 Chapter 5 of RUMOLA. 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 Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California. RUMOLA by George Elliott. Chapter 5. The Blind Scholar and His Daughter. Via de Bardi, a street noted in the history of Florence, lies an altano or that portion of the city which closed the southern bank of the river. It extends from the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza di Mozzi at the head of the Ponte Allegazzi. Its right hand line of houses and walls being backed by the rather steep ascent which in the 15th century was known as the Hill of Bogoli, the famous stone quarry where the city got its pavement. Of dangerously unstable consequence when penetrated by rains, its left hand buildings flanking the river and making on their northern side a length of quaint, irregularly pierced facade of which the waters give a softened loving reflection as the sun begins to decline towards the western heights. But quaint as these buildings are, some of them seem to the historical memory a too modern substitute for the famous houses of the Bardi family, destroyed by popular rage in the middle of the 14th century. They were a proud and energetic stock, these Bardi, conspicuous among those who clutched the sword in the earliest world famous quarrels of Florentines with Florentines. When the narrow streets were darkened with the high towers of the nobles and when the old tutelure god Mars, as he saw the gutters reddened with neighbor's blood, might well have smiled at the centuries of lip service paid to his rival, the Baptist. But the Bardi hands were of the sort that not only clutched the sword hilt with vigor, but loved the more delicate pleasure of fingering minted metal. They were matched too with true Florentine eyes, capable of discerning that power was to be one by other means than by rending and writhing. And by the middle of the 14th century, we find them risen from their original condition of Popilani to be possessors by purchase of lands and strongholds and the feudal dignity of Counts of Verneu. Distributing to the jealousy of their Republican fellow citizens, these lordly purchases are explained by our seeing the Bardi disastrously signalized only a few years later as standing in the very front of European commerce. The Christian Rothschilds of that time, undertaking to furnish the species for the wars of our Edward III and having revenues in kind made over to them, especially in wool most precious of freights for Florentine galleys. Their august debtor left them with an august deficit and alarmed Sicilian creditors made a too sudden demand for the payment of deposits causing a ruinous shock to the credit of the Bardi and of associated houses, which was felt as a commercial calamity along all the coasts of the Mediterranean. But, like more modern bankrupts, they did not for all that hide their heads in humiliation. On the contrary, they seem to have held them higher than ever and to have been among the most arrogant of those grandees who, under certain noteworthy circumstances, open to all who will read the honest pages of Giovanni Villani drew upon themselves the exasperation of the armed people in 1343. The Bardi, who had made themselves fast in their street between the two bridges, kept these narrow inlets, like panthers at bay, against the oncoming gonfalons of the people and were only made to give way by an assault from the hill behind them. Their houses by the river, to the number of 22 Palaghi and Casa Grande, were sacks and burnt and many among the chief of those who bore the Bardi name were driven from the city. But an old Florentine family was many-rooted and we find the Bardi maintaining importance and rising again and again to the surface of Florentine affairs in a more or less creditable manner, implying an untold family history that would have included even more vicissitudes and contrasts of dignity and disgrace of wealth and poverty than are usually seen on the background of wide kinship. But the Bardi never resumed their proprietorship in the old street on the banks of the river, which in 1492 had long been associated with other names of Mark and especially with the Nerri, who possessed a considerable range of houses on the side towards the hill. In one of these Nerri houses there lived, however, a descendant of the Bardi and of that very branch which a century and a half before had become counts of Verneaux, a descendant who had inherited the old family pride and energy, the old love of preeminence, the old desire to leave a lasting track of his footsteps on the fast whirling earth. But the family passion lived on in him under altered conditions. This descendant of the Bardi was not a man swift in street warfare, or one who loved to play the signer, fortifying strongholds and asserting the right to hang vassals, or a merchant and usurer of keen daring who delighted in the generalship of wide commercial schemes. He was a man with a deep veined hand cramped by much copying of manuscripts who ate sparing dinners and wore threadbare clothes at first from choice and at last from necessity. Who sat among his books and his marble fragments of the past and saw them only by the light of those far off younger days which still shone in his memory. He was a moneyless, blind old scholar. The Bardi de Bardi, to whom Nello, the barber, had promised to introduce the young Greek Tito Malema. The house in which Bardi lived was situated on the side of the street nearest the hill and was one of those large somber masses of stone building pierced by comparatively small windows and surmounted by what may be called a roof terrace or loggia, of which there are many examples still to be seen in the venerable city. Grim doors with conspicuous scrolled hinges, having high up on each side of them a small window defended by iron bars, open on a groined entrance porch, empty of everything but a massive lamp iron suspended from the center of the groin. A smaller grim door on the left hand admitted to the stone staircase and the rooms on the ground floor. These last were used as a warehouse by the proprietor. So was the first floor, and both were filled with precious stores destined to be carried, some perhaps to the banks of the Shelte, some to the shores of Africa, some to the aisles of the Aegean, or to the banks of the Yucsin. Masso, the old serving man, when he returned from the Mercato with the stock of cheap vegetables, had to make his slow way up to the second story before he reached the door of his master Bardot, through which we are about to enter only a few mornings after Nello's conversation with the Greek. We follow Masso across the empty chamber to the door on the left hand, through which we pass as he opens it. He merely looks in and nods, while a clear young voice says, Ah, you are come back Masso, it is well. We have wanted nothing. The voice came from the farther end of a long, spacious room, surrounded by shelves, on which books and antiquities were arranged in scrupulous order. Here and there, on separated stands in front of the shelves, were placed a beautiful feminine torso, a headless statue with an uplifted muscular arm wielding a bladeless sword, rounded, dimpled, infantile limbs, severed from the trunk, inviting the lips to kiss the cold marble, some well preserved Roman busts, and two or three vases from Magna Gracia. A large table in the center was covered with antique bronze lamps and small vessels in dark pottery. The color of these objects was chiefly pale or somber. The vellum bindings, with their deep ridged backs, gave little relief to the marble, livid with long burial. The once splendid patch of carpet at the far end of the room had long been worn to dimness. The dark bronzes wanted sunlight upon them to bring out their tinge of green, and the sun was not yet high enough to send gleams of brightness through the narrow windows that looked on the Via de Bardi. The only spot of bright color in the room was made by the hair of a tall maiden of 17 or 18 who was standing before a carved legio or reading desk, such as is often seen in the choirs of Italian churches. The hair was of a reddish gold color, enriched by an unbroken small ripple, such as may be seen in the sunset clouds on grandest autumnal evenings. It was confined by a black fillet above her small ears, from which it rippled forth again and made a natural veil for her neck above her square cut gown of black racia or surge. Her eyes were bent on a large volume placed before her. One long white hand rested on the reading desk, and the other clasped the back of her father's chair. The blind father sat with head uplifted and turned a little aside towards his daughter, as if he were looking at her. His delicate paleness, set off by the black velvet cap which surmounted his drooping white hair, made all the more perceptible the likeness between his aged features and those of the young maiden, whose cheeks were also without any tinge of the rose. There was the same refinement of brow and nostril in both, counterbalanced by a full, though firm mouth and powerful chin, which gave an expression of proud tenacity and latent impetuousness. An expression carried out in the backward poise of the girl's head and the grand line of her neck and shoulders. It was a type of face of which one could not venture to say whether it would inspire love or only that unwilling admiration which is mixed with dread. The question must be decided by the eyes, which often seemed charged with a more direct message from the soul. But the eyes of the father had long been silent, and the eyes of the daughter were bent on the Latin pages of Politan's miscellaneous eye, from which she was reading aloud at the 80th chapter to the following effect. There was a certain nymph of Thebes named Chiriclo, especially dear to Pallas, and this nymph was the mother of Tiresias. But once when in the heat of summer Pallas, in company with Chiriclo, was bathing her disrobed limbs in the Heliconian Hippocrine, it happened that Tiresias, coming as a hunter to quench his thirst at the same fountain, inadvertently beheld Bonerva unveiled, and immediately became blind. For it is declared in the Saturnian Laws that he who beholds the gods against their will shall atone for it by a heavy penalty. When Tiresias had fallen into this calamity, Pallas, moved by the tears of Chiriclo, endowed him with prophecy and length of days, and even caused his prudence and wisdom to continue after he had entered among the Shades, so that an oracle spake from his tomb. And she gave him a staff wherewith, as by a guide, he might walk without stumbling, and hence Nannus, in the fifth book of Dionysiaca, introduces Actrion, exclaiming that he calls Tiresias happy, since, without dying and with the loss of his eyesight merely, he had beheld Bonerva unveiled, and thus, though blind, could forevermore carry her image in his soul. At this moment in the reading, the daughter's hand slipped from the back of the chair and met her father's, which he had that moment uplifted. But she had not looked round and was going on, though in a voice a little altered by some suppressed feeling, to read the Greek quotation from Nannus, when the old man said, Stay, Romola, reach me my own copy of Nannus. It is a more correct copy than any in the Poziano's hands, for I made emendations in it which have not yet been communicated to any man. I finished it in 1477, when my sight was fast failing me. Romola walked to the farther end of the room, with the queenly step, which was the simple action of her tall, finely wrought frame, without the slightest conscious adjustment of herself. Is it in the right place, Romola? asked Bardot, who was perpetually seeking the assurance that the outward fact continued to correspond with the image which lived to the minutest detail in his mind. Yes, father, at the west end of the room, on the third shelf from the bottom, behind the bust of Hadrian, above Apollonius Rhodius, and Colomacus, and below Lucan, and Silius Italius. As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear voice and distinct utterance a faint suggestion of weariness struggling with habitual patience. But as she approached her father and saw his arms stretched out, a little with nervous excitement to seize the volume, her hazel eyes filled with pity. She hastened to lay the book on his lap, and kneeled down by him, looking up at him as if she believed that the love in her face must surely make its way through the dark obstruction that shut out everything else. At that moment, the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity and affection. It was evident that the deepest fount of feeling within her had not yet wrought its way to the less changeful features, and only found its outlet through her eyes. But the father, unconscious of that soft radiance, looked flushed and agitated as his hand explored the edges and back of the large book. The vellum is yellowed in these thirteen years, Romola. Yes, father, said Romola gently, but your letters at the back are dark and plain still. Fine Roman letters and the Greek character, she continued, laying the book open on her father's knee, is more beautiful than that of any of your bot manuscripts. Assuredly, child, said Bardo, passing his finger across the page as if he hoped to discriminate line and margin. What hired ammuensis can be equal to the scribe who loves the words that grow under his hand, and to whom an error or indistinctness in the text is more painful than a sudden darkness or obstacle across his path. And even these mechanical printers who threaten to make learning a base and vulgar thing. Even they must depend on the manuscript over which we scholars have bent, with that insight into the poet's meaning, which is closely akin to the Monde's divinois of the poet himself. Unless they would flood the world with grammatical falsities and inexplicable anormalities that would turn the very fountain of Parnassus into a deluge of poisonous mud. But find the passage in the fifth book, to which Puliziano refers. I know it very well. Seating herself on a low stool close to her father's knee, Ramola took the book on her lap and read the four verses containing the exclamation of Actrion. It is true, Ramola, said Bardo, when she had finished. It is a true conception of the poet, for what is that grosser, narrower light by which men behold merely the pretty scene around them, compared with that far-stretching, lasting light, which spreads over the centuries of thought and over the life of nations. It makes clear to us the minds of the immortals who have reaped the great harvest and left us to glean in their furrows. For me, Ramola, even when I could see, it was with the great dead that I lived. While the living often seemed to me mere specters, shadows dispossessed of true feeling and intelligence. And unlike those lame I, to whom Puliziano, with that official ingenuity, which I do not deny to him, compares our inquisitive Florentines, because they put on their eyes when they went abroad and took them off when they got home again. I have returned from the converse of the streets as from a forgotten dream, and have sat down among my books saying with Petrarcha, the modern who is least unworthy, to be named after the ancients, Libri medullitus delicante collocuture consulante et viva quantum nobis autque arguta familiariata ungunture. And in one thing you are happier than your favorite Petrarcha, Father, said Ramola affectionately, humoring the old man's disposition to dilate in this way. For he used to look at his copy of Homer and think sadly that the Greek was a dead letter to him. So far he had the inward blindness that you feel is worse than your outward blindness. True, child, for I carry within me the fruits of that fervent study which I gave to the Greek tongue, under the teaching to the younger Crisallora and Filelfo and Arguirapullo, Though the great work in which I had desired to gather, as into a firm web, all the threads that my research had laboriously disentangled and which would have been the vintage of my life, was cut off by the failure of my sight and my want of a fitting co-agitor. For the sustained zeal and unconquerable patience demanded from those who would tread the unbeaten path of knowledge are still less reconcilable with the wandering, vagrant propensity of the feminine mind than with the feeble powers of the feminine body. Father, said Ramola with a sudden flush and an injured tone, I read anything you wish me to read and I will look out any passages for you and make whatever notes you want. Bardo shook his head and smiled with a bitter sort of pity, as well to try and be a penthalose and perform all the five feats of palaistra with the limbs of a nymph. Have I forgotten my fainting in the mere search for the references I needed to explain a single passage of Calimacus? But Father, it was the weight of the books and Maso can help me. It was not want of attention and patience, Bardo shook his head again. It is not merely bodily organs that I want. It is the sharp edge of a young mind to pierce the way for my somewhat blunted faculties. For blindness acts like a dam, sending the streams of thought backward along the already-traveled channels and hindering the course onward. If my son had not forsaken me, deluded by debasing fanatical dreams, worthy only of an inirgumen whose dwelling is among tombs, I might have gone on and seen my path broadening to the end of my life, for he was a youth of great promise. But it has closed in now, the old man continued after a short pause. It has closed in now, all but the narrow track he has left me to tread, alone in my blindness. Amola started from her seat and carried away the large volume to its place again, stung too acutely by her father's last words to remain motionless as well as silent. And when she turned away from the shelf again, she remained standing at some distance from him, stretching her arms downward and clasping her fingers tightly as she looked with sad dreariness in her young face at the lifeless objects around her. The parchment-backs, the unchanging mutilated marble, the bits of obsolete bronze and clay, bardo, though usually susceptible to Ramola's movements and eager to trace them, was now too entirely preoccupied by the pain of rankling memories to notice her departure from his side. Yes, he went on. With my son to aid me, I might have had my dues share in the triumphs of this century. The names of Bardi, father and son, might have been held reverently on the lips of scholars in the ages to come. Not on account of frivolous verses or philosophical treatises, which are superfluous and presumptuous attempts to imitate the inimitable, such as allure vain men like Panhormita, and from which even the admirable Poggio did not find himself sufficiently free. But because we should have given a lamp whereby men might have studied the supreme productions of the past. For why is a young man like Puliziano, who was not yet born when I already held worthy to maintain a discussion with Thomas of Sarzana, to have a glorious memory as a commentator on the appendix? Why is Ficino, whose Latin is an offence to me, and who wanders purblind among the superstitious fancies that marked the decline at once of art, literature and philosophy, to descend to posterity as the very high priest of Platonism, while I, who am more than their equal, have not affected anything but scattered work, which will be appropriated by other men? Why? But because my son, whom I had brought up to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me in all liberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight with besotted friars, that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting men who know of no past older than the missile and the crucifix, left me when the night was already beginning to fall on me. In these last words, the old man's voice, which had risen high in indignant protest, fell into a tone of reproach so tremulous and plaintive, that Romola, turning her eyes again towards the blind aged face, felt her heart swell with forgiving pity. She seated herself by her father again, and placed her hand on his knee, too proud to obtrude consolation in words that might seem like a vindication of her own value, yet wishing to comfort him by some sign of her presence. Yes, Romola, said Bardo, automatically letting his left hand, with its massive prophylactic rings, fall a little too heavily on the delicate blue vein back of the girl's right so that she bit her lip to prevent herself from starting. If even Florence only is to remember me, it can but be on the same ground that it will remember Niccolò Niccolì, because I forsook the vulgar pursuit of wealth in commerce that I might devote myself to collecting the precious remains of ancient art and wisdom and leave them after the example of the magnificent Romans for an everlasting possession to my fellow citizens. But why do I say Florence only? If Florence remembers me, will not the world remember me? Yet, added Bardo, after a short pause, his voice falling again into a saddened key, Lorenzo's untimely death has raised a new difficulty. I had his promise, I should have had his bond, that my collection should always bear my name, and never be sold, though the harpies might clutch everything else. But there is enough for them, there is more than enough, and for thee too, Romola, there will be enough. Besides, thou wilt marry, Bernardo reproaches me that I do not seek a fitting parentato for thee. And we will delay no longer, we will think about it. No, no, Father, what could you do? Besides, it is useless. Wait till someone seeks me, said Romola hastily. Nay, my child, that is not the paternal duty. It was not so held by the ancients, and in this respect, Florentines have not degenerated from their ancestral customs. But I will study diligently, said Romola, her eyes dilating with anxiety. I will become as learned as Cassandra Fidele. I will try and be as useful to you as if I had been a boy, and then perhaps some great scholar will want to marry me, and will not mind about a dowry, and he will like to come and live with you, and he will be to you in place of my brother. And you will not be sorry that I was a daughter? There was a rising sob in Romola's voice as she said the last words, which touched the fatherly fiber and bardo. He stretched his hand upward a little in search of her golden hair, and as she placed her head against his hand he gently stroked it, leaning towards her, as if his eyes discerned some glimmer there. Nay, Romola Mia! I said not so. If I have pronounced an anathema on a degenerate and ungrateful son, I said not that I could wish the other than the sweet daughter thou hath been to me. For what son could have tended me so gently in the frequent sickness I have had of late, and even in learning thou art not, according to thy measure, contemptible? Something perhaps were to be wished in thy capacity of attention and memory, not incompatible even with the feminine mind. But as Calcundila bore testimony, when he aided me to teach thee, thou hast a ready apprehension, and even a wide-glancing intelligence, and thou hast a man's nobility of soul, thou hast never fretted me with thy petty desires as thy mother did. It is true I have been careful to keep the aloof from the debasing influence of thy own sex, with their sparrow-like frivolity and their enslaving superstition, except indeed from that of our cousin Brigida, who may well serve as a scarecrow and a warning. And though, since I agree with the divine Petrarcha when he declares, quoting the Alularia of Plautus, who again was indebted for the truth to the supreme Greek intellect, optimum phoenumum nulum esse alia lisit alia pejor sit. I cannot boast that thou art entirely lifted out of that lower category to which nature assigned thee, nor even that an erudition thou art on a par with the more learned women of this age. Thou art nevertheless, yes, remola mia, said the old man, his pedantry again melting into tenderness. Thou art my sweet daughter, and thy voice is as the lower notes of the flute. Dolchis, drab, bilis, clara, pura, secans, aria, et aribus sedens, according to the choice words of Quintilian, and Bernardo tells me thou art fair, and thy hair is like the brightness of the morning, and indeed it seems to me that I discern some radiance from thee. Ah, I know how all else looks in this room, but thy form I only guess at. Thou art no longer the little woman six years old that faded for me into darkness. Thou art tall, thy arm is but little below mine. Let us walk together. The old man rose, and remola, soothed by these beams of tenderness, looked happy again as she drew his arm within hers, and placed in his right hand the stick which rested at the side of his chair. While Bernardo was sitting, he had seemed hardly more than sixty. His face, though pale, had that refined texture in which wrinkles and lines are never deep. But now that he had begun to walk, he looked as old as he really was, rather more than seventy. In his tall spare frame had the student stoop of the shoulders, and he stepped with the undecided gate of the blind. No remola, he said, pausing against the bust of Hadrian, and passing his stick from the right to the left, that he might explore the familiar outline with a seen hand. There will be nothing else to preserve my memory, and carry down my name as a member of the great Republic of Letters. Nothing but my library and my collection of antiquities. And they are choice, continued Bardo, pressing the bust and speaking in a tone of insistence. The collections of Nicolo I know were larger, but I take any collection which is the work of a single man, that of the great Boccaccio even. Mine will surpass it. That Apogio was contemptible compared with mine. It will be a great gift to unborn scholars. And there is nothing else. For even if I were to yield to the wish of Aldo Manuzzo, when he sets up his press at Venice and give him the aid of my annotated manuscripts, I know well what would be the result. Some other scholar's name would stand on the title page of the edition. Some scholar who would have fed on my honey and then declared in his preface that he had gathered it all himself fresh from my menace. Else why have I refused the loan of many an annotated codex? Why have I refused to make public any of my translations? Why? But because scholarship is a system of licensed robbery and your man in scarlets and furred robes who sits in judgment on thieves is himself a thief of the thought and the fame that belong to his fellows. But against that robbery, bardo di bardi shall struggle. Though blind and forsaken he shall struggle, I too have a right to be remembered as greater right, as Pogianus or Merula, whose names will be foremost on the lips of posterity because they sought patronage and found it, because they had tongues that could flatter and blood that was used to be nourished from the client's basket. I have a right to be remembered. The old man's voice had become at once loud and tremulous and a pink flush overspread his proud delicately cut features. While the habitually raised attitude of his head gave the idea that behind the curtain of his blindness he saw some imaginary high tribunal to which he was appealing against the injustice of fame. Ramola was moved with sympathetic indignation for in her nature too there lay the same large claims and the same spirit of struggle against their denial. She tried to calm her father by still prouder word than his. Nevertheless, Father, it is a great gift of the gods to be born with a hatred and contempt of all injustice and meanness. Yours is a higher lot, never to have lied and trekkled, than to have shared honors won by dishonor. There is strength in scorn, as there was in the martial fury by which men became insensible to wounds. It is well said, Ramola. It is a Promethean word thou hast uttered," answered Bardo, after a little interval in which he had begun to lean on his stick again and to walk on. And I indeed am not to be pierced by the shafts of fortune. My armor is the ace-truplex of a clear conscience and a mind nourished by the precepts of philosophy. For men, says Epictetus, are disturbed not by things themselves, but by their opinions or thoughts concerning those things. And again, whosoever will be free, let him not desire or dread that which is in the power of others, either to deny or inflict. Otherwise, he is a slave. And of all such gifts, as are dependent on the comprese of fortune or of men I have long ago learned to say with Horace, who, however, is too wavering in his philosophy, vacillating between the precepts of Zeno and the less-worthy maxims of Epicurus, and attempting, as we say, duobos celest sedere, concerning such accidents I say, with the pregnant brevity of the poet, sunt qui non habeyant est qui non chirat habere. He is referring to gems and purple and other insignia of wealth. But I may apply his words, not less justly, to the tributes men pay us with their lips and their pens, which are also matters of purchase and often with base coin. Yes, in Nani's hollow empty is the epithet justly bestowed on fame. They made the tour of the room in silence after this. But Bardot's lip-borne maxims were as powerless over the passion which had been moving him as if they had been written on parchment and hung round his neck in a sealed bag. And he presently broke forth again in a new tone of insistence. In Nani's, yes, if it is a lying fame, but not if it is just the mead of labour and a great purpose, I claim my right. It is not fair that the work of my brain in my hands should not be a monument to me. It is not just that my labour should bear the name of another man. It is but little to ask, the old man went on bitterly, that my name should be over the door. That men should own themselves debtors to the Bardi Library in Florence. They will speak coldly of me, perhaps, a diligent collector and transcriber, they will say, and also of the same critical ingenuity. But one who could hardly be conspicuous in an age so fruitful in illustrious scholars. Yet he merits our pity for in the latter years of his life he was blind and his only son to whose education he had devoted his best years. Nevertheless, my name will be remembered and men will honour me. Not with the breath of flattery purchased by mean bribes, but because I have laboured and because my labours will remain. Debt, I know there are debts, and there is thy dowry, Ramola, to be paid. But there must be enough, or at least, there can lack but a small sum, such as the senioria might well provide. And if Lorenzo had not died, all would have been secured and settled. But now... At this moment, Maso opened the door and advancing to his master announced that Nello, the barber, had desired him to say that he was come with the Greek scholar whom he had askedly to introduce. It is well, said the old man, bring them in. Bardot, conscious that he looked more dependent while he was walking, liked always to be seated in the presence of strangers, and Ramola, without needy to be told, conducted him to his chair. She was standing by him at her full height in quiet majestic self-possession when the visitor has entered. And the most penetrating observer, with hardly of divine, that this proud pale face at the slightest touch on the fibers of affection or pity could become passionate with tenderness, or that this woman, whom posed a certain awe on those who approached her, was in a state of girlish simplicity and ignorance concerning the world outside her father's books. End of Chapter 5 Recorded by Martina Hutchins in Berkeley, California. Gently pushed Tito before him and advanced with him towards her father. Mesher Bardot, he said, in a more measured and respectful tone than was usual with him. I have the honor of presenting to you the Greek scholar who has been eager to have speech of you, not less from the report I have made to him of your learning and your priceless collections than because of the furtherance your patronage may give him under the transient need to which he has been reduced by shipwreck. His name is Tito Malema, at your service. Romula's astonishment could hardly have been greater if the stranger had worn a panther skin and carried a thursus. For the cunning barber had said nothing of the Greek's age or appearance, and among her father's scholarly visitors she had hardly ever seen any but middle-aged or gray-headed men. There was only one masculine face, at once youthful and beautiful, the image of which remained deeply impressed on her mind. It was that of her brother, who long years ago had taken her on his knee, kissed her, and never come back again. A fair face with sunny hair like her own, with habitual attitude of her mind towards strangers, a proud self-dependence and determination to ask for nothing, even by a smile, confirmed in her by her father's complaints against the world's injustice, was like a snowy embankment hemming in the rush of admiring surprise. Tito's bright face showed its rich-tinted beauty without any rivalry of colorable of his black sagio or tunic reaching to the knees. Like a wreath of spring dropped suddenly in Romela's young but wintry life, which had inherited nothing but memories, memories of a dead mother, of a lost brother, of a blind father's happier time, memories of far-off light, love, and beauty that lay embedded in dark minds of books and could hardly give out their brightness again until they were kindled for her by the torch of some known joy. Nevertheless she returned Tito's bow, made to her on entering, with the same pale, proud face as ever, as he approached the snow-melted, and when he ventured to look towards her again while Nella was speaking, a pink flush overspread her face to vanish again almost immediately as if her imperious will had recalled it. Tito's glance, on the contrary, had that gentle beseeching admiration in it which is the most propitiating of appeals to a proud, shy woman, and is perhaps the only atonement a man can make for being too handsome. The finished fascination of his air came chiefly from the absence of demand and assumption. It was that of a fleet soft-coated, dark-eyed animal that delights you by not bounding away an indifference from you and unexpectedly pillows its chin on your palm and looks up at you desiring to be stroked as if it loved you. Miserre, I give you welcome, said Bardo with some condescension. Misfortune wedded to learning, and especially to Greek learning, is a letter of credit that should win the ear of every instructed Florentine. Since the period when your countryman, Manuello Cricelora, defused the light of his teaching in the chief cities of Italy, now nearly a century ago, no man is held worthy of the name of scholar who has acquired merely the trans-planted and derivative literature of the Latins. Rather, such inert students are stigmatized as opi-key or barbarians according to the phrase of the Romans themselves who frankly replenished their urns at the fountain-head. I am, as you perceive and as Nello as doubtless forewarned you, totally blind, a calamity to which we Florentines are held especially liable, whether owing to the cold winds which rush upon us in spring from the passes of the Apennines, or to that sudden transition from the cool gloom of our houses to the dazzling brightness of our summer sun, by which the leapy are said to have been made so numerous among the ancient Romans, or in fine to some occult cause which eludes our superficial surmises. But I pray you be seated. Nello, my friend, be seated. Bardo paused until his fine ear had assured him that the Romans were first seating themselves, and that Romula was taking her usual chair at his right hand. Then he said, For what part of Greece do you come, Messera? I had thought that your unhappy country had been almost exhausted of those sons who could cherish in their minds any image of her original glory, though indeed the barbarous sultans have of late shown themselves not indisposed to engraft on their wild stock the precious vine which their own fierce bands have hewn down and trampled underfoot. From what part of Greece do you come? I sailed last from Naplia, said Tito, but I have resided both at Constantinople and Thessalonica, and have traveled in various parts little visited by Western Christians since the triumph of the Turkish arms. I should tell you, however, Messera, that I was not born at Greece, but at Bari. I spent the first sixteen years of my life in southern Italy and Sicily. While Tito was speaking some emotion passed like a breath on the waters across Bardo's delicate features. He leaned forward, put out his right hand towards Romula, and turned his head as if about to speak to her. But then, correcting himself, turned away again and said in a subdued voice, Excuse me. Is it not true? You are young. I am three and twenty, said Tito. Ah, said Bardo, still in a tone of subdued excitement, and you had doubtless a father who cared for your early instruction, who perhaps was himself a scholar. There was a slight pause before Tito's answer came to the ear of Bardo, but for Romula and Nello it began with a slight shock that seemed to pass through him and cause a momentary quivering of the lip, doubtless at the revival of a supremely painful remembrance. Yes, he replied, at least a father by adoption. He was a Neapolitan and of accomplished scholarship both Latin and Greek. But, added Tito after another slight pause, he is lost to me, was lost on a voyage he too rashly undertook to Delos. Bardo sank backward again, too delicate to ask another question that might probe a sorrow which he divined to be recent. Romula, who knew well what were the fibres that Tito's voice had stirred in her father, felt that this new acquaintance had with wonderful suddenness got within the barrier that lay between them and the alien world. Nello, thinking that the evident check given to the conversation offered a graceful opportunity for relieving himself from silence, said, in truth it is as clear as Venetian glass that this fine young man has had the best training, for the two Chenini have set him to work at their Greek sheets already, and it seems to me they are not meant to begin cutting before they have felt the edge of their tools. They tested him well beforehand, we may be sure, and if there are two things not to be hidden, love and a cough, I say there is a third, and that is ignorance when once a man is obliged to do something besides wagging his head. The tonsor iniqualis is inevitably betrayed when he takes the shears in his hand. Is it not true, Mr. Bardo? I speak after the fashion of the barber, but as Luigi says, perdonimi sio fallo, chi mescolta intende il mio vulgar cosuo latino. Nay, my good Nello, said Bardo, with an air of friendly severity. You are not altogether illiterate, and my doubtless have made a more respectable progress in learning, if you had abstained somewhat from the chicolata and gossip of the street corner to which our Florentines are excessively addicted. But still more if you had not clogged your memory with those frivolous productions of which Luigi Pulci has furnished the most peckant exemplar. A compendium of extravagances and incongruities, the farthest removed from the models of a pure age, and resembling rather the grily or conceits of a period when mystic meaning was held a warrant for monstrosity of form, with this difference that while a monstrosity is retained, the mystic meaning is absent. In contemptible contrast with the great poem of Virgil, who as I long held with Phil Elfo before Landino had taken upon him to intercaspound the same opinion, embodied the deepest lessons of philosophy in a graceful and well-knit fable. And I cannot but regard the multiplication of these babbling lawless productions, albeit countenance by the patronage and in some degree the example of Lorenzo himself, otherwise a friend to true learning, as a sign that the glorious hopes of this entry are to be quenched in gloom, nay, that they have been the delusive prologue to an age worse than that of iron, the age of tinsel and gossamer, in which no thought has substance enough to be moulded into consistent and lasting form. Once more parton, said Nello, opening his palms outward and shrugging his shoulders, I find myself knowing so many things in good tusk and before I have the time to think of the Latin for them, and Messer Luigi's rhymes are always slipping off the lips of my customers, that is what corrupts me. And indeed, talking of customers, I have left my shop and my reputation too long in the custody of my slow Sandro, who does not deserve even to be called a tonsor iniqualis, but rather to be pronounced simply a bungler in the vulgar tongue. So with your permission, Messer Bardot, I will take my leave. Well understood that I am at your service whenever Massa calls upon me. It seems a thousand years till I dress and perfume the Damagello's hair, which deserves to shine in the heavens as a constellation, though indeed it were a pity for it ever to go so far out of reach. Three voices made a fugue of friendly farewells to Nello, as he retreated with a bow to Romala and a beck to Tito. The acute barber saw that the pretty youngster who had crept into his liking by some strong magic was well launched Bardot's favorable regard, and satisfied that his introduction had not miscarried so far, he felt the propriety of retiring. The little burst of wrath, called forth by Nello's unlucky quotation, had diverted Bardot's mind from the feelings which had just before been hemming in further speech, and he now addressed Tito again with his ordinary calmness. Ah, young man, you are happy in having been able to unite the advantages of travel with those of study, and you will be welcome among us as a bringer of fresh tidings from a land that has become sadly strange to us, except through the agents of a now restricted commerce and the reports of hasty pilgrims. For those days are in the far distance which I myself witnessed, when men like Orispa and Guarino went out to Greece as to a storehouse and came back laden with manuscripts which every scholar was eager to borrow, and, be it owned with shame, not always willing to restore. Nay, even the days when erudite Greeks flocked to our shores for refuge seem far off now, farther off than the oncoming of my blindness, but doubtless young men, research after the treasures of antiquity was not alien to the purpose of your travels. Assuredly not, said Tito, on the contrary, my companion, my father, was willing to risk his life in his zeal for the discovery of inscriptions and other traces of ancient civilization. And I trust there is a record of his researches and their results, said Bardot eagerly, since they must be even more precious than those of Chiriaco, which I have diligently availed myself of, though they are not always illuminated by adequate learning. There was such a record, said Tito, but it was lost like everything else, in the shipwreck I suffered below Encona, the only record left is such as remains in our, in my memory. You must lose no time in committing it to paper, young man, said Bardot, with growing interest. Doubtless you remember much if you ate it in transcription, for when I was your age words wrought themselves into my mind as if they had been fixed by the tool of the graver, wherefore I constantly marvel at the capriciousness of my daughter's memory, which grasps certain objects with tenacity and lets fall all those minutia whereon depends accuracy the very soul of scholarship. But I apprehend no such danger with you, young man, if your will has seconded the advantages of your training. When Bardot made this reference to his daughter, Tito ventured to turn his eyes towards her, and at the accusation against her memory his face broke into its brightest smile, which was reflected as inevitably as sudden sunbeams in Romala's. Conceived the soothing delight of that smile to her, Romala had never dreamed that there was a scholar in the world who would smile at a deficiency for which she was constantly made to feel herself a culprit. It was like the dawn of any sense to her, the sense of comradeship. Did not look away from each other immediately, as if the smile had been a stolen one, they looked and smiled with frank enjoyment. She is not really so cold and proud, thought Tito. Does he forget too, I wonder? thought Romala. Yet I hope not, else he will vex my father. But Tito was obliged to turn away and answer Bardot's question. I have had much practice in transcription, he said, but in the case of inscriptions copied in memorable scenes rendered doubly impressive by the sense of risk and adventure, it may have happened that my retention of written characters has been weakened on the plain of the Eurotus, or among the gigantic stones of Mycenae and Tirins, especially when the fear of the Turk hovers over one like a vulture, the mind wanders, even though the hand writes faithfully what the eye dictates. But something doubtless I have retained, added Tito with a modesty which was not false, though he was conscious that it was politic, something that might be of service if illustrated and corrected by a wider learning than my own. That is well spoken, young man, said Bardot, delighted, and I will not withhold from you such aid as I can give if you like to communicate with me concerning your recollections. I foresee a work which will be a useful supplement to the Isolario of Cristoforo Duon Del Monte, and which may take rank with the Itenarario of Ciriaco and the admirable Ambrodio Traversari. But we must prepare ourselves for Calumni, young man. Bardot went on with energy as if the work were already growing so fast that the time of trial was near. If your book contains novelties, you will be charged with forgery. If my elucidations should clash with any principles of interpretation adopted by another scholar, our personal characters will be attacked. We shall be impeached with foul actions. You must prepare yourself to be told that your mother was a fish woman and that your father was a renegade priest or a hanged malifactor. I myself, for having shown error in a single preposition, had an invective written against me wherein I was taxed with treachery, fraud, indecency, and even hideous crimes. Such my young friend, such are the flowers with which the glorious path of scholarship is strewed. But tell me then, I have learned much concerning Byzantium and Thessalonica long ago from Dimitrio Calcondila who has but lately departed from Florence, but you it seems have visited less familiar scenes. Yes, we made what I may call a pilgrimage full of danger, for the sake of visiting places which have almost died out of the memory of the West, for they lie away from the track of pilgrims, and my father used to say that scholars themselves hardly imagine them to have any existence out of books. He was of opinion that a new and more glorious era would open for learning, when men should begin to look for their commentaries on the ancient riders in the remains of cities and temples, nay, in the paths of the rivers, and on the face of the valleys and the mountains. Ah! said Bartow fervently, your father then was not a common man. Was he fortunate, may I ask? Had he many friends? These last words were uttered in a tone charged with meaning. No. He made enemies. Chiefly, I believe, by a certain impetuous candor, and they hindered his advancement, so that he lived in obscurity, and he would never stoop to conciliate. He could never forget an injury. Ah! said Bartow again, with a long, deep intonation. Among our hazardous expeditions continued Tito, willing to prevent further questions on a point so personal. I remember with particular vividness a hastily snatched visit to Athens, our hurry, and the double danger of being seized as prisoners by the Turks, and of our galley raising anchor before we could return, made it seem like a fevered vision of the night, the wide plain, the girdling mountains, the ruined porticoes and columns, either standing far aloof as if receding from our hurried footsteps, or else jammed in confusedly among the dwellings of Christians degraded into servitude, or among the forts and turrets of their Muslim conquerors, who have their stronghold on the Acropolis. You fill me with surprise, said Bartow. Athens then is not utterly destroyed and swept away, as I had imagined. No wonder you should be under that mistake, for few even of the Greeks themselves who live beyond the mountain boundary of Attica know anything about the present condition of Athens, or Cetinae, as the sailors call it. I remember, as we were rounding the promontory of Sunium, the Greek pilot we had on board our Venetian galley pointed to the mighty columns that stand on the summit of the Rock. The remains, as you know well, of the great temple erected to the goddess Athena, who looked down from that high shrine with triumph at her conquered rival Poseidon. Well, our Greek pilot pointing to those columns said, that was the school of the great philosopher Aristotle. And at Athens itself, the monk who acted as our guide in the hasty view we snatched, insisted most on showing us the spot where Saint Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, or some such legend. Talk not of monks and their legends, young man, said Bartow, interrupting Tito impetuously. It was enough to overlay human hope and enterprise with an eternal frost to think that the ground which was trodden by philosophers and poets is crawled over by those insect swarms of besotted fanatics or howling hypocrites. Perdio, I have no affection for them, said Tito, with a shrug. Servitu agrees well with a religion like theirs, which lies in the renunciation of all that makes life precious to other men, and they carry the yoke that befits them. Their matten chant is drowned by the voice of the Muesin, who from the gallery of the high tower on the Acropolis calls every muscleman to his prayers. That tower springs from the Parthenon itself, and every time we paused and directed our eyes towards it, our guide set up a wail, that a temple which had once been won from the diabolical uses of the pagans to become the temple of another virgin than Pallas, the virgin mother of God, was now again perverted to the accursed ends of the Moslem. It was the sight of those walls of the Acropolis which disclosed themselves in the distance as we leaned over the sight of our galley when it was forced by contrary winds to anchor in the Parias, that fired my father's mind with a determination to see Athens at all risks, and in spite of the sailors' warnings that if we lingered till a change in the wind they would depart without us. But after all it was impossible for us to venture near the Acropolis, for the sight of men eager in examining old stones raised the suspicion that we were Venetian spies, and we had to hurry back to the harbor. We will talk more of these things, said Mardo eagerly. You must recall everything to the minutest trace left in your memory. You will win the prize by leaving a record of the aspect Greece bore, while yet the barbarians had not swept away every trace of the structures that Pausanias and Pliny described. You will take those great writers as your models, and such a contribution of criticism and suggestion as my writer mind can supply shall not be wanting to you. There will be much to tell, for you have traveled, you said, in the Heloponnesus. Yes, and in Biosha also. I have rested in the groves of Helicon, and tasted of the Greece conquest after conquest has set its seal, tiller is a confusion of ownership even in ruins that only close study and comparison could unravel. High over every fastness, from the plains of Lacquer Diamond to the Straits of Thermopole, there towers some huge Frankish fortress, once inhabited by a French or Italian Marquis, now either abandoned or held by Turkish bands. Stay! cried Bardo, whose mind was now too thoroughly preoccupied by the idea of the future book to attend to. Do you think of writing in Latin or Greek? Doubtless Greek is the more ready clothing for your thoughts, and it is the noble or language, but on the other hand Latin is the tongue in which we shall measure ourselves with the larger and more famous number of modern rivals, and if you are less at ease in it I will aid you. Yes, I will spend on you that long accumulated study which was to have been thrown into the channel of another work, a work in which I myself was to have had a helpmate. The work may not be executed yet, for you too young men have been brought up by a father who poured into your mind all the long gathered stream of his knowledge and experience. Our aid might be mutual. Romula, who had watched her father's growing excitement and divined well the invisible currents of feeling that determined every question and remark, felt herself in a glow of strange anxiety. She turned her eyes on Tito continually, to watch the impression her father's words made on him, afraid lest he should be inclined to see which were lighting up her father's face with a new hope. But no, he looked so bright and gentle, he must feel as she did, that in this eagerness of blind age there was piteousness enough to call forth inexhaustible patience. How much more strongly he would feel this if he knew about her brother. A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humours of the gods in fair weather. What did he feel within? And Tito was really very far from feeling impatient. He delighted in sitting there with the sense that Romula's attention was fixed on him, and that he could occasionally look at her. He was pleased that Bardo should take an interest in him, and he did not dwell with enough seriousness on the prospect of the work in which he was to be aided to feel moved by it to anything else than that easy good-humoured acquiescence which was natural to him. Romula did not make this self-depreciatory statement in a tone of anxious humility, but with a proud gravity. ''Nay, my Romula,'' said her father, not willing that the stranger should take an interest in Romula. ''You are mistaken,'' said Romula. ''I am by no means sufficient to my father. I have not the gifts that are necessary for scholarship. Romula did not make this self-depreciatory statement in a tone of anxious humility, but with a proud gravity. ''Nay, my Romula,'' said her father, not willing that the stranger should have too low a conception of his daughter's powers. ''Thou art not destitute of gifts. Rather thou art endowed beyond the measure of women, but thou hast with all the woman's delicate frame which ever craves repose and variety, and so begets a wandering imagination. ''My daughter,'' turning to Tito, ''has been very precious to me, filling up to the best of her power of the place of a son. For I had once a son,'' Bardo checked and he did not wish to assume an attitude of complaint in the presence of a stranger, and he remembered that this young man in whom he had unexpectedly become so much interested was still a stranger, towards whom it became him rather to keep the position of a patron. His pride was roused to double activity by the fear that he had forgotten his dignity. ''But,'' he resumed in his original tone of condescension, ''we're departing from what I believe is to you the most important business. Nello informed me that you had certain gems which you disfane dispose of, and that you desired a passport to some man of wealth and taste, who would be likely to become a purchaser. It is true. For though I have attained employment as a corrector with the chinini, my payment leaves little margin beyond the provision of necessaries, and would leave less but that my good friend Nello insists on my hiring a lodging from him and saying nothing about the rent till better days. ''Nello is a good-hearted prodigal,'' said Bardo, and though with that ready ear and ready tongue he is much like the ill-famed marketes, knowing many things and knowing them all badly as I hinted to him but now. He is nevertheless enormous sapiens after the manner of our born Florentines. ''But have you the gems with you? I would willingly know what they are. Oh, yet his is useless. No, it might only deepen regret. I cannot add to my store. ''I have one or two intaglios of much beauty,'' said Tito, proceeding to draw from his wallet a small case. But Romela no sooner saw the movement than she looked at him with significant gravity and placed her finger on her lips, conviso che tacendo di c'è tacci. If Bardo were made aware that the gems were within reach she knew well he would want a minute description of them and it would become pain to him that they should go away from him even if he did not insist on some device for purchasing them in spite of poverty. But she had no sooner made this sign than she felt rather guilty and ashamed at having her father's to a stranger. It seemed that she was destined to a sudden confidence and familiarity with this young Greek, strangely at variance with her deep seated pride and reserve, and this consciousness again brought the unwanted colour to her cheeks. Tito understood her look and sign and immediately withdrew his hand from the case, saying in a careless tone so as to make it appear that he was merely following up his last words. ''But they are usually in the keeping of Messer Domenico Cennini, who has made them as worth at least five hundred ducats.'' ''Ah, then, they are fine and tagly,'' said Bardo. ''Five hundred ducats? Ah, more than a man's ransom!'' Tito gave a slight, almost imperceptible start and opened his long dark eyes with questioning surprise at Bardo's blind face as if his words, a mere phrase of common parlance at a time when men were often being ransomed for slavery imprisonment, had had some special meaning for him. But the next day, as if her eyes must be her father's interpreters, she, intensely preoccupied with what related to her father, imagined that Tito was looking to her again for some guidance and immediately spoke. ''Alessandra Scala delights in gems, you know, father. She calls them her winter flowers, and the secretario would be almost sure to buy any gems that she wished for. Besides, he himself sets great store by rings and sigils, which he wears as a defence against pains in the joints.'' ''It is true,'' said Bardo. ''There is much confidence in the efficacy of gems, a confidence wider than what is sanctioned by Pliny, who clearly shows that he regards many beliefs of that sort as idle superstitions, though not to the utter denial of medicinal values in gems. Wherefore I myself, as you observe, young man, wear certain rings, which the discreet Camillo Leonardo prescribed to me by letter when two years ago I had a certain infirmity of sudden numbness. But thou hast spoken well, Romala, I know, which maso shall carry. But it were well that Messera should notify to thee what the gems are, together with the intagli they bear, as a warrant to Bartolomeo that they will be worthy of his attention.'' ''Nay, father,'' said Romala, whose dread lest a paroxysm of the collector's mania should seize her father, gave her the courage to resist his proposal. Your word will be sufficient that Messera is a scholar and has travelled much. The secretario will need no further information.'' said Bartolomeo, touched on a cord that was sure to respond. ''I have no need to add proofs and arguments in confirmation of my word to Bartolomeo, and I doubt not that this young man's presence is in accord with the tones of his voice, so that the door once being opened he will be his own best advocate.'' Bartolomeo paused a few moments, but a silence was evidently charged with some idea that he was hesitating to express, for he once leaned forward a little as if he was backward again. At last, as if he had made up his mind, he said in a tone which might have become a prince giving the courteous signal of dismissal, ''I am somewhat fatigued this morning, and shall prefer seeing you again to-morrow, when I shall be able to give you the secretary's answer, authorizing you to present yourself to him at some given time. But before you go, here the old man in spite of himself fell into a more faltering tone. You will perhaps permit me to touch your hand?'' His long since I touched the hand of a young man. Bartolomeo had stretched out his aged white hand, and Tito immediately placed his dark but delicate and supple fingers within it. Bartolomeo's crimped fingers closed over them, and he held them for a few minutes in silence. Then he said, ''Romala, has this young man the same complexion as thy brother, fair and pale?'' ''No, father,'' Romala answered with determined composure, though her heart began to beat violently with emotions. The hair of Messera is dark. His complexion is dark. Inwardly she said, ''Will he mind it? Will it be disagreeable?'' No, he looked so gentle and good natured. Then aloud again, ''Would Messera permit my father to touch his hair and face?'' Her eyes inevitably made a timid in treating appeal while she asked this, and Tito's met them with soft brightness, as he said assuredly, and leaning forward with the brightness of assent, which was the greater relief to her because it was unaccompanied by any sign of embarrassment. Bartolomeo passed his hand again and again over the long curls, and grasped them a little, as if their spiral resistance made his inward vision clearer. Then he passed his hand over the brow and cheek, tracing the profile with the edge of his palm and fourth finger, and letting the breadth of his hand repose on the rich oval of the cheek. ''Ah,'' he said, as his hand opened, ''he must be very unlike thy brother, Romala, and it is the better. You see no visions, I trust, my young friend.'' At this moment the door opened, and there entered unannounced a tall, elderly man in a handsome black silk luco, who, unwinding his bichetto from his neck and taking off his cap, disclosed ahead as white as Bartolomeo's. He cast a keen glance of surprise at the group before him, the young stranger leaning in that attitude and Romala sitting near with eyes dilated by anxiety and agitation. But there was an instantaneous change. Bartolet fall his hand, Tito raised himself from his stooping posture, and Romala rose to meet the visitor with an alacrity which implied all the greater intimacy because it was unaccompanied by any smile. ''Well, God-daughter,'' said the stately man, as he had touched Romala's shoulder, ''Maso said you had a visitor, but I came to see you. You are to come at a fortunate moment. This young man,'' he continued, while Tito rose and bowed, ''is one of the chief citizens of Florence, Messer Bernardo Del Nero, my oldest, I had almost said my only friend, whose good opinion, if you can win it, may carry you far. He is but three and twenty Bernardo, yet he can doubtless tell thee much which thou wilt care to hear. For though as color he has already traveled far, and looked on other steams. ''Ah, a Greek as I augur,'' said Bernardo, returning Tito's reverence but slightly, and surveying him with that sort of glance which seems almost to cut like fine steel. Newly arrived in Florence it appears. The name of Messera, or part of it, for it is doubtless a long one. ''On the contrary,'' said Tito with perfect good humor, it is most modestly free from polysyllabic pomp, my name is Tito Malema. He was born fully as he took a seat. I had expected it to be at least as long as the names of a city, a river, a province and an empire all put together. We Florentines mostly use names as we do prawns, and strip them of all flourishes before we trust them to our throats. ''Well, Bernardo,'' he continued, as if the stranger were not worth further notice and changing his tone of sarcastic suspicion for one of sadness, we have buried him. ''Ah,'' replied Bernardo with corresponding words. ''And a new epoch has come for Florence, a dark one, I fear. Lorenzo has left behind him an inheritance that is but like the alchemist's laboratory, when the wisdom of the alchemist is gone.' ''Not altogether so,'' said Bernardo. ''Piro de Medici has abundant intelligence, his faults are only the faults of hot blood. I love the lad, lad he will always be to me, as I have always been little father to him. Who hopes?'' said Bernardo. ''We shall have the old strife of parties, I fear. If we could have a new order of things that was something else than knocking down one coat of arms to put up another,'' said Bernardo, I should be ready to say, I belong to no party, I am a Florentine. But as long as parties are in question, I am a Medician, and will be a Medician till I die. I am of the same mind as Ferenata de Gliudberte. To wish, ill, or well for the sake of past wrongs or kindnesses. During this short dialogue Tito had been standing and now took his leave. ''But come again at the same hour to-morrow,'' said Bardo graciously before Tito left the room, that I may give you Bartolomeo's answer. ''From what quarter of the sky has this pretty Greek youngster alighted so close to thy chair, Bardo?'' said Bernardo evidently intended to convey something more to Bardo than was implied by the mere words. He is a scholar who has been shipwrecked and has saved a few gems for which he wants to find a purchaser. I am going to send him to Bartolomeo's scala, for thou knowest it were more prudent in me to abstain from further purchases.' Bernardo shrugged his shoulders and said, ''Romela, wilt thou see if my servant is without? I ordered him to wait for me here.' Then when there was a low emphatic tone, ''Remember, Bardo, thou hast a rare gem of thy own. Take care no one gets it who is not likely to pay a worthy price. That pretty Greek has a lithe sleepness about him that seems marvelously fitted for slipping easily into any nest he fixes his mind on.' Bardo was startled. The association of Tito with the image of his lost son had excluded instead of suggesting the thought of Romela. But almost immediately there seemed to be a reaction to the last of the warning as if it had been a hope. But why not, Bernardo? If the young man approved himself worthy, he is a scholar, and there would be no difficulty about the dowry which always makes thee gloomy. CHAPTER VII OF ROMELA 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. ROMELA by George Elliott. CHAPTER VII A Learned Squabble Bartolomeo Scala, secretary of the Florentine Republic, on whom Tito Malema had been thus led to anchor his hopes, lived in a handsome palace close to the Porta Pinti, now known as the Casa Geradesca. His arms, and as your ladder transverse on a golden field, with the motto gradatim placed over the entrance, told all comers that the miller's son held assent to honors by his own efforts, a fact to be proclaimed without wincing. The secretary was a vain and pompous man, but he was also an honest one. He was sincerely convinced of his own merit, and could see no reason for feigning. The topmost round of his as your ladder had been reached by this time. He had held his secretary ship these twenty years, had long since made his orations on the ringiera, or platform of the old palace, as the custom was, in the presence of princely visitors, while Marzocco, the head of his gold crown on the occasion, and all the people cried, Viva Meser Bortolomeo! Had been on an embassy to Rome, and had there been made titular senator, apostolical secretary, Knight of the Golden Spur, and had, eight years ago, been gone phalonia, last goal of the Florentine citizen's ambition. Meantime he had got richer and richer and more and more gouty, after the manner of successful mortality, and the Knight of the Golden Spur had often to sit with helpless cushioned heal under the handsome loggia he'd built overlooking the spacious gardens and lawn at the back of his palace. He was in this position on the day when he had granted the desired interview to Tito Malema. The May afternoon sun was on the flowers and the grass beyond the pleasant shade of the loggia. The two stately silk luco was cast aside, and the light loose mantle was thrown over his tunic. His beautiful daughter, Alessandra, and her husband, the Greek soldier poet Marullo, were seated on one side of him, on the other two friends, not oppressively illustrious, and therefore listeners. Yet to say nothing of the gout, Messer Bertolomeo's felicity was far from perfect. It was embittered by the contents of certain papers that lay before him, consisting chiefly of a correspondence between himself and Politian. It was a human foible at that period, incredible as it may seem, to recite quarrels and favor scholarly visitors with the communication of an entire and lengthy correspondence, and this was neither the first nor the second time that Scala had asked the candid opinion of his friends as to the balance of right and wrong in some half-score Latin letters between himself and Politian, all springing out of certain epigrams written in the most playful tone in the world. It was the story of a very typical and pretty quarrel, in which we are interested because it supplied precisely that thistle of hatred necessary according to Nello, as a stimulus to the sluggish paces of the cautious steed friendship. Politian, having been a rejected pretender to love in the hand of Scala's daughter, kept a very sharp and learned tooth in due prosperous and presumptuous secretary who had declined the greatest scholar of the age for a son-in-law. Scala was a meritorious public servant and, moreover, a lucky man, naturally exasperating to an offended scholar, but then, oh, beautiful balance of things, he had an itch for authorship and was a bad writer. One of those excellent people who, sitting in gouty slippers, penned poetical trifles, entirely for their own amusement without any view to an audience and consequently sent them to their friends in letters, which were the literary periodicals of the fifteenth century. Now Scala had an abundance of friends who were ready to praise his writings, friends like Ficino and Landino, amiable browsers the Medician park along with himself, who found his Latin prose style elegant and masculine, and the terrible Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorant of Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. But when was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous friends? That critical, supercilious politian, a fellow browser who was far from amiable, must be made aware that the solid secretary showed in his leisure hours a pleasant fertility and verses, which indicated pretty clearly how much he might do in that way if he were not a man of affairs. Ineffable moment, when the man you secretly hate sends you a Latin epigram with a false gender, hendecosyllables with a questionable lesion, at least a toe too much, attempts at poetic figures which that moment had come to politian. The secretary had put forth his soft head from the official shell, and the terrible lurking crab was down upon him. Politian had used the freedom of a friend, and pleasantly in the form of a Latin epigram corrected the mistake of Scala in making the Culex, an insect too well known on the banks of the Arno, of the inferior or feminine gender. Scala replied by a bad joke in suitable Latin verses, referring to politian's unsuccessful suit. Politian found the verses very pretty and highly facetious. The more was the pity that they were seriously incorrect, and in as much as Scala had alleged that he had written them an imitation of a Greek epigram, Politian, being on such friendly terms, would enclose a Greek epigram of his own on the same interesting insect. Not we may presume out of any wish to humble Scala, but rather to instruct him. Said epigram containing a lively conceit about Venus, Cupid, and the Culex of a kind much tasted at that period, founded partly on the zoological fact that the gnat, like Venus, was born from the waters. Scala, in reply, begged to say that his verses were never intended for a scholar with such delicate olfactories as Politian, nearest of all living men to the perfection of the ancients, and of a taste so fastidious that Sturgeon itself must seem insipid to him. Defended his own verses nevertheless, though indeed they were written hastily in action, and intended as an agreeable distraction during the summer heat, to himself and such friends as were satisfied with mediocrity, he, Scala, not being like some other people who courted publicity through the book-sellers. For the rest, he had barely enough Greek to make out the sense of the epigram so graciously sent him to say nothing of tasting its elegances. But the epigram was Politians, what more need be said. Still, by way of post-tripped he feared that his incomparable friend's comparison of the Nat to Venus, on account of its origins from the waters, was in many ways ticklish. On the one hand, Venus might be offended, and on the other, unless the poet intended an allusion to the doctrine of Thales, that cold and damp origin seemed doubtful to Scala in the case of a creature so fond of warmth, a fish were perhaps the better comparison, or when the power of flying was in question an eagle, or indeed when the darkness was taken into consideration a bat or an owl and more apposite parallel, et cetera, et cetera. It was a great opportunity for Politian. He was not aware, he wrote, that when he had Scala's verses placed before him there was any question of sturgeon, but rather of frogs and guzzins, made short work with Scala's defense of his own Latin, and mangled him terribly on the score of the stupid criticisms he had ventured on the Greek epigram kindly forwarded to him as a model. Wretched cavals indeed. He was the authority of Virgil himself who had called it the alumnus of the waters, and as to what his dear dull friend had to say about the fish, the eagle and the rest, it was nihil ad rem. For because the eagle could fly higher, it by no means followed that the nat could not fly at all, et cetera, et cetera. He was ashamed, however, to dwell on such trivialities and thus to swell a nat into an elephant, but for his own part would only add that he had nothing deceitful or double about him, neither thought when present by the false blandishments of those who slandered him in his absence, agreeing rather with a Homeric sentiment on that head, which furnished a Greek quotation to serve as powder to his bullet. The quarrel could not end there. The logic could hardly get worse, but the secretary got more pompously self-asserting, and the scholarly poets temper more and more venomous. Politian had been generously willing to hold up a mirror by which the two-inflated secretary beholding his cease setting up his ignorant defenses of bad Latin against ancient authorities whom the consent of centuries had placed beyond question, unless indeed he had designed to sink in literature and proportion as he rose in honors that by a sort of compensation men of letters might feel themselves as equals. In return Politian was begged to examine scholar's writings. Nowhere would he find a more devout admiration of antiquity. The secretary was ashamed of the age in which he lived some indeed there were who wanted to have their own works praised and exalted to a level with the divine monuments of antiquity, but he, Scala, could not oblige them, and asked to the honors which were offensive to the envious they had been well-earned witness his whole life since he came in penury to Florence. The elegant scholar, in reply, was not surprised that Scala found the age distasteful to him since he himself was so distasteful to the age. Nay, it was with perfect accuracy that he, the elegant scholar, had called Scala a branny monster, in as much as he was formed from the off-scourings of monsters born amidst the refuse of a mill, and eminently worthy the long-eared office of turning the paternal millstones, in Pistrini's Sordibus Natus at Quidem Pistrino Dignissimus. It was not without reference to Tito's appointed visit that the papers containing this correspondence were brought out today. Here was a new Greek scholar whose accomplishments they tested, and on nothing did Scala more desire a dispassionate opinion from persons of superior knowledge than on that Greek epigram of Politians. After sufficient introductory talk concerning Tito's travels, after a survey and discussion of the gems, and an easy passage from the mention of the lamented Lorenzo's eagerness in collecting such specimens of ancient art, to the subject of classical tastes and studies in general, and their present condition in Florence. It was inevitable to mention but a little too arrogant, assuming to be a Hercules whose office it was to destroy all the literary monstrosities of the age, and writing letters to his elders without signing them, as if they were miraculous revelations that could only have one source. And after all, were not his own criticisms often questionable, and his tastes perverse. He was fond of saying pungent things about the men who thought they wrote like Cicero because they ended every sentence with Essay-ou-Daitour. But while he was in servile imitation, did he not fall into the other extreme, running after strange words and affected phrases? Even in his much-belauded misculinia was every point tenable. And Tito, who had just been looking into the misculinia, found so much to say that was agreeable to the secretary, he would have done so from the mere disposition to please without further motive, that he showed himself quite worthy to be made a judge in the notable correspondence concerning the Culex. Here was the most thought-the-finest in the world, though he had pretended to believe that the Transmarini, the Greeks themselves, would make light of it. Had he not been unintentionally speaking the truth in his false modesty, Tito was ready and scarified the epigram to Scala's content. Oh, wise young judge, he could doubtless appreciate satire even in the vulgar tongue, and Scala, who, excellent man, not seeking publicity through the booksellers, was never unprovided with hasty, uncorrected rifles, as a sort of sherbet for a visitor on a hot day, or if the weather were called, why, then, as a cordial. Had a few little matters in the shape of sonnets turning on well-known foibles of politians, which he would not like to go any farther, but which would perhaps amuse the company. Enough. Tito took his leave under an urgent invitation to come again. His gems were interesting, especially the agate with the Lucis Naturae in it, a most wonderful semblance of Cupid riding on the lion, and with the lion headed serpent and chased in it, both of which the secretary agreed to buy, the latter as a reinforcement of his preventives against the gout, which gave him such severe twinges that was plain enough how intolerable it would be if he were not well supplied, with rings of rare virtue, and with an amulet worn close under the right breast. But Tito was assured that he himself was more interesting than his gems. He had won his way to the Scala palace by the recommendation of Bardo de Bardi, who, to be sure, was Scala's old scholar, in spite of his overvaluing himself a little, a frequent foible in the secretary's friends. But he must come again on the ground of his own manifest accomplishments. The interview could hardly have ended more auspiciously for Tito, and as he walked out of the Porta Pinti that he might laugh a little at his ease over the affair of the Culex, he felt that fortune could hardly mean to turn her back on him again at present, since she had taken him by the hand in this decided way. CHAPTER 8 FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO VOLUNTEER PLEASE VISIT LIBERVOX.ORG ROMULA BY GEORGE ELLIOT CHAPTER 8 A FACE IN THE CROWD It is easy to northern people to rise early on Midsummer morning to see the dew on the grassy edge of the dusty pathway, to notice that fresh shoots among the darker green of the oak and fur in the coppers, and to look over the gate at the shorn meadow, without recollecting that it is the nativity of St. John the Baptist. Not so to the Florentine, still less to the Florentine of the fifteenth century. To him on that particular morning the brightness of the eastern sun on the Arno has something special in it. The ringing of the bells was articulate and declared it to be the great Summer Festival of Florence, the day of St. Giovanni. San Giovanni had been the patron saint of Florence for at least eight hundred years, ever since the time when the lumbord queen Theodolinda had commanded her subjects to do him peculiar honour. Ne says old Villani to the best of his knowledge, ever since the days of Constantino the Great and Pope Sylvester, when the Florentines deposed their idol Mars, whom they were nevertheless careful not to treat with, contumely. For while they consecrated their beautiful temple to the honour of God and of the Beato Messere, St. Giovanni, they placed old Mars respectfully on a high tower near the river Arno, finding in certain ancient memorials that he had been elected as their tutelor deity under such astral influences that if he were broken or otherwise treated with indignity the city would suffer great damage and mutation. But in the fifteenth century that discrete regard to the feelings of the man destroyer had long vanished. A lot of the spear and shield had ceased to frown by the side of the Arno, and the defences of the Republic were held to lie in its craft and its coffers. For spear and shield could be hired by gold Florence, and on the gold Florence there had always been the image of St. Giovanni. Much good had come to Florence since the dim time of struggle between the old patron and the new. Some quarreling and bloodshed doubtless between Gelf and Gibleen, between black and white, between orthodox church and heretic Paterini, some floods famine and pestilence, but still much wealth and glory. Florence had achieved conquests over wild cities once mightier than itself, and especially over-hated Pisa, whose marble buildings were too high and beautiful, whose masts were too much honored on Greek and Italian coasts. The name of Florence had been growing prouder and prouder in all the courts of Europe, nay in Africa itself on the strength of purest gold coinage, finest dyes and textures, preeminent scholarship and poetic genius, and wits of the most serviceable sort for statesmanship and banking. It was a name so omnipresent that a pope with a turn for epigram had called Florentines the fifth element. And for this high destiny, though it might partly depend on the stars and Madonna dell' Impronetta, and certainly depended on other higher powers less often named, the praise was greatly due to San Giovanni, whose image was on the fair gold Florence. Therefore it was fitting that the day of San Giovanni, that ancient church festival already venerable in the days of St. Augustine, should be a day of peculiar rejoicing to Florence, and should be ushered in by a vigil duly kept in strict old Florentine fashion, with much dancing, with much street-gesting, and perhaps with not a little stone throwing and window-breaking. But emphatically with certain street sites such as could only be provided by a city which held in its service a clever seca, engineer and architect, valuable alike in sieges and in shows. But the help of seca, the very saints surrounded by their almond-shaped glory and floating on clouds with their joyous companionship of winged cherubs, even as they may be seen to this day in the pictures of Perugino, seemed on the eve of San Giovanni to have brought their piece of the heavens down into the church, and to pass slowly through them. And more wonderful still, saints of gigantic size with the tendent angels might be seen not seated, but moving in a slow, mysterious manner along the streets, like a procession of colossal figures come down from the high domes and tribunes of the church. The clouds were made of good woven stuff. The saints and cherubs were unglorified mortals supported by firm bars, and those mysterious giants were really men of very steady brain, balancing themselves on stilts and enlarged, like Greek tragedians, by huge masks and stuffed shoulders. But he was a miserably unimaginative Florentine who thought only of that. Nay, somewhat impious for in the images of sacred things was there not some of the virtue of sacred things themselves. And if after that there came a company of merry black demons well armed with claws and thongs of influence of sport, ready to perform impromptu farces of bestenadoing and clothes tearing, why, that was the demon's way of keeping a vigil, and they too might have descended from the domes and the tribunes. The Tuscan mind slipped from the devout to the burlesque as readily as water round an angle, and the saints had already had their turn, had gone their way and made their due pause before the gates of San Giovanni to do him honour on the eve of his festa. And on the morrow the great day thus ushered in it was fitting that the tributary symbols paid to Florence by all its dependent cities, districts and villages, whether conquered, protected or of immemorial possession, should be offered at the shrine of San Giovanni in the old octagonal church, once the cathedral and now the baptistery. Where every Florentine had had the sign of the cross made with the anointing chrysm on his brow, that all the city from the white-haired man to the stripling, and from the matron to the lisping child, should be clothed in its best to do honour to the great day and see the great sight. And that again when the sun was sloping and the streets were cool, there should be the glorious race or corso when the unsaddled horses clothed in rich trappings should run right across the city from the Porta al Prato on the northwest through the Mercato Vecchio to the Porta Santa Croce on the southeast where the richest of the Pali or velvet and brocade banners with silk linings and fringe of gold such as became a city that half clothed the well-dressed world were mounted on a tramful car awaiting the winner or winner's owner and thereafter followed more dancing. Nay, through the whole days as an old chronicler at the beginning of that century, there were weddings and the grandest gatherings with so much piping music and song with balls and feasts and gladness and an ornament that this earth might have been mistaken for paradise. In this year of 1492 it was perhaps a little less easy to make that mistake. Lorenzo the Magnificent and Subtle was dead and an arrogant incocious pierrot was come in his room. An evil change for Florence unless indeed the wise horse prefers the bad rider as more easily thrown from the saddle and already the regrets for Lorenzo were getting less predominant over the former desire for government on a broader basis in which corruption might be arrested and there might be that free play for everybody's jealousy and ambition which made the ideal liberty of the good old quarrelsome struggling times when Florence raised her great buildings, reared her own soldiers, drove out would-be tyrants at the sword's point and was proud to keep faith at her own loss. Lorenzo was dead, Pope Innocent was dying and a troublesome succession with an intriguing ambitious Milan might set Italy by the years before long. The times were likely to be difficult. Still there was all the more reason that the Republic should keep its religious festivals and Midsummer Morning in this year 1492 was not less bright than usual. It was the times in the morning that the symbolic offerings to be carried in grand procession were all assembled at their starting point in the Piazza della Signoria that famous piazza where stood then and stand now the massive turreted palace of the people called the Palazzo Vecchio and the spacious loggia built by Orcania the scene of all grand state ceremonial. The sky made the fairest blue tent and under it the bell swung so vigorously that every evil spirit with sense enough to be formidable must long sense have taken this flight. Windows and terraced roofs were alive with human faces. Somber stone houses were bright with hanging draperies. The boldly soaring palace tower, the yet older square tower of the Bargello and the spire of the neighboring Badia seemed to keep watch above and below on the broad polygonal flags of the piazza was the glorious show of banners and horses with rich trappings and gigantic sari or tapers that were fitly called towers. Strangely a grand eyes descendants of those torches by whose faint light the church worshiped in the catacombs. By times in the morning all processions had need to move under the mid-summer sky of Florence where the shelter of the narrow streets must every now and then be exchanged for the glare of wide spaces and the sun would be high up in the heavens before the long pomp had ended its pilgrimage in the piazza di San Giorani. But here where the procession was to the magnificent city with its ingenious sicka had provided another tent than the sky for the whole of the piazza del Duomo from the octagonal baptistery in the center to the façade of the cathedral and the walls of the houses on the other sides of the quadrangle was covered at the height of 40 feet or more with blue drapery adorned with well-stitched yellow lilies and the familiar coats of arms while sheaves of many colored banners drooped at fit angles under this super-incumbent blue a gorgeous rainbow-lit shelter to the waiting spectators who leaned from the windows and made a narrow border on the pavement and wished for the coming of the show. One of these spectators was Tito Malema bright in the midst of brightness he sat at the window of the room above Nello's shop his right elbow resting on the red drapery hanging from the windowsill and his head supported in a backward position by the right hand which pressed his ear. His face wore that bland liveliness as far removed from excitability as from heaviness or gloom which marks the companion popular alike amongst men and women the companion who was never obtrusive or noisy from uneasy vanity or excessive animal spirits and whose brow was never contracted by resentment or indignation. He showed no other change from the two months and more that had passed since his first appearance in the weather-stain then that added radiance of good fortune which is like the just perceptible perfecting of a flower after hit his drunk a morning sunbeams. Close behind him ensconced in the narrow angle between his chair and the window frame stood the slim figure of Nello in a holiday suit and at his left the young Sinini, Pietro the erudite corrector of proofsheets not Domenico the practical. Tito was looking alternately down on the scene below and upward at the varied knot of gazers and talkers immediately around him some of whom had come in after witnessing the commencement of the procession in the Piazza della Signoria. Pietro di Cosima was raising a laugh among them by his grimaces and anathemas of the noise of the bells against which no kind of ear-stuffing was a sufficient barricade since the more he stuffed his ears the more he felt the vibration of his skull and declared that he would bury himself at the spot of the Valdarno on a festa if he were not condemned as a painter to lie in wait for the secrets of color that were sometimes to be caught from the floating of banners and the chance grouping of the multitude. Tito had just turned his laughing face away from the whimsical painter to look down at the small drama going on among the checkered border of the spectators. When at the angle of the marble steps in front of the Duomo nearly opposite Nello's shop on the gaze that seemed to have more meaning in it than the ordinary passing observation of a stranger it was a face with a tonshered head that rose above the black mantel and white tunic of a Dominican friar a very common sight in Florence but the glance had something peculiar in it for Tito there was a faint suggestion in it certainly not of an unpleasant kind yet what pleasant association had he ever had with monks? None. The glance and this suggestion hardly took longer than a flash of lightning Nello, said Tito hastily but immediately added in a tone of disappointment ah, he's turned around it was that tall thin friar who was going up the steps I wanted you to tell me if you knew out of him One of the frati predicatori said Nello carelessly you don't expect me to know the private history of the crows I seem to remember something about his face it is an uncommon face what? you thought it might be our fragile armo? too tall and he never shows himself in that chance way besides that loud barking hound of the lord is not in Florence just now said Francesco C. the popular poet footnote a play on the name of the Dominicans Dominicanes which was accepted by themselves and which is pictorially represented for them by Simone Memmi end of footnote he has taken Piero de Medici's hint to carry his railing prophecies on a journey for a while the frate neither rails nor prophecies against any man said a middle aged person seated at the other corner of the window he only prophecies against a vice if you think that an attack on your poems Francesco it is not the frate's fault ah, he's gone into the duomo now said Tito who had watched the figure eagerly no, I was not under that mistake Nello your fragile armo has a high nose and a large underlip I saw him once he is not handsome but this man truce to your description said Cennini Hark, see, here come the horsemen and the banners that's standard he continued laying his hand familiarly on Tito's shoulder that carried on the horse with white trappings that with the red eagle holding the green dragon between its talons and the red lily over the eagle is the gonfalan of the Guelph party and those cavaliers close around it are the chief officers of the Guelph party that is one of our proudest banners grumble as we may it means the triumph of the Guelphs which means the triumph of Florentine will which means triumph of the Popolani nay, go on Cennini said the middle aged man seated at the window which means triumph of the fat Popolani over the lean which means triumph of the fatest Popolano over those who are less fat Crenaca, you are becoming sententious said the printer Fra Giorlamo's preaching will spoil you and make you take life by the wrong handle trust me your cornices will lose half their beauty if you begin to mingle bitterness with them that is the maniera tedesca which you used to declaim against when you came from Rome the next palace you build we shall see you trying to put the fratis doctrine into stone that is a goodly show of cavaliers said Tito who had learned by this time the best way to please Florentines but are there not strangers among them I see foreign costumes assuredly said Cennini you see there the orators from France Milan and Venice and behind them are English and German nobles for it is customary that all foreign visitors of distinction pay their tribute to San Giovanni in the train of that gonfalon for my part I think our Florentine cavaliers sit their horses many of those cut-and-thrust northerners whose wits lie in their heels and saddles and for Jan Venetian I fancy he would feel himself more at ease on the back of a dolphin we ought to know something of horsemanship for we excel all Italy in the sport of the giostra and the money we spend on them but you will see a finer show of our men by and by Malema my brother himself will be among the officers of the Zecca the banners are the better sight said Piero di Cosimo setting the noise in his delight at the winding stream of color as the tributary standards advanced around the piazza the Florentine men are so-so they make Barassari show at this distance with their patch of sallow flesh-tint above the black garments but those banners with their velvet and satin and miniver and brocade and their endless play of delicate light and shadow Va! your human talk and doings are a tame jest the only passionate life is in form and color so if satin-asso could paint thou would sell thy soul to learn his secrets said Nello but there is little likelihood of it seeing the blessed angels themselves are such poor hands at Ciroscoro if one may judge from their capo d'Opera the Madonna Nunziata there go the banners of Pisa and Arezzo said Cennini I, Mr. Pisano it is no use for you to look sullen you may as well carry your banner to our San Giovanni with a good grace this falls, Florentine's blind the second half of that proverb will hold no longer there come the ensigns of our subject towns and seniors Malema they will all be suspended in San Giovanni until this day next year when they will give place to new ones they are a fair sight said Tito and San Giovanni will surely be as well satisfied with that produce of Italian looms as Minerva with her peplos especially as he contents himself with so little drapery but my eyes are less delighted with those whirling towers which would soon make me fall from the window in a sympathetic vertigo the towers of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all efficacious wax taper were also called c'eri but in as much as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion these gigantic c'eri some of them so large would be of necessity carried on wheels were not solid but hollow and had their surface made not solely of wax but of wood and pasteboard gilded, carved and painted as real sacred tapers often are with successive circles of figures warriors on horseback foot soldiers with lance and shield dancing maidens, animals trees and fruits and in fine says the old chronicler all things that could delight the eye and the heart the hollowness having the further advantage that men could stand inside these hyperbolic tapers and whirl them continually so as to produce a phantasmagoric effect which considering the towers were numerous must have been calculated to produce dizziness on a truly magnificent scale Pestilenza said Piero di Cosimo moving from the window those whirling circles one above the other are worse than the jangling of all the bells let me know when the last taper has passed nay, you will surely like to be called when the Contadini come carrying their torches said Nello you would not miss the country folk of the Mugello and the Cassantino of whom your favorite Leonardo would make a hundred grotesque sketches no, said Piero resolutely I will see nothing till the car of the Zecca comes I have seen clowns enough holding tapers of slant both with and without cowls to last me for my life here it comes then Piero the car of the Zecca called out Nello after an interval during which towers and tapers in a descending scale of size had been making their slow transit Fedidio exclaimed Francesco C. that is a well-tanned San Giovanni some sturdy Roman Yolbeger man I'll warrant our Signoria plays the host to all the Jewish and Christian scum that every other city shuts its gates against and lets them fatten on us like St. Anthony Swine the car of the Zecca or mint which had just rolled into sight was originally an immense wooden tower or Cero adorned after the same fashion as the other tributary Ceri mounted on a splendid car and drawn by two mouse-colored oxen whose mild heads looked out from rich trappings bearing the arms of the Zecca what the latter half of the century was getting rather ashamed of the towers with their circular or spiral paintings which had delighted the eyes and the hearts of the other half so that they had become a contemptuous proverb and any ill-painted figure looking as will sometimes happen to figures in the best stages of art as if it had been boned for a pie was called a fantocchio da Cero a tower puppet consequently improved taste with Zecca to help it had devised for the magnificent Zecca a triumphal car like a pyramidal catafalque with ingenious wheels warranted to turn all corners easily round the base were living figures of saints and angels arranged in sculpturesque fashion and on the summit, at the height of 30 feet well bound to an iron rod and holding an iron cross also firmly infixed stood a living representative of Saint John the Baptist with arms and legs bare a garment of tiger skins about his body and a golden nimbus fastened on his head as the precursor was want to appear in the cloisters and churches not having yet revealed himself to painters as the brown and sturdy boy who made one of the holy family for where could the image of the patron saint be more fitly placed than on the symbol of the Zecca was not the royal prerogative of coining money the surest token that a city had won its independence and by the blessing of San Giovanni this beautiful sheepfold of his had shown that token earliest among the Italian cities nevertheless the annual function of representing the patron saint was not among the high prizes of public life it was paid for with something like ten shillings a cake weighing fourteen pounds two bottles of wine and a handsome supply of light eatables the money being furnished by the magnificent Zecca and the payment in kind being by peculiar privilege presented in a basket suspended on a pole from an upper window of a private house whereupon the Adalon of the austere saint at once invigorated himself with a reasonable share of the sweets and wine through the remnants to the crowd and embraced the mighty cake securely with a bright arm through the remainder of his passage this was the attitude in which the Mimic San Giovanni presented himself as the tall car jerked and vibrated on its slow way round the piazza to the northern gate of the baptistery there go the masters of the Zecca and there is my brother you see him malema, cried Cennini with an agreeable stirring of pride at showing a stranger what was too familiar to be remarkable to fellow citizens behind come the members of Calimara footnote Arte di Calimara Arte being in this use of it equivalent to corporation end of footnote the dealers in foreign cloths to which we have given our Florentine finish men of ripe years you see who were matriculated before you were born and then comes the famous art of money changers many of them matriculated also to the noble art of usury before you were born as you may discern by a certain fitful glare of the eye and a sharp curve of the nose which manifest their descent from the ancient harpies whose portraits you saw supporting the arms of the Zecca shaking off old prejudices now such a procession as that of some 400 passably ugly men carrying their tapers in open daylight diogenes fashion as if they were looking for a lost quatrino would make a merry spectacle for the feast of fools blaspheme not against the usages of our city said Pietro Cennini much offended there are new wits who think they see things more truly because they stand on their heads to look at them like tumblers and mountain banks instead of keeping the attitude of rational men doubtless it makes little difference to Maestro Viano's monkeys whether they see our Donatello statue of Judith with their heads or their tails uppermost your solemnity will allow some quarter to playful fancy I hope said Chey with a shrug else what becomes of the ancients whose example you scholars are bound to revere Monsieur Pietro life was never anything but a perpetual seesaw between gravity and jest keep your jest then till your end of the pole is uppermost said Cennini still angry and that is not when the great bond of our republic is expressing itself in ancient symbols without which the vulgar would be conscious of nothing beyond their own petty wants of back and stomach and never rise to the sense of community in religion and law there has been no great people without processions and the man who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to anything but contempt is like the puddle that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed by no one said anything after this indignant burst of Cenninis till he himself spoke again Hark! the trumpets of the Signoria now comes the last stage of the show Malema that is our Gon Falloniere in the middle, in the starred mantel with the sword carried before him twenty years ago we used to see our foreign Podesta who was our judge in civil causes walking on his right hand but our republic has been overdoctored by clever Medici that is the proposto, spokesman or moderator of the priori on the left then come the other seven priori then all the other magistracies and officials of our republic you see your patron the secretario there is Mr. Bernardo Di Nero also said Tito his visage is a fine and venerable one though it has worn rather a petrifying look towards me ah, said Nello he is the dragon that guards the remnant of old Bardot's gold which I fancy is chiefly that virgin gold that falls about the fair Ramola's head and shoulders eh, my Apolino? he added painting Tito's head Tito had the youthful grace of blushing but he had also the adroit and ready speech that prevents a blush from looking like embarrassment he replied at once and a very pactolus it is a stream with golden ripples if I were an alchemist he was saved from the need for further speech by the sudden fortissimo of drums and trumpets and fiefs bursting into the breadth of the piazza in a grand storm of sound a roar, a blast, and a whistling well befitting a city famous for movements and reducing the members of the closest group to a state of death isolation during this interval Nello observed Tito's fingers moving in recognition of someone in the crowd below but not seeing the direction of his glance he failed to detect the object of this greeting the sweet round blue-eyed face under a white hood immediately lost in the narrow border of heads where there was a continual eclipse of round Contadena cheeks by the harsh line features or bent shoulders and old spadesmen and where profiles turned as sharply from north to south as weathercocks under a shifting wind but when it was felt that the show was ended when the twelve prisoners released in honour of the day and the very barbari or race-horses with the arms of their owners embroidered on their clothes it followed up the signoria and had been duly consecrated to San Giovanni and everyone was moving from the window Nello, whose florentine curiosity was of that lively canine sort which thinks no trifle too despicable for investigation put his hand on Tito's shoulder and said what acquaintance was that you were making signals at eh Giovanni Mio? some little Contadena who probably mistook me for an acquaintance for she had honoured me with a greeting or who wished to begin an acquaintance said Nello but you are bound for the Via de Bardi and the Feast of the Muses there is no counting on you for a frolic else we might have gone in search of adventures together in the crowd and had some pleasant fooling in honour of San Giovanni but your high fortune has come on you too soon I don't mean the professor's mantle that is roomy enough to hide a few stolen chickens but Messer Endimion minded his manners after that singular good fortune of his and what says our Luigi Pulci? da quel giorno in quaccamor marxesse per lei son fatto e gentile e cortese Nello amica Mio thou hast an intolerable trick of making life stale by forestalling it with thy talk said Tito shrugging his shoulders with a great look of patient resignation which was his nearest approach to anger not to mention that such ill founded babbling would be a held a great offence by that same goddess whose humble worshipper you are always professing yourself I will be mute said Nello laying his finger on his lips with a responding shrug but it is only under our four eyes that I talk any folly about her pardon you were on the verge of it just now in the hearing of others if you want to ruin me in the minds of Bardo and his daughter enough enough said Nello I am an absurd old barber it all comes from that abstinence of mine in not making bad verses in my youth for want of letting my folly run out that way when I was 18 it runs out at my tongue's end now I am at the unseemly age of 50 but Nello has not got his head muffled for all that he can see a buffalo in the snow Adio Giovanni Mio End of Chapter 8