 CHAPTER IX A MAN'S RANSOM Tito was soon down among the crowd, and notwithstanding his indifferent reply to Nello's question about his chance-acquaintance, he was not without a passing wish, as he made his way around the piazza to the Corso degli Addimari, that he might encounter the pair of blue eyes which had looked up towards him from under the square bit of white linen drapery that formed the ordinary hood of the Contadina at Vesta time. He was perfectly well aware that the face was Tessa's, but he had not chosen to say so. What had Nello to do with the matter? Tito had an innate love of reticence, let us say a talent for it, which acted, as other impulses do, without any conscious motive. And like all people to whom concealment is easy, he would now and then conceal something which had as little the nature of a secret as the fact that he had seen a flight of crows. But the passing wish about pretty Tessa was almost immediately eclipsed by the recurrent recollection of that friar whose face had some irrecoverable association for him. Why should a sickly fanatic worn with fasting have looked at him in particular, and where in all his travels could he remember encountering that face before? Folly! Such vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs with tickling in portunity. Best to sweep them away at a dash. And Tito had pleasanter occupation for his thoughts. By the time he was turning out of the Corso della Di Mari into a side street, he was caring only that the sun was high and that the procession had kept him longer than he had intended from his visit to that room in the Via de Bardi, where his coming he knew was anxiously awaited. He felt the scene on his entrance beforehand. The joy beaming diffusedly in the blind face like the light in a semi-transparent lamp. The transient pink flush on Ramola's face and neck, which subtracted nothing from her majesty, but only gave it the exquisite charm of a womanly sensitiveness, heightened still more by what seemed the paradoxical boylike frankness of her look and smile. They were the best comrades in the world during the hours they passed together around the blind man's chair. She was constantly appealing to Tito, and he was informing her. Yet he felt himself strangely in subjection to Ramola with that simplicity of hers. He felt for the first time, without defining it to himself, that loving awe in the presence of noble womanhood, which is perhaps something like the worship paid of old to a great nature goddess, who was not all knowing but whose life and power were something deeper and more primordial than knowledge. They had never been alone together, and he could frame to himself no probable image of love scenes between them. He could only fancy and wish wildly what he knew was impossible, that Ramola would someday tell him that she loved him. One day in Greece, as he was leaning over a wall in the sunshine, a little black-eyed peasant girl, who had rested her water-pot on the wall, crept gradually nearer and nearer to him, and at last shyly asked him to kiss her, putting up her round olive cheek very innocently. Tito was used to love that came in this unsought fashion, but Ramola's love would never come in that way. Would it ever come at all? And yet it was that topmost apple on which he had set his mind. He was in his fresh youth, not passionate, but impressible. It was as inevitable that he should feel lovingly towards Ramola as that the white irises should be reflected in the clear sunlit stream. But he had no cox-comery, and had an intimate sense that Ramola was something very much above him. Many men have felt the same before a large-eyed, simple child. Nevertheless, Tito had had the rapid success which would have made some men presuming, or would have warranted him in thinking that there would be no great presumption in entertaining and agreeable confidence that he might one day be the husband of Ramola, nay, that her father himself was not without a vision of such a future for him. His first auspicious interview with Bartolomeo Scala had proved the commencement of a growing favour on the Secretary's part, and had led to an issue which would have been enough to make Tito decide on Florence as the place in which to establish himself, even if it had held no other magnet. Politian was Professor of Greek as well as Latin at Florence, professorial chairs being maintained there, although the university had been removed to Pisa. But for a long time Demetrio Calcondila, one of the most eminent and respectable among the emigrant Greeks, had also held a Greek chair, simultaneously with the two predominant Italian. Calcondila was now gone to Milan, and there was no counter-poise or rival to Politian, such as was desired for him by the friends who wished him to be taught a little propriety and humility. Scala was far from being the only friend of this class, and he found several, who if they were not among those thirsty admirers of mediocrity that were glad to be refreshed with his verses in hot weather, were yet quite willing to join him in doing that moral service to Politian. It was finally agreed that Tito should be supported in a Greek chair, as Demetrio Calcondila had been by Lorenzo himself, who, being at the same time the affectionate patron of Politian, had shown by precedent that there was nothing invidious in such a measure, but only a zeal for true learning and for the instruction of the Florentine youth. Tito was thus sailing under the fairest breeze, and besides convincing fair judges that his talents squared with his good fortune, he wore that fortune so easily and unpretentiously, that no one had yet been offended by it. He was not unlikely to get into the best Florentine society—society where there was much more plate than the circle of enameled silver in the centre of the brass dishes, and where it was not forbidden by the scenery to wear the richest brocade. For where could a handsome young scholar not be welcome, when he could touch the lute and troll a gay song? That bright face, that easy smile, that liquid voice seemed to give life a holiday aspect, just as a strain of gay music and the hoisting of colours make the work worn and the sad rather ashamed of showing themselves. Here was a professor likely to render the Greek classics amiable to the sons of great houses. And that was not the whole of Tito's good fortune, for he had sold all his jewels, except the ring he did not choose to part with, and he was the master of full five hundred gold Florence. Yet the moment when he first had this sum in his possession was the crisis of the first serious struggle his facile good-humoured nature had known. An importunate thought of which he had till now refused to see more than the shadow as it dogged his footsteps, at last rushed upon him and grasped him. He was obliged to pause and decide whether he would surrender and obey, or whether he would give the refusal that must carry irrevocable consequences. It was in the room above Nello's shop, which Tito had now hired as a lodging, that the elder Sinini handed him the last quota of the sum on behalf of Bernardo Rossele, the purchaser of the two most valuable gems. Ecco Givanni Mio. So the respectable printer and goldsmith. You have now a pretty little fortune, and if you will take my advice, you will let me place your Florence in a safe quarter, where they may increase and multiply instead of slipping through your fingers for banquets and other follies which are rife among our Florentine youth. And it has been too much the fashion of scholars, especially when, like our Pietro Crenito, they think their scholarship needs to be scented and broided, to squander with one hand till they have been feigned to beg with the other. I have brought you the money, and you are free to make a wise choice or an unwise. I shall see on which side the balance dips. We Florentines hold no man a member of an art till he has shown his skill and been matriculated, and no man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted. If you make up your mind to put your Florence out to usury, you can let me know to-morrow. A scholar may marry and should have something in readiness for the Morgan cap. Adio. Footnote. A sum given by the bridegroom to the bride the day after the marriage. And a footnote. As Sinini closed the door behind him, Tito turned round with the smile dying out of his face, and fixed his eyes on the table where the Florentines lay. He made no other movement, but stood with his thumbs in his belt, looking down in that transfixed state which accompanies the concentration of consciousness on some inward image. A man's ransom. Who was it that had said 500 Florence was more than a man's ransom? If now under this midday sun on some hot coast far away, a man somewhat stricken in years, a man not without high thoughts and with the most passionate heart, a man who long years ago had rescued a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel wrong, had reared him tenderly and bended him as a father. If that man were now under this summer sun toiling as a slave, hewing wood and drawing water, perhaps being smitten and buffeted because he was not deft and active, if he were saying to himself, Tito will find me. He had but to carry our manuscripts and gems to Venice. He will have raised money and will never rest till he finds me out. If that were certain, could he, Tito, see the price of the gems lying before him and say, I will stay at Florence, where I am fanned by soft heirs of promised love and prosperity? I will not risk myself for his sake? No, surely not, if it were certain. But nothing could be farther from certainty. The galley had been taken by a Turkish vessel on its way to Delos. That was known by the report of the companion galley which had escaped. But there had been resistance and probable bloodshed. A man had been seen falling overboard. Who were the survivors and what had been fallen them amongst all the multitude of possibilities? Had not he, Tito, suffered shipwreck and narrowly escaped drowning? He had good cause for feeling the omnipresence of casualties that threatened all projects with futility. The rumour that there were pirates who had a settlement in Delos was not to be depended on, or might be nothing to the purpose. What, probably enough, would be the result if he were to quit Florence and go to Venice, get authoritative letters—yes, he knew that might be done—and set out for the archipelago? Why? That he should be himself seized and spend all his Florence on preliminaries, and be again a destitute wanderer with no more gems to sell? Tito had a clearer vision of that result than of the possible moment when he might find his father again and carry him deliverance. It would surely be an unfairness that he, in his full ripe youth, to whom life had hitherto had some of the stint and subjection of a school, should turn his back on promised love and distinction, and perhaps never be visited by that promise again. And yet, he said to himself, if I were certain that Baldissari Calvo was alive and that I could free him by whatever exertions or perils I would go now, now I have the money. It was useless to debate the matter before. I would go now to Bardo and Bartolomeo Scala and tell them the whole truth. Tito did not say to himself so distinctly that if those two men had known the whole truth, he was aware there would have been no alternative for him but to go in search of his benefactor, who, if alive, was the rightful owner of the gems, and whom he had always equivocally spoken of as lost. He did not say to himself, what he was not ignorant of, that Greeks of distinctions had made sacrifices, taken voyages again and again, and sought help from crowned and mitered heads for the sake of freeing relatives from slavery to the Turks. Public opinion did not regard this as exceptional virtue. This was his first real colloquy with himself. He had gone on following the impulses of the moments, and one of these impulses had been to conceal half the fact. He had never considered this part of his conduct long enough to face the consciousness of his motives for the concealment. What was the use of telling the whole? It was true, the thought had crossed his mind several times since he had quitted Naplia, that after all it was a great relief to be quit of Baldissari, and he would have liked to know who it was that had fallen overboard. But such thoughts spring inevitably out of a relation that is irksome. Baldissari was exacting, and had got stranger as he got older. He was constantly scrutinizing Tito's mind to see whether it answered to his own exaggerated expectations. And age, the age of a thick set, heavy-browed, bald man beyond sixty, whose intensity and eagerness in the grasp of ideas have long taken the character of monotony and repetition, may be looked at from many points of view without being found attractive. Such a man, stranded among new acquaintances, unless he had the philosopher's stone, would hardly find rank, youth, and beauty at his feet. The feelings that gather fervor from novelty will be of little help towards making the world a home for dimmed and faded human beings, and if there is any love of which they are not widowed, it must be the love that is rooted in memories, and distills perpetually the sweet balms of fidelity and forebearing tenderness. But surely such memories were not absent from Tito's mind. Far in the backward vista of his remembered life, when he was only seven years old, Baldissari had rescued him from blows, had taken him to a home that seemed like opened paradise, where there was sweet food and soothing caresses all had on Baldissari's knee, and from that time till the hour they had parted, Tito had been the one center of Baldissari's fatherly cares. And he had been docile, pliable, quick of apprehension, ready to acquire. A very bright, lovely boy, a youth of even splendid grace, who seemed quite without vices, as if that beautiful form represented a vitality so exquisitely poised and balanced that it could know no uneasy desires, no unrest. A radiant presence for a lonely man to have won for himself. If he were silent when his father expected some response, still he did not look moody. If he declined some labour, why he flung himself down with such a charming, half-smiling, half-pleading air that the pleasure of looking at him made amends to one who would watch his growth with a sense of claim and possession. The curves of Tito's mouth had ineffable good humour in them. And then the quick talent to which everything came readily, from philosophical systems to the rhymes of a street-ball had caught up at a hearing. Would anyone have said that Tito had not made a rich return to his benefactor, or that his gratitude and affection would fail on any great demand? He did not admit that his gratitude had failed, but it was not certain that Baldassari was in slavery, nor certain that he was living. Do I not owe something to myself, said Tito inwardly, with the slight movement of his shoulders, the first he had made since he had turned to look down at the Florence? Before I quit everything and incur again all the risks of which I am even now weary, I must at least have a reasonable hope. Am I to spend my life in a wandering search? I believe he is dead. Sinini was right about my Florence. I will place them in his hands tomorrow. When, the next morning, Tito put his determination into act, he had chosen his colour in the game, and had given an inevitable bent to his wishes. He had made it impossible that he should not, from henceforth, desire it to be the truth that his father was dead. Impossible that he should not be tempted to baseness rather than that the precise facts of his conduct should not remain forever concealed. Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes whose unwholesome, infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires, the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity, as, on the other hand, the purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact that by it the hope in lies forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity. Besides, in this first distinct colloquy with himself the ideas which had previously been scattered and interrupted had now concentrated themselves. The little reels of selfishness had united and made a channel so that they could never again meet with the same resistance. Hither, too, Tito had left in vague indecision the question whether, with the means in his power, he would not return and ascertain his father's fate. He had now made a definite excuse to himself for not taking that course. He had avowed to himself a choice which he would have been ashamed to avow to others, and which would have made him ashamed in the resurgent presence of his father. But the inward shame, the reflex of that outward law which the great heart of mankind makes for every individual man, a reflex which will exist even in the absence of the sympathetic impulses that need no law, but rush to the deed of fidelity and pity as inevitably as the brute mother shields her young from the attack of the hereditary enemy. That inward shame was showing its blushes in Tito's determined assertion to himself that his father was dead, or that at least search was hopeless. On the day of San Giovanni, it was already three weeks ago that Tito had handed his florins to Tinini, and we have seen that as he set out towards the via de Bardi, he showed all the outward signs of a mind at ease. How should it be otherwise? He never jarred with what was immediately around him, and his nature was too joyous, too unapprehensive, for the hidden and the distant to grasp him in the shape of a dread. As he turned out of the hot sunshine into the shelter of a narrow street, took off the black cloth barretta, or simple cap with upturned lapet, which just crowned his brown curls, pushing his hair and tossing his head backward to court the cooler air, there was no brand of duplicity on his brow, neither was there any stamp of candor. It was simply a finely formed, square, smooth, young brow. And the slow, absent glance he cast around at the upper windows of the houses had neither more dissimulation in it, nor more ingenuousness than belongs to a youthful, well-opened eyelid with its unwirried breadth of gaze, to perfectly palucid lenses, to the undimmed dark of a rich brown iris, and to a pure, surruly-intended angle of whiteness streaked with the delicate shadows of long eyelashes. Was it that Tito's face attracted or repelled, according to the mental attitude of the observer? Was it a cipher with more than one key? The strong, unmistakable expression in his whole air and person was a negative one, and it was perfectly voracious. It declared the absence of any uneasy calm, any restless vanity, and it made the admiration that followed him as he passed among the troop of holiday makers a thoroughly willing tribute. For by this time the stirrer of the festa was felt even in the narrowest side streets. The throng which had at one time been concentrated in the lines through which the procession had to pass was now streaming out in all directions in pursuit of a new object. Such intervals of a festa are precisely the moments when the vaguely active animal spirits of a crowd are likely to be the most petulant and most ready to sacrifice a stray individual to the greater happiness of the greater number. As Tito entered the neighborhood of San Martino he found the throng rather denser, and near the hostelry of the Bertuche, or Barbaboons, there was evidently some object which was arresting the passengers and forming them into a knot. It needed nothing of great interest to draw aside passengers unfrated with a purpose, and Tito was preparing to turn aside into an adjoining street. When, amidst the loud laughter, his ear discerned as distressed childish voice crying, Loose me! Holy Virgin, help me! which at once determined him to push his way into the knot of gazers. He had just had time to perceive that the distressed voice came from a young contadina whose white hood had fallen off in the struggle to get her hands free from the grasp of a man in the party-colored dress of a ceretano, or conjurer, who was making laughing attempts to soothe and cajole her, evidently carrying with him the amused sympathy of the spectators. These, by a persuasive variety of words signifying Simpleton, for which the Florentine dialect is rich in equivalence, seemed to be arguing with the contadina against her obstinacy. At the first moment the girl's face was turned away, and he saw only her light brown hair plaited and fastened with a long silver pin. But in the next the struggle brought her face opposite Tito's, and he saw the baby features of Tessa, her blue eyes filled with tears, and her underlip quivering. Tessa too saw him, and through the mist of her swelling tears there beamed a sudden hope, like that in the face of a little child, when, held by a stranger against its will, it sees a familiar hand stretched out. In an instant Tito had pushed his way through the barrier of bystanders, whose curiosity made them ready to turn aside at the sudden interference of this handsome young senior, had grasped Tessa's waist and had said, Loose this child! What right have you to hold her against her will? The conjurer, a man with one of those faces in which the angles of the eyes and eyebrows of the nostrils, mouth, and sharply defined jaw, all tend upward, showed his small regular teeth in an impish but not ill-natured grin as he let go Tessa's hands and stretched out his own backward, shrugging his shoulders and bending them forward a little in a half-apologetic, half-protesting manner. I mean the ragazza, no evil in the world, Messere. Ask this respectable company. I was only going to show them a few samples of my skill, in which this little damsel might have helped me better because of her kitten face, which would have assured them of open dealing, and I had promised her a lap full of confetti as a reward. But what then? Messere has doubtless better confetti at hand, and she knows it. A general laugh among the bystanders accompanied these last words of the conjurer, raised probably by the look of relief and confidence with which Tessa clung to Tito's arm as he drew it from her waist and placed her hand within it. She only cared about the laugh as she might have cared about the roar of wild beasts from which she was escaping, not attaching any meaning to it. But Tito, who had no sooner got her on his arm than he foresaw some embarrassment in the situation, hastened to get clear of observers who, having been dispoiled of an expected amusement, were sure to re-establish the balance by jests. See, see, see, see, little one, here is your hood, said the conjurer, throwing the bit of white drapery over Tessa's head. Orsu, termino malus, come back to me when Messere can spare you. Ah, maestro vayano, she'll come back presently as the toad said to the harrow, called one of the spectators, seeing how Tessa started and shrank at the action of the conjurer. Tito pushed his way vigorously towards the corner of the side street, a little vexed at this delay in his progress to the Via de Bardi, and intending to get rid of the poor little contundina as soon as possible. The next street, too, had its passengers inclined to make holiday remarks on so unusual a pair, but they had no sooner entered it than he said, in a kind but hurried manner. Now, little one, where were you going? Are you come by yourself to the festa? Ah, no, said Tessa, looking frightened and distressed again. I have lost my mother in the crowd, her and my father-in-law. They will be angry, he will beat me. It was in the crowd in San Pulidari. Someone pushed me along and I couldn't stop myself, so I got away from them. Oh, I don't know where they're going. Please, don't leave me. See? Her eyes had been swelling with tears again, and she ended with a sob. Tito hurried along again. The Church of the Badia was not far off. They could enter it by the cloister that opened at the back, and in the church he could talk to Tessa, perhaps leave her. No, it was an hour in which the church was not open. But they paused under the shelter of the cloister, and he said, Have you no cousin or friend in Florence, my little Tessa, whose house you could find? Or are you afraid of walking by yourself since you have been frightened by the conjurer? I am in a hurry to get to Ultrarno, but I could take you anywhere near. Oh, I am frightened. He was the devil I know he was, and I don't know where to go. I have nobody, and my mother meant to have her dinner somewhere, and I don't know where. Holy Madonna, I shall be beaten! The corners of the pouty mouth went down piteously, and the poor little bosom with the beads on it above the green surge gown heaved so that there was no longer any help for it. A loud sob would come, and the big tears fell as if they were making up for lost time. Here was a situation. It would have been brutal to leave her, and Tito's nature was all gentleness. He wished at that moment that he had not been expected at the via di Barri. As he saw her lifting up her holiday apron to catch the hurrying tears, he laid his hand too on the apron and rubbed one of the cheeks and kissed the babylike roundness. My poor little Tessa, leave off crying. Let us see what can be done. Where's your home? Where do you live? There was no answer, but the sobs began to subside a little, and the drops to fall less quickly. Come, I'll take you a little way if you'll tell me where you want to go. The apron fell, and Tessa's face began to look as contented as a cherub's, budding from a cloud. My diabolical conjurer, the anger and the beating, seemed a long way off. I think I'll go home if you'll take me, she said in a half whisper, looking up at Tito with wide blue eyes and with something sweeter than a smile, with a childlike calm. Come, then, little one, said Tito in a caressing tone, putting her arm within his again. Which way is it? Beyond Peratola, where the large pear tree is. Peratola? Out at which gate, Pazzarella? I'm a stranger, you must remember. Out at the poor little plateau, said Tessa, moving along with a very fast hold on Tito's arm. He did not know all the turnings well enough to venture on an attempt at choosing the quietest streets, and besides it occurred to him that where the passengers were most numerous, there was, perhaps, the most chance of meeting with Monoguita and finding an end to his night-errant ship. So he made straight for Portorosa, and on to Ognisanti, showing his usual bright propitiatory face to the mixed observers who threw their jests at him and his little heavy shod maiden with such liberality. Mingle with the more decent holiday makers, there were frolic cement apprentices, rather envious of his good fortune, bold-eyed women with the badge of the yellow veil, beggars who thrust forward their caps for alms in derision at Tito's evident haste, dicers, sharpers, and loungers of the worst sort, boys whose tongues were used to wag in concert at the most brutal street gains, for the streets of Florence were not always a moral spectacle in those times, and Tessa's terror at being lost in the crowd was not wholly unreasonable. When they reached the piazza dognisanti, Tito slacked his pace. They were both heated with their hurried walk, and here was a wider space where they could take breath. They sat down on one of the stone benches which were frequent against the walls of old Florentine houses. Holy Virgin! said Tessa. I'm glad we've got away from those women and boys, but I was not frightened, because you could take care of me. Pretty little Tessa, said Tito, smiling at her. What makes you feel so safe with me? Because you are so beautiful, like the people going into paradise. They're all good. It's a long while since you had your breakfast, Tessa, said Tito, seeing some stalls near with fruit and sweetmeats upon them. Are you hungry? Yes, I think I am. If you will have some too. Tito bought some apricots and cakes and comfits and put them into her apron. Come, he said, let us walk on to the Prato, and then perhaps you will not be afraid to go the rest of the way alone. But you will have some of the apricots and things, said Tessa, rising obediently and gathering up her apron as a bag for her store. We will see, said Tito aloud. And to himself, he said, here is a little Contadina who might inspire a better idol than Lorenzo de Medici's Mencia da Barbrino that Nello's friends rave about. If I were only a theocotus, or had time to cultivate the necessary experience by unreasonable walks of this sort, however, the mischief is done now. I am so late already that another half hour will make no difference. Pretty little pigeon. We have a garden and plenty of pears, said Tessa, and two cows, besides the mules. And I'm very fond of them. But my father-in-law is a cross man. I wish my mother had not married him. I think he is wicked. He's very ugly. And does your mother let him beat you, povrina? You said you were afraid of being beaten. Ah, my mother herself scolds me. She loves my young sister better, and thinks I don't do work enough. Nobody speaks kindly to me, only the pivano, parish priest, when I go to confession. And the men in the mercato laugh at me and make fun of me. Nobody ever kissed me and spoke to me, as you do, just as I talk to my little black-faced kid, because I'm very fond of it. It seemed not to have entered Tessa's mind that there was any change in Tito's appearance since the morning he begged the milk from her, and that he looked now like a personage for whom she must summon her little stock of reverent words and signs. He had impressed her too differently from any human being who had ever come near her before, for her to make any comparison of details. She took no note of his dress. He was simply a voice and a face to her, something come from paradise, into a world where most things seemed hard and angry. And she paddled with as little restraint as if he had been an imaginary companion, born of her own lovingness in the sunshine. They had now reached the Prato, which at that time was a large open space within the walls, where the Florentine youth played at their favorite Calcio, a peculiar kind of football, and otherwise exercised themselves. At this midday time it was forsaken and quiet to the very gates, where a tent had been erected in preparation for the race. On the border of this wide meadow, Tito paused and said, Now Tessa, you will not be frightened if I leave you to walk the rest of the way by yourself. Adio! Shall I come and buy a cup of milk from you in the Mercato tomorrow morning to see that you are quite safe? He added this question in a soothing tone, as he saw her eyes widening so roughly in the corners of her mouth, falling. She said nothing at first. She only opened her apron and looked down at her apricots and sweet meats. Then she looked up at him again and said, complainingly, I thought you would have some, and we could sit down under a tree outside the gate and eat them together. Tessa, Tessa, you little siren, you would ruin me, said Tito, laughing and kissing both her cheeks. I ought to have been in the Via de Bardi long ago. No, I must go back now. You are in no danger. There, I'll take an apricot. Adio! He had already stepped two yards from her when he said the last word. Tessa could not have spoken. She was pale and a great sob was rising, but she turned round as if she felt there was no hope for her, and stepped on, holding her apron so forgetfully that the apricots began to roll out on the grass. Tito could not help looking after her, and seeing her shoulders rise to the bursting sob and the apricot's fall could not help going after her and picking them up. It was very hard upon him. He was a long way off via de Bardi and very near to Tessa. See, my silly one, he said, picking up the apricots, come, leave off crying. I will go with you, and we'll sit down under the tree. Come, I don't like to see you cry, but you know I must go kick sometime. So it came to pass that they found a great plain tree not far outside the gates, and they sat down under it, and all the feast was spread out on Tessa's lap, she leaning with her back against the trunk of the tree, and he stretched opposite to her, resting his elbows on the rough green growth cherished by the shade, while the sunlight stole through the boughs and played about them like a winged thing. Tessa's face was all contentment again, and the taste of the apricots and sweetmeats seemed very good. You pretty bird, said Tito, looking at her as she sat eyeing the remains of the feast with an evident mental debate about saving them, since he had said he would not have any more. To think of anyone scolding you, what sins do you tell of that confession, Tessa? Oh, a great many. I am often naughty. I don't like work, and I can't help being idle, though I know I shall be beaten and scolded. I give the mules the best fodder when nobody sees me, and then when the madrin is angry I say I didn't do it, and that makes me frightened at the devil. I think the conjurer was the devil. I am not so frightened after I have been to confession, and, see, I've got a breve here at a good father who came to Prato preaching this Easter blessed and gave us all. Here Tessa drew from her bosom a tiny bag carefully fastened up, and I think the holy Madonna will take care of me. She looks as if she would, and perhaps if I wasn't idle she wouldn't let me be beaten. If they are so cruel to you, Tessa, shouldn't you like to leave them and go live with a beautiful lady who would be kind to you if she would have you to wait upon her? Tessa seemed to hold her breath for a moment or two. Then she said doubtfully, I don't know. Then shouldn't you like to be my little servant and live with me? Said Tito, smiling. He meant no more than to see what sort of pretty look and answer she would give. There was a flush of joy immediately. Will you take me with you now? Ah, I shouldn't go home and be beaten then. She paused a little while, and then added more doubtfully, but I should like to fetch my black-faced kid. Yes, you must go back to your kid, my Tessa, said Tito, rising, and I must go to the other way. By Jupiter, he added, as he went from under the shade of the tree. It is not a pleasant time of day to walk from here to the Via di Barri. I'm more inclined to lie down and sleep in this shade. It ended so. Tito had an incomparable aversion to anything unpleasant, even when an object very much loved and desired was on the other side of it. He had risen early, had waited, had seen sights, and had been already walking in the sun. He was inclined for a siesta, and inclined all the more because little Tessa was there and seemed to make the air softer. He lay down on the grass again, putting his cap under his head on a green tuft by the side of Tessa. That was not quite comfortable, so he moved again and asked Tessa to let him rest his head against her lap, and in that way he soon fell asleep. Tessa sat quiet as a dove on its nest, just venturing when he was fast asleep, to touch the wonderful dark curls that fell backward from his ear. She was too happy to go to sleep, too happy to think that Tito would wake up, and then he would leave her, and she must go home. It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish, where it will find its world and paradise all in one, and never have a presentiment of the dry bay. The fretted summer shade then stole us, and the gentle breathing of some loved life near. It would be paradise to us all, if eager thought, the strong angel with the implacable brow, had not long since closed the gates. It really was a long while before the waking came, before the long, dark eyes opened at Tessa, first with a little surprise, and then with a smile, which was soon quenched by some preoccupying thought. Tito's deeper sleep had broken into a dose in which he felt himself in the Via di Barti, explaining his failure to appear at the appointed time. The clear images of that dose urged him to start up at once to a sitting posture, and as he stretched his arms and shook his cap, he said, Tessa, little one, you let me sleep too long. My hunger and the shadows together tell me that the sun has done much travel since I fell asleep. I must lose no more time. A deal. He ended, patting her cheek with one hand, and settling his cap with the other. She said nothing, but there were signs in her face which made him speak again in as serious and as chiding atone as he could command. Now, Tessa, you must not cry. I shall be angry. I shall not love you if you cry. You must go home to your black-faced kid, or if you like, you may go back to the gate and see the horses start. But I can stay with you no longer. And if you cry, I shall think you are troublesome to me. The rising tears were checked by terror at this change in Tito's voice. Tessa turned very pale, and sat in trembling silence with her blue eyes widened by arrested tears. Look now! Tito went on, soothingly, opening the wallet that hung at his belt. Here is a pretty charm that I have had a long while, ever since I was in Sicily, a country a long way off. His wallet had many little matters in it, mingled with small coins, and he had the usual difficulty in laying his finger on the right thing. He unhooked his wallet and turned out the contents on Tessa's lap. Among them was his onyx ring. Ah, my ring, he exclaimed, slipping it on the forefinger of his right hand. I forgot to put it on again this morning. Strange, I never missed it. See, Tessa, he added, as he spread out the smaller articles and selected the one he was in search of. See this pretty little pointed bit of red coral, like your goat's horn, is it not? And here's a hole in it, so you can put another cord around your neck along with your breve, and then the evil spirits can't hurt you. If you ever see them coming in the shadow around the corner, point this little coral horn at them, and they will run away. It is a buona fortuna, and will keep you from harm, when I'm not with you. Come, undo the cord. Tessa obeyed, with a tranquilizing sense that life was going to be something quite new, and that Tito would be with her often. All who remember their childhood remember the strange, vague sense, when some new experience came, that everything else was going to be changed, and that there would be no lapse into the old monotony. So the bit of coral was hung beside a tiny bag with a scrap of squalled parchment in it, and Tessa felt braver. And now you will give me a kiss, said Tito, economizing time by speaking while he swept in the contents of the wallet and hung it at his waist again, and looked happy, like a good girl, and then Tessa had immediately put forward her lips in a moment and kissed his cheek, as he hung down his head. Oh, you pretty pigeon, cried Tito, laughing, pressing her round cheeks with his hands, and crushing her features together so as to give them a general impartial kiss. Then he started up and walked away, not looking round till he was ten yards from her, when he just turned and gave a parting back. Tessa was looking after him, but he could see that she was making no signs of distress. It was enough for Tito if she did not cry while he was present. The softness of his nature required that all sorrow should be hidden away from him. I wonder when Ramola will kiss my cheek in that way, thought Tito as he walked along. It seemed a tiresome distance now, and he almost wished he had not been so soft-hearted or so tempted to linger in the shade. No other excuse was needed to Bardo and Ramola, than saying simply that he had been unexpectedly hindered. He felt confident their proud delicacy would inquire no further. He lost no time in getting to Ognisanti, and hastily taking some food there. He crossed the Arno by the Ponte alia Caraya, and made his way as directly as possible towards the Via de Bardi. But it was the hour when all the world, who meant to be, in particularly good time to see the Corso, were returning from the Borghi, or villages, just outside the gates, where they had dined and reposed themselves. And the thoroughfares leading to the bridges were of course the issues towards which the stream of sightseers tended. Just as Tito reached the Ponte Vecchio, in the entrance of the Via de Bardi, he was suddenly urged back towards the angle of the intersecting streets. A company on horseback, coming from the Via Guicciardini, and turning up the Via de Bardi, had compelled the foot passengers to recede hurriedly. Tito had been walking, as his matter was, with the thumb of his right hand resting in his belt. And he was thus forced to pause, and was looking carelessly at the passing Cavaliers. He felt a very thin, cold hand laid on his. He started around, and saw the Dominican friar whose upturned face had so struck him in the morning. Seeing closer, the face looked more evidently worn by sickness, and not by age. And again it brought some strong but indefinite reminiscences to Tito. "'Pardon me, but from your face and your ring,' said the friar, in a faint voice, "'is not your name Tito Melema?' "'Yes,' said Tito, also speaking faintly, doubly jarred by the cold touch and the mystery. He was not apprehensive or timid through his imagination, but through his sensations and perceptions he could easily be made to shrink and turn pale like a maiden. "'Then I shall fulfill my commission.' The friar put his hand under his scapulary, and drawing out a small linen bag which hung round his neck, took from it a bit of parchment, doubled and stuck firmly together with some black adhesive substance, and placed it in Tito's hand. On the outside was written in Italian, in a small but distinct character. Tito Melema aged 23 with a dark, beautiful face, long, dark curls, the brightest smile, and a large onyx ring on his right forefinger. Tito did not look at the friar, but tremblingly broke open the bit of parchment. Inside, the words were, "'I am sold for a slave. I think they are going to take me to Antioch. The gems alone will serve to ransom me.' Tito looked round at the friar, but could only ask a question with his eyes. "'I had it at Connith,' the friar said, speaking with difficulty, like one whose small strength had been overtaxed. "'I had it from a man who was dying.' "'He's dead then,' said Tito, with a bounding of the heart. "'Not the writer, the man who gave it me, was a pilgrim, like myself, to whom the writer had entrusted it, because he was journeying to Italy.' "'You know the contents? I do not know them, but I conjecture them. Your friend is in slavery. You will go and release him, but I am unable to talk now.' The friar, whose voice had become feebler and feebler, sank down on the stone bench against the wall from which he had risen to touch Tito's hand, adding, "'I am at San Marco. My name is Fra Luca.' End of Chapter 10, Chapter 11 of Ramola. 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 Eugene Smith. Ramola by George Eliot. Chapter 11, Tito's Dilemma When Fra Luca had ceased to speak, Tito still stood by him in a resolution, and it was not till the pressure of the passengers being removed the friar rose and walked slowly into the Church of Santa Felicità that Tito also went on his way along the Via di Bardi. "'If this monk is a Florentine,' he said to himself, "'if he is going to remain at Florence, everything must be disclosed.' He felt that a new crisis had come, but he was not for all that too evidently agitated to pay his visit to Bargio and apologize for his previous non-appearance. Tito's talent for concealment was being fast-developed into something less neutral. It was still possible, perhaps it might be inevitable, for him to accept frankly the altered conditions and avow Balda Sade's existence, but hardly without casting an unpleasant light backward on his original reticence as studied equivocation, in order to avoid the fulfillment of a secretly recognized claim to say nothing of his quiet settlement of himself and investment of his Florence when, it would be clear, his benefactor's fate had not been certified. It was at least provisionally wise to act as if nothing had happened, and for the present he would suspend decisive thought. There was all the night for meditation, and no one would know the precise moment which he had received the letter. So he entered the room on the second story, where Ramola and her father sat among the parchment in the marble, aloof from the light of the streets on holidays, as well as on common days, with a face only a little less bright than usual, from regret at appearing so late, a regret which wanted no testimony, since he had given up the sight of the corso in order to express it, and then set himself to throw extra animation into the evening, though all the while his consciousness was at work like a machine with complex action, leaving deposits quite distinct from the line of talk. And by the time he descended the stone stairs and issued from the grim door in the starlight, his mind had already reached a new stage in its formation of a purpose. And when, the next day after he was free from his professorial work, he turned up the Via del Cocco Mero towards the convent of San Marco, his purpose was fully shaped. He was going to ascertain from Fra Luca precisely how much he conjectured of the truth and on what grounds he conjectured it, and further, how long he was to remain at San Marco. And on that fuller knowledge he hoped to mold a statement which would in any case save him from the necessity of quitting Flores. Tito had never had occasion to fabricate an ingenious lie before, the occasion was come now, the occasion which circumstance never fails to be yet on tacit falsity, and his ingenuity was ready. For he had convinced himself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldesade, he had once said that on a fair assurance of his father's existence and whereabout, he would unhesitatingly go after him. But after all, why was he bound to go? What looked at closely was the end of all life, but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure. And was not his own blooming life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but for others, in the withered wintry life of a man who was past the time of keen enjoyment and whose ideas had stiffened into barren rigidity. Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito's mind, and were lively germs there. That was the proper order of things, the order of nature, which treats all maturity as a mere knightess for youth. Baldesade had done his work, had had his draft of life, Tito said it was his turn now, and the prospect was so vague. Quote, I think they are going to take me to Antioch, end quote. Here was a vista. After a long voyage to spend months, perhaps years, in a search for which even now there was no guarantee that it would not prove vain, and to leave behind at starting a life of distinction and love, and to find, if he thought anything, the old exacting companionship which was known by rote beforehand. Certainly the gems and therefore the florins were, in a sense, Baldesades, in the narrow sense by which the right of possession is determined in ordinary affairs. But in that large and more radically natural view by which the world belongs to youth and strength, there were rather his who could extract the most pleasure out of them. That, he was conscious, was not the sentiment which the complicated play of human feelings had engendered in society. The men around him would expect that he should immediately apply those florins to his benefactors' rescue. But what was the sentiment of society? A mere tangle of anomalous traditions and opinions which no wise man would take as a guide, except so far as his own comfort was concerned? Not that he cared for the florins, say perhaps for Ramola's sake, he would give up the florins readily enough. It was the joy that was due to him, and was close to his lips, which he felt he was not bound to thrust away from him, and so travel on, thirsting. Any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that was needed to make existence sweet were only the lining of human selfishness turned outward. They were made by men who wanted others to sacrifice themselves for their sake. He would rather that Baldesare should not suffer. He liked no one to suffer. But what could any philosophy prove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more than for his own? To do so he must have loved Baldesare devotedly. He did not love him. Was that his own fault? Gratitude, seen closely, it made no valid claim. His father's life would have been dreary without him. Are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasures they give themselves? Having once begun to explain away Baldesare's claim, Tito's thought showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that dread, which has been erroneously decried, as if it were nothing higher than a man's animal care for his own skin. That awe of the divine nemesis, which was felt by religious pagans, and though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrongdoing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice. It is the initial recognition of a moral law, restraining desire, and checks the hard, bold, scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the absence of feeling. Quote, It is good, saying the old humanities in Escalus, that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul, forcing it into wisdom, good that men should carry a threatening shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine, else how should they learn to revere the right? End quote. That guardianship may become needless, but only when all outward law has become needless, only when duty and love have united in one stream and made a common force. As Tito entered the outer cloister of San Marco and inquired for Fra Luca, there was no shadowy presentiment in his mind. He felt himself too cultured and skeptical for that. He had been nurtured in contempt for the tales of priests whose impudent lives were proverged, and in erudite familiarity with disputes concerning the chief good, which, after all, he considered left it a matter of taste. Yet fear was a strong element in Tito's nature. The fear of what he believed or saw was likely to rob him of pleasure, and he had a definite fear that Fra Luca might be the means of driving him from Florence. Quote. Fra Luca? Ah, he has gone to Fiazole, to the Dominican Monastery there. He is taken on a litter in the cool of the morning. The poor brother is very ill. Could you leave a message for him? End quote. This answer was given by a Fra Converso, or lay brother, whose accent told plainly that he was a raw contadino and whose dull glance implied no curiosity. Thanks, my business can wait. Tito turned away with a sense of relief. This friar is not likely to live, he said to himself. I saw he was worn to a shadow, and at Fiazole there will be nothing to recall me to his mind. Besides, if he should come back, my explanation will serve as well then as now. But I wish I knew what it was that his face recalled to me. End quote. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of Ramola. 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 Phil Chenevere. Ramola by George Elliott. Chapter 12. The prize is nearly grasped. Tito walked along with a light step, for the immediate fear had vanished. The usual joyousness of his disposition re-assumed its predominance, and he was going to see Ramola. Yet Ramola's life seemed an image of that loving, pitying, devotedness, that patient endurance of irksome tasks, from which he had shrunk and excused himself. But he was not out of love with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice. He was in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for all charm and loveliness. He had still a healthy appetite for ordinary human joys, and the poison could only work by degrees. He had sold himself to evil, but at present life seemed so nearly the same to him that he was not conscious of the bond. He meant all things to go on as they had done before, both within and without him. He meant to win golden opinions by meritorious exertion, by ingenious learning, by amiable compliance. He was not going to do anything that would throw him out of harmony with the beings he cared for, and he cared supremely for Ramola. He wished to have her for his beautiful and loving wife. There might be a wealthier alliance within the ultimate reach of successful accomplishments like his, but there was no woman in all Florence like Ramola. When she was near him and looked at him with her sincere hazel eyes, he was subdued by a delicious influence as strong and inevitable as those musical vibrations which take possession of us with a rhythmic empire that no sooner ceases than we desire it to begin again. As he trod the stone stairs, when he was still outside the door, with no one but Meso near him, the influence seemed to have begun its work by the mere nearness of anticipation. Welcome, Tito Mio, said the old man's voice, before Tito had spoken. There was a new vigor in the voice, a new cheerfulness in the blind face, since that first interview more than two months ago. You have brought fresh manuscript doubtless, but since we were talking last night, I have had new ideas. We must take a wider scope. We must go back upon our footsteps. Tito, paying his homage to Ramola as he advanced, went as his custom was, straight to Bardo's chair, and put his hand in the palm that was held to receive it, placing himself on the cross-legged leather seat with scrolled ends close to Bardo's elbow. Yes, he said in his gentle way, I have brought the new manuscript, but that can wait your pleasure. I have young limbs, you know, and can walk back up the hill without any difficulty. He did not look at Ramola as he said this, but he knew quite well that her eyes were fixed on him with delight. That is well said, my son. Bardo had already addressed Tito in this way, once or twice of late, and I perceive with gladness that you do not shrink from labor, without which the poet has wisely said, life has given nothing to mortals, it is too often the Palmos Sine Pulvera, the prize of glory without the dust of the race, that attracts young ambition. But what says the Greek? In the morning of life, work. In the midday, give counsel. In the evening, pray. It is true, I might be thought to have reached the helpless evening, but not so, while I have counsel within me which is yet unspoken. From my mind, as I have often said, was shot up as by a dam. The plenteous waters lay dark and motionless, but you, my Tito, have opened a duct for them, and they rush forward with a force that surprises myself. And now what I want is that we should go over our preliminary ground again with a wider scheme of comment and illustration, otherwise I may lose opportunities which I now see retrospectively, and which may never occur again. You mark what I am saying, Tito? He had just stooped to reach his manuscript, which had rolled down, and Bardo's jealous ear was alive to the slight movement. Tito might have been excused for shrugging his shoulders at the prospect before him, but he was not naturally impatient. Moreover, he had been bred up in that laborious irredition, at once minute and copious, which was the chief intellectual task of the age, and with Ramola near, he was floated along by waves of agreeable sensation that made everything seem easy. Assuredly, he said, you wish to enlarge your comments on certain passages we have cited. Not only so, I wish to introduce an occasional excursus, where we have noticed an author to whom I have given special study, for I may die too soon to achieve any separate work, and this is not a time for scholarly integrity and well sifted learning to lie idle, when it is not only rash ignorance that we have to fear, but when there are men like Calderino, who, as Poliziano has well shown, have recourse to impudent falsities of citation to serve the ends of their vanity and to secure a triumph to their own mistakes. Wherefore, my Tito, I think it not well that we should let slip the occasion that lies under our hands, and now we will turn back to the point where we have cited the passage from Thucydides, and I wish you, by way of preliminary, to go with me through all my notes on the Latin translation made by Lorenzo Valla, for which the incomparable Pope Nicholas V, with whose personal notice I was honoured while I was yet young, and when he was still Thomas of Sorzana, paid him, I say not unduly, the sum of five hundred gold scooty, but in as much as Valla, though otherwise of dubious fame, is held in high honour for his severe scholarship, whence the epigrammatist has jacosely said of him that, since he went among the shades, Pluto himself has not dared to speak in the ancient languages, it is the more needful that his name should not be as a stamp warranting falsewares, and therefore I would introduce an excursus on Thucydides wherein my castigations of Valla's text may find a fitting place. My Ramola, thou wilt reach the needful volumes, thou knowest them on the fifth shelf of the cabinet. Tito rose at the same moment with Ramola, saying I will reach them, if you will point them out, and followed her hastily into the adjoining small room, where the walls were also covered with ranges of books in perfect order. There they are, said Ramola, pointing upward, every book is just where it was when my father ceased to see them. Tito stood by her without hastening to reach the books. They had never been in this room together before. I hope, she continued, turning her eyes full on Tito with a look of grave confidence, I hope he will not weary you, this work makes him so happy. And me too, Ramola, if you will only let me say I love you, if you will only think me worth loving a little. His speech was the softest murmur, and the dark, beautiful face, nearer to hers than it had ever been before, was looking at her with beseeching tenderness. I do love you, murmured Ramola. She looked at him with the same simple majesty as ever, but her voice had never in her life before sunk to that murmur. It seemed to them both that they were looking at each other a long while before her lips moved again, yet it was but a moment till she said, I know now what it is to be happy. The faces just met, and the dark curls mingled for an instant with the rippling gold. Quick as lightning after that, Tito set his foot on a projecting leg of the bookshelves and reached down the needful volumes, they were both contented to be silent and separate, for that first blissful experience of mutual consciousness was all the more exquisite for being unperturbed by immediate sensation. It had all been as rapid as the irreversible mingling of waters, for even the eager and jealous bardo had not become impatient. You have the volumes, my Ramola, the old man said, as they came near him again, and now you will get your pen ready for, as Tito marks off the skolia we determined on extraction, it will be well for you to copy them without delay, numbering them carefully mined to correspond with the numbers in the text which he will write. Ramola always had some task which gave her a share in this joint work. Tito took his stand at the legio, where he both wrote and read, and she placed herself at a table just in front of him, where she was ready to give into her father's hands anything that he might happen to want or relieve him of a volume that he had done with. They had always been in that position since the work began, yet on this day it seemed new. It was so different now for them to be opposite each other, so different for Tito to take a book from her as she lifted it from her father's knee, yet there was no finesse to secure an additional look or touch. Each woman creates in her own likeness the love tokens that are offered to her, and Ramola's deep calm happiness encompassed Tito like the rich but quiet evening light which dissipates all unrest. They had been two hours at their work and were just desisting because of the fading light when the door opened in their intraday figure, strangely incongruous with the current of their thoughts, and with the suggestions of every object around them. It was the figure of a short stout, black-eyed woman about fifty wearing a black velvet beretta, or close cap, embroidered with pearls, unto which surprisingly massive black braids surmounted the little bulging forehead, and fell in rich plaited curves over the ears, while an equally surprising carbon tint on the upper region of the fat cheeks contrasted with the surrounding salinus. Three rows of pearls and a lower necklace of gold reposed on the horizontal cushion of her neck, the embroidered border of her trailing black velvet gown, and her embroidered long drooping sleeves of rose-colored damask were slightly faded, but they conveyed to the initiated eye the satisfactory assurance that they were the splendid result of six months labor by a skilled workman, and the rose-colored petticoat with its dimmed white fringe and seed pearl arabesques was duly exhibited in order to suggest a similar pleasing reflection. A handsome coral rosary hung from one side of an inferential belt, which emerged into certainty with a large clasp of silver wrought in knee-ellow, and on the other side, where the belt again became inferential, hung a scarcella or large purse of crimson velvet stitched with pearls. Her little fat right hand, which looked as if it had been made of paste, and had risen out of shape under partial baking, held a small book of devotions also splendid with velvet, pearls, and silver. The figure was already too familiar to Tito to be startling, for Mona Brigida was a frequent visitor at Bardo's, being accepted from the sentence of banishment passed on feminine triviality on the ground of her cousinship to his dead wife and her early care for Ramola, who now looked round at her with an affectionate smile, and rose to draw the leather seat to a due distance from her father's chair, that the coming gusher talk might not be too near his ear. La Cusina said Bardo, interrogatively detecting the short steps and the sweeping drapery. Yes, it is your cousin, said Mona Brigida, in an alert voice, raising her fingers smilingly at Tito, and then lifting up her face to be kissed by Ramola. Always the troublesome cousin breaking in on your wisdom, she went on, seating herself and beginning to fan herself with the white veil hanging over her arm. Well, well, if I didn't bring you some news of the world now and then, I do believe you'd forget there was anything in life but these moldy agents who want sprinkling with holy water if all I hear about them is true, not but what the world is bad enough nowadays for the scandals that turn up under one's nose at every corner. I don't want to hear and see such things, but one can't go about with one's head in a bag, and it was only yesterday. Well, well, you needn't burst out at me, Bordeaux. I'm not going to tell anything. If I'm not as wise as the three kings, I know how many legs go into one boot. But, nevertheless, Florence is a wicked city. Is it not true, Monsieur Tito? For you go into the world. Not but what one must sin a little. Monsieur Domenedito expects that of us, else what are the blessed sacramas for? And what I say is we've got to reverence the saints, and not to set ourselves up as if we could be like them, else life would be unbearable, as it will be if things go on after this new fashion. For what do you think? I've been at the wedding today, Dianora Akiyojolli's with the young Albezi, that there has been so much talk of, and everybody wonder at its being today instead of yesterday, but Cielli, such a wedding as it was, might have been put off till the next Quarassima for a penance. For there was the bride looking like a white nun, not so much as a pearl about her, and the bridegroom as solemn as San Giuseppe, it's true. And half the people invited were Pianoni, they called them Pianoni, funeral mourners, properly paid mourners. Now these new saints of Fragiro Lamos making, and to think of two families like the Albezi and the Akiyojolli, taking up such notions when they could afford to wear the best. Well, well, they invited me, but they could do no other seeing my husband was Luca Antonio's uncle by the mother's side. And a pretty time I had of it while we waited under the canopy in front of the house before they let us in. I couldn't stand in my clothes, it seemed, without giving offence. For there was Mona Bertha, who has had worse secrets in her time than any I could tell of myself, looking a skence at me from under her hood like a Pinsociera, a sister of the Third Order of St. Francis, an uncluster nun, and telling me to read the Frate's book about widows from which she had found great guidance. Holy Madonna, it seems as if widows had nothing to do now but to buy their coffins and think it a thousand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying themselves a little when they've got their hands free for the first time. And what do you think was the music we had to make our dinner lively? I long discourse from Fra Dominico of San Marco about the doctrines of the Blessed Fra Girolamo, the three doctrines we are all to get by heart, and he kept marking them off on his fingers till he made my flesh creed. And the first is Florence, or the Church, I don't know which, for first he said one and then the other, shall be scourged. But if he means the pestilence, the signore ought to put a stop to such preaching, for it's enough to raise a swelling under one's arms with fright. But then, after that, he says Florence is to be regenerated, but while we'll be the good of that when we're all dead of the plague or something else, and then the third thing, and what he said oftenest, is that it's all to be in our days. And he marked that off on his thumb till he made me tremble like the very jelly before me. They had jellies, to be sure, with the arms of the albisi and the aqueazoli raised on them in all colors. They've not turned the world quite upside down yet. But all their talk is that we are to go back to the old ways for upstarts Francesco Valori, that I've danced with in the Via Larga when he was a bachelor, and as fond of the Medici as anybody. And he makes a speech about the old times, before the Florentines had left off crying Popolo and begun to cry Palle, as if that had anything to do with a wedding, and how we ought to keep to the rules the seniori lay down heaven knows when, that we were not to wear this and that and not to eat this and that, and how our manners were corrupted, and we read bad books, though he can't say that of me. Stop, cousin, said Bardot in his imperious tone, for he had a remark to make, and only desperate measures could arrest the rattling lethliness of Mona Brigida's discourse. But now she gave a little start, pursed up her mouth, and looked at him with round eyes. Francesco Valori is not altogether wrong, Bardot went on. Bernardo, indeed, rates him not highly, and is rather of opinion, that he christened private grudges by the name of public zeal, though I must admit that my good Bernardo is too slow of belief in that unalloyed patriotism which was found in all its luster among the ancients. But it is true, Tito, that our manners have degenerated somewhat from that noble frugality which, as has been well seen in the public acts of our citizens, is the parent of true magnificence. For men, as I hear, will now spend on the transient show of a giostra, sums which would suffice to found a library, and confer a lasting possession on mankind. Still, I conceive it remains true of us Florentines, that we have more of that magnanimous sobriety, which abhor is a trivial lavishness, that it may be grandly open-handed on grand occasions, than can be found in any other city of Italy. For I understand that the Neapolitan and Milanese courtiers laugh at the scarcity of our plate, and think scorn of our great families for borrowing from each other that furniture of the table at their entertainments. But in the vain laughter of folly, wisdom hears half its applause. Laughter indeed! First, fourth, Mona Brigida again, the moment Bardo paused. If anybody wanted to hear laughter at the wedding today, they were disappointed for when young Niccolò Machiavelli tried to make a joke, and told stories out of Franco Sacchetti's book, how it was no use for a seniorina to make rules for us women, because we were cleverer than all the painters, and architects, and doctors of logic in the world, for we could make black look white, and yellow look pink, and crooked look straight, and if anything was forbidden, we could find a new name for it. Holy virgin, the Piagoni looked more dismal than before, and somebody said Sacchetti's book was wicked. Well, I don't read it, they can't accuse me of reading anything. Save me from going to a wedding again if that's to be the fashion. For all of us who were not Piagoni were as comfortable as wet chickens. I was never caught in a worst trap but once before, and that was when I went to hear their precious Frate Las Quarassima in San Lorenzo. Perhaps I never told you about it, Mr. Tito. It almost freezes my blood when I think of it. How he rated us poor women, and the men too, to tell the truth, but I didn't mind that so much. He called us cows and lumps of flesh and wantons and mischief makers, and I could just bear that for there were plenty others more fleshy and spiteful than I was, though every now and then his voice shook the very bench under me like a trumpet, but then he came to the false hair, and oh, means that according to you he made a picture, I see it now, of a young woman lying on a pale corpse, and us, like-minded widows, of course he met me as well as the rest, for I had my plaits on, for if one is getting old, one doesn't want to look as ugly as the Belfana, us widows rushing up to the corpse like bare painted vultures as we were, and cutting off its young dead hair to deck our old heads with. Oh, the dreams I had after that, and then he cried and wrung his hands at us, and I cried too, and to go home, and take off my jewels, this very clasp, and everything, and to make them into a packet, fui tutona, and I was with in a hair of sending them to the good men of Saint Martin to give to the poor, but by heaven's mercy I bethought me first of going to my confessor, Fra Cristoforo at Santa Croce, and he told me how it was all the work of the devil, this preaching and prophesying of their Fra Girolamo, and the Dominicans were trying to turn the world upside down, and I was never to go and hear him again, else I must do penance for it, for the great preachers Fra Mariano and Fra Menico had shown how Fra Girolamo preached lies, and that was true, for I heard them both in Duomo, and how the Pope's dream of San Francesco propping up the church with his arms was being fulfilled still, and the Dominicans were beginning to pull it down. Well, and good, I went away condio and made myself easy. I am not going to be frightened by a frate predicatory again, and all I say is, I wish it hadn't been the Dominicans that poor Dino joined years ago, for then I should have been glad when I heard them say he was come back. Silencio, said Bardo, in a loud, agitated voice, while Romola, half started from her chair, clasped her hands and looked round atito, as if now she might appeal to him. Mona Brigida gave a little scream and bit her lip. Dona, said Bardo again, hear once more my will. Bring no reports about that name to this house, and thou, Romola, I forbid thee to ask. My son is dead. Bardo's whole frame seemed vibrating with passion, and no one dared to break silence again. Mona Brigida lifted her shoulders and her hands in mute dismay. Then she rose as quietly as possible, gave many significant nods to Tito and Romola, motioning to them that they were not to move, and stole out of the room like a culpable fat spaniel who has barked unseasonably. Meanwhile, Tito's quick mind had been combining ideas with lightning like rapidity. Bardo's son was not really dead then, as he had supposed. He was a monk. He was come back, and fra luka. Yes, it was the likeness to Bardo and Romola that had made the face seem half known to him if he were only dead at fisioli at that moment. This impartunate selfish wish inevitably thrust itself before every other thought. It was true that Bardo's rigid will was a sufficient safeguard against any intercourse between Romola and her brother, but not against the betrayal of what he knew to others, especially when the subject was suggested by the coupling of Romola's name with that of the very Tito Malema, whose description he had carried round his neck as an index. No, nothing but fra luka's death could remove all danger, but his death was highly probable, and after the momentary shock of the discovery, Tito let his mind fall back and repose on that confident hope. They had sat in silence and in a deepening twilight for many minutes, when Romola ventured to say, Shall I light the lamp, Father, and shall we go on? No, my Romola, we will work no more tonight. Tito, come and sit by me here. Tito moved from the reading desk and seated himself on the other side of Bardo, close to his left elbow. Come nearer to me, Figliola mia, said Bardo again after a moment's pause, and Romola seated herself on a low stool and let her arm rest on her father's right knee that he might lay his hand on her hair as he was fond of doing. Tito, I never told you that I had once a son, said Bardo, forgetting what had fallen from him in the emotion raised by their first interview. The old man had been deeply shaken and was forced to pour out his feelings in spite of pride, but he left me. He is dead to me. I have disowned him forever. He was a ready scholar as you are, but more fervent and impatient, and yet sometimes wrapped and self-absorbed, like a flame fed by some fitful source, showing a disposition from the very first to turn away his eyes from the clear lights of reason and philosophy and to prostrate himself under the influences of a dim mysticism which eludes all rules of human duty, as it eludes all argument, and so it ended. We will speak no more of him. He is dead to me. I wish his face could be blotted from that world of memory in which the distant seems to grow clearer and the near to fade. Bardo paused, but neither Ramola nor Tito dared to speak. His voice was too tremulous, the poise of his feelings too doubtful, but he presently raised his hand and found Tito's shoulder to rest it on while he went on speaking with an effort to be calmer. But you have come to me, Tito, not quite too late. I will lose no time in vain regret. When you are working by my side, I seem to have found a son again. The old man, preoccupied with the governing interest of his life, was only thinking of the much meditated book which had quite thrust into the background the suggestion, raised by Bernardo del Niro's warning, of a possible marriage between Tito and Ramola, but Tito could not allow the moment to pass unused. Will you let me be always and altogether your son? Will you let me take care of Ramola be her husband? I think she will not deny me. She has said she loves me. I know I am not equal to her in birth, in anything. But I am no longer a destitute stranger. Is it true, my Ramola, said Bardo, in a lower tone, an evident vibration passing through him, anticipating the saddened aspects of his features? Yes, Father, said Ramola firmly, I love Tito, I wish to marry him, that we may both be your children and never part. Tito's hand met hers in a strong clasp for the first time while she was speaking, but their eyes were fixed anxiously on her father. Why should it not be, said Bardo, as if arguing against any opposition to his assent, rather than assenting, it would be a happiness to me, and thou, too, Ramola, was to be the happier for it. He stroked her long hair gently and bent towards her. Ah, I have been apt to forget that thou needest some other love than mine, and thou wilt be a noble wife. Bernardo thinks I shall hardly find a husband fitting for thee, and he is perhaps right. For thou art not like the herd of thy sex. Thou art such a woman as the immortal poets had a vision of, when they sang the lives of the heroes, tender but strong, like thy voice, which has been to me instead of the light in the years of my blindness. And so thou lovest him? He sat upright again for a minute, and then said, in the same tone as before, why should it not be? I will think of it. I will talk with Bernardo. Tito felt a disagreeable chill at this answer, for Bernardo del Nero's eyes had retained their keen suspicion whenever they looked at him, and the uneasy remembrance of Fra Luka converted all uncertainty into fear. Speak for me, Ramola, he said pleadingly. Mr. Bernardo is sure to be against me. No, Tito, said Ramola. My godfather will not oppose what my father firmly wills, and it is your will that I should marry Tito. Is it not true, Father? Nothing has ever come to me before that I have wished for strongly. I do not think it possible that I could care so much for anything that could happen to myself. It was a brief and simple plea, but it was the condensed story of Ramola's self-repressing, colorless young life, which had thrown all its passion into sympathy with aged sorrows, aged ambition, aged pride, and indignation. It had never occurred to Ramola that she should not speak as directly and emphatically of her love for Tito as of any other subject. Ramola mia, said her father fondly, pausing on the words, It is true thou hast never urged on me any wishes of thy own, and I have no will to resist thine, rather my heart met Tito's entreaty at its very first utterance. Nevertheless, I must talk with Bernardo about the measures needful to be observed, for we must not act in haste or do anything unbeseeming my name. I am poor, and held a little account by the wealthy of our family. Nay, I may consider myself a lonely man, but I must, nevertheless, remember that generous birth has its obligations, and that would not be reproached by my fellow citizens for rash haste in bestowing my daughter. Bortolomega Scala gave his alessandra to the Greek Marulo, but Marulo's lineage was well known, and Scala himself is of no extraction. I know Bernardo will hold that we must take time, he will perhaps reproach me with want of due forethought. Be patient, my children, you are very young. No more could be said, and Ramola's heart was perfectly satisfied. Not so, Tito's. If the subtle mixture of good and evil prepares suffering for human truth and purity, there is also suffering prepared for the wrongdoer by the same mangled conditions. As Tito kissed Ramola on their parting that evening, the very strife of the thrill that moved his whole being at the sense that this woman, whose beauty it was hardly possible to think of as anything but the necessary consequence of her noble nature, loved him with all the tenderness that spoke in her clear eyes, brought a strong reaction of regret that he had not kept himself free from that first deceit which had dragged him into the danger of being disgraced before her. There was a spring of bitterness mingling with that fountain of sweets. With the death of Fra Luka arrested, he hoped it would. CHAPTER XIII. THE SHADOW OF NEMISIS It was a lazy afternoon time on the 7th of September, more than two months after the day on which Ramola and Tito had confessed their love to each other. Tito, just ascended into Nello's shop, had found the barber stretched on the bench with his cap over his eyes, one leg was drawn up, and the other had slipped towards the ground, having apparently carried with it a manuscript of verse, which lay with its leaves crushed. In a corner sat Sandro, playing a game of mora by himself, and watching the slow reply of his left fingers to the arrhythmical demands of his right with solemn eyed interest. Treading with the gentlest step, Tito snatched up the lute, and, bending over the barber, touched the strings lightly while he sang, Quante bella givenezza, che si fuggi tutu via, chi volesse reetto sia, di domano c'e c'e c'e c'e. NOTE I. BEAUTIUS'S LIFE IN BLOSSOM, AND IT FLEEDITH, FLEEDITH EVER, WHO SO WOULD BE JOYFUL LET HIM, THERE IS NO SURETY IN THE MORNAW. CARNIVAL SONG BY LORENZO DE MEDICI. END OF NOTE I. Nello was as easily awakened as a bird. The cap was off his eyes in an instant, and he started up. Ah, my Apolino. I am somewhat late with my siesta on this hot day, it seems. That comes of not going to sleep in the natural way, but taking a potion of potent posy. Hear you, how I am beginning to match my words by the initial letter like a trevator. That is one of my bad symptoms. I am sorely afraid that the good wine of my understanding is going to run off at the spigot of authorship, and I shall be left an empty cask with an odor of dregs, like many other incomparable genius of my acquaintance. What is it, my Orpheus? Here Nello stretched out his arms to their full length, and then brought them round till his hands grasped Tito's curls and drew them out playfully. What is it you want of your well-tamed Nello? For I perceive a coaxing sound in that soft strain of yours. Let me see the very needle's eye of your desire, as the sublime poet says that I may thread it. That is but a tailor's image of your sublime poets, said Tito, still letting his fingers fall in a light way dropping on the strings. But you have divined the reason of my affectionate impatience to see your eyes open. I want you to give me an extra touch of your art, not on my chin, no, but on the Zazzara, which is as tangled as your Florentine's politics. You have an adroit way of inserting your comb, which flatters the skin, and stirs the animal spirits agreeably in that region. And a little of your most delicate orange scent would not lie amiss, for I am bound to the Scala's Palace, and am to present myself in radiant company. The young cartel Giovanni de Medici is to be there, and he brings with him a certain young Bernardo da Visi of Babiana, whose wit is so rapid that I see no way of out-rivaling it to save by the scent of orange blossoms. Nello had already seized and flourished his comb, and pushed Tito gently backward into the chair, wrapping the cloth round him. Never talk of rivalry, Belgio Vanne, Mio. Bernardo da Visi is a keen youngster, who will never carry a net out to catch the wind. But he has something of the same sharp, muzzled look as his brother Sir Piero. The weasel that Piero de Medici keeps at his back to slip through small holes for him. No, you distance all rivals, and may soon touch the sky with your forefinger. They tell me you have even carried enough honey with you to sweeten the sour Mr. Angelo, for he has pronounced you less of an ass than might have been expected, considering there is such good understanding between you and the Secretary. And between ourselves, Nello, Mio, that Mr. Angelo has more genius and erudition than I can find in all other Florentine scholars put together. I may answer very well for them to cry me up now, when Paulziano has beaten down with grief or illness or something else. I can try a flight with such a sparrow-hog as Pietro Cronito, but for Paulziano, he is a large-beaked eagle who would swallow me feathers and all, and not feel any difference. I will not contradict your modesty there, if you will have it so. But if you don't expect us clever Florentines to keep saying the same things over and over every day of our lives, as we must do so if we always told the truth. We cry down Dante, and we cry out Francesco C, just for the sake of variety. And if we cry you up as a new Paulziano, Heaven has taken us care that it will not be quite so great a lie as it might have been. And are you not a pattern of virtue in this wicked city, with your ears double-waxed against all siren invitations that would lure you from the Via di Bardi and the great work which is to astonish posterity? Posterity and good truth, whom it will pronably astonish as the universe does, by the impossibility of seeing what was the plan of it. Yes, something like that was being prophesied here the other day. Cristoforo Ledino said that the excellent Bardot was one of those scholars who lie overthrown in their learning, like Cavaliers in great armor, and then get angry because they are overridden, which pithy remark, it seems to me, was not an herb out of his own garden. For all men, from feeding one with an emptied spoon and gagging one with vain expectation by long discourse, Mr. Cristoforo is the pearl. Echo, you are perfect now. Here, Nello drew away the cloth, impossible to add a grace more. But love is not always to be fed on learning, ah. We shall have to dress the Zazarov for the Britrotho before long, is it not true? Perhaps, said Tito, smiling, unless Mr. Bernardo should next recommend Bardot to require that I yoke a lion and a wild boar to the car of the Zekka before I can win my Eclistus. But I confess, he is right in holding me unworthy of Ramola. She is a pliade that might grow dim before marrying an immortal. Naph, your modesty is in the right place there. Yet Faith seems to have measured and chiseled you for that niche that was left empty by the old man's son, who, by the way, Cronaccia, was telling me, is now at San Marco, did you know? A slight electrical shock passed through Tito as he rose from the chair, but it was not outwardly perceptible, for he immediately stooped to pick up the fallen book and busied his fingers with flattening the leaves while he said, no, he was at Fiesol, I thought. Are you sure he has come back from Saint Marco? Cronaccia is my authority, said Nello, with a shrug. I don't frequent that sanctuary, but he does. Ah, he added, taking the book from Tito's hand. My poor Nessia de Barberino, it jars your scholarly feelings to see the pages dog-eared. I was lulled to sleep by the well-rhymed charms of that rustic maiden, prettier than a turnip-flower, with a cheek more savory than cheese. But to get such a well-scented notion of the Contadina, one must lie on velvet cushions in the Via Ligra, not to go back to the Fiora Colina, stumping into the Piazza dei Nunziata this evening after sundown. And pray, who are the Fiora Colina? said Tito, indifferently settling his cap. The Contadine, who came from the mountains of Pistoia and the Castino, and heaven knows where to keep their vigil in the Church of Nunziata, to sell their yarn and dried mushrooms at the Fiora Cola, the little fair, as we call it. To make a queer show with their paper lanterns howling their hymns to the virgin on this eve of her nativity. If you had the leisure to see them, no, well I've had enough of it myself, for there is wild work in the Piazza. One may happen to get a stone or two about the ears or shins without asking for it, and I was never fond of that pressing attention. Adio! Tito carried the little uneasiness with him on his visit, which ended earlier than he had expected. The boy cardinal Giovanni dei Magici, youngest of the red-headed fathers, who had since presented his broad, dark cheek very conspicuously to posterity as Pope Leo X, having been detained at his favorite pastime of the chase and having failed to appear. It still wanted half an hour of sunset as he left the door of the Scalia Palace, with the intention of proceeding forthwith to the Via de Bardi, but he had not gone far when, to astonishment, he saw Ramola advancing towards him along the Borgio Pinti. She wore a thick black veil and a black mantle, but it was impossible to mistake her figure on her walk, and by her side was a short stout form, which he recognized as that of Mona Brigida, in spite of the unusual plainness of her attire. Ramola had not been bred up to devotional observances, and the occasions on which she took the air elsewhere than other the logia on the roof of the house were so rare and so much dwelt on beforehand, because of the bardo's dislike to be left without her, that Tito felt sure there must have been some sudden and urgent ground for an absence of which he had heard nothing on the day before. She saw him through the veil and hastened her steps. Ramola, has anything happened, said Tito, turning to walk by her side. She did not answer at the first moment, and Mona Brigida broke in. Ah, Monsieur Tito, you do well to turn around for we are in haste, and is it not a misfortune? We are obliged to go round by the walls, and turn up the Via del Maglio, because of the fair, for the Contadine is coming into block the way of the Nunziato, which had taken us to San Marco in half the time. Tito's heart gave a great bound and began to bleep violently. Ramola, he said in a lower tone, are you going to San Marco? They were now out of the Borgio Pinti, and were under the city walls, where they had wide gardens on their left hand, and all was quiet. Ramola put aside her veil for the sake of breathing air, and he could see the subdued agitation on her face. Yes, Tito Mio, she said, looking directly at him with sad eyes. For the first time I am doing something unknown to my father. It comforts me that I have met you, for at least I can tell you. But if you are going to him, it will all be well for you not to say that you had met me. He thinks I am only gone to my cousin, because she sent for me. I left my godfather with him. He knows where I am going and why. You remember that evening when my brother's name was mentioned and my father spoke of him to you? Yes, said Tito in a low tone. There was strange complication in his mental state. His heart sank at the probability that a great change was coming over his prospects, while at the same time his thoughts were darting over a hundred details of the course he would take when the change had come. And yet he returned Ramola's gaze with a hungry sense that it might be the last time she could ever bend it on him with full and questioning confidence. The Conjina had heard that he had come back, and the evening before, the evening of San Giovanni, as I afterwards found, he had been seen by our good Meso near the door of our house. But when Meso went to inquire at San Marco, Dino, that is, my brother, he was Christen Bernardino, after our godfather, but now he calls himself Fra Luca, had been taken to the monastery at Fiascola because he was ill. But this morning a message came to Meso saying that he had come back to San Marco, and Meso went to him there. He is very ill, and he has adjourned me to go and see him. I cannot refuse it, though I hold him guilty. I still remember how I loved him when I was a little girl, because I knew that he would forsake my father. And perhaps he is some word of penance to send to me. It cost me a struggle to act in opposition to my father's feelings, which I have always held to be just. I am almost sure you will think I have chosen rightly, Tito, because I have noticed that your nature is less rigid than mine, and nothing makes you angry. It would cost you less to be forgiving, though, if you had seen your father forsaken by one to whom he had given his chief love. By one he has planted his labor and his hopes, forsaken when his need was becoming the greatest. Even you, Tito, would find it hard to forgive. What could he say? He was not equal to the hypocrisy of telling Ramona that such offenses ought not to be pardoned, and he had not the courage to utter any words of dissuasion. You are right, my Ramola, you are always right, except in thinking too well of me. There was some genuineness in those last words, and Tito looked very beautiful as he uttered them, with an unusual pallor in his face and a slight quivering of his lip. Ramola, interpreting all things largely, like a mind pre-purposed with high beliefs, had a tearful brightness in her eyes as she looked at him, touched with keen joy that he felt so strongly whatever she felt. But without pausing in her walk, she said, and now, Tito, I wish you to leave me, for the congena and I will be less noticed if we enter the piazza alone. Yes, it would be better if you were to leave us, said Mona Brigida. For to say the truth, M. Tito, all eyes follow you, and let Ramona muffle herself as she will. Everyone wants to see what there is under her veil, for she has that way of walking like a procession. Not that I find fault with her for it, only it doesn't suit my steps. And indeed I would rather not have a scene going to San Marco. That is why I am dressed as one of the Pugioni themselves, and as old as St. Anna, for if it had been anybody but poor Dino who ought to be forgiven if he's dying. For what's the use of having a grudge against dead people? Make them feel while they live, say I. No one made a scruple of interrupting Mona Brigida, and Tito, having just raised Ramona's hand to his lips, said, I understand, I obey you. Now turned away, lifting his cap, a sign of reverence rarely made at that time by native Florentines, and which excited Bernardo del Nero's contempt for Tito as a faun in Greek, while to Ramona, who loved homage, it gave him an exceptional grace. He was half glad of the dismissal, half disposed to cling to Ramona to that last moment in which she would love him without suspicion. For it seemed to him certain that this brother who would before all things want to know, and that Ramona would before all things confide to him, what was her father's position and her own after the years which must have brought so much change. She would tell him that she was soon to be publicly betrothed to a young scholar, who was to fill up the place left vacant so long ago by a wandering son. He foresaw the impulse that would prompt Ramona to dwell on that prospect, and what would follow on the mention of the future husband's name. Fra Luka would tell all he knew and conjectured, and Tito saw no possible falsity by which he would now ward off the worst consequences of his former disillumination. It was all over his prospects in Florence. There was Messer Bernardo del Nero, who would be delighted at seeing confirmed the wisdom of his advice about deferring the betrothal until Tito's character and position had been established by a longer residence, and the history of the young Greek professor, whose benefactor was in slavery, would be the talk under every loggia. For the first time in his life he felt too fevered and agitated to trust his power of self-command. He gave up his intended visit to Bardot, and walked up and down under the walls until the yellow light in the west had quite faded, when, without any distinct purpose, he took the first turning, which happened to be the Vio San Sebastiano, leading him directly towards the Piazzo della Nunziata. He was at one of those lawless moments which came to us, all if we have no guide but desire, and if the pathway where desire leaves us seems suddenly closed, he was ready to follow any beckoning that offered him an immediate purpose.