And as for Lorenzo-who's dead and gone before his time-he was a man who had an eye for curious iron-work; and if any body says he wanted to make himself a tyrant, I say, 'Sia; I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weather-cock.' But that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk, and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing. Though if there was any chance of a real reform, so that Marzocco* might shake his mane and roar again, instead of dipping his head to lick the feet of any body that will mount and ride him, I'd strike a good blow for it." "And that reform is not far off, Niccolò," said the sallow, mild-faced man, seizing his opportunity like a missionary among the too lightminded heathens; "for a time of tribulation is coming, and the scourge is at hand. And when the Church is purged of cardinals and prelates who traffic in her inheritance that their hands may be full to pay the price of blood, and to satisfy their own lusts, the State will be purged too —and Florence will be purged of men who love to see avarice and lechery under the red hat and the mitre because it gives them the screen of a more hellish vice than their own." 66 Ay, as Goro's broad body would be a screen for my narrow person in case of missiles," said Nello; "but if that excellent screen happened to fall, I were stifled under it, surely enough. That is no bad image of thine, Nanni-or, rather of the Frate's; for I fancy there is no room in the small cup of thy understanding for any other liquor than what he pours into it." "And it were well for thee, Nello," replied Nanni, "if thou couldst empty thyself of thy scoffs and thy jests, and take in that liquor too. The warning is ringing in the ears of all men : and it's no new story; for the Abbot Joachim prophesied of the coming time three hundred years ago, and now Fra Girolamo has got the message afresh. He has seen it in a vision, even as the prophets of old: he has seen the sword hanging from the sky." "Ay, and thou wilt see it thyself, Nanni, if thou wilt stare upward long enough," said Niccolò; "for that pitiable tailor's work of thine makes thy noddle so overhang thy legs that thy eyeballs can see naught above the stitching-board but the roof of thy own skull." The honest tailor bore the jest without bitterness, bent on convincing his hearers of his doctrine rather than of his dignity. But Niccolò gave him no opportunity for replying; for he turned away to the pursuit of his market business, probably considering further dialogue as a tinkling on cold iron. "Well, I know no more," said he of the hosen; only Guccio there met a staffiere going back to Careggi, and he told him the Frate had been sent for yesternight, after the Magnifico had confessed and had the holy sacraments." "It's likely enough the Frate will tell the people something about it in his sermon this morning; is it not true, Nanni ?" said Goro. "What do you think?" But Nanni had already turned his back on Goro, and the group was rapidly thinning; some being stirred by the impulse to go and hear "new things" from the Frate ("new things" were the nectar of Florentines); others by the sense that it was time to attend to their private business. In this general movement Bratti got close to the barber, and said: "Nello, you've a ready tongue of your own, and are used to worming secrets out of people when you've once got them well lathered. I picked up a stranger this morning as I was coming in from Rovezzano, and I can spell him out no better than I can the letters on that scarf I bought from the French cavalier. It isn't my wits are at fault-I want no man to help me tell peas from paternosters-but when you come to foreign fashions a fool may happen to know more than a wise man." "Ay, thou hast the wisdom of Midas, who could turn rags and rusty nails into gold, even as thou dost," said Nello; "and he had also something of the ass about him. But where is thy bird of strange plumage?" Bratti was looking round with an air of disappointment. "Diavolo!" he said, with some vexation. "The bird's flown. It's true he was hungry, and I forgot him. But we shall find him in the Mercato, within scent of bread and savors, I'll answer for him." "Let us make the round of the Mercato, then," said Nello. "It isn't his feathers that puzzle me," continued Bratti, as they pushed their way together. "There isn't much in the way of cut and cloth on this side the Holy Sepulchre that can puzzle a Florentine." “Or frighten him either,” said Nello, “after he has seen an Inglese or a Tedesco." "No, no," said Bratti, cordially; one may never lose sight of the Cupola and yet know the world, I hope. Besides, this stranger's clothes are good Italian merchandise, and the hose he wears were dyed in Ognissanti before ever they were dyed with salt-water, as he says. But the riddle about him is-" "Ebbene," said the man with the hose round his neck, who had lately migrated from another knot of talkers, "they are safest who cross themselves and jest at nobody. Do you know that the Magnifico sent for the Frate at the last, and couldn't die without his bless-trances of the piazza, and before he could resume ing?" The stone Lion, emblem of the Republic. Here Bratti's explanation was interrupted by some jostling as they reached one of the en it they had caught sight of the enigmatical object they were in search of. CHAPTER II. A BREAKFAST FOR LOVE. AFTER Bratti had joined the knot of talkers, the young stranger, hopeless of learning what was the cause of the general agitation, and not much caring to know what was probably of little interest to any but born Florentines, soon became tired of waiting for Bratti's escort, and chose to stroll round the piazza, looking out for some vendor of eatables who might happen to have less than the average curiosity about public news. But as if at the suggestion of a sudden thought he thrust his hand into a purse or wallet that hung at his waist, and explored it again and again with a look of frustration. "Not an obolus, by Jupiter!" he murmured, in a language which was not Tuscan or even Italian. "I thought I had one poor piece left. I must get my breakfast for love, then!" He had not gone many steps farther before it seemed likely that he had found a quarter of the market where that medium of exchange might not be rejected. In a corner, away from any group of talkers, two mules were standing, well adorned with red tassels and collars. One of them carried wooden milk-vessels, the other a pair of panniers filled with herbs and salads. Resting her elbow on the neck of the mule that carried the milk there leaned a young girl, apparently not more than sixteen, with a red hood surrounding her face, which was all the more baby-like in its prettiness from the entire concealment of her hair. The poor child, perhaps, was weary after her labor in the morning twilight in preparation for her walk to market from some castello three or four miles off, for she seemed to have gone to sleep in that half-standing half-leaning posture. Nevertheless our stranger had no compunction in awaking her, but the means he chose were so gentle that it seemed to the damsel in her dream as if a little sprig of thyme had touched her lips while she was stooping to gather the herbs. The dream was broken, however, for she opened her blue baby-eyes, and started up with astonishment and confusion to see the young stranger standing close before her. She heard him speaking to her in a voice which seemed so strange and soft that, even if she had been more collected, she would have taken it for granted that he said something hopelessly unintelligible to her, and her first movement was to turn her head a little away, and lift up a corner of her green serge mantle as a screen. He repeated his words: "Forgive me, pretty one, for waking you. I'm dying with hunger, and the scent of milk makes breakfast seem more desirable than ever." He had chosen the words "muoio di fame," because he knew they would be familiar to her ears; and he had uttered them playfully, with the intonation of a mendicant. This time he was understood; the corner of the mantle was dropped, and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk was held out to him. He paid no further compliments before raising it to his lips, While this process of survey was going on there was another current of feeling that carried her hand into a bag which hung by the side of the mule, and when the stranger set down his cup he saw a large piece of bread, held out toward him, and caught a glance of the blue eyes that seemed intended as an encouragement to him to take this additional gift. said. ment. "But perhaps that is your own breakfast," he "No, I have had enough without payA thousand thanks, my gentle one!" There was no rejoinder in words; but the piece of bread was pushed a little nearer to him, as if in impatience at his refusal; and as the long dark eyes of the stranger rested on the baby face it seemed to be gathering more and more courage to look up and meet them. "Ah, then, if I must take the bread," he said, laying his hand on it, "I shall get bolder still, and beg for another kiss to make the bread sweeter." His speech was getting wonderfully intelligible in spite of the strange voice, which had at first almost seemed a thing to make her cross herself. She blushed deeply, and lifted up a corner of her mantle to her mouth again. But just as the too-presumptuous stranger was leaning forward, and had his fingers on the arm that held up the screening mantle, he was startled by a harsh voice close upon his ear. "Who are you with a murrain to you? No honest buyer, I'll warrant, but a hanger-on of the dicers-or something worse. Go! dance off, and find fitter company, or I'll give you a tune to a little quicker time than you'll like." The young stranger drew back and looked at the speaker with a glance provokingly free from alarm and deprecation, and his slight expression of saucy amusement broke into a broad beaming smile as he surveyed the figure of his threatener. She was a stout but brawny woman, with a man's jerkin slipped over her green serge gamurra or gown, and the peaked hood of some departed mantle fastened round her sunburned face, which, under all its coarseness and premature wrinkles, showed a half-sad half-ludicrous maternal resemblance to the tender baby face of the little maiden-the sort of resemblance which often seems a more croaking, shuddercreating prophecy than that of the death'shead. There was something irresistibly propitiating in that bright young smile, but Monna Ghita was not a woman to betray any weakness, and she went on speaking, apparently with heightened exasperation : "Yes, yes, you can grin as well as other monkeys in cap and jerkin. You're a minstrel or a mountebank, I'll be sworn! You look for all the world as silly as a tumbler when he's been upside-down and has got on his heels again. And what fool's tricks hast thou been after, Tessa?" she added, turning to her daughter, whose frightened face was more inviting to abuse. "Giving away the milk and victuals, it seems; ay, ay, thou'dst carry water in thy ears for any idle vagabond that didn't like to stoop for it, thou silly, staring rabbit! Turn thy back and lift the herbs out of the panniers, else I'll make thee say a few Aves without counting!" of. "Va, va! I know what paste you are made You may tickle me with that straw a good long while before I shall laugh, I can tell you. Get along, with a bad Easter! else I'll make a beauty-spot or two on that face of yours that shall spoil your kissing on this side Advent." As Monna Ghita lifted her formidable talons by way of complying with the first and last requisite of eloquence, Bratti, who had come up a minute or two before, had been saying to his companion, "What think you of this pappagallo, Nello? Doesn't his tongue smack of Venice?" "Nay, Bratti," said the barber in an under tone, "thy wisdom has much of the ass in it, as I told thee just now; especially about the ears. This stranger is a Greek, else I'm not the barber who has had the sole and exclusive shaving of the excellent Demetrio, and drawn more than one sorry tooth from his learned jaw. And this youth might be taken to have come straight from Olympus-at least when he has had a touch of my razor. "Orsù! Monna Ghita!" continued Nello, not sorry to see some sport; "what has happened to cause such a thunder-storm? Has this young stranger been misbehaving himself?" "By San Giovanni!" said the cautious Bratti, who had not shaken off his original suspicions concerning the shabbily-clad possessor of jewels, "he did right to run away from me, if he meant to get into mischief. I can swear that I found him under the Loggia de' Cerchi, with a ring on his finger such as I've seen worn by Bernardo | Rucellai himself. Not another rusty nail's worth do I know about him." gift of bread, for which I was making an humble offering of gratitude, before I had had the higher pleasure of being face to face with these ripe charms which I was perhaps too bold in admiring." "Va, va! be off, every one of you, and stay in purgatory till I pay to get you out, will you?" said Monna Ghita, fiercely, elbowing Nello, and leading forward her mule so as to compel the stranger to jump aside. "Tessa, thou simpleton, bring forward thy mule a bit, the cart will be upon us." As Tessa turned to take the mule's bridle she cast one timid glance at the stranger, who was now moving with Nello out of the way of an approaching market-cart; and the glance was just long enough to seize the beckoning movement of his hand, which indicated that he had been watching for this opportunity of an adieu. "Ebbene," said Bratti, raising his voice to speak across the cart; "I leave you with Nello, young man, for there's no pushing my bag and basket any farther, and I have business at home. But you'll remember our bargain, because if you found Tessa without me it was not my fault. Nello will show you my shop in the Ferravecchj, and I'll not turn my back on you." "A thousand thanks, friend!" said the stranger, laughing, and then turned away with Nello up the narrow street which led most directly to the Piazza del Duomo. CHAPTER III. THE BARBER'S SHOP. "To tell you the truth," said the young stranger to Nello, as they got a little clearer of the entangled vehicles and mules, "I am not sorry to be handed over by that patron of mine to one who has a less barbarous accent, and a less enigmatical business. Is it a common thing among you Florentines for an itinerant trafficker in broken glass and rags to talk of a shop where he sells lutes and swords ?" "Bratti "Common? No: our Bratti is not a common man. He has a theory, and lives up to it, which is more than I can say for any philosopher I have the honor of shaving," answered Nello, whose loquacity, like an overfull bottle, could never pour forth a small dose. means to extract the utmost possible amount of pleasure, that is to say, of hard bargaining, out of this life; winding it up with a bargain for the easiest possible passage through purgatory, by giving Holy Church his winnings when the game is over. He has had his will made to that effect on the cheapest terms a notary could be got for. "Che, che," said Nello, eying the stranger good-humoredly; "the fact is, this bello giovane has been a little too presumptuous in admiring the charms of Monna Ghita, and has attempted to kiss her while her daughter's back is turned; for I observe that the pretty Tessa is too busy to look this way at present. Was it not so, Mes-But I have often said to him, 'Bratti, thy barser?" Nello concluded, in a tone of courtesy. "You have divined the offense like a soothsayer," said the stranger, laughingly. "Only that I had not had the good fortune to find Monna Ghita here at first. I begged a cup of milk from her daughter, and had accepted this gain is a limping one, and thou art on the lame side of it. Does it not make thee a little sad to look at the pictures of the Paradiso? Thou wilt never be able there to chaffer for rags and rusty nails; the saints and angels want neither pins nor tinder; and except with San Bartolom Have we meo, who carries his skin about in an inconven- | Because he was a large melon, every other Florient manner, I see no chance of thy making a entine is not a pumpkin, mi pare. bargain for second-hand clothing.' But, Dio mi not Bernardo Rucellai, and Alamanno Rinucperdoni," added Nello, changing his tone, and cini, and plenty more? And if you want to be crossing himself, "this light talk ill beseems a informed on such matters, I, Nello, am your morning when Lorenzo lies dead, and the Muses man. It seems to me a thousand years till I are tearing their hair—always a painful thought can be of service to a bel erudito like yourself. to a barber; and you yourself, Messer, are prob- And, first of all, in the matter of your hair. ably under a cloud, for when a man of your That beard, my fine young man, must be parted speech and presence takes up with so sorry a with, were it as dear to you as the nymph of night's lodging, it argues some misfortune to your dreams. Here at Florence we love not to have befallen him." see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair. But, remember, you will have passed the Rubicon when once you have been shaven: if you repent, and let your beard grow after it has acquired stoutness by a struggle with the razor, your mouth will by-and-by show no longer what Messer Angelo calls the divine prerogative of lips, but will appear like a dark cavern fringed with horrent brambles." What Lorenzo is that whose death you speak of?" said the stranger, appearing to have dwelt with too anxious an interest on this point to have noticed the indirect inquiry that followed it. "What Lorenzo? There is but one Lorenzo, I imagine, whose death could throw the Mercato into an uproar, set the lantern of the Duomo leaping in desperation, and cause the lions of the Republic to feel under an immediate necessity to devour one another. I mean Lorenzo de' Medici, the Pericles of our Athens-if I may make such a comparison in the ear of a Greek." "Why not?" said the other, laughingly; "for I doubt whether Athens, even in the days of Pericles, could have produced so learned a barber." "Yes, yes; I thought I could not be mistaken," said the rapid Nello, "else I have shaved the venerable Demetrio Calcondila to little purpose; but pardon me, I am lost in wonder: your Italian is better than his, though he has been in Italy forty years-better even than that of the accomplished Marullo, who may be said to have married the Italic Muse in more senses than one, since he has married our learned and lovely Alessandra Scala." "That is a terrible prophecy," said the Greek, "especially if your Florentine maidens are many of them as pretty as the little Tessa I stole a kiss from this morning." "Tessa? she is a rough-handed contadina: you will rise into the favor of dames who bring no scent of the mule-stables with them. But to that end you must not have the air of a sgherro, or a man of evil repute: you must look like a courtier, and a scholar of the more polished sort, such as our Pietro Crinito-like one who sins among well-bred, well-fed people, and not one who sucks down vile vino di sotto in a chance tavern." "If 66 Giovanni, and at the door of my shop. But you are pausing, I see; naturally, you want to look at our wonder of the world, our Duomo, our Santa Maria del Fiore. Well, well, a mere glance; but I beseech you to leave a closer survey till you have been shaved: I am quivering with the inspiration of my art even to the very edge of my razor. Ah, then, come round this way.' "With all my heart," said the stranger. the Florentine Graces demand it, I am willing to give up this small matter of my beard, but-" Yes, yes," interrupted Nello. "I know what you would say. It is the bella zazzera"It will lighten your wonder to know that I the hyacinthine locks, you do not choose to part come of a Greek stock, planted in Italian soil with; and there is no need. Just a little prunmuch longer than the mulberry-trees which have ing-ecco!-and you will look not unlike the taken so kindly to it. I was born at Bari, and illustrious prince Pico di Mirandola in his prime. my-I mean, I was brought up by an Italian-And here we are in good time in the Piazza San and, in fact, may rather be called a Græculus than a Greek. The Greek dye was subdued in me, I suppose, till I had been dipped over again by long abode and much travel in the land of gods and heroes. And, to confess something of my private affairs to you, this same Greek dye, with a few ancient gems I have about me, is the only fortune shipwreck has left me. But-when the towers fall, you know, it is an ill-business for the small nest-builders-the death of your Pericles makes me wish I had rather turned my steps toward Rome, as I should have done, but for a fallacious Minerva in the shape of an Augustinian monk. 'At Rome,' he said, 'you will be lost in a crowd of hungry scholars; but at Florence, every corner is penetrated by the sunshine of Lorenzo's patronage: Florence is the best market in Italy for such commodities as yours. "Gnaffè, and so it will remain, I hope," said Nello. "Lorenzo was not the only patron and judge of learning in our city-Heaven forbid! The mercurial barber seized the arm of the stranger and led him to a point on the south side of the piazza, from which he could see at once the huge dark shell of the cupola, the slender soaring grace of Giotto's campanile, and the quaint octagon of San Giovanni in front of them, showing its unique gates of storied bronze, which still bore the somewhat dimmed glory of their original gilding. The inlaid marbles were then fresher in their pink, and white, and purple than they are now, when the winters of four centuries have turned their white to the rich ochre of well-mellowed meerschaum; the façade of the cathedral did not stand ignomini- | studying the antique a little. But with monks ous in faded stucco, but had upon it the magnifi- for models, and the legends of mad hermits and cent promise of the half-completed marble inlay-martyrs for subjects, the vision of Olympus iting and statued niches which Giotto had de- self would be of small use to them." vised a hundred and fifty years before; and as the campanile in all its harmonious variety of color and form led the eyes upward, high into the pure air of that April morning, it seemed a prophetic symbol, telling that human life must somehow and some time shape itself into accord with that pure aspiring beauty. But this was not the impression it appeared to produce on the Greek. His eyes were irresistibly led upward, but as he stood with his arms folded and his curls falling backward there was a slight touch of scorn on his lip, and when his eyes fell again, they glanced round with a scanning coolness which was rather piquing to Nello's Florentine spirit. 66 Ebbene, bel giovane," he said, with some impatience, "you seem to make as little of our cathedral as if you were the angel Gabriel come straight from Paradise. I should like to know if you have ever seen finer work than our Giotto's tower, or any cupola that would not look a mere mushroom by the side of Brunelleschi's there, or any marbles finer or more cunningly wrought than these that our Signoria got from far-off quarries, at a price that would buy a dukedom. Come, now, have you ever seen any thing to equal them ?" "If you asked me that question with a cimeter at my throat, after the Turkish fashion, or even your own razor,” said the young Greek, smiling gayly, and moving on toward the gates of the Baptistery, "I dare say you might get a confession of the true faith from me. But with my throat free from peril, I venture to tell you that your buildings smack too much of Christian barbarism for my taste. I have a shuddering sense of what there is inside-hideous smoked Madonnas; fleshless saints in mosaic, staring down idiotic astonishment and rebuke from the apse; skin-clad skeletons hanging on crosses, or stuck all over with arrows, or stretched on gridirons; women and monks with heads aside in perpetual lamentation. I have seen enough of those wry-necked favorites of heaven at Constantinople. But what is this bronze door rough with imagery? These women's figures seem moulded in a different spirit from those starved and staring saints I spoke of: these heads in high relief speak of a human mind within them, instead of looking like an index to perpetual spasms and colic." "Yes, yes," said Nello, with some triumph. "I think we shall show you by-and-by that our Florentine art is not in a state of barbarism. These gates, my fine young man, were moulded, half a century ago, by our Lorenzo Ghiberti, when he counted hardly so many years as you do." "Ah, I remember," said the stranger, turning away like one whose appetite for contemplation was soon satisfied. "I have heard that your Tuscan sculptors and painters have been "I understand," said Nello, with a significant shrug, as they walked along. "You are of the same mind as Michele Marullo, ay, and as Angelo Poliziano himself, in spite of his canonicate, when he relaxes himself a little in my shop, after his lectures, and talks of the gods awaking from their long sleep and making the woods and streams vital once more. But he rails against the Roman scholars who want to make us all talk Latin again: My ears,' he says, 'are sufficiently flayed by the barbarisms of the learned, and if the vulgar are to talk Latin I would as soon have been in Florence the day they took to beating all the kettles in the city because the bells were not enough to stay the wrath of the saints.' Ah, Messer Greco, if you want to know the flavor of our scholarship, you must frequent my shop: it is the focus of Florentine intellect, and in that sense the navel of the earth—as my great predecessor, Burchiello, said of his shop, on the more frivolous pretension that his street of the Calimara was the centre of our city. And here we are at the sign of 'Apollo and the Razor.' Apollo, you see, is bestowing the razor on the Triptolemus of our craft, the first reaper of beards, the sublime Anonimo, whose mysterious identity is indicated by a shadowy hand." "I see thou hast had custom already, Sandro," continued Nello, addressing a solemn-looking, dark-eyed youth who made way for them on the threshold. "And now make all clear for this signor to sit down. And prepare the finest scented lather, for he has a learned and a handsome chin." "You have a pleasant little adytum there, I see," said the stranger, looking through a latticed screen which divided the shop from a room of about equal size, opening into a still smaller walled inclosure, where a few bays and laurels surrounded a stone Hermes. "I suppose your conclave of eruditi meets there ?" "There, and not less in my shop," said Nello, leading the way into the inner room, in which were some benches, a table, with one book in manuscript and one printed in capitals lying open upon it, a lute, a few oil-sketches, and a model or two of hands and ancient masks. "For my shop is a no less fitting haunt of the Muses, as you will acknowledge when you feel the sudden illumination of understanding and the serene vigor of inspiration that will come to you with a clear chin. Ah! you can make that lute discourse, I perceive. I too have some skill that way, though the serenata is useless when daylight discloses a visage like mine, looking no fresher than an apple that has stood the winter. But look at that sketch-it is a fancy of Piero di Cosimo's, a strange freakish painter, who says he saw it by long looking at a mouldy wall.” The sketch Nello pointed to represented three masks-one a drunken, laughing Satyr, another a sorrowing Magdalen, and the third, which lay |