 Prologue of Remola. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Remola by George Eliot. Prologue. More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid-springtime of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad, slow wing from the Levant to the pillars of Hercules and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea, saw the same great mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen today, saw olive mounds and pine forests and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass, saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the riversides, or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea coast in the same spots where they rise today. And as the faint light of his course pierced into the dwellings of men, he fell, as now, on the rosy warmth of nestling children, on the haggard waking of sorrow and sickness, on the hasty uprising of the hard-handed labourer, and on the late sleep of the night-student who had been questioning the stars or the sages or his own soul for that hidden knowledge which would break through the barrier of man's brief life, and show its dark path that seemed to bend no wither, to be an arc in an immeasurable circle of light and glory. The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed, and those other streams, the life-currents that air-bend flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history, hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death. Even if, instead of following the dim day-break, our imagination pauses on a certain historical spot and awaits the fuller morning, we may see a world-famous city which has hardly changed its outline since the days of Columbus, seeming to stand as an almost unviolated symbol amidst the flux of human things, to remind us that we still resemble the men of the past more than we differ from them, as the great mechanical principles in which those domes and towers were raised must make a likeness in human building that will be broader and deeper than all possible change. And doubtless, if the spirit of a Florentine citizen whose eyes were closed for the last time while Columbus was still waiting and arguing for the three poor vessels with which he was to set sail from the port of Palos, could return from the shades and pause where our thought is pausing, he would believe that there must still be fellowship and understanding for him among the inheritors of his birthplace. Let us suppose that such a shade has been permitted to revisit the glimpses of the golden morning, and is standing once more on the famous hill of San Mineado, which overlooks Florence from the south. The spirit is clothed in his habit as he lived. The folds of his well-lined black silk garment, or luco, hang in grave unbroken lines from neck to ankle, his plain cloth cap with its baguetto, or long hanging strip of drapery, to serve as a scarf in case of need, surmounts a penetrating face, not perhaps very handsome, but with a firm, well-cut mouth, kept distinctly human by a close-shaven lip and chin. It is a face charged with memories of a keen and various life passed below there on the banks of the gleaming river, and as he looks at the scene before him, the sense of familiarity is so much stronger than the perception of change that he thinks it might be possible to descend once more amongst the streets and take up that busy life where he left it. For it is not only the mountains and the westward-bending river that he recognises, not only the dark sides of Mount Morello opposite to him, and the long valley of the Arno that seems to stretch its grey, low-tufted luxuriance to the far-off ridges of Carrara, and the steep height of Fiesoli with its crown of monastic walls and cypresses, and all the green-gray slopes sprinkled with villas which he can name as he looks at them. He sees other familiar objects much closer to his daily walks. For though he misses the seventy or more towers that once surmounted the walls and encircled the city as with a regal diadem, his eyes will not dwell on that blank. They are drawn irresistibly to the unique tower springing like a tall flower stem drawn towards the sun from the square turreted mass of the old palace in the very heart of the city, the tower that looks none the worse for the four centuries that have passed since he used to walk under it. The great dome, too, greatest in the world, which in his early boyhood had been only a daring thought in the mind of a small, quick-eyed man. There it raises its large curves still, eclipsing the hills. And the well-known bell-towers, jottos, with its distant hint of rich colour, and the graceful-spired badia, and the rest, he looked at them all from the shoulder of his nurse. Surely, he thinks, Florence can still ring her bells with the solemn hammer-sound that used to beat on the hearts of her citizens and strike out the fire there. And here, on the right, stands the long dark mass of Santa Croce where we buried our famous dead, laying the laurel on their cold brows and fanning them with the breath of praise and of banness. But Santa Croce had no spire then. We Florentines were too full of great building projects to carry them all out in stone and marble. We had our frescoes and our shrines to pay for, not to speak of rapacious conditieri, bribed royalty and purchased territories, and our façades and spires must need weight. But what architect can the Frati Minori, the Franciscans, have employed to build that spire for them? If it had been built in my day, Filippo Grimeleski or Micalozzo would have devised something of another fashion than that, something worthy to crown the Church of Amorfo. At this, the spirit with a sigh lets his eyes travel on to the city walls, and now he dwells on the change there with wonder at these modern times. Why have five out of the eleven convenient gates been closed? And why, above all, should the towers have been levelled that were once a glory in defence? Is the world become so peaceful then? And do the Florentines dwell in such harmony that there are no conspiracies to bring ambitious exiles home again with armed bands at their back? These are difficult questions. It is easier and pleasanter to recognise the old than to account for the new. And there flows Arnault with its bridges just where they used to be. The Ponte Vecchio, least like other bridges in the world, laden with the same quaint shops where our spirit remembers lingering a little on his way perhaps to look at the progress of that great palace which Messellucco Pitti had set a building with huge stones got from the hill of Bogoli, now Boboie, close behind, or perhaps to transact a little business with the cloth-dresses in Altraveno. The exorbitant line of the Pitti Roof is hidden from San Minardo, but the yearning of the old Florentine is not to see Messellucco's two ambitious palace which he built unto himself. It is to be down among these narrow streets and busy humming piazzé where he inherited the eager life of his father's. Is not the anxious voting with black and white beans still going on down there? Who are the priori in these months, eating soberly, regulated official dinners in the Palazzo Vecchio, with the moves of tripe and boiled partridges seasoned by practical jokes against the ill-fated butt among these potent seniors? Are not the significant banners still hung from the windows, still distributed with decent pomp under Arcania's loggia every two months? Life had it zest for the old Florentine when he, too, trod the marble steps and shared in those dignities. His politics had an area as wide as his trade, which stretched from Syria to Britain, but they had also the passionate intensity and the detailed practical interest, which could belong only to a narrow scene of corporate action, only to the members of a community shut in close by the hills and by walls of six miles' circuit, where men knew each other as they passed in the street, set their eyes every day on the memorials of their Commonwealth, and were conscious of having not simply the right to vote, but the chance of being voted for. He loved his honours and his gains, the business of his counting-house, of his guild, of the public council chamber. He loved his enmities, too, and fingered the white bean, which was to keep a hated name out of the borosa with more complacency than if it had been a golden Florentine. He loved to strengthen his family by a good alliance and went home with a triumphant light in his eyes after concluding a satisfactory marriage for his son or daughter under his favourite lodger in the evening cool. He loved his game of chess under that same lodger and his biting jest and even his coarse joke as not beneath the dignity of a man eligible for the highest magistracy. He had gained an insight into all sorts of affairs at home and abroad. He had been of the ten who managed the War Department, of the eight who attended to home discipline of the priori or signori who were the heads of the executive government. He had even risen to the supreme office of Gonfaloniere. He had made one in embassies to the Pope and to the Venetians. Antti had been commissary to the hired army of the Republic directing the inglorious bloodless battles in which no man died of brave breast wounds, virtuosi colpi, but only of casual falls and tramplings. And in this way he had learnt to distrust men without bitterness, looking on life mainly as a game of skill, but not dead to traditions of heroism and clean-handed honour. For the human soul is hospitable and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality. It was his pride, besides, that he was duly tinctured with the learning of his age and judged not altogether with the vulgar, but in harmony with the ancients. He, too, in his prime, had been eager for the most correct manuscripts, and had paid many Florence for antique vases and for disinterred busts of the ancient immortals, some, perhaps, trenches-naribus, wanting as to the nose, but not the less authentic. And in his old age he had made haste to look at the first sheets of that fine Homer, which was among the early glories of the Florentine press. But he had not, for all that, neglected to hang up a waxen image or double of himself under the protection of the Madonna nonciata, or to do penance for his sins in large gifts to the shrines of saints, whose lives had not been modelled on the study of the classics. He had not even neglected making liberal bequests towards buildings for the fratti against whom he had levelled many a jest. For the unseen powers were mighty. Who knew, who was sure, that there was any name than behind which there was no angry force to be appeased, no intercessory pity to be won? Were not gems medicinal, though they only pressed the finger? Were not all things charged with occult virtues? Lucretius might be right. He was an ancient and a great poet. Luigi Polici, too, who was suspected of not believing anything from the roof upward, the Altetto in Sioux, had very much the air of being wiped over the supper table when the wine and jests were circulated fast, though he was only a poet in the Volga town. There were even learned personages who maintained that Aristotle, wisest of men, unless indeed Plato, a wiser, was a thoroughly irreligious philosopher, and a liberal scholar must entertain all speculations. But the negatives might, after all, prove false. Nay, seemed manifestly false as the circling hours swept past him, and turned round with graver faces. For had not the world become Christian, had he not been baptized in the San Giovanni, where the dome is awful with the symbols of coming judgment, and where the altar bears a crucified image disturbing to perfect complacency in one's self and the world, our resuscitated spirit was not a pagan philosopher, nor a philosophizing pagan poet, but a man of the fifteenth century, inheriting its strange web of belief and unbelief, of Epicurean levity and phetacistic dread, of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude patterns acted out with childish impulsiveness, of inclination towards a self-indulgent paganism and inevitable subjection to that human conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air with strange prophecies and presentiments. He had smiled, perhaps, and shaken his head dubiously as he heard simple folk talk of a Pope Angelico, who was to come by and by and bring in a new order of things, to purify the church from simony, and the lives of the clergy from scandal. A state of affairs too different from what existed under Innocent the Eighth, for a shrewd merchant and politician to regard the prospect as worthy of entering into his calculation. But he felt the evils of the time, nevertheless, for he was a man of public spirit, and public spirit can never be wholly immoral, since its essence is care for a common good. That very charisma, or lent of 1492 in which he died, still in his erect old age, he had listened in San Lorenzo, not without a mixture of satisfaction, to the preaching of a Dominican friar named Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced with a rare boldness the worldliness and vicious habits of the clergy, and insisted on the duty of Christian men not to live for their own ease when wrong was triumphing in high places, and not to spend their wealth in outward pomp even in the churches, when their fellow citizens were suffering from want and sickness. The frate carried his doctrine rather too far for elderly ears, yet it was a memorable thing to see a preacher move his audience to such a pitch that the women even took off their ornaments and delivered them up to be sold for the benefit of the needy. He was a noteworthy man that prior of San Marco, thinks our spirit, somewhat arrogant and extreme perhaps, especially in his denunciations of speedy vengeance. Ah, idio, non pagali sabato, God does not pay on a Saturday. The wages of men's sins often linger in their payment, and I myself saw much established wickedness of long-standing prosperity. But a frate predicatori who wanted to move the people, how could he be moderate? He might have been a little less defiant and curt, though, to Lorenzo di Milici, whose family had been the very makers of San Marco. Was that quarrel ever made up? And are Lorenzo himself with the dim outward eyes and the subtle inward vision, did he ever get over that illness at Careggi? It was but a sad, uneasy-looking face that he would carry out of the world, which had given him so much. And there were strong suspicions that his handsome son would play the part of Rio Boan. How has it all turned out? Which part he is likely to be banished and have its houses sacked just now? Is there any successor of the incomparable Lorenzo, to whom the great Turk is so gracious as to send presents of rare animals, rare relics, rare manuscripts, or fugitive enemies, suited to the tastes of a Christian Magnifico, who is at once lettered and devout, and also slightly vindictive? And what famous scholar is dictating the Latin letters of the Republic? What fiery philosopher is lecturing on Dante and the Duomo, and going home to write bitter invectives against the father and mother of the bad critic, who may have found fault with his classical spelling? Are our wiser heads leaning towards alliance with the Pope and the Rigno, the name given to Naples by way of distinction among the Italian states, or are they rather untieing their ears to the orators of France and of Milan? There is knowledge of these things to be had in the streets below on the beloved Marmi in front of the churches, and under the shelter in Lodgi, where surely our citizens have still their gossip and debates, their bitter and merry jests as of old. For are not the well-remembered buildings all there? The changes have not been so great in those uncounted years. I will go down in here, I will tread the familiar pavement, and here once again the speech of Florentines. Go not down, good spirit, for the changes are great, and the speech of Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if you do go, mingle with no politicians on the Marmi or elsewhere, ask no questions about trade in the Calimara, confuse yourself with no inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the sunlight and the shadows on the grand walls that were built solidly and have endured in their grandeur. Look at the faces of the little children making another sunlight amidst the shadows of age. Look, if you will, into the churches and hear the same chants, see the same images as of old, the images of willing anguish for the great end, of beneficent love and ascending glory. See upturned living faces and lips moving to the old prayers for help. These things have not changed. The sunlight and shadows bring their old beauty and awaken the old heart strains at morning, noon and even tide. The little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty, and men still yearn for the reign of peace and righteousness, still own that life to be the highest which is a conscious, voluntary sacrifice. For the Pope Angelico is not come yet. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Lodger di Cerchi stood in the heart of Old Florence, within a labyrinth of narrow streets behind the Badia, now rarely threaded by the stranger, and less in a dubious search for a certain severely simple door-place, bearing this inscription. To the ear of Dante, the same streets rang with the shout and clash of fierce battle between rival families. But in the fifteenth century, they were only noisy with the unhistorical quarrels and broad jests of will-carders in the cloth-producing quarters of San Martino in Garbo. Under this Lodger, in the early morning of the ninth of April, 1492, two men had their eyes fixed on each other. One was stooping slightly and looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity. The other, lying on the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a suddenly awakened dreamer. The standing figure was the first to speak. He was a grey-haired, broad-shouldered man of the type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded with the fist and polished with the pickaxe. But the self-important gravity which had written itself out in the deep lines about his browned mouth seemed intended to correct any contemptuous inferences from the hasty workmanship which nature had bestowed on his exterior. He had deposited a large, well-filled bag made of skins on the pavement, before him hung a peddler's basket, garnished partly with small women's wear, such as thread and pins, and partly with fragments of glass, which had probably been taken in exchange for those commodities. Young man, he said, pointing to a ring on the finger of the reclining figure, when your chin has got a stiffer crop on it, you'll know better than to take your nap in street corners with a ring like that on your finger. By the holy angels, if it had been any body but me standing over you two minutes ago, but Pratifereveki is not the man to steal, the cat couldn't eat her mouse if she didn't catch it alive, and Pratifereveki couldn't relish gain if it had no taste of a bargain. Why, young man, one San Giovanni three years ago, the saint sent a dead body in my way, a blind beggar with his cap well lined with pieces. But, if you will believe me, my stomach turned against the money I'd never bargained for, till it came into my head that San Giovanni owed me the pieces for what I spend yearly at the festa. Besides, I buried the body and paid for a mass, and so I saw it was a fair bargain. But how comes a young man like you, with the face of Mesa San Michele, to be sleeping on a stone bed with the wind for a curtain? The deep, guttural sound of the speaker was scarcely intelligible to the newly-waked, bewildered listener, but he understood the action as pointing to his ring. He looked down at it, and, with a half-automatic obedience to the warning, took it off and thrust it within his doublet, rising at the same time and stretching himself. Your tunic and hoes match ill with that jewel, young man," said Brati deliberately, anybody might say that the saints had sent you a dead body, but if you took the jewels, I hope you buried him, and can afford a mass or two for him into the bargain. Something like a painful thrill a beard did dart through the frame of the listener, and arrest the careless stretching of his arms and chest. For an instant he turned on Brati with a sharp frown, but he immediately recovered an air of indifference, took off the red Leventine cap which hung like a great purse over his left ear, pushed back his long, dark brown curls, and, glancing at his dress, said smilingly, You speak true friend. My garments are as weather-stained as an old sail, and they are not old either. Only, like an old sail, they have had a sprinkling of the sea as well as the ring. The fact is, I'm a stranger in Florence, and when I came in foot-saw last night, I preferred flinging myself in a corner of this hospitable porch to hunting any longer for a chance hostery which might turn out to be a nest of blood-suckers of more sorts than one. A stranger in good suit, said Brati, for the words come all melting out of your throat, so that a Christian in a Florentine can't tell a hook from a hangar. But you're not from Genoa, more likely from Venice by the cut of your clothes. At this present moment, said the stranger smiling, it is of less importance where I come from than where I can go for a mouthful of breakfast. This city of yours turns a grim look on me just here. Can you show me the way to a more lively quarter where I can get a meal and a lodging? That I can, said Brati, and it is your good fortune, young man, that I happened to be walking in from Rovedzana this morning and turned out of my way to Mercato Vecchio to say an ave at the badia. That, I say, is your good fortune, but it remains to be seen what is my profit in this matter. Nothing for nothing, young man. If I show you the way to Mercato Vecchio, you'll swear by your patient saint to let me have the bidding for that stained suit of yours when you set up a better, as doubtless you will. Agreed, by San Nicolo, said the other laughing. But now let us set off to this said Mercato, for I feel the warmth of a better lining to this doblet of mine which you are coveting. Coveting? Nay, said Brati, heaving his bag on his back and setting out, but he broke off in his reply and burst out in loud, harsh tones, not unlike the creaking and grating of a cartwheel. Kia parrata, parrata, parrata, Kia parrata, cenci e vetri, prata farivecchi. Who wants to exchange rags, broken glass, or old iron? It's worth but little, he said presently, relapsing into his conversational tone. Hose and altogether your clothes are worth but little. Still, if you've a mind to set yourself up with a loot worth more than any new one, or with a sword that's been worn by a Rodolfi, or with a Patanoster of the best mode, I could let you have a great bargain by making an allowance for the clothes. For simple as I stand here, I've got the best furnished shop in the fervecchi and it's close by the Mercato. The virgin be praised. It's not a pumpkin I carry on my shoulders, but I don't stay caged in my shop all day. I've got a wife and a raven to stay at home and mine the stock. Hey, a barata, barata, barata! And now, young man, where do you come from and what's your business here in Florence? I thought you liked nothing that came to you without a bargain, said the stranger. You've offered me nothing yet in exchange for that information. Well, well, a Florentine doesn't mind bidding a fair price for news. It stays the stomach a little though he may win no hose by it. If I take you to the prettiest damsel in the Mercato to get a cup of milk, that will be a fair bargain. Nay, I can find her myself if she be really in the Mercato for pretty heads are apt to look forth with doors and windows. No, no, besides, a shark traded like you ought to know that he who bids for nuts and news may chance to find them hollow. Ah, young man, said Prati with a sideways glance of some admiration. You were not born of a Sunday. The salt shops were open when you came into the world. You're not a Hebrew, eh? Come from Spain or Naples, eh? Let me tell you that Prati Minori are trying to make Florence as hot as Spain for those dogs of hell that want to get all the profit of usury to themselves and leave none for Christians. And when you walk the calamara with a piece of yellow cloth in your cap, it will spoil your beauty more than a sword cut across the olive cheek of yours. A barata, barata, I tell you, young man, grey cloth is against yellow cloth and there's as much grey cloth in Florence as would make a gown and cowl for the Duomo. And there's not so much yellow cloth as would make hoes for St. Christopher. Blessed be his name and send me a sight of him this day. A barata, barata, all that is very amusing information you are parting with for nothing. said the stranger scornfully. But it happens not to concern me. I am not a Hebrew. See now! said Prati Triumphantly. I've made a good bargain with mere words. I've made you tell me something, young man. That you're as difficult to hold as a lampry. San Giovanni be praised. A blind Florentine is a match for two one-eyed men. But here we are in the Mercato. They had now emerged from the narrow streets into a broad piazza known to the elder Florentine writers as the Mercato Vecchio, or the Old Market. This piazza, though it had been a scene of a provision market from time immemorial, and may perhaps, so is fond imagination, be the very spot to which the Fesolean ancestors of the Florentines descended from their high fastness to traffic with the rustic population of the valley, had not been shunned as a place by Florentine wealth. In the early decades of the 15th century, which was now near its end, the Medici and other powerful families of the population of Rassi, or commercial nobility, had their houses there, not perhaps finding their ears much offended by the loud roar of mingled dialects, or their eyes much shocked by the butcher's stalls, which the old poet Antonio Pucci accounts as a chief glory, or dignita, of a market that, in hisisting, eclipsed the markets of all the earth beside. But the glory of mutton in veal, well attested to be the flesh of the right animals, for where not the skins with the heads attached, duly displayed according to the decree of the signoria, was just now wanting to the mercato, the time of Lent not being yet over. The proud corporation, or art of butchers, was in abeyance, and it was the great harvest time of the market gardeners, the cheese mungers, the vendors of macaroni, corn, eggs, milk, and dried fruits, a change which was apt to make the women's voices predominant in the chorus. But in all seasons, there was the experimental ringing of pots and pans, the chinking of the money-changes, the tempting offers of cheapness at the old clothes stalls, the challenges of the dices, the vaunting of new linens and woolens, of excellent woodenware, kettles and frying-pans. There was the choking of the narrow inlets with new wools and carts, together with much uncomplementary remonstrance in terms remarkably identical with the insults in use by the gentler sects of the present day, under the same imbrowning and heating circumstances. Ladies and gentlemen who came to market looked on at a larger amount of amateur fighting than could easily be seen in later times, and beheld more revolting rags, beggary and rascaldom than modern householders could well picture to themselves. As the day wore on, a hideous drama of the gaming-house might be seen here by any chance-open-air spectator, the quivering eagerness, the blank despair, the sobs, the blasphemy and the blows. Evidesi, chi perdi con gran sofi? estemiar con le mano aia michela, e ricevere e dar di molto in gofi. Still, there was the relief of prettier sights. There were brood rabbits, not less innocent and astonished than those of our own period. There were doves and singing-birds to be bought as presents for the children. There were even kittens for sale, and here and there Hansen Gaduccio, or Tom, with the highest character of mousin, and, better than all, there were the young, softly-rounded cheeks and bright eyes lined by the start from the far-off castello, walled village, at daybreak, not to speak of older faces with the unfading charm of honest goodwill in them, such as are never quite wanting in scenes of human industry. And high on a pillar in the centre of the place, a venerable pillar, fetched from the church of San Giovanni, stood Donatello's stone statue of plenty with a fountain near it, where, says old Pucci, the good wives of the market fashioned their utensils and their throats also, not because they were unable to buy wine, but because they wished to save the money for their husbands. But on this particular morning a sudden change seemed to have come over the face of the market. The desci, or stalls, were indeed partly dressed with the various commodities, and already they were purchased as assembled, on the alert to secure the finest, freshest vegetables and butter. But when Brati and his companion entered the piazza, it appeared that some common preoccupation had for the moment distracted the attention both of buyers and sellers from their proper business. Most of the traders had turned their backs on their goods, and had joined the knots of talkers who were concentrating themselves at different points in the piazza. A vendor of old clothes in the act of hanging out a pair distractedly hung them round his neck in his eagerness to join the nearest group. An oratorical cheese-monger with a piece of cheese in one hand and a knife in the other was unconsciously making notes of his emphatic pauses on that excellent specimen of Marzolino. And elderly market women with their egg baskets in a dangerously oblique position contributed in a wailing fugue of invocation. In this general distraction the quarantine boys who were never wanting in any street scene and were of an especially mischievous sort as who would say very sour crabs indeed saw a great opportunity. Some made a rush at the nuts and dried figs. Others preferred the ferocious delicacies at the cooked provision stalls delicacies to which certain four-footed dogs also who had learnt to take kindly to Lenten fair applied a discriminating nostril and then disappeared with much rapidity under the nearest shelter while the mules, not without some kicking and plunging among impeding baskets were stretching their muzzles towards the aromatic green moot. Diavolo, said Brati as he and his companion came quite unnoticed upon the noisy scene the Mercato is gone as mad as if the most holy father had excommunicated us again. I must know what this is but never fear it seems a thousand years to you till you see the pretty cessa and get your cup of milk but keep hold of me and I'll hold to my bargain. Remember I'm to have the first bid for your suit especially for the hose which with all their stains are the best panno di garbo as good as ruined with mud and weather stains. Hola monatreca, Brati preceded turning towards an old woman on the outside of the nearest group who for the moment had suspended her wail to listen and shouting close in her ear here are the mules upsetting all your bunches of parsley is the world coming to an end then? Monatreca, equivalent to Dame Greengrocer turned round at this unexpected trumpeting in her right ear with a half fierce, half bewildered look first at the speaker then at her disarranged commodities and then at the speaker again a bad Easter and a bad year to you and may you die by the sword she burst out rushing towards her stall but directing this first volley of her wrath against Brati who without heeding the malediction quietly slipped into her place within hearing of the narrative which had been absorbing her attention making a sign at the same time to the younger stranger to keep near him I tell you I saw it myself said a fat man with a bunch of newly purchased leaks in his hand I was in Santa Maria Novella and I saw it myself the woman started up and threw out her arms and cried out and said she saw a big bull with fiery horns coming down on the church to crush it I saw it myself saw what Goro said a man of slim figure twinkled rather roguishly he wore a close jerkin a skullcap lodged carelessly over his left ear as if it had fallen there by chance a delicate linen apron tucked up on one side and a razor stuck in his belt saw the bull or only the woman why the woman to be sure but it's all one me pade it doesn't alter the meaning that answered the fat man with some contempt no, no, that's clear enough said several voices at once and then followed a confusion of tongues in which lights shooting over San Lorenzo for three nights together thunder in the clear starlight lantern of the Duomo struck with the sword of Saint Michael Palle arms of the Medici all smashed lions tearing each other to pieces ah, they might well Boto, caduto in Santissima Anunciata died like the best of Christians God will have pardoned him were often repeated phrases which shot across each other like storm-driven hailstones each speaker feeling rather the necessity of utterance than of finding a listener note one Boto, a votive image of Lorenzo in wax hung up in the church of the Anunciata supposed to have fallen at the time of his death Boto is popular Tuscan for voto end of note perhaps the only silent members of the group for Brati, who, as a newcomer was busy enough mentally piecing together the flying fragments of information the man of the razor and a thin-lipped, eager-looking personage in spectacles, wearing a pen and ink case at his belt Ebbene nello said Brati, skirting the group that was within hearing of the barber it appears that the magnifico is dead rest his soul and the price of wax will rise even as you say ancied nello and then I live with an air of extra gravity but with marvellous rapidity and his wax and image in the Anunciata fell at the same moment, they say or at some other time whenever it pleases the Frati Serviti who know best and several cows and women have had and for the bad eggs that have been broken since the carnival nobody has counted them a great man a great politician a great poet then, Dante and yet the cupola didn't fall only the lantern a sharp and lengthened pssst was suddenly heard darting across the pelting storm of gutterils it came from the pale man in spectacles and had the effect he intended for the noise ceased and all eyes in the group were fixed on him with the look of expectation Tis well said you florentines are blind he began in an incisive high voice it appears to me you need nothing but a diet of hay to make cattle of you what? do you think the death of Lorenzo is the scourge god has prepared for Florence? go you are sparrows chattering a praise over the dead hawk what? a man who was trying to slip a noose over every neck in the republic that he might tighten it at his pleasure you like that you like to have the election of your magistrates turned into closet work and no man to use the rights of a citizen unless he's a magician that is what he's meant by qualification now neto di specchio no longer means that a man pays his dues to the republic it means that he'll wink at the rubbery of the people's money at the rubbery of their daughter's dowries that he'll play the chamberer and the philosopher by turns listen to bawdy songs at the carnival and cry bellissimi and listen to sacred lords and cry again bellissimi note 2 the phrase used to express the absence of disqualification i.e. the not being entered as a debtor in the public book of your end of note but this is what you love you grumble and raise it right over your cartone bianchi white fathons but you take no notice when the public treasury has got a hole in the bottom for the gold to run out into Lorenzo's drains you like to pay for footmen to walk before and behind one of your citizens that he may be affable and condescending to you see what a tall piece and we keep say you to march before him a drawn sword flashing in our eyes and yet Lorenzo smiles at us what goodness and you think the death of a man who would soon have saddled and bridled you as the sforza has saddled and bridled Milan you think his death is the scourge god is warning you up by portents i tell you there is another sort of scourge in the air nay nay sir johnny keep a stride your politics and never mount your prophecy politics is the better horse sednello but if you talk of portents what portent can be greater than a pious notary Balham's ass was nothing to it i but a notary out of work with his ink bottle dry said another bystander very much out at elbows better than a cowl at once said johnny everybody will believe in your fasting the notary turned and left the group with a look of indignate contempt posing as he did so the sallow but mild face of a short man who had been standing behind him and whose bent shoulders told of some sedentary occupation by san giovanni though said the fat purchaser of leaks with an air of a person rather shaken in his theories i am not sure there isn't some truth in what sir johnny says for i know i have good reason to find fault with the cotrini bianchi myself grumble, did he say? sophistication i should think we do grumble and let anybody say the word i'll turn out into the piazza with the rediest sooner than have our money altered in our hands as if the magistraty was so many necromancers and it's true Lorenzo might have hindered such work if he would and for the bull with the flaming horns why as sir johnny says there may be many meanings to it for the matter of that there are more necromancers than we think for when god above sends a sign it's not to be supposed he'd have only one meaning spoken like an oracle god or why when we poor mortals can pack true or three meanings into one sentence it will mere blasphemy not to believe that your miraculous bull means everything that any mind in flurrence likes it to mean thou art pleased to scoff, nella said the sallow round-shouldered man no longer eclipsed by the notary but it is not the less true that every revelation whether by visions, dreams, potents or the written word has many meanings which it is given to the illuminated only to unfold assuredly answered nella haven't I been to hear the frat in san Lorenzo but then I've been to hear framenico in a duomo too and according to him Gerofragerolomo with his visions and his interpretations is running after the wind of Manjubello and those to follow him are like to have the fate of certain swine that ran headlong into the sea or some hotter place with the san domenico roaring e vero in one ear and san francisco screaming e falso in the other what is a poor barber to do unless he were illuminated but it's plain our goro is beginning to be illuminated for he already sees that the bull with the flaming horns means first himself and secondly all the other aggrieved taxpayers of Florence who are determined to gore the magistracy on the first opportunity goro is a fool said a base voice with a note that dropped like the sound of a great bell in the midst of much tinkling let him carry home his leaks and shake his flanks over his wool-beating he'll mend matters more that way than by showing his tongue-shaped body in the piazza as if everybody might measure his grievances by the size of his porch the burdens that harm him most are his heavy carcass and his idleness the speaker had joined the group only in time to hear the conclusion of Nella's speech but he was one of those figures for whom all the world instinctively makes way and it would for a battering ram he was not much above the middle height but the impression of enormous force which was conveyed by his capacious chest and brawny arms bared to the shoulder was deepened by the keen sense and quiet resolution expressed in his glance and in every furrow of his cheek and brow he had often been an unconscious model to Domenico Giorlandoggio when that great painter was making the walls of the churches reflect the life of Florence translating pale aerial traditions into deep colour and strong lines of the faces he knew the naturally dark tint of his skin was additionally bronzed by the same powdery deposit that gave a polished black surface to his leather and apron a deposit which Habit had probably made a necessary condition of perfect ease for it was not washed off with punctilious regularity Goro turned his fat cheek and glassy eye on the Frank speaker with a look of deprecation rather than of resentment Why Nicolo? he said in an injured tone I've heard you sing to another tune than that often enough when you've been laying down the law at Sangallo on a festa I've heard you say yourself that a man wasn't a mill-wheel to be on the grind, grind as long as he was driven and then stick in his place without stirring when the water was low you'd be as fond of your vote as any man in Florence I, and I've heard you say if Lorenzo Yes, yes, said Nicolo don't you be bringing up my speeches again after you've swallowed them and handing them about as if they were none the worse I vote and I speak when there's any use in it if there's hot metal on the anvil I lose no time before I strike but I don't spend good hours and tinkling on cold iron or in standing on the pavement as thou dost goro with snout upward like a pig under an oak tree and as for Lorenzo dead and gone before his time he was a man who had an eye for curious ironwork and if anybody says he wanted to make himself a tyrant I say, see ya I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weather-cock but that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing though if there was any chance of a real reform so that Masocco the stone lion emblem of the republic might shake his mane and roar again instead of dipping his head to lick the feet of anybody that will mount and ride him I'd strike a good blow for it and that reform is not far off Nicolo said the sallow, mild-faced man seizing his opportunity like a missionary among two light-minded heathens for a time of tribulation is coming and the scourge is at hand and when the church is purged of cardinals and prelates who traffic in her inheritance that their hands may be full to pay the price of blood and to satisfy their own lusts the state will be purged too and Florence will be purged of men who love to see avarice and lechery under the red hat and the mitre because it gives them the opportunity of a more hellish vice than their own I, as Goro's broad body would be a screen from my narrow person in case of missile said Nanno but if that excellent screen happened to fall I was stifled under it surely enough that is no bad image of thy nanny or rather of the fratis for I fancy there is no room in the small cup of thy understanding for any other liquor than what he pours into it and it will well for thee Nanno replied Nanny if thou couldst empty thyself of thy scoffs and thy jests and take in that liquor too the warning is ringing in the ears of all men and it's no new story for the abbot Jochim prophesied the coming time 300 years ago and now Frageroloma has got the message afresh he has seen it in a vision even as the prophets of old he has seen the sword hanging from the sky I and thou wilt see it thyself Nanny if thou wilt stare upward long enough said Nicola for that pitiable tailor's work of thine makes thy noddle so overhang thy legs that thy eyeball can see nought above the stitching board but the roof of thy own skull the honest tailor bore the jest without bitterness bent on convincing his hearers of his doctrine rather than of his dignity but Nicola gave him no opportunity for reply for he turned away to the pursuit of his market business probably considering further dialogue as a tinkling on cold iron Ed Benek said the man with the holes round his neck who had lately migrated from another lot of talkers they are safest who cross themselves without nobody do you know that the Magnifico sent for the frate at the last and couldn't die without his blessing was it so in truth said several voices yes yes God will have pardoned him he died like the best of Christians never took his eyes from the holy crucifix and the frate will have given him his blessing well I know no more than a thousand only Guccio there met a footman going back to the careggi and he told him the frate had been sent for yesterday night after the Magnifico had confessed and had the holy sacraments it's likely enough the frate will tell the people something about it in his sermon this morning is it not true Nanny said Goro what do you think but Nanny had already turned his back on Goro and the group was rapidly thinning it's nice to go and hear new things from the frate new things were the nectar of Florentines others by the sense that it was time to attend to their private business in this general movement Prate got close to the barber and said Nello you've already tongue of your own and are used to warming secrets out of people when you've once got them well lathered I picked up a stranger this morning as I was coming from Robertsano and I can spell him out no better than I can the letters on that scarf I bought from the French Cavalier it isn't my wits are at fault I want no man to help me tell peas from pattern oysters but when you come to foreign fashions a fool may happen to know more than a wise man I thou hast the wisdom of my dust who could turn rags and rusty nails into gold even as thou dust he had also something of the ass about him but where is thy bird of strange plumage Prate was looking round with an air of disappointment Diavolo he said with some vexation the birds flown it's true he was hungry and I forgot him but we shall find him in the Mercato with incentive bread and savers I'll answer for him let us make the round of the Mercato then said Nello there isn't much in the way of cut and cloth on this side of the Holy Sepulchre that can puzzle a Florentine or frighten him either said Nello after he has seen an Englander or a German no, no, said Prate cordially one may never lose sight of the cupola and yet know the world I hope besides, this stranger's clothes are good Italian merchandise and the hose he wears would died in Onesanti before ever they would've died with salt water, as he says but the riddle about him is here Prate's explanation was interrupted by some jostling as they reached one of the entrances of the piazza and before he could resume it they had caught sight of the enigmatic object they were in search of End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Ramona this is a Librivox recording or Librivox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org Ramona by George Eliot Chapter 2 Breakfast for Love After Prate had joined the knot of talkers the young stranger hopeless of learning what was the cause of the general agitation and not much caring to know what was probably of little interest to any but born Florentines soon became tired of waiting for Prate's escort and chose to stroll around the piazza looking out for some vendor of eatables who might happen to have less than the average curiosity about public news but as if at the suggestion of a sudden thought he thrust his hand into a purse or wallet that hung at his waist and explored it again and again with a look of frustration not an obelisk by Jupiter he murmured in a language which was not Tuscan or even Italian I thought I had one poor piece left I must get my breakfast for love then he had not gone many steps farther before it seemed likely that he had found a quarter of the market where that medium of exchange might not be rejected in a corner away from any group of talkers two mules were standing well adorned with red tassels and collars one of them carried wooden milk vessels the other a pair of panties filled with herbs and salads resting her elbow on the neck of the mule that carried the milk there leaned a young girl apparently not more than sixteen with a red hood surrounding her face which was all the more babylike in its prettiness from the entire concealment of her hair the poor child perhaps was weary after her labour in the morning twilight in preparation for her warp to market from some castello three or four miles off for she seemed to have gone to sleep in that half standing half leaning posture nevertheless our young stranger had no compunction in awaking her but the means he chose were so gentle that it seemed to the damsel in her dream as if a little sprig of thyme had touched her lips while she was stooping to gather the herbs the dream was broken however for she opened her blue baby eyes and stared up with astonishment and confusion to see the young stranger standing close before her she heard him speaking to her in a voice which seemed strange and soft that even if she had been more collected she would have taken it for granted that he said something hopelessly unintelligible to her and her first movement was to turn her head a little away and lift up a corner of her green surge mantle as a screen he repeated his words forgive me pretty one for waking you I'm dying with hunger and the scent of milk makes breakfast seem more desirable than ever he had chosen the words more your diffame because he knew they would be familiar to her ears and he had uttered them playfully with the intonation of a mendicant this time he was understood the corner of the mantle was dropped and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk was held out to him he paid no further compliments before raising it to his lips and while he was drinking the little maiden found courage to look up at the long dark curls of this singular voiced stranger who had asked for food in the tones of a beggar but who though his clothes were much damaged was unlike any beggar she had ever seen while this process of survey was going on there was another current of feeling that carried her hand into a bag which hung by the side of the mule and when the stranger set down his cup he saw a large piece of bread held out towards him with the eyes of the blue eyes that seemed intended as an encouragement to him to take this additional gift but perhaps that is your own breakfast he said no I have had enough without payment a thousand thanks my gentle one there was no rejoinder in words but the piece of bread was pushed a little nearer to him as if in impatience at his refusal and as the long dark eyes of the stranger rested on the baby face it seemed to be gathering more and more courage to look up at them ah then if I must take the bread he said laying his hand on it I shall get bolder still and beg for another kiss to make the bread sweeter his speech was getting wonderfully intelligible in spite of the strange voice which had at first almost seemed a thing to make her cross herself she blushed deeply and lifted up a corner of her mantle to her mouth again but just as the two presumptuous stranger was leaning forward and had his fingers on the arm and held up the screening mantle he was startled by a harsh voice close upon his ear who are you with a mourn to you no honest fire I'll warrant but a hanger on over the dices or something worse go dance off and find fitter company or I'll give you a tune to a little quicker time than you'll like the young stranger drew back and looked at the speaker with a glance provokingly free from alarm and deprecation and his slight expression of saucy amusement looked into a broad beaming smile as he surveyed the figure of his threatener she was a stout but brawny woman with a man's jacket slipped over her green surge gamura or gown and the peaked hood of some departed mantle fastened round her sunburnt face which, under all its coarseness and premature wrinkles showed a half sad, half ludicrous maternal resemblance to the tender babyface of the little maiden the sort of resemblance which often seems a more croaking shadow-creating prophecy than that of the death-head there was something irresistibly propitiating in doubt bright young smile but Monlegita was not a woman to betray any weakness and she went on speaking apparently with heightened exasperation yes, yes you can grin as well as other monkeys in cap of jerkin you're a minstrel or a mountbank, I'll be sworn you look for all the world a tumbler when he's been upside down and has got on his heels again and what fool's tricks has thou been after Tessa? she added, turning to her daughter whose frightened face was more inviting to abuse giving away the milk and vitals it seems aye, I am bouts to carry water in thy ears for any idle vagabond that didn't like to stoop for it thou silly staring rabbit turn thy back and lift the herbs out of the panniers I'll make thee say a few alveys without counting nay, Madonna said the stranger with a cleeding smile don't be angry with your pretty Tessa for taking pity on a hungry traveller who found himself unexpectedly without a quatrino your handsome face looks so well when it frowns that I long to see it illuminated by a smile va, via I know what taste you are made of you may tickle me with that straw for a while before I shall laugh I can tell you get along with a bad easter else I'll make a beauty spot or two on that face of yours that shall spoil your kissing on this side advent Asma and Nagita lifted her formidable talents by way of complying with the first and last requirement of eloquence Prapti, who had come up a minute or two before had been saying to his companion what think you of this pretty parrot, Nella? doesn't his tongue smack a Venice? Nella Prapti said the barber in an undertone thy wisdom has much of the ass in it as I told thee just now especially about the ears this stranger is a Greek else I'm not the barber who has the soul and exclusive shaving of the excellent Dimitra I'm drawn more than one sorry tooth from his learned jaw and this youth might be taken to have come straight from Olympus at least when he has had a touch of my razor Orsu, Monagita continued Nella not sorry to see some sport what has happened to cause such a thunderstorm has this young stranger been misbehaving himself? that is San Giovanni said the cautious Prapti who had not shaken off his original suspicions concerning the shabbily clad possessor of jewels he did right to run away from me if he meant to get into mischief I can swear that I found him under the shadow on his fingers such as I've seen worn by Bernardo Ruccioli himself not another rusty nails worth do I know about him the fact is said Nella I am the stranger could humbly this bell of Giovanni has been a little too presumptuous in admiring the charms of Monagita and has attempted to kiss her while her daughter's back is turned for I observe that the pretty Tessa is too busy to look this way at present was it not so Messa Nella concluded in a towing of courtesy you have divined the offence like a soothsayer said the stranger laughing only that I had not the good fortune to find Monagita here at first I begged a cup of milk from her daughter and had accepted this gift of bread for which I was making a humble offering of gratitude before I had the higher pleasure of being face to face with these right perchance which I was perhaps too bold in admiring va, va we are every one of you and stay in purgatory till I pay to get you out will you? said Monagita fiercely, elbowing Nella and leaning forward her mule so as to compel the stranger to jump aside Tessa, thou simpleton bring forward thy mule a bit the cart will be upon us as Tessa turned to take the mule's bridle she cast one timid glance at the stranger who was now moving with Nella out of the way of an approaching market cart and the glance was just long enough to seize the beckoning movement of his hand which indicated that he had been watching for this opportunity of an adieu ebbene said Thrati raising his voice to speak across the cart I leave you with Nella young man for there's no pushing my bag and basket any farther and I have business at home but you all remember our bargain because if you found Tessa without me it was not my fault and I'll not turn my back on you a thousand thanks friend said the stranger laughing and then turned away with Nella up the narrow street which led most directly to the Piazza del Duomo End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Romala This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Romala by George Elliot Chapter 3 The Barber's Shop To tell you the truth said the young stranger to Nella as they got a little clearer of the entangled vehicles and mules I am not sorry to be handed over by that patron of mine to one who has a less barbarous accent and a less enigmatic business Is it a common thing among you Florentines for an itinerant trafficker in broken glass and rags to talk of a shop where he sells Brati is not a common man he has a theory and lives up to it which is more than I can say for any philosopher I have the honor of shaving answered Nello whose locacity like an over-full bottle could never pour forth a small dose Brati means to extract the utmost possible amount of pleasure that is to say of hard bargaining out of this life winding it up with a bargain for the easiest possible passage through Purgatory by giving Holy Church his winnings when the game is over he has had his wheel made to that effect on the cheapest terms a notary could be got for but I have often said to him Brati thy bargain is a limping one and thou art on the lame side of it does it not make thee a little sad to look at the pictures of the Paradiso thou wilt never be able there to chaffer for rags and rusty nails the saints and angels want neither pins nor tinder and except with San Bartel Omeo who carries his skin about in an inconvenient manner I see no chance of thy making a bargain for secondhand clothing but God pardon me asked Nello changing his tone and crossing himself this light talk ill besiems a morning when Lorenzo lies dead and the muses are tearing their hair always a painful thought to a barber and you yourself, Messera, are probably under a cloud for when a man of your speech and presence takes up with so sorry a night lodging it argues some misfortune to have befallen him what Lorenzo is that whose death you speak of said the stranger appearing to have dwelt with too anxious an interest and he noticed the indirect inquiry that followed it what Lorenzo there is but one Lorenzo I imagine whose death could throw the mercatoid when uproar set the lantern of the Duomo leaping in desperation and caused the lions of the Republic to feel under an immediate necessity to devour one another I mean Lorenzo de Medici the Pericles of our Athens if I may make such a comparison in the ear of a Greek why not said the other laughingly for I doubt whether in Athens the days of Pericles could have produced so learn and a barber yes, yes, I thought I could not be mistaken said the rapid nello else I have shaved the venerable Dimitrio Calcondila to little purpose but pardon me, I am lost in wonder your Italian is better than his though he has been in Italy forty years better even than that of the accomplished Marullo who may be said to have married the italic muses in more senses than one since he has married our learned and lovely Alessandro Scala it will lighten your wonder I am of Greek stock planted in Italian soil much longer than the mulberry trees which have taken so kindly to it I was born at Barry and my I mean I was brought up by an Italian and in fact I am a Greek very much as your peaches are Persian the Greek die was subdued in me as opposed till I had been dipped over again by long abode and much travel in the land of gods and heroes and to confess something of my private affairs to you this same Greek die with a few ancient gems I have about me is the only fortune shipwreck has left me but when the towers fall you know it is an ill business for the small nest builders the death of your Pericles makes me wish I had rather turned my steps towards Rome as I should have done but for a fallacious Minerva in the shape of an Augustinian monk at Rome he said you will be lost in a crowd of hungry scholars but at Florence every corner is penetrated by the sunshine of Lorenzo's patronage Florence is the best market in Italy for such commodities as yours Grafe, and so it will remain I hope, said Nello Lorenzo was not the only patron and judge of learning in our city, heaven forbid because he was a large melon every other Florentine is not a pumpkin I suppose have we not Bernardo Ruccioli and Alamano Rinocini and plenty more and if you want to be informed on such matters I, Nello, am your man it seems to me a thousand years I can be of service to a bella ruttito like yourself and first of all in the matter of your hair that beard my fine young man must be parted with were it as dear to you as the nymph of your dreams here at Florence we love not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair but remember you will have passed the Rubicon when once you have been shaven if you repent and let your beard grow after it has acquired stoutness by a struggle with the razor no longer what Messerangelo calls the divine prerogative of lips but will appear like a dark cavern fringed with horrent brambles that is a terrible prophecy said the Greek especially if your Florentine maidens are many of them as pretty as the little Tessa I stole a kiss from this morning Tessa she is a rough-handed countedina you will rise into the favor of dames who bring no scent of the mule stables with them but to that end you must not have the end of a scarow of evil repute you must look like a courtier and a scholar of the more polished sort such as our pietro Crenito like one who sins among well-bred well-fed people and not one who sucks down vile vino di soto in a chance tavern with all my heart said the stranger if the Florentine graces demand it I am willing to give up this small matter of my beard but yes, yes interrupt of Nello I know what you would say it is the Bella Tzatzera the highest in thin locks you do not choose to part with and there is no need just a little pruning echo and you will look not unlike the illustrious Prince Pico di Mirandola in his prime and here we are in good time in the piazza San Giovanni and at the door of my shop but you are pausing I see naturally you want to look at our wonder of the world our Duomo, our Santa Maria del Fiore well, well a mere glance but I beseech you to leave a closer survey till you have been shaved I am quivering with the inspiration of my art even to the very edge of my razor ah, then come round this way the mercurial barber seized the arm of the stranger and led him to a point on the south side of the piazza from which he could see at once the huge dark shell of the cupola the slender soaring grace of Giotto's Campanile and the quaint octagon of San Giovanni in front of them showing its unique gates of storied bronze which still bore the somewhat dimmed glory of their original gilding the inlaid marbles were then fresher and white and purple than they are now where the winters of four centuries have turned their white to the rich ochre of well-mallowed Mierscham the façade of the cathedral did not stand ignominious in faded stucco but had upon it the magnificent promise of the half-completed marble inlaying on statued niches which Giotto had devised 150 years before and as the Campanile in all its harmonious variety of color and form led the eyes upward high into the clear air of this April morning it seemed a prophetic symbol telling that human life must somehow and sometime shape itself into a chord with that pure aspiring beauty but this was not the impression it appeared to produce on the Greek his eyes were irresistibly led upward but as he stood with his arms folded and his curls falling backward there was a slight touch of scorn on his lip and when his eyes fell again they glanced round with a scanning coolness which was rather peaking to Nello's Florentine spirit with some impatience you seem to make as little of our cathedral as if you were the angel Gabriel come straight from paradise I should like to know if you have ever seen finer work than our Giotto's tower or any cupola that would not look a mere mushroom by the side of Brunelleshi's there or any marbles finer or more cunningly wrought than these that our senioria got from far off quarries at a price that would buy a duke done come now have you ever seen anything to equal then my throat after the Turkish fashion or even your own razor said the young Greek smiling gaily and moving on towards the gates of the baptistery I dare say you might get a confession of the true faith from me but with my throat free from peril I venture to tell you that your building smacked too much of Christian barbarism for my taste I have a shuddering sense of what there is inside hideous smoked Madonna's fleshless saints in mosaics staring down idiotic astonishment and rebuke the apps skin clad skeletons hanging on crosses or stuck all over with arrows or stretched on grid irons women and monks with heads aside in perpetual lamentation I've seen enough of those Ryan act favorites of heaven at Constantinople but what is this bronze door rough with imagery these women's figures seem molded in a different spirit from those starved and staring saints I spoke of these heads in high relief speak of a human mind within them instead of looking like old spasms and colic yes yes said Nella with some triumph I think we shall show you by and by that our Florentine art is not in a state of barbarism these gates my fine young man were molded half a century ago by our Lorenzo Ghiberti when he counted hardly so many years as you do ah I remember said the stranger turning away like one whose appetite for contemplation was soon satisfied I have heard that your Tuscan sculptors and painters have been studying but with monks from models and the legends of mad hermits and martyrs for subjects the vision of Olympus itself would be of small use to them I understand said Nella with a significant shrug as I walked along you are of the same mind as Michel Marullo I and as Angelo Poliziano himself in spite of his canonical when he relaxes himself a little in my shop after his lectures and talks of the gods are waking from their long sleep and making the woods in the streams vital once more and rails against the Roman scholars who want to make us all talk Latin again my ears he says are sufficiently flayed by the barbarisms of the learned and if the vulgarer to talk Latin I would as soon have been in Florence the day they took to beating all the kettles in the city because the bells were not enough to stay the wrath of the saints ah Messer Greco if you want to know the flavor of our scholarship you must frequent my shop it is the focus of Florentine intellect and in that sense the naval of the earth as predecessor Burcielos said of his shop on the more frivolous pretension that his street of the Calimara was the center of our city and here we are at the sign of Apollo and the razor Apollo you see is bestowing the razor on the tractolomus of our craft the first reaper of Beards the sublime Anonimo whose mysterious identity is indicated by a shadowy hand I see thou hast had custom already Sandro continued Nello addressing a solemn looking dark-eyed youth who made way for them on the threshold and now make all clear for this senior to sit down and prepare the finest scented lather for he has a learned and a handsome chin you have a pleasant little Additum there I see said the stranger looking through a lattice screen which divided the shop from a room of about equal size opening into a still smaller walled enclosure where a few bays and laurels surrounded a stone Hermes I suppose your conclave of erudite meets there there and not less in my shop said that I was in a cello leading the way into an inner room in which were some benches a table with one book and manuscript and one printed in capitals lying open upon it a loot a few oil sketches and a model or two of hands and ancient masks for my shop is a no less fitting haunt of the muses as you will acknowledge when you feel the sudden illumination of understanding and the serene vigor of inspiration that will come to you with a clear chin ah you can make that loot discourse I perceive I too have some skill in the way though the serenata is useless when daylight discloses a visage like mine looking no fresher than an apple that has stood the winter but look at that sketch it is a fancy of paro di casimos a strange freakish painter who says he saw it by long looking at a moldy wall the sketch Nello pointed to represented three masks one a drunken laughing satyr another a sorrowing Magdalene and the third which lay between them the rigid cold face of a stoic the masks rested obliquely on the lap of a little child whose cherub features rose above them with something of the supernal promise in the gaze which painters had by that time learned to give to the divine infant a symbolical picture I see said the young Greek touching the loot while he spoke so as to bring out a slight musical murmur the child perhaps is the golden age wanting neither worship nor philosophy and the golden age can always come back as long as men are born in the form of babies and don't come into the world mental or the child may mean the wise philosophy of Epicurus removed a light from the gross the sad and the severe everybody has his own interpretation for that picture said Nello and if you ask pyro himself what he meant by it he says his pictures are appendix which Messer Domendio has been pleased to make to the universe and if any man is in doubt what they mean he had better inquire of holy church he has been asked to paint a picture after the sketch but he puts his fingers and shakes his head at that the fancy is past he says a strange animal are pyro but now all is ready for your initiation into the mysteries of the razor mysteries they may well be cold continued the barber with rising spirits at the prospect of a long monologue as he imprisoned the young Greek in the shroud like shaving cloth mysteries of Minerva and the graces I get the flower of men's thoughts because I seized them in the first moment after shaving it tickles the outlying limits of the nose I admit and that is what makes the peculiar fitness of a barber's shop to become a resort of wit and learning for look now at a drugist's shop there is a dull conclave at the side of the moor that pretends to rival mine but what sort of inspiration I beseech you can be got from the scent of nauseous vegetable decoctions to say nothing of the fact that you know sooner past the threshold than you see a doctor of physics like a gigantic spider disguised in scarlet waiting for his prey or even see him blocking up the doorway seated on a bony hack in inspecting saliva your chin a little elevated if it please you contemplate that angel who's blowing the trumpet at you from the ceiling I had it painted expressly for the regulation of my client's chins besides your drugist who herbarizes and decocts as a man of prejudices he has poisoned people according to a system and is obliged to stand up for his system to justify the consequences now a barber can be dispassionate the only thing he necessarily stands by is the razor always providing he is not an author that was the flaw in my great predecessor Bertiello he was a poet and had consequently a prejudice about his own poetry I have escaped that I saw very early that authorship is a narrowing business in conflict with the liberal art of the razor which demands an impartial affection for all men's chins echo messer the outline of your chin and lip is clear as a maidens and now fix your mind on a knotty question ask yourself whether you're bound to spell Virgil with an I or an E and say if you do not feel an unwanted clearness on the point only if you decide for the I keep it to yourself till your fortune is made for the E have the stronger following in Florence ah I think I see a gleam of still quicker wit in your eye I have it on the authority of our young Niccolò Machiavelli himself keen enough to discern Neil Pellonwell Wovo as we say and a great lover of delicate shaving though his beard is hardly of two years date that no sooner do the hairs begin to push themselves that he perceives a certain grossness of apprehension creeping over him suppose you let me look at myself said the stranger laughing the happy effect on my intellect is perhaps obstructed by a little doubt as to the effect on my appearance behold yourself in this mirror then it is a Venetian mirror from Morano no skete Ipsum as I have named it compared with which the finest mirror of steel or silver is mere darkness see now how by diligent shaving the nether region of your face may preserve its human outline instead of presenting no distinction from the physiognomy of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape I have seen men whose beards have so invaded their cheeks that one might have pitted them as the victims of a sad brutalizing chastisement befitting our Dante's Inferno if they had not seemed distraught with a strange triumph in their extravagant hairiness it seems to me said the Greek still looking into the mirror that you have taken away some of my capital with your razor I mean a year or two of age which might have won me more ready credit for my learning under the inspection of a patron whose vision has grown somewhat dim I shall have a perilous resemblance to a maiden of 18 in the disguise of hosin jerkin not at all said Nello proceeding to clip extravagant curls your proportions are not those of a maiden and for your age I myself remember seeing Angelo Poliziano begin his lectures on the Latin language when he had a younger beard than yours and between ourselves his juvenile ugliness was not less signal than his precocious scholarship whereas you now know your age is not against you but between ourselves let me hint to you that you're being a Greek though it be only in a pulian Greek is not in your favor certain our scholars hold that your Greek learning is but a wayside degenerate plant until it has been transplanted into Italian brains and that now there is such a plentiful crop of the superior quality your native teachers are mere propagators of degeneracy echo your curls are now of the right proportion to neck and shoulders rise messera and I will free you from the encumbrance of this cloth I almost advise you to retain the faded jerkin and hose a little longer they give you the air of a fallen prince but the question is said the young Greek leaning against the high back of a chair and returning Nello's contemplative admiration with a look of inquiring anxiety the question is in what quarter I am to carry my princely air so as to rise from the said fallen condition if your Florentine patrons of learning share this scholarly hostility to the Greeks I see not how your city can be a hospitable refuge for me as you seem to say just now Pian piano not so fast said Nello sticking his thumbs into his belt and nodding to Sandro to restore order I will not conceal from you that there is a prejudice against Greeks among us and though as a barber unsnared by authorship I share no prejudices I must admit that the Greeks are not always such pretty youngsters as yourself their erudition is often of an uncombed unmanorly aspect and entrusted with a barbarous utterance of Italian that makes their converse hardly more euphonious than that of a Tedesco in a state of disdain and then again excuse me we Florentines have liberal ideas about speech and consider that an instrument which can flatter and promise so cleverly as the tongue must have been partly made for those purposes and that truth is a riddle for eyes and wit to discover which it were a mere spoiling of sport for the tongue to betray still we have our limits beyond which we call dissimulation treachery but it is said of the Greeks that their honesty begins at what is the hanging point with us since the old furies went to sleep your Christian Greek is of so easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of his father's corpse the flush on the stranger's face indicated what seemed so natural a movement of resentment that the good-natured nello hastened to atone for his want of reticence be not offended belgeovane I am but repeating what I hear in my shop as you may perceive my eloquence is simply the cream which I skim off my client's talk heaven forbid I should buy impartiality by entertaining an opinion and for that same scholarly objection to the Greeks added nello in a more mocking tone with a significant grimace the fact is your heretics messer jealousy has nothing to do with it if you would just change your opinion about leaven and alter your doxology a little our Italian scholars would think it a thousand years till they could give up their chairs to you yes yes it is chiefly religious scruple and partly also the authority of a great classic juvenile is it not he I gather had his bile as much stirred by the swarm of Greeks as our messer angelo who was fond of quoting some passage about their incorrigible impudence audacchia perdita who the passage is a compliment said the Greek who had recovered himself and seemed wise enough to take the matter gaily in guenium vellox audacchia perdita sermo promptus at isio torrentior a rapid intellect and ready eloquence may carry off a little impudence assuredly said nello and since as I see you know Latin literature as well as Greek you will not fall into the mistake of Giovanni Agiropulo who ran full tilt against Cicero and pronounced him all but a pumpkin head for let me give you one bit of advice young man trust a barber who has shaved the best chins and kept his eyes and ears open for 20 years oil your tongue well when you talk of the ancient Latin writers and give it an extra dip when you talk of the modern a wise Greek may win favor among us witness our excellent Demetrio who was loved by many and not hated immoderately even by the most renowned scholars I discern the wisdom of your advice so clearly said the Greek with the bright smile which was continually lighting up the fine form and color of his young face that I will ask you for a little more who now for example will be the most likely patron for me is there a son of Lorenzo who inherits his tastes or is there any other wealthy Florentine specially addicted to purchasing antique products I have a fine Cleopatra cut in sardonyx and one or two other intaglios and cameos both curious and beautiful worthy of being added to the cabinet of a prince happily I had taken the precaution of fastening them within the lining of my doublet before I set out on my voyage moreover I should like to raise a small sum for my present need on this ring of mine here he took out the ring and replaced it on his finger if you could recommend me to any honest trafficker let us see let us see said Nello perusing the floor and walking up and down the length of his shop this is no time to apply to Pyro de Medici though he has the will to make such purchases if he could always spare the money but I think it is another sort of Cleopatra that he covets most yes yes I have it what you want is a man of wealth and influence and scholarly tastes not one of your learned porcupines bristling all over with critical tests but one who's he can latin or of a comfortable laxity and that man is Bartolomeo Scala the secretary of a republic he came to Florence as a poor adventurer himself a miller's son a branny monster as he has been nicknamed by our honey-lipped Poliziano who agrees with him as well as my teeth agree with lemon juice and by the by that may be a reason why the secretary may be the more ready to do a good turn to a strange scholar for between you and me Belgeovane trust a barber who has shaved the best scholars friendliness is much such a steed as Sir Bengi's it will hardly show much alacrity unless it has got the thistle of hatred under its tail however the secretary is a man who will keep his word to you even to the having of a fennel seed and he is not unlikely to buy some of your gems but how am I to get at this great man said the Greek rather impatiently I was coming to that said Nello just now everybody of any public importance will be full of Lorenzo's death and a stranger may find it difficult to get any notice but in the meantime I could take you to a man who if he has a mind can help you to a chance of a favourable interview with scholar sooner than anybody else in Florence worth seeing for his own sake to say nothing of his collections or of his daughter Romola who is as fair as the Florentine Millie before it got quarrelsome and turned red but if this father of the beautiful Romola makes collections why should he not like to buy some of my gems himself Nello shrugged his shoulders for good reasons want of sight to look at the gems and want of money to pay for them our old bardo de Bardi is so blind that he can see no more of his daughter then as he says a glimmering of something bright when she comes very near him doubtless her golden hair which as Messer Luigi Pulci says of his meridianus Rage comestele per sereno ah here come some clients of mine and I shouldn't wonder if one of them could serve your turn about that ring end of chapter three recording by David Goldfarb Houston, Texas chapter four of Romola this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by David Goldfarb Romola by George Elliott chapter four first impressions good day Messer Domenico said Nello to the foremost of the two members who entered the shop while he nodded silently to the other you come as opportunity as cheese on macaroni ah you are in haste wished to be shaved without delay echo and this is a morning when everyone has grave matter on his mind Florence orphaned the very pivot of Italy snatched away heaven itself at a loss what to do next oime well well the sun is nevertheless traveling on towards dinner time again and as I was saying you come like cheese grated for this young stranger was wishing for an honorable trader who would advance him a sum on a certain ring of value and if I had counted every goldsmith and money lender in Florence on my fingers I couldn't have found a better name than Menico Cennini besides he hath other where in which you deal Greek learning and young eyes a double implement which you printers are always in need of the grave elderly man son of that Bernardo Cennini who twenty years before having heard of the new process of printing carried on by Germans had cast his own types in Florence remained necessarily in lathered silence and passivity while Nello showered this talk in his ears but turned a slow sideway gaze on the stranger this fine young man has unlimited Greek Latin or Italian at your service continued Nello fond of interpreting by very ample paraphrase he is as great a wonder of juvenile learning as Francesco Filelfo or our own incomparable Poliziano a second guarino too for he has had the misfortune to be shipwrecked and has doubtless lost a store of precious manuscripts that might have contributed some correctness even to your correct editions Domenico fortunately he has rescued a few gems of rear value his name is you said your name Messer was Tito Malema said the stranger slipping the ring from his finger and presenting it to Cennini whom Nello not less rapid with his razor than with his tongue had now released from the shaving cloth meanwhile the man who had entered the shop company with the goldsmith a tall figure about fifty with a short trimmed beard wearing an old felt hat and a thread bear mantle had kept his eye fixed on the Greek and now said abruptly young man I'm painting a picture of Cenoan deceiving old Priam and I should be glad of your face for my Cenoan if you'd give me a sitting Tito Malema started and looked round with a pale astonishment in his face as if had a sudden accusation but Nello left him no time to feel at a loss for an answer pyro said the barber though are the most extraordinary compound humors and fancies ever packed into a human skin what trick will thou play with the fine visage of this young scholar to make it suit thy traitor ask him rather to turn his eyes upward and thou mayst make a saint Sebastian of him that will draw troops of devout women or if thou art in a classical vein but mortal about his curls and make him a young Bacchus or say rather a Phoebus Apollo for his face is as warm and bright as a summer morning it made me his friend in the space of a cradle I Nello said the painter speaking with and if thy tongue can leave off its everlasting chirping long enough for thy understanding to consider the matter thou mayst see that thou has just shown the reason why the face of Messera will suit my traitor a perfect traitor should have a face which vice can write no marks on lips that will lie with a dimpled smile eyes of such agate like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard I say not this young man is a traitor I mean he has a face that would make him the more perfect traitor if he had the heart of one which is saying neither more nor less than that he has a beautiful face informed with rich young blood that will be nourished enough by food and keep its color without much help of virtue he may have the heart of a hero along with it I ever nothing to the contrary ask Domenico there if the lapidaries can always tell a gem by the sight alone and now I'm going to put the toe in my ears for thy chatter and the bells together are more than I can endure so say no I beared with these last words pyro called the Cosimo from his master Cosimo Rosselli drew out two bits of toe stuffed them in his ears and placed himself in the chair before Nello who shrugged his shoulders and cast a grimacing look of intelligence of the Greek as much as to say a whimsical fellow you perceive everybody holds his speeches as mere jokes Tito who had stood transfixed with his long dark eyes resting on the unknown man who had addressed him so equivocally seemed recalled to his self-command by pyro's change of position and apparently satisfied with his explanation was again giving his attention to Chenini who presently said this is a curious and valuable ring young man this intaglio of the fish with the crested serpent above it in the black stratum of the onyx or rather Nicolo is well shown by the surrounding blue of the upper stratum the ring has doubtless a history added Chenini looking keenly at the young stranger yes indeed said Tito meeting the scrutiny very frankly the ring was found in Sicily and I have understood from those who busy themselves with gems and sigils that both the stone and intaglio are of virtue to make the wearer fortunate especially at sea and also to restore to him whatever he may have lost but he continued smiling though I have worn it constantly since I acquitted grease it has not made me altogether fortunate at sea you perceive unless I am to count escape from drowning as a sufficient proof of its virtue it remains to be seen whether my lost but to lose no chance of such a result messer I will pray you only to hold the ring for a short space as pledge for a small sum far beneath its value and I will redeem it as soon as I can dispose of certain other gems which are secured within my doublet or indeed as soon as I can earn something by any scholarly employment if I may be so fortunate as to meet with such that may be seen young man if you will come with me said Chenini my brother pietro who is a better judge of scholarship than I will perhaps be able to take the task that may test your capabilities meanwhile take back your ring until I can hand you the necessary Florence and if it please you come along with me yes yes said Nello go with Messer Domenico you cannot go in better company he was born under the constellation that gives a man skill riches and integrity whatever that constellation may be which is of the less consequence because babies can't choose their own horoscopes and indeed if they could there might be an inconvenient rush of babies at particular epochs besides phoenix the incomparable pico has shown that your horoscopes are all a nonsensical dream which is the less troublesome opinion adio belgeovane don't forget to come back to me no fear of that said Tito beckoning a farewell as he turned around his bright face at the door you are to do me a great service that is the most positive security for your seeing me again say what thou wilt pyro said Nello as the young stranger disappeared I shall never look at such an outside as that without taking it as a sign of a noble nature why that wilt say next that Leonardo whom thou art always raving about ought to have made his Judas as beautiful as Saint John but thou art as deaf as the top of Mount Morella with that accursed toe in thy ears well well I'll get a little more of this young man's history from him before I take him to Bardo Bardi end of chapter four recording by David Goldfarb Houston Texas