, fell to her side listlessly, and her round cheek was paled, either by the light or by the weariness that was expressed in her attitude. Her lips were pressed partingly together, and every now and then, her eyelids half fell. She was a large image of a sweet sleepy child. Tito felt an irrepressible desire to go up to her and get her pretty trusting looks and prattle. This creature, who was without mortal judgement that could condemn him, his little loving ignorant soul made a world apart where he might feel a freedom from suspicions and exacting demands, had a new attraction for him now. She seemed a refuge from the threatened isolation that would come with disgrace. He glanced cautiously round to assure himself that Monlagita was not near, and then, slipping quietly to her side, kneeled on one knee and said in the softest voice, Tessa. She hardly started any more than she would have started at a soft breeze that fanned her gently when she was kneading it. She turned her head and saw Tito's face close to her. It was very much more beautiful than Archangel Michaels, who was so mighty and so good that he lived with the Madonna and all the saints, and was preyed to along with them. She smiled in happy silence, for that nearness of Tito quite filled her mind. My little Tessa, you look very tired. How long have you been kneeling here? She seemed to be collecting her thoughts for a minute or two, and at last she said, I'm very hungry. Come then, come with me. He lifted her from her knees, and led her out under the cloisters surrounding the atrium, which were then open, and not yet adorned with the frescoes of André del Sarto. How is it you are all to yourself, and so hungry, Tessa? The madre's ill. She has very bad pains in her legs, and sent me to bring these cocoons to the Santissima Nunciata, because they're so wonderful. See? She held up a bunch of cocoons, which were arranged with fortuitous regularity on a stem, and she had kept them to bring them herself, but she couldn't. So she sent me, because she thinks the Holy Madonna may take away her pains. And somebody took my bag with a bread and chestnuts in it, and the people pushed me back, and I was so frightened coming in the crowd, and I couldn't get anywhere near the Holy Madonna to give the cocoons to the Padre. But I must! Oh, I must! Yes, my little Tessa, you shall take them. But first, come, and let me give you some belligrozzi. There are some to be had, not far off. Where did you come from? said Tessa, a little bewildered. I thought you would never come to me again, because you never came to the Magcarta for milk any more. I sent myself Aves to say, to see if they would bring you back. But I left off, because they didn't. You see, I am come when you want someone to take care of you, Tessa. Perhaps the Aves fetched me, only it took them a long while. But what shall you do if you are here all alone? Where shall you go? Oh, I shall stay and sleep in the church. A great many of them do in the church, and all about here. I did once, when I came with my mother, and the Padrena was coming with the mules in the morning. They were out in the piazzana, where the crowd was rather less riotous than before, and the lights were fewer, the streams of pilgrims having ceased. Tessa clung fast to Tito's arm in satisfied silence, while he led her towards the stall, where he remembered seeing the eatables. Their way was the easier, because there was just now a great rush towards the middle of the piazza, where the masked figures on stilts had found space to execute a dance. It was very pretty to see the garless thing giving her cocoons into Tito's hand, and then eating her bell in grozzi with the relish of a hungry child. Tito had really come to take care of her as he did before, and then wonderful happiness of being with him had begun again for her. Her hunger was soon appeased, all the sooner for the new stimulus of happiness that had roused her from her langa, and as they turned away from this stall, she said nothing about going into the church again, but looked round as if the sights in the piazza were not without attraction to her now she was safe under Tito's arm. How can they do that? she exclaimed, looking up at the dancers on stilts. Then, after a minute's silence, do you think Saint Christopher helps them? Perhaps. What do you think about it, Tessa? Slipping his right arm round her, and looking down at her fondly. Because Saint Christopher is so very tall, and he is very good. If anybody looks at him, he takes care of them all day. He is on the wall of the church, too tall to stand up there. But I saw him walking through the streets, one San Giovanni, carrying the little jazoo. You pretty pigeon! Do you think anybody could help taking care of you if you looked at them? Shall you always come and take care of me? said Tessa, turning her face up to him, as he crushed her cheek with his left hand. And shall you always be a long while first? Tito was conscious that some bystanders were laughing at them, and, though the license of street fun among artists and the young men of the wealthiest sort as well as among the populace, made few adventures exceptional, still less disreputable, he chose to move away towards the end of the piazza. Perhaps I shall come again to you very soon, Tessa, he answered rather dreamily when they had moved away. He was thinking that when all the rest had turned their backs upon him, it would be pleasant to have this little creature adoring him and nestling against him. The absence of presumptuous self-conceit in Tito made him feel all the more defenceless under perspective of bloke. He needed soft looks and caresses too much ever to be impudent. In the mercato, said Tessa, not tomorrow morning, because the premio will be there, and he is so cross. But do you have money? And he will not be cross if you buy some salad. And there are some chestnuts. Do you like chestnuts? He said nothing, but continued to look down at her with a dreamy gentleness. And Tessa felt herself in a state of delicious wonder. Everything seemed as new as if she were being carried on a chariot of clouds. Holy Virgin, she explained again presently, there is a holy father like the bishop I saw at Prato. Tito looked up too, and saw that he had unconsciously advanced to within a few yards of the conjure Maestrovayano, who for the moment was forsaken by the crowd. His face was turned away from them, and he was occupied with the apparatus on his altar, or table, preparing a new diversion by the time the interest in the dancing should be exhausted. The monkey was imprisoned under the red cloth, out of reach of mischief, and the youngster in the white surplus was holding a sort of dish or salver from which his master was taking some ingredient. The altar-like table with its gorgeous cloth, the row of tapers, the sham episcopal costume, the surplus attendant, and even the movements of the mighty figure as he alternately bent his head and then raised something before the lights, were sufficiently near parody to sacred things to rouse poor little Tess's veneration. And there was some additional awe produced by the mystery of their appearance in this spot, for when she had seen an altar in the street before, it had been on Corpus Christi day, and there had been a procession to account for it. She crossed herself and looked up at Tito, but then, as if he had had time for reflection, said, It is because of the nativita. Meanwhile, Vayano had turned round, raising his hands to his altar with the intention of changing his dress, when his quick eye recognised Tito and Tessa, who were both looking at him, their faces being shone upon by the light of his tapers, while his own was in shadow. Ha ha, my children, he said instantly, stretching out his hands in benedictory attitude. You are come to be married? I commend your penitence. The blessing of Holy Church can never come too late. But whilst he was speaking, he had taken in the whole meaning of Tessa's attitude and expression, and he discerned an opportunity for a new kind of joke, which required him to be cautious and solemn. Should you like to be married to me, Tessa? said Tito softly, half enjoying the comedy, as he saw the pretty childish seriousness on her face, half prompted by the hazy provisions which belonged to the intoxication of despair. He felt her vibrating before she looked up at him and said, Timidly, will you let me? He answered, only by a smile, and by leading her forward in front of the Coretino, who, seeing an excellent jest in Tessa's evident delusion, assumed a surpassing sacri-dotal solemnity, and went through the mimic ceremony with a liberal expenditure of lingua fobosca, or thieves Latin. But some symptoms of a new movement in the crowd urged him to bring it to a speedy conclusion, and dismissed them with outstretched hands in benedictory attitude over their kneeling figures. Tito, disposed always to cultivate good will, though it might be the least select, put a piece of foregrossy into his hand as he moved away, and was thanked by Look, which, the conjurer felt sure, conveyed a perfect understanding of the whole affair. But Tito himself was very fraught with that understanding, and did not, in fact, know whether the next moment he should tell Tessa of the little joke, and laugh at her for her little goose, or whether he should let her delusion last, and see what would come of it. See what she would say, and do next. Then you will not go away from me again, said Tessa, after they had walked a few steps, and you will take me to where you live. She spoke meditatively, and not in a questioning tone. But presently, she added, I must go back once to the Mildriddle, to tell her I brought the cocoons, and that I am married, and shall not go back again. Tito felt the necessity of speaking now, and in the rapid thought prompted by that necessity, he saw that by undeceiving Tessa he should be rubbing himself of some at least of that pretty trustfulness, which might, by and by, be his only haven from contempt. It would spoil Tessa to make her the least particle wiser, or more suspicious. Yes, my little Tessa, he said caressingly, you must go back to the Madre, but you must not tell her you are married. You must keep that a secret from everybody else some very great harm will happen to me, and you will never see me again. She looked up at him with fear in her face. You must go back and feed your goats and your mules, and do just as you have always done before, and say no word to anyone about me. The choirs of her mouth fell a little, and then perhaps I shall come and take care of you again when you want me, as I did before. But you must do what I tell you, else you will never see me again. Yes, I will, I will, she said in a loud whisper, frightened at that blank prospect. They were silent a little while, and then Tessa, looking at her hand, said, The Madre wears a betrothal ring. She went to church and had it put on, and then after that, another day, she was married, and so did the cousin Amino. But then she married Golo, added the poor little thing, entangled in the difficult comparison between her own ease and others within her experience. But you must not wear a betrothal ring, my Tessa, because no one must know you are married, said Tito, feeling some insistence necessary, and the born of Fortuna I gave you did just as well for betrothal. Some people are betrothed with rings, and some are not. Yes, it is true, they would see the ring, said Tessa, trying to convince herself that a thing she would like very much was really not good for her. They were near the entrance of the church again, and she remembered her cocoons, which were still in Tito's hand. You must give me the bottle, she said. And we must go in, and I must take it to the Padre, and I will tell the rest of my beads, because I was too tired before. Yes, you must go in, Tessa, but I will not go in. I must leave you now, said Tito, too feverish and weary to re-enter that stifling heat, and feeling that this was the least difficult way of parting with her. And not come back. Oh, where do you go? Tessa's mind had never formed an image of his whereabout, or doings, when she did not see him. He had vanished, and her thought, instead of following him, had stayed in the same spot where he was with her. I shall come back some time, Tessa, said Tito, taking her under the cloisters to the door of the church. You must not cry. When you have said your beads, you must go to sleep. And here is money to buy your breakfast. Now, kiss me and look happy, else I shall not come again. She made a great effort over herself, as she put up her lips to kiss him, and submitted to be gently turned round with her face towards the door of the church. Tito saw her enter, and then, with a shrug at his own resolution, leaned against the pillar, took off his cap, rubbed his hair backward, and wondered where Ramola was now, and what she was thinking of him. Poor little Tessa had disappeared behind the curtain among the crowd of peasants. But the love, which formed one web with all his worldly hopes, with the ambitions and pleasures that must make the solid part of his days, the love was identified with his larger self, was not to be banished from his consciousness. Even to the man who presents the most elastic resistance to whatever is unpleasant, there will come moments when the pressure from without is too strong for him, and he must feel the smart and the bruise in spite of himself. Such a moment had come to Tito. There was no possible attitude of mind, no scheme of action by which the uprooting of all his newly planted hopes could be made otherwise than painful. 15. The Dying Message When Ramola arrived at the entrance of San Marco, she found one of the fratti waiting there in expectation of her arrival. Mona Brigitta retired to the adjoining church, and Ramola was conducted to the door of the chapter house in the outer cloister, whether the invalid had been conveyed, no woman being allowed admission beyond this precinct. When the door opened, the subdued external light, blending with that of two tapers placed behind a charcoal bed, showed the emaciated face of Fra Luka, with the tonsured crown of golden hair above it, and with deep sunken hazel eyes fixed on a small crucifix which he held before him. He was propped up into a nearly sitting posture, and Ramola was just conscious, as she threw aside her veil, that there was another monk standing by the bed, with the black cowl drawn over his head, and that he moved towards the door as she entered, just conscious that in the background there was a crucified form rising high pale on the frescoed wall, and pale faces of sorrow looking out from it below. The next moment her eyes met Fra Luka's as they looked up at her from the crucifix, and she was absorbed in that pang of recognition which identified this monkish emaciated form with the image of her fair young brother. Dino! she said in a voice like a low cry of pain, but she did not bend towards him, she held herself erect, and paused at two yards distance from him. There was an unconquerable repulsion for her in that monkish aspect. It seemed to her the brand of that dastardly undutifulness which had left her father desolate of the groveling superstition which could give such undutifulness the name of piety. Her father, whose proud sincerity and simplicity of life had made him one of the few frank pagans of his time, had brought her up with a silent ignoring of any claims the church could have to regulate the belief and action of beings with a cultivated reason. The church in her mind belonged to that actual life of the mixed multitude from which they had always lived apart, and she had no ideas that could render her brother's course an object of any other feeling than incurious, indignant contempt. Yet the lovingness of Ramola's soul had clung to that image in the past, and while she stood rigidly aloof, there was a yearning search in her eyes for something too faintly discernible. But there was no corresponding emotion in the face of the monk. He looked at the little sister returned to him in her full womanly beauty, with the far-off gaze of a revisiting spirit. My sister, he said, with a feeble and interrupted, but yet distinct utterance, it is well thou art not longer delayed to come, for I have a message to deliver to thee, and my time is short. Ramola took a step nearer. The message, she thought, would be one of affectionate penitence to her father, and her heart began to open. Nothing could wipe out the long years of desertion, but the culprit, looking back on those years with a sense of irremediable wrong committed, would call forth pity. Now, at the last, there would be understanding and forgiveness. Dina would pour out some natural filial feeling. He would ask questions about his father's blindness, how rapidly it had come on, how the long, dark days had been filled, what the life was now in the home where he himself had been nourished, and the last message from the dying lips would be one of tenderness and regret. Ramola, Frolico began, I have had a vision concerning thee, thrice I have had it in the last two months, each time it has been clearer. Therefore, I came from Fusoli, deeming it a message from heaven that I was bound to deliver, and I gather a promise of mercy for thee in this, that my breath is preserved in order to— The difficult breathing, which continually interrupted him, would not let him finish the sentence. Ramola had felt her heart chilling again. It was a vision, then, this message, one of those visions she had so often heard her father allude to with bitterness. Her indignation rushed to her lips. Dino, I thought you had some words to send to my father. You forsook him when his sight was failing. You made his life very desolate. Have you never cared about that? Never repented? What is this religion of yours that places visions before natural duties? The deep, sunken, hazel eyes turned slowly towards her, and rested upon her in silence for some moments, as if he were meditating whether he should answer her. No, he said at last, speaking as before, in a low, passionless tone, as of some spirit not human, speaking through dying human organs. No, I have never repented, fleeing from the stifling, poison breath of sin that was hot and thick around me, and threatened to steal over my senses, like besotting wine. My father could not hear the voice that called me night and day. He knew nothing of the demon tempters that tried to drag me back from following it. My father has lived amidst human sin and misery without believing in them. He has been like one busy picking, shining stones in a mine. While there was a world dying of plague above it, I spoke, but he listened with scorn. I told him the studies he wished me to live for were either childish, trifling, dead toys, or else they must be made war, and living by pulses that beat to worldly ambitions and fleshly lusts. For worldly ambitions and fleshly lusts made all the substance of the poetry and history he wanted me to bend my eyes on continually. Has not my father led a pure and noble life then? Ramola burst forth, unable to hear in silence this implied accusation against her father. He has sought no worldly honours. He has been truthful. He has denied himself all luxuries. He has lived like one of the ancient sages. He never wished you to live for worldly ambitions and fleshly lusts. He wished you to live as he himself has done, according to the purest maxims of philosophy in which he brought you up. Ramola spoke partly by rote, as all ardent and sympathetic young creatures do, but she spoke with intense belief. The pink flush was in her face and she quivered from head to foot. Her brother was again slow to answer, looking at her passionate face with strange, passionless eyes. What were the maxims of philosophy to me? They told me to be strong when I felt myself weak when I was ready, like the Blessed Saint Benedict, to roll myself among thorns and caught smarting wounds as a deliverance from temptation. For the divine love had sought me and penetrated me, and created a great need in me, like a seed that wants room to grow. I had been brought up in carelessness of the true faith. I had not studied the doctrines of our religion, but it seemed to take possession of me like a rising flood. I felt that there was a life of perfect love and purity of the soul in which there would be no uneasy hunger after pleasure, no tormenting questions, no fear of suffering. Before I knew the history of the saints, I had a foreshadowing of their ecstasy, for the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs and live in the life of God as the unseen perfectness. But to attain that I must forsake the world, I must have no affection, no hope, wedding me to that which pass away. I must live with my fellow beings only as human souls related to the eternal unseen life. That need was urging me continually. It came over me in visions when my mind fell away weary from the vain words which record the passions of dead men. It came over me after I had been tempted into sin and had turned away with loathing from the scent of the emptied cup and in visions I saw the meaning of the crucifix. He paused, breathing hard for a minute or two, but Ramola was not prompted to speak again. It was useless for her mind to attempt any contact with the mind of this unearthly brother, as useless as for her hand to try and grasp a shadow. When he spoke again, his heaving chest was quieter. I felt whom I must follow, but I saw that even among the servants of the cross who professed to have renounced the world, my soul would be stifled with the fumes of hypocrisy and lust and pride. God had not chosen me as he chose Saint Dominic and Saint Francis to wrestle with evil in the church and in the world. He called upon me to flee. I took the sacred vows and I fled, fled to lands where danger and scorn and want bore me continually, like angels to repose on the bosom of God. I have lived the life of a hermit. I have ministered to pilgrims, but my task has been short. The veil has worn very thin. That divides me from my everlasting rest. I came back to Florence that, Dino, you did want to know if my father was alive? interrupted Ramola, the picture of that suffering life touching her again with the desire for union and forgiveness. That before I died, I might urge others of our brethren to study the eastern tongues as I had not done, and go out to greater ends than I did, and I find them already bent on the work. And since I came Ramola, I have felt that I was sent partly to thee not to renew the bonds of earthly affection, but to deliver the heavenly warning conveyed in my vision, for I have had that vision thrice, and through all the years since first the divine voice called me. While I was yet in the world, I have been taught and guided by visions. For in the painful linking together of our waking thoughts, we can never be sure that we have not mingled our own error with the light we have prayed for. But in visions and dreams we are passive, and our souls are as an instrument in the divine hand. Therefore listen and speak not again, for the time is short. Ramola's mind recoiled strongly from listening to this vision. Her indignation had subsided, but it was only because she had felt the distance between her brother and herself widening. But while Fra Luka was speaking, the figure of another monk had entered, and again stood on the other side of the bed, with the cowl drawn over his head. Neal, my daughter, for the angel of death is present, and waits while the message of heaven is delivered. Bend thy pride before it has bent for thee by a yoke of iron, said a strong rich voice, startlingly in contrast with Fra Luka's. The tone was not one of imperious command, but of quiet self-possession and assurance of the right, blended with benignity. Ramola, vibrating to the sound, looked round at the figure on the opposite side of the bed. His face was hardly discernible under the shadow of the cowl, and her eyes fell at once on his hands, which were folded across his breast and lay in relief on the edge of his black mantle. They had a marked physiognomy which enforced the influence of the voice. They were very beautiful and almost of transparent delicacy. Ramola's disposition to rebel against command, doubly active in the presence of monks, whom she had been taught to despise, would have fixed itself on any repulsive detail as a point of support. But the face was hidden, and the hands seemed to have an appeal in them against all hardness. The next moment the right hand took the crucifix to relieve the fatigued grasp of Fra Luka, and the left touched his lips with a wet sponge which lay near. In the act of bending the cowl was pushed back, and the features of the monk had the full light of the tapers on them. They were very marked features, such as lend themselves to popular description. There was the high arched nose, the prominent underlip, the coronet of thick dark hair above the brow, all seeming to tell of energy and passion. There were the blue-gray eyes, shining mildly under urban eyelashes, seeming, like the hands, to tell of acute sensitiveness. Ramola felt certain they were the features of Fra Girolamo Savonorola, the prior of San Marco, whom she had chiefly thought of as more offensive than other monks, because he was more noisy. Her rebellion was rising against the first impression, which had almost forced her to bend her knees. Neal my daughter, the penetrating voice said again, the pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul. He was looking at her with mild fixedness while he spoke, and again she felt that subtle mysterious influence of a personality by which it has been given to some rare men to move their fellows. Slowly Ramola fell on her knees, and in the very act a tremor came over her. In the renunciation of her proud erectness, her mental attitude seemed changed, and she found herself in a new state of passiveness. Her brother began to speak again. Ramola, in the deep night, as I lay awake, I saw my father's room, the library with all the books and the marbles, and the ledger where I used to stand and read. And I saw you, you were revealed to me as I see you now, with fair long hair sitting before my father's chair, and at the ledger stood a man whose face I could not see. I looked and looked, and it was blank to me, even as a painting faced, and I saw him move and take the Ramola by the hand, and then I saw thee take my father by the hand, and you all three went down the stone steps into the streets, the man whose face was a blank to me, leading the way, and you stood at the altar in Santacrote, and the priest who married you had the face of death, and the graves opened, and the dead in their shrouds rose and followed you like a bridal train, and you passed on through the streets and the gates into the valley, and it seemed to me that he who led you hurried you more than you could bear, and the dead were weary of following you and turned back to their graves, and at last you came to a stony place where there was no water, and no trees or herbage, but instead of water. I saw written parchment unrolling itself everywhere, and instead of trees and herbage, I saw men of bronze and marbles ringing up and crowding round you, and my father was faint for want of water, and fell to the ground, and the man whose face was a blank loosed thy hand and departed, and as he went I could see his face, and it was the face of the great tempter, and thou, Ramola, didst wring thy hands and seek for water, and there was none, and the bronze and marble figures seemed to mock thee and hold out cups of water, and when thou didst grasp them and put them to my father's lips, they turned to parchment, and the bronze and marble figures seemed to turn into demons and snatched my father's body from thee, and the parchment shriveled up, and blood ran everywhere instead of them, and fire upon the blood till they all vanished, and the plain was bare and stony again, and thou wasst alone in the midst of it, and then it seemed that the night fell and I saw no more. Thrice I have had that vision, Ramola, I believe it is a revelation meant for thee to warn thee against marriage as a temptation of the enemy, it calls upon thee to dedicate thyself. His pauses had gradually become longer and more frequent, and he was now compelled to cease by a severe fit of gasping in which his eyes would turn on the crucifix, as on a light that was vanishing. Presently he found strength to speak again, but in a feebly, scarcely audible tone, to renounce the vain philosophy and corrupt thoughts of the heathens, for in the hour of sorrow and death their pride would turn to mockery, and the unclean gods will. The words died away. In spite of the thought that was at work in Ramola, telling her that this vision was no more than a dream, fed by youthful memories and ideal convictions, a strange awe had come over her. Her mind was not apt to be assailed by sickly fantasies. She had the vivid intellect and the healthy human passion which are too keenly alive to the constant relations of things to have any morbid craving after the exceptional. Still the images of the vision she despised jarred and distressed her like painful and cruel cries, and it was the first time she had witnessed the struggle with approaching death. Her young life had been somber, but she had known nothing of the utmost human needs, no acute suffering, no heart-cutting sorrow, and this brother, come back to her in his hour of supreme agony, was like a sudden, awful apparition from an invisible world. The pale faces of sorrow in the fresco on the opposite wall seemed to have come nearer and to make one company with the pale face on the bed. Fradi, said the dying voice. Fragiloramo leaned down, but no other word came for some moments. Ramola, it said next. She leaned forward, too, but again there was silence. The words were struggling in vain. Fragiloramo, give! The crucifix, said the voice of Fragiloramo. No other sound came from the dying lips. Dino, said Ramola, with a low but piercing cry, as the certainty came upon her that the silence of misunderstanding could never be broken. Take the crucifix, my daughter, said Fragiloramo, after a few minutes. His eyes behold it no more. Ramola stretched out her hand to the crucifix, and this act appeared to relieve the tension of her mind. A great sob burst from her. She bowed her head by the side of her dead brother, and wept aloud. It seemed to her as if this first vision of death must alter the daylight for her for evermore. Fragiloramo moved towards the door, and called in a lay brother who was waiting outside. Then he went up to Ramola and said in a tone of gentle command, Rise, my daughter, and be comforted. Our brother is with the blessed. He has left you the crucifix in remembrance of the heavenly warning, that it may be a beacon to you in the darkness. She rose from her knees, trembling, folded her veil over her head, and hid the crucifix under her mantle. Fragiloramo then led the way out into the cloistered court, lit now only by the stars and by a lantern which was held by someone near the entrance. Several other figures in the dress of the dignified laity were grouped about the same spot. They were some of the numerous frequenters of San Marco who had come to visit the prior, and, having heard that he was in attendance on the dying brother in the chapter house, had awaited him here. Ramola was dimly conscious of footsteps and rustling forms moving aside. She heard the voice of Fragiloramo saying in a low tone, Our brother is departed. She felt a hand laid on her arm. The next moment the door was opened and she was out in the wide piazza of San Marco, with no one but Mona Brigita and the servant carrying lantern. The fresh sense of space revived her and helped her to recover her self-mastery. The scene which had just closed upon her was terribly distinct and vivid, but it began to narrow under the returning impressions of the life that lay outside it. She hastened her steps, with nervous anxiety to be again with her father, and with Tito, for were they not together in her absence? The images of that vision, while they clung about her like a hideous dream, not yet to be shaken off, made her yearn all the more for the beloved faces and voices that would assure her of her waking life. Tito, we know, was not with Bardo. His destiny was being shaped by a guilty consciousness, urging on him the despairing belief that by this time, Ramola possessed the knowledge which would lead to their final separation. And the lips that could have conveyed that knowledge were forever closed. The provision that Fran Luca's words had imparted to Ramola had been such as comes from the shadowy region where human souls seek wisdom apart from the human sympathies, which are the very life and substance of our wisdom. The revelation that might have come from simple questions of finial and brotherly affection had been carried into irrevocable silence. 16. A Florentine Joke Early the next morning Tito was returning from Bardo's shop in the narrow thoroughfare of the Faravecci. The Genoese stranger had carried away the Onyx ring, and Tito was carrying away fifty Florence. It did just cross his mind that if, after all, fortune by one of her able devices, saved him from the necessity of quitting Florence, it would be better for him not to have parted with his ring, since he had been understood to wear it for the sake of peculiar memories and predilections. Still it was a slight matter, not worth dwelling on with any emphasis, and in those moments he had lost his confidence in fortune. The feverish excitement of the first alarm which had impelled his mind to travel into the future had given place to a dull regretful lassitude. He cared so much for the pleasures that could only come to him through the good opinion of his fellow men that he wished now he had never risked ignominy by shrinking from what his fellow men called obligations. But our deeds are like children that are born to us. They live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never. They have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness, and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on Tito for the first time. He was going back to his lodgings in the piazza di San Giavani, but he avoided passing through the Mercato Vecchio, which was his nearest way, lest he should see Tessa. He was not in the humour to seek anything. He could only await the first sign of his altering lot. The piazza with its sights of beauty was lit up by that warm morning sunlight under which the autumn dew still lingers, and which invites to an eyed lass, undulled by fatigue. It was a festival morning, too, when the soft warmth seems to steal over one with a special invitation to lounge and gaze. Here, too, the signs of the fair were present. In the spaces round the octagon of baptistry stalls were being spread with fruit and flowers, and here and there laden yules were standing quietly absorbed in their nose bags, while their drivers were perhaps gone through the hospitable sacred doors to kneel before the blessed virgin on this morning of her nativity. On the broad marble steps of the Duomo there were scattered groups of beggars and gossiping talkers. Here an old crone with white hair and hard sun-burnt face encouraging a round-capped baby to try its tiny bare feet on the warmed marble, while a dog sitting near snuffed at the performance suspiciously. There were a couple of shaggy-headed boys learning to watch a small pale cripple, who was cutting a face on a cherry-stone. And above them on the wide platform men were making changing knots and laughing Dusseltory chat, or else were standing in close couples gesticulating eagerly. But the largest and most important company of loungers was that towards which Tito had to direct his steps. It was the busiest time of the day with Nello, and in this warm season and at an hour when clients were numerous, most men preferred being shaved under the pretty red and white awning in front of the shop rather than within narrow walls. It is not a sublime attitude for a man to sit with lathered chin thrown backward and have his nose made a handle of, but to be shaved was a fashion of Florentine respectability, and it is astonishing how gravely men look at each other when they are all in their fashion. It was the hour of the day, too, when yesterday's crop of gossip was freshest, and the barber's tongue was always in its glory when his razor was busy. The deft activity of those two instruments seemed to be set going by a common spring. Tito foresaw that it would be impossible for him to escape being drawn into the circle. He must smile and retort and look perfectly at his ease. Well, it was but the ordeal of swallowing bread and cheese-pills after all. The men who let the mere anticipation of discovery choke him was simply a man of weak nerves. But just at that time Tito felt a hand laid on a shoulder, and no amount of previous resolution could prevent the very unpleasant sensation with which that sudden touch jarred him. His face, as he turned it round, betrayed the inward shock, but the owner of the hand that seemed to have such evil magic in it broke into a light laugh. He was a young man about Tito's own age, with keen features, small, close clipped head, and close shaven lip and chin, given the idea of a mind as little encumbered as possible with material that was not nervous. The keen eyes were bright with hope and friendliness, as so many other young eyes have been that have afterwards closed on the world in bitterness and disappointment. For at that time there were number-pleasant predictions about Niccolò Machiavelli as a young man of promise who was expected to mend the broken fortunes of his ancient family. Why, Milema, what evil dream did you have last night that took my light grasp of that of a sparrow or something worse? Ah, Mesa Niccolò, said Tito, recovering himself immediately. It must have been extra amount of dullness in my veins this morning that shuddered at the approach of your wit. But the fact is I have had a bad night. That is unlucky, because you will be expected to shine without any obstructing fog today in the Routallet Gardens. I take it for granted you are to be there. Mesa Bernardo did me the honour to invite me, said Tito, but I shall be engaged elsewhere. Ah, I remember you are in love, said Machiavelli with a shrug. Else you would never have such inconvenient engagements. Why, we are to eat a peacock and orderlons under the loggia, among Bernardo Routallet's rare trees. There are to be the choicest spirits in Florence and the choicest wines. Only as Piero de' Medici is to be there, the choicest spirits may happen to be swamped in the capping of imprompto verses. I hate that game. It is a device for the triumph of small wits, who are always inspired the most by the smallest occasions. What is that you are saying about Piero de' Medici and small wits, Mesa Nicolo? said Nello, whose light figure was at the moment predominating over the Herculian frame of Nicola Capara. That famous worker and iron whom we saw last with bared muscular arms and leather napron in the Mercado Vecchio was this morning dressed in holiday suit. And as he sat submissively while Nello skipped around him, lathered him, seized him by the nose and scraped him with magical quickness, he looked as much as a lion might if it had dawned linen and tunic, and was preparing to go into society. A private secretary will never rise in the world if he couples great and small in that way, continued Nello. When great men are not allowed to marry their sons and daughters as they like, small men must not expect to marry their words as they like. Have you heard the news Domenici Cennini here has been telling us? The Pagol Antonio Sotirini has given Sir Piero de' Bibiana a box on the ear for setting on Piero de' Medici to interfere with the marriage between young to muscle Sotirini and Fiametta Strozzi and is to be sent to Ambassador de' Venice as a punishment. I don't know which I am here most, said Machiavelli, the offence of the punishment. The offence will make him the most popular man in all Florence, and the punishment will take him among the only people in Italy who have known how to manage their own affairs. Yes, if Sotirini stays long enough at Venice, said Cennini, he may chance to learn the Venetian fashion and bring it home with him. The Sotirini have been fast friends of the Medici, but what has happened is likely to open Pagol Antonio's eyes to the good of our old Florentine trick of choosing a new hornet when the old one gulls us, if we have not quite lost the trick in these last fifty years. Not we, said Nicola Capata, who was rejoicing in the free use of his lips again. Eat eggs and Lenten snow will melt. That's what I say to our people when they get noisy over their cups at Zangallo, and talk of rising a roule-mort, insurrection. I say never do you plan a roule-mort, you may as well try to fill arno with buckets. When there's water enough, arno will be full, and that will not be till the torrent is ready. Capata, that oracular speech of yours is due to my excellent shaving, said Nello. You could never have made it with that dark rust on your chin. Echo Mesa Domenico, I am ready for you now. By the way, my Bal Eru Ditto, continued Nello as he saw Tito moving towards the door. Here has been old Masso seeking for you, but your nest was empty. He will come again presently. The old man looked mournful and seemed in haste. I hope there is nothing wrong in the Via de Bardi. Doubtless Mesa Tito knows that Bardo's son is dead, said Crenica, who had just come up. Tito's heart gave a leap. Had the death happened before Ramola saw him? No, I had not heard it. He said with no more discomposure than the occasion seemed to warrant, turning and leaning against the door-post, as if he had given up his intention of going away. I knew that his sister had gone to see him. Did he die before she arrived? No, said Crenica. I was in San Marco at the time and saw her come out from the chapter-house with Fraggio Lamo, who told us that the dying man's breath had been preserved as by a miracle that he might make a disclosure to his sister. Tito felt that his fate was decided. Again his mind rushed over all the circumstances of his departure from Florence, and he conceived a plan of getting back his money from Cennini before the disclosure had become public. If he once had his money he'd need not stay long in endurance of scorching looks and biting words. He would wake now and go away with Cennini and get the money from him at once. With that project in his mind he stood motionless, his hands in his belt, his eyes fixed absently on the ground. Nello glancing at him felt sure that he was absorbed in anxiety about Ramola, and thought him such a pretty image of self-forgetful sadness that he just perceptibly pointed his razor at him and gave a challenging look at Piero da Cosimo, whom he had never forgiven for his refusal to see any prognostics of character in his favourite's handsome face. Piero, who was leaning against the other door-post close to Tito, shrugged his shoulders. The frequent recurrence of such challenges from Nello had changed the painter's first declaration of neutrality into a positive inclination to believe ill of the much-praised Greek. So you have got your Fraggio Lamo back again, Cronica. I suppose we shall have him preaching again this next advent, said Nello. And not before there is need, said Cronica gravely. We have had the best testimony to his words since the last Querasima, for even to the wicked wickedness has become a plague, and the ripeness of vice is turning to rottenness in the nostrils even of the vicious. There has not been a change since Querasima, either in Rome or at Florence, but has put a new seal on the Frate's words, that the harvest of sin is ripe, and that God will reap it with a sword. I hope he has had a new vision, however, said Francesco Chase nearingly. The old ones are somewhat stale. Can't our Frate get a poet to help out his imagination for him? He has no lack of poets about him, said Cronica with quiet contempt. But they are great poets and not little ones, so they are contented to be taught by him, and no more think the truth stale which God has given them to utter, than they think the light of the moon is stale. But perhaps certain high prelates and princes, who dislike the Frate's denunciations, might be pleased to hear that though Giovanni Pico and Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino, and most other men of Mark and Florence, reverence Fra Girolamo, Mesa Francesco Chase despises him. Poliziano, said Chase with a scornful laugh, he asked Atlas he believes in your new Jonah, witnessed the final rations he wrote for the envoys of Siena, to tell Alexander the Sixth that the world and the Church would never so well off as since he became Pope. Ne Francesco, said Machiavelli, smiling, a various scholar must have various opinions, and as for the Frate, whatever we may think of his saintliness, you judge his preachings too narrowly. The secret of oratory lies not in saying new things, but in saying things with a certain power that moves the hearers, without which, as Old Phil Elfo said, your speaker deserves to be called non-oratorium said oratorium, and according to that test, Fra Girolamo is a great orator. That is true Nicolo, said Cennini speaking from the shaving chair. A part of the secret lies in the prophetic visions. Our people, no offense to you, Cronica, will run after anything in the shape of a prophet, especially if he prophesized heirs and tribulations. Rather say, Cennini, answered Cronica, that the chief secret lies in the Frate's pure life and strong faith which stamp him as a messenger of God. I admit it, I admit it, said Cennini, opening his palms as he rose from the chair. His life is spotless, no man has impeached it. He is satisfied with the pleasant lust of arrogance, Che burst out bitterly. I can see it in that proud lip and satisfied eye of his. He hears the air filled with his own name. Fra Girolamo's Savonarola, a Ferrara, the prophet, the saint, the mighty preacher, who frightens the very babies of Florence into laying down their wicked bobbles. Come, come, Francesco, you are out of humour with waiting, said the conciliatorianello. Let me stop your mouth with a little lather. I must not have my friend Cronica made angry. I have a regard for his chin, and his chin is in no respect altered since he became a piegnone. And for my part I confess, when the frate was preaching in the Duomo last advent, I got into such a trick of slipping in to listen to him that I might have turned piegnone, too, if I had not been hindered by the liberal nature of my art, and also by the length of the sermons, which are sometimes a good while before they get to the moving point. But, as Messem Nicolo here says, the frate lays hold of the people by some power over and above his prophetic visions. Monks and nuns who prophesy are not of that rareness. For what, says Luigi Polci, Dombruno's sharp-cutting cimetor had the fame of being enchanted. But, says Luigi, I am rather of opinion that it cut sharp because it was of strongly tempered steel. Yes, yes, Paternoster's may shave clean, but they must be set over a good razor. See, Nello! said Machiavelli. What doctor is this advancing on his Busephalus? I thought your piata was free from those furred and scarlet-robed lackeys of death. This man looks as if he had some such night-adventurous Boccaccio's pastro Simone, and had his bonnet a mantle pickled a little in the gutter, though he himself is as sleek as a miller's rat. Aha! said Nello with a long, drawn intonation, as he looked up towards the advancing figure, a round-headed, round-body personage, seated on a raw young horse, which held its nose out with an air of threatening obstinacy, and by a constant effort to back and go off in an oblique line, showed free views about authority very much in advance of the age. And I have a few more adventures in pickle for him, continued Nello in an undertone, which I hope will drive his inquiring nostrils to another quarter of the city. He's a doctor from Padua. They say he has been at Prato for three months, and now he's come to Florence to see what he can net. But his great trick is making rounds among the Contadini, and do you know those great saddle-bags he carries? They are to hold the fat capons and eggs and meal he levies on silly clowns with whom Coyne is scarce. He vents his own secret medicines, so he keeps away from the doors of the druggists, and for this last week he's been taken to sitting in my piazza for two or three hours every day, and making it a resort for asmus and squalling bambini. It stirs my gall to see the toad-face quack fingering the greasy quatrini, or bagging a pigeon in exchange for his pills and powders. But I'll put a few thorns in his saddle, else I'm no Florentine. Lodimus! He is coming to be shaved! That's what I've waited for! Mr. Domenico! Go not away! Wait! You shall see a rare bit of fooling, which I devised two days ago. Here, Sandro! Nello whispered in the ear of Sandro, who rolled his solemn eyes, nodded, and following up these signs of understanding with a slow smile, took to his heels with surprising rapidity. How is it with you, Master Tacho? said Nello, as the doctor with difficulty brought his horse's head round towards the barber's shop. That is a fine young horse of yours, but something raw in the mouth, eh? He is an accursed beast, the vermo-cane sees him. Said Master Tacho, with a burst of irritation, descending from his saddle and fastening the old bridle, mended with string, to an iron staple in the wall. And nevertheless, he added recollecting himself, a sound beast and a valuable for one who wanted to purchase and get a profit by training him. I had him cheap. Rather too hard riding for a man who carries your weight of learning, eh, Mastero? said Nello. You seem hot. Truly I am likely to be hot, said the doctor, taking off his bonnet, and giving to full view a bald, low head and flat, broad face, with high ears, wide lipless mouth, round eyes, and deep arched lines above the projecting eyebrows, which altogether made Nello's epithet toad-faced, dubiously complementary to the blameless patrachian. Riding from patrola when the sun is high is not the same thing as kicking your heels on a bench in the shade, like your Florence doctors. Moreover, I have had not a little pulling to get through the carts of mules and to the Makato to find out the husband of a certain Monagita, who had had a fatal seizure before I was called in, and if it had not been that I had to demand my fees. Monagita, said Nello, as the perspiring doctor interrupted himself to rub his head and face. Peace be with her angry soul! The Makato will want to whip them more if her tongue is laid to rest. Tito, who had roused himself from his abstraction and was listening to the dialogue, felt a new rush of the vague, half-formed ideas about Tessa, which had passed through his mind the evening before. If Monagita were really taken out of the way, it would be easier for him to see Tessa again, whenever he wanted to see her. Nothing, maestro! Nello went on in sympathizing tone. You are the slave of rude mortals, who but for you would die like brutes without help of pill or powder. It is pitiful to see or learn, linked, oozing from your pores, as if it were mere vulgar moisture. You think my shaving will cool and disencumber you? One moment, and I have done with Messer Francesco here. It seems to me a thousand years till I wait upon a man who carries all the science of Arabia in his said and saddle-bags. Echo Nello held up the shaving-cloth with an air of invitation, and maestro Tacho advanced and seated himself under a preoccupation with his heat and his self-importance, which made him quite deaf to the irony conveyed in Nello's officiously polite speech. It is but fitting that a great mediticus like you, said Nello, adjusting the cloth, should be shaved by the same razor that has shaved the illustrious Antonio Benavienna, the greatest master of the chirurgic art. The chirurgic art interrupted the doctor with an air of contemptuous disgust. Is it your florentine fashion to put the masters of the science of medicine on a level with men who do carpentry on broken lins and sew up wounds like tailors and carve away exorcises as the butcher-tremes meet? Via. A manual art such as any artifice her might learn, and which has been practiced by simple barbers like yourself, on a level with the noble science of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, which penetrates into the occult influences of the stars and plants and gents, a science locked up from the vulgar. No, in truth, maestro, said Nello, using his lather very deliberately, as if he wanted to prolong the operation to the utmost. I never thought of placing them on a level. I know your science comes next to the miracles of Holy Church for mystery, but there you see is the pity of it. Here Nello fell into a tone of regretful sympathy. Your high science is sealed from the profane and the vulgar, and so you become an object of envy and slander. I grieve to say it, but there are low fellows in the city, mere scary, who go about in night-caps and long beards and make it their business to sprinkle gall in every man's broth who is prospering. Let me tell you, for you are a stranger, this is the city where every man had need carry a large nail ready to fasten on the wheel of fortune when his side happens to be uppermost. Already there are stories, mere fables doubtless, beginning to be buzzed about concerning you, that make me wish I could hear of your being well on your way to Arezzo. I would not have a man of your metal stone, for though San Stefano was stoned, he was not great in medicine like San Cosmo and San Damiano. What stories! What fables! Stampled Maestro Tacho, what do you mean? Lasso! I fear me you are coming into the trap for your cheese, Maestro. The fact is, there is a company of evil use who grow prowling about the houses of our citizens, carrying sharp tools in their pockets. No sort of door or window or shutter, but they will pierce it. They are possessed with the diabolical patience to watch the doings of people who fancy themselves private. It must be they who have done it. It must be they who have spread the stories about you and your medicines. Have you by chance detected any small aperture at your door or window shutter? No. Well, I advise you to look, for it is now commonly talked of that you have been seen in your dwelling at the Cantot Paglia, making your secret specifics by night, pounding dried toads in a mortar, compounding a salve out of mashed worms, and making your pills from the dried livers of rats which you mix with saliva emitted during the utterance of blasphemous incantation, which indeed these witnesses profess to repeat. It is a pack of lies!" exclaimed the doctor, struggling to get utterance and then dissisting an alarm at the approaching razor. It is not to me or any of this respectable company that you need to say that, doctor. We are not the heads to plant such carats as those in. But what of that? What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands? There are those among us who think Cecco di Ascoli was an innocent sage, and we all know how he was burnt alive or being wiser than his fellows. Ah, doctor, it is not by living at Padua that you can learn to know Florentines. My belief is they would stone the Holy Father himself if they could find a good excuse for it. And they are persuaded that you are a necromancer who was trying to raise the pestilence by selling secret medicines. And I am told your specifics have in truth an evil smell. It is false! burst out the doctor as Nello moved away his razor. It is false! I will show the pills and powders to these honourable signore, and the sob. It has an excellent odor, an odor of—of sob! He started up with the lather on his chin and the cloth round his neck to search in his saddle-bag for the belied medicines. And Nello, in an instant, adroitly shifted the shaving chair till it was close in the vicinity of the horse's head, while Sandro, who had now returned at a sign from his master, placed himself near the bridle. Behold, Messeri! said the doctor, bringing a small box of medicines and opening it before them. Let any signore apply this box to his nostrils, and he will find an honest odor of medicaments, not indeed of pounded gems or rare vegetables from the east, or stones found in the bodies of birds, for I practice in the diseases of the vulgar, for whom heaven has provided cheaper and less powerful remedies, according to their degree. And there are even remedies known to our signs which are entirely free of cost, as the new tussis may be counteracted in the poorer who can pay for no specifics by a resolute holding of the breath. And here is a paste which is even of savory odor and is infallible against melancholia, being concocted under the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, and I have seen it allay spasms. Stay, Maestro! said Nello, while the doctor had his lather face turned towards the group near the door, eagerly holding out his box and lifting out one specific after another. Here comes a crying Contadena with her baby. Doubtless she is in search of you. It is perhaps an opportunity to you to show this honorable company a proof of your skill. Here, braunedana, here is the famous doctor. Why, what is the matter with the sweet bimbo? This question was addressed to a sturdy-looking broad-shoulder Contadena, with her head-drapery folded about her face so that little was to be seen but a bronzed nose and a pair of dark eyes and eyebrows. She carried her child packed up in the stiff mummy-shaped case, in which Italian babies have been from time immemorial introduced into society, turning its face a little towards her bosom and making those sourful grimaces which women are in the habit of using as a sort of pulleys to draw down reluctant tears. Oh, the love of the holy Madonna! said the woman in a wailing voice. Will you look at my poor bimbo? I know I can't pay you for it, but I took it into the nunciata last night and it's turned a worse color than before. It's the convulsions. But when I was holding it before the Santissima nunciata, I remember they said there was a new doctor-hub who cured everything and so I thought it might be the will of the holy Madonna that I should bring it to you. Sit down, maestro, sit down! said Nello. Here is an opportunity for you. Here are honorable witnesses who will declare before the magnificent date that they have seen you practicing honestly and relieving a poor woman's child. And then if your life is in danger, the magnificent date will put you in prison a little while just to ensure your safety, and after that the Siberia will conduct you out of Florence by night as they did the zealous Frate Menore who preached against the Jews. What! our people are given to stone-throwing, but we have magistrates. The doctor, unable to refuse, seated himself in the shaving chair trembling, half with fear and half with rage, and by this time quite unconscious of the lather which Nello had laid on with such profuseness. He deposited his medicine case on his knees, took out his precious spectacles, wondrous Florentine device, from his wallet, lodged them carefully above his flat nose and high ears, and, lifting up his brows, turned towards the applicant. Oh, Santa, did you look at him! said the woman with a more piteous wail than ever, as she held up the small mummy, which had its head completely concealed by dingy drapery wound round the head of the portable cradle, but seemed to be struggling and crying in a demoniacal fashion under this imprisonment. The fit is on him! Oh, am I! I know what colour he is! It's the evil eye, oh! The doctor, anxiously holding his knees together to support his box, bent his spectacles towards the baby and said cautiously, It may be a new disease, unwind these rags, Mona. The Contadina, with sudden energy, snatched off the encircling linen, when out-struggled, scratching, grinning, and screaming, what the doctrine is frightfully believed to be a demon, but what Tito recognised as Vaiano's monkey, made more forbiddable by an artificial blackness, such as might have come from hasty rubbing up the chimney. Up started the unfortunate doctor, letting his medicine box fall, in a way jumped the no less terrified and indignant monkey, finding the first resting place for his claws on the horse's mane, which she used as sort of a rope ladder, till he had fairly found his equilibrium, when he continued to clutch it as a bridle. The horse, wanting no spur under such a rider, and the already loosened bridle offering no resistance, darted off across the piazza with the monkey clutching, grinning, and blinking on his neck. Il cavallo, il divallo! was now shouted on all sides by the idle rascals, who gathered from all quarters of the piazza, and was echoed in tones of alarm by the stallkeepers, whose vested interest seemed in some danger. While the doctor, out of his wits with confused terror at the devil, the possible stoning and the escape of his horse, took to his heels with spectacles on nose, lavoured face, and the shaving-cloth about his neck crying, Stop him! Stop him! A florin! Stop him for a florin! While the lads outstripping him clapped their hands and shouted encouragement to the runaway. The serratano, who had not bargained for the flight of his monkey along with the horse, had caught up his petticoats with much salarity, and showed a pair of party-coloured hose above his cantadena's shoes, far in advance of the doctor, and away went the grotesque race up the Corso degli ad amari. The horse with the singular jockey, the cantadena with a remarkable hose, and the doctor in lather and spectacles, with furred mantle outflying. It was a scene such as Florentine's loved, from the potent and reverent senior going to counsel in his luco down to the grinning youngster, who felt himself master of all situations when his bag was filled with smooth stones from the convenient dry bread of the torrent. The gray-headed Domenica Cennini laughed no less heartily than the younger men, and Nello was triumphantly secure of the general admiration. Aha! He exclaimed, snapping his fingers when the first burst of laughter was subsiding. I have cleared my piazza of that unsavory fly-trap Mipare. Maestro Tacho will no more come here again to sit for patience than he will take to licking marble for his dinner. You are going towards the piazza della Sinoria, Mesa Domenico, said Machiavelli. I will go with you, and we shall perhaps see who has deserved the palio among these racers. Come, Milena, will you go too. It had been precisely Tito's intention to accompany Cennini, but before he had gone many steps, he was called back by Nello, who saw Maso approaching. Maso's message was from Ramola. She wished Tito to go to the Via de Bardi as soon as possible. She would see him under the loggia at the top of the house, as she wished to speak to him alone. CHAPTER XVII under the loggia The loggia at the top of Bardo's house rose above the buildings on each side of it, and formed a gallery round quadrangular walls. On the side towards the street the roof was supported by columns, but on the remaining sides by a wall pierced with arched openings so that at the back, looking over a crowd of irregular, poorly built dwellings towards the hill of Bogoli, Romola could at all times have a walk sheltered from observation. Near one of those arched openings, close to the door by which she had entered the loggia, Tito awaited her, with a sickening sense of the sunlight that slanted before him and mingled itself with the ruin of his hopes. He had never for a moment relied on Romola's passion for him as likely to be too strong for the repulsion created by the discovery of his secret. He had not the presumptuous vanity which might have hindered him from feeling that her love had the same root with her belief in him. But as he imagined her coming towards him in her radiant beauty, made so lovably mortal by her soft hazel eyes, he fell into wishing that she had been something lower, if it were only that she might let him clasp and kiss her before they parted. He had had no real caress from her, nothing but now and then a long glance, a kiss, a pressure of the hand, and he had so often longed that they should be alone together. They were going to be alone now, but he saw her standing inexorably aloof from him. His heart gave a great throb as he saw the door move. Romola was there. It was all like a flash of lightning he felt rather than saw the glory about her head, the tearful, appealing eyes. He felt rather than heard the cry of love with which she said, Tito! And in the same moment she was in his arms and sobbing with her face against his. How poor Romola had yearned through the watches of the night to see that bright face. The new image of death, the strange bewildering doubt infused into her by the story of a life removed from her understanding and sympathy, the haunting vision which she seemed not only to hear uttered by the low gasping voice, but to live through as if it had been her own dream, had made her more conscious than ever that it was Tito who had first brought the warm stream of hope and gladness into her life, and who had first turned away the keen edge of pain and the remembrance of her brother. She would tell Tito everything. There was no one else to whom she could tell it. She had been restraining herself in the presence of her father all the morning, but now that long pent-up sob might come forth. Proud and self-controlled to all the world beside, Romola was as simple and unreserved as a child in her love for Tito. She had been quite contented with the days when they had only looked at each other, but now when she felt the need of clinging to him there was no thought that hindered her. My Romola, my goddess, Tito murmured with passionate fondness as he clasped her gently and kissed the thick golden ripples on her neck. He was in paradise, disgrace, shame, parting. There was no fear of them any longer. This happiness was too strong to be marred by the sense that Romola was deceived in him. Nay, he could only rejoice in her delusion, for after all, concealment had been wisdom. The only thing he could regret was his needless dread, if indeed the dread had not been worth suffering for the sake of this sudden rapture. The sob had satisfied itself, and Romola raised her head. Neither of them spoke. They stood looking at each other's faces with that sweet wonder which belongs to young love. She with her long white hands on the dark brown curls, and he with his dark fingers bathed in the streaming gold. Each was so beautiful to the other. Each was experiencing that undisturbed mutual consciousness for the first time. The cold pressure of a new sadness on Romola's heart made her linger the more in that silent, soothing sense of nearness and love, and Tito could not even seek to press his lips to hers, because that would be change. Tito, she said at last, it has been altogether painful, but I must tell you everything. Your strength will help me to resist the impressions that will not be shaken off by reason. I know Romola. I know he is dead, said Tito, and the long, lustrous eyes told nothing of the many wishes that would have brought about that death long ago if there had been such potency and mere wishes. Romola only read her own pure thoughts in their dark depths, as we read letters in happy dreams. So changed Tito. It pierced me to think that it was Dino, and so strangely hard, not a word to my father, nothing but a vision that he wanted to tell me. And yet it was so piteous, the struggling breath, and the eyes that seemed to look towards the crucifix, and yet not to see it. I shall never forget it. It seems as if it would come between me and everything I shall look at. Romola's heart swelled again so that she was forced to break off, but the need she felt to disburden her mind to Tito urged her to repress the rising anguish. When she began to speak again her thoughts had traveled a little. It was strange, Tito. The vision was about our marriage, and yet he knew nothing of you. What was it, my Romola? Sit down and tell me, said Tito, leading her to the bench that stood near. A fear had come across him lest the vision should somehow or other relate to Baldissare, and this sudden change of feeling prompted him to seek a change of position. Romola told him all that had passed from her entrance into San Marco, hardly leaving out one of her brother's words, which had burnt themselves into her memory as they were spoken. But when she was at the end of the vision she paused. The rest came too vividly before her to be uttered, and she sat looking at the distance, almost unconscious for the moment that Tito was near her. His mind was at ease now, that vague vision had passed over him like white mist and left no mark. But he was silent, expecting her to speak again. I took it, she went on, as if Tito had been reading her thoughts. I took the crucifix. It is down below in my bedroom. And now, my Romola, said Tito intrudingly, you will banish these ghastly thoughts. The vision was an ordinary, monkish vision, bread of fasting and fanatical ideas. It surely has no weight with you. No, Tito, no. But poor Dino, he believed it was a divine message. It is strange, she went on meditatively. This life of men possessed with fervid beliefs that seemed like madness to their fellow beings. Dino was not a vulgar fanatic, and that fragile Romola. His very voice seems to have penetrated me with the sense that there is some truth in what moves them, some truth of which I know nothing. It was only because your feelings were highly wrought, my Romola. Your brother's state of mind was no more than a form of aptheosophy, which has been the common disease of excitable, dreamy minds in all ages. The same idea is that your father's old antagonist, Marsilio Ficino, pours over in the new Platonists. Only your brother's passionate nature drove him to act out what other men write and talk about. And for Fragerolamo, he is simply a narrow-minded monk, with a gift of preaching and infusing terror into the multitude. Any words or any voice would have shaken you at that moment. When your mind has had a little repose, you will judge of such things as you have always done before. Not about poor Dino, said Romola. I was angry with him. My heart seemed to close against him while he was speaking, but since then I have thought less of what was in my own mind and more of what was in his. Oh, Tito, it was very piteous to see his young life coming to an end in that way. That yearning look at the crucifix when his gasping for breath, I can never forget it. Last night I looked at the crucifix a long while and tried to see that it would help him. Until it last it seemed to me by the lamplight as if the suffering face shed pity. My Romola, promise me to resist such thoughts. They are fit for sickly nuns, not for my golden-tressed aurora, who looks made to scatter all such twilight fantasies. Try not to think of them now. We shall not long be alone together. The last words were uttered in a tone of tender beseeching, and he turned her face towards him with a gentle touch of his right hand. Romola had had her eyes fixed absently on the arched opening, but she had not seen the distant hill. She had all the while been in the chapter house looking at the pale images of sorrow and death. Tito's touch and beseeching voice recalled her, and now in the warm sunlight she saw that rich dark beauty which seemed to gather round at all images of joy. Purple vines festooned between the elms, the strong corn perfecting itself under the vibrating heat. Bright winged creatures hurrying and resting among the flowers, round limbs beating the earth in gladness, with symbols held aloft. Light melodies chanted to the thrilling rhythm of strings, all objects in all sounds that tell of nature reveling in her force. Strange bewildering transition from those pale images of sorrow and death to this bright youthfulness, as of a sun god who knew nothing of night, what thought could reconcile that worn anguish in her brother's face, that straining after something invisible, with this satisfied strength and beauty and make it intelligible that they belonged to the same world? Or was there never any reconciling of them but only a blind worship of clashing deities, first in mad joy and then in wailing? Romola for the first time felt this questioning need like a sudden uneasy dizziness and want of something to grasp. It was an experience hardly longer than a sigh, for the eager theorizing of ages is compressed, as in a seed, in the momentary want of a single mind. But there was no answer to meet the need, and it vanished before the returning rush of young sympathy with the glad loving beauty that beamed upon her in new radiance, like the dawn after we have looked away from it to the gray west. Your mind lingers apart from our love, my Romola, Tito said, with a soft reproachful murmur. It seems a forgotten thing to you. She looked at the beseeching eyes in silence till the sadness all melted of her own. My joy, she said in her full clear voice. Do you really care for me enough then to banish those chill fancies? Or shall you always be suspecting me as the great tempter? said Tito with his bright smile. How should I not care for you more than for everything else? Everything I had felt before in all my life, about my father, about my loneliness, was a preparation to love you. You would laugh at me, Tito, if you knew what sort of man I used to think I should marry, some scholar with deep lines in his face like Alamono Rinuccini, and with rather gray hair who would agree with my father in taking the side of the Aristotelians and be willing to live with him. I used to think about the love I read of in the poets, but I never dreamed that anything like that could happen to me here in Florence in our old library. And then you came, Tito, and were so much to my father, and I began to believe that life could be happy for me, too. My goddess, is there any woman like you? said Tito, with a mixture of fondness and wondering admiration at the blended majesty and simplicity in her. But, dearest, he went on rather timidly, if you minded more about our marriage you would persuade your father and Messer Bernardo not to think of any more delays, but you seem not to mind about it. Yes, Tito, I will, I do mind, but I am sure my godfather will urge more delay now because of Dino's death. He has never agreed with my father about disowning Dino, and you know he has always said that we ought to wait until you have been at least a year in Florence. Do not think hardly of my godfather. I know he is prejudiced and narrow, but yet he is very noble. He has often said that it is folly in my father to want to keep his library apart, that it may bear his name, yet he would try to get my father's wish carried out. That seems to me very great and noble, that power of respecting a feeling which he does not share or understand. I have no rancor against Messer Bernardo for thinking you too precious for me, my Romula, said Tito, and that was true. But your father, then, knows of his son's death. Yes, I told him, I could not help him. I told him where I had been, and that I had seen Dino die, but nothing else, and he has commanded me not to speak of it again. But he has been very silent this morning, and has had those restless movements which always go to my heart. They look as if he were trying to get outside the prison of his blindness. Let us go to him now. I had persuaded him to try to sleep because he slept little in the night. Your voice will soothe him, Tito. It always does. And not one kiss? I have not had one, said Tito, in his gentle reproachful tone, which gave him an air of dependence, very charming, and a creature with those rare gifts that seemed to excuse presumption. The sweet pink blush spread itself with the quickness of light over Romula's face and neck as she bent towards him. It seemed impossible that their kisses could ever become common things. Let us walk once round the lodge, said Romula, before we go down. There is something grim and grave to me always about Florence, said Tito, as they paused in the front of the house, where they could see over the opposite roofs to the other side of the river. And even in its merriment there is something shrill and hard, biting rather than gay. I wish we lived in southern Italy, where thought has broken not by weariness, but by delicious langurs such as never seemed to come over the Ingenia Acherema Florentina. I should like to see you under that southern sun, lying among the flowers, subdued into mere enjoyment, while I bent over you and touched the loot and sang to you some little unconscious strain that seemed all one with the light in the warmth. You have never known that happiness of the nymphs, my Romula. No, but I have dreamed of it often since you came. I am very thirsty for a deep draft of joy, for a life all bright like you. But we will not think of it now, Tito. It seems to me as if there would always be pale, sad faces among the flowers, and eyes that look in vain. Let us go.