to go and hear him again, else I must do pen- | Bardo again, after a moment's pause. And ance for it; for the great preachers Fra Mariano Romola seated herself on a low stool and let and Fra Menico had shown how Fra Girolamo her arm rest on her father's right knee, that he preached lies-and that was true, for I heard might lay his hand on her hair, as he was fond them both in the Duomo-and how the Pope's of doing. 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 con Dio, and made myself easy. I am not going to be frightened by a Frate Predicatore 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-"

"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 fervid and impatient, and yet sometimes rapt 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

"Silenzio!" said Bardo, in a loud agitated voice, while Romola half-started from her chair, clasped her hands, and looked round at Tito, as if now she might appeal to him. Monna Brigi-influences of a dim mysticism which eludes all da gave a little scream and bit her lip.

"Donna!" 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. Monna 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.

66

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 Luca-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 Fiesole at that moment! This importunate 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 Melema whose description he had carried round his neck as an index. No! nothing but Fra Luca'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 in 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, figliuola mia," said

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 Romola 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 more 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 back-ground the suggestion, raised by Bernardo del Nero's warning, of a possible marriage between Tito and Romola. 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 Romola-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 any thing; but I am no longer a destitute stranger."

"Is it true, my Romola?" said Bardo, in a lower tone, an evident vibration passing through him and dissipating the saddened aspect of his features.

"Yes, father," said Romola, firmly. "I love Tito-I wish to marry him, that we may be both 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, Romola, wouldst be the happier for it."

He stroked her long hair gently and bent toward 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?"

sense that this woman, whose beauty it was hardly possible to think of as any thing 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 this danger of being disgraced before her. There was a

spring of bitterness mingling with that fountain of sweets. Would the death of Fra Luca arrest

He sat upright again for a minute and then it? He hoped it would. 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 Luca converted all uncertainty into fear.

"Speak for me, Romola," he said, pleadingly. "Messer Bernardo is sure to be against me.' "No, Tito," said Romola, "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 did not think it possible that I could care so much for any thing that could happen to myself."

It was a brief and simple plea; but it was the condensed story of Romola'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 Romola that she should not speak as directly and emphatically of her love for Tito as of any other subject.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SHADOW OF NEMESIS.

Ir was the lazy afternoon time on the seventh of September, more than two months after the day on which Romola and Tito had confessed

their love to each other.

Tito, just descended 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 toward the ground, having apparently carried with it a manuscript volume of verse, which lay with its leaves crushed. In a corner sat Sandro, playing a game at mora by himself, and watching the slow reply of his left fingers to the arithmetical 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,

"Quant'è bella giovinezza,

Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto sia;
Di doman non c'è certezza."'*

The

Nello was as easily awaked as a bird. cap was off his eyes in an instant, and he started up.

"Romola 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. "Ah, my Apollino! I am somewhat late with Nevertheless, I must talk with Bernardo about my siesta on this hot day, it seems. That comes the measures needful to be observed. For we of not going to sleep in the natural way, but must not act in haste, or do any thing unbe- taking a potion of potent poesy. Hear you, how seeming my name. I am poor, and held of lit- I am beginning to match my words by the initial tle account by the wealthy of our family-nay, letter, like a trovatore? That is one of my bad I may consider myself a lonely man-but I must symptoms: I am sorely afraid that the good nevertheless remember that generous birth has wine of my understanding is going to run off at its obligations. And I would not be reproached the spigot of authorship, and I shall be left an by my fellow-citizens for rash haste in bestow-empty cask with an odor of dregs, like many aning my daughter. Bartolommeo Scala gave his Alessandra to the Greek Marullo, but Marullo'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 Romola'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 wrong-doer by the same mingled conditions. As Tito kissed Romola on their parting that evening, the very strength of the thrill that moved his whole being at the

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."

"Beauteous is life in blossom!

And it fleeteth-fleeteth ever;
Whoso would be joyful-let him!
There's no surety for the morrow."

Carnival Song by Lorenzo dei Medici.

"That is but a tailor's image of your sublime | scholars who lie overthrown in their learning, poet's," said Tito, still letting his fingers fall in a light dropping way 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 zazzera, which is as tangled as your Florentine 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 be amiss, for I am bound to the Scala palace, and am to present myself in radiant company. The young Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici is to be there, and he brings with him a certain young Bernardo Dovizi of Bibbiena, whose wit is so rapid that I see no way of outrivaling it save by the scent of orange blossoms."

presented his broad dark cheek very conspicuously to posterity as Pope Leo the Tenth, 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 Scala palace, with the intention of proceeding forthwith to the Via de' Bardi, but he had not gone far when, to his astonishment, he saw Romola advancing toward him along the Borgo Pinti.

the last time she would ever bend it on him with full, unquestioning confidence.

"The cugina had heard that he was come back, and the evening before-the evening of | San Giovanni—as I afterward found, he had been seen by our good Maso near the door of our house; but when Maso went to inquire at San | Marco, Dino, that is, my brother—he was christened Bernardino, after our godfather, but now he calls himself Fra Luca-had been taken to She wore a thick black veil and black mantle, the monastery at Fiesole, because he was ill. but it was impossible to mistake her figure and | But this morning a message came to Maso, sayher walk; and by her side was a short, stouting that he was come back to San Marco, and form, which he recognized as that of Monna Maso went to him there. He is very ill, and Brigida, in spite of the unusual plainness of her he has adjured me to go and see him. I can not attire. Romola had not been bred up to devo- refuse it, though I hold him guilty: I still retional observances, and the occasions on which member how I loved him when I was a little she took the air elsewhere than under the loggia | girl, before I knew that he would forsake my faon the roof of the house were so rare and so much ther. And perhaps he has some word of penidwelt on beforehand, because of 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 the day before. She saw him through her veil and hastened her steps.

tence to send by me. It cost me a struggle to act in opposition to my father's feeling, 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:

"Romola, has any thing happened?" said it would cost you less to be forgiving; though, Tito, turning to walk by her side.

if you had seen your father forsaken by one to

She did not answer at the first moment, and whom he had given his chief love-by one in Monna Brigida broke in.

"Ah, Messer Tito, you do well to turn round, 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 Fiera; for the contadine coming in block up the way by the Nunziata, which would have taken us to San Marco in half the time."

whom he had planted his labor and his hopesforsaken when his need was becoming greatest— even you, Tito, would find it hard to forgive.”

What could he say? He was not equal to the hypocrisy of telling Romola that such offenses ought not to be pardoned; and he had not the courage to utter any words of dissuasion. "You are right, my Romola; you are always

Tito's heart gave a great bound, and began to right, except in thinking too well of me." beat violently.

There was really some genuineness in those

"Romola," he said, in a lower tone, are you last words, and Tito looked very beautiful as he going to San Marco ?"

They were now out of the Borgo Pinti and were under the city walls, where they had wide gardens on their left hand, and all was quiet. Romola put aside her veil for the sake of breathing the air, and he could see the subdued agitation in 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 be well for you not to say that you met me. He thinks I am only gone to the cugina, 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 a 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 Romola's gaze with a hungry sense that it might be|

uttered them, with an unusual pallor in his face, and a slight quivering of his lip. Romola, interpreting all things largely, like a mind prepossessed with high beliefs, had a tearful brightness in her eyes as she looked at them, 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 cugina and I shall be less noticed if we enter the piazza alone."

"Yes, it were better you should leave us,” said Monna Brigida; "for to say the truth, Messer Tito, all eyes follow you, and let Romola muffle herself as she will, every one 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 us seen going to San Marco, and that's why I am dressed as if I were one of the piagnoni themselves, and as old as Sant' Anna; for if it had been any body 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 Monna Brigida, and Tito, having just raised Romola's

hand to his lips, and said, "I understand, I obey | struggling into the piazza, while above them 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 fawning Greek; while to Romola, who loved homage, it gave him an exceptional grace.

paper lanterns, held aloft on sticks, were waving uncertainly to and fro. A rude monotonous chant made a distinctly traceable strand of noise, across which screams, whistles, gibing chants in piping boyish voices, the beating of nacchere or drums, and the ringing of little bells, met each He was half glad of the dismissal, half dis- other in confused din. Every now and then posed to cling to Romola to the last moment in one of the dim floating lights disappeared with which she would love him without suspicion. a smash from a stone lanced more or less vagueFor it seemed to him certain that this brother ly in pursuit of mischief, followed by a scream would before all things want to know, and that and renewed shouts. But on the outskirts of Romola would before all things confide to him, the whirling tumult there were groups who were what was her father's position and her own after keeping this vigil of the Nativity of the Virgin the years which must have brought so much in a more methodical manner than by fitful change. She would tell him that she was soon stone - throwing and gibing. Certain ragged to be publicly betrothed to a young scholar, who men, darting a hard, sharp glance around them was to fill up the place left vacant long ago by a while their tongues rattled merrily, were inwandering son. He foresaw the impulse that viting country people to game with them on would prompt Romola to dwell on that prospect, fair and open-handed terms; two masquerading and what would follow on the mention of the figures on stilts, who had snatched lanterns from future husband's name. Fra Luca would tell the crowd, were swaying the lights to and fro in all he knew and conjectured, and Tito saw no meteoric fashion, as they strode hither and thithpossible falsity by which he could now ward off er; a sage trader was doing a profitable business the worst consequences of his former dissimula- at a small covered stall, in hot berlingozzi, a fation. It was all over with his prospects in Flor-vorite farinaceous delicacy; one man standing There was Messer Bernardo del Nero, on a barrel, with his back firmly planted against a pillar of the loggia in front of the Foundling Hospital (Spedale degl' Innocenti), was selling efficacious pills, invented by a doctor of Salerno, warranted to prevent toothache and death by drowning; and not far off, against another pillar, a tumbler was showing off his tricks on a small platform; while a handful of 'prentices, despising the slack entertainment of guerrilla stonethrowing, were having a private concentrated match of that favorite Florentine sport at the narrow entrance of the Via de' Febbrai.

ence.

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 Bardo, and walked up and down under the walls until the yellow light in the west had quite faded, when, without any distinct purpose, Tito, obliged to make his way through chance he took the first turning, which happened to be openings in the crowd, found himself at one mothe Via San Sebastiano, leading him directly to- ment close to the trotting procession of bareward the Piazza dell' Annunziata. He was at footed, hard-heeled contadine, and could see one of those lawless moments which come to us their sun-dried, bronzed faces, and their strange all if we have no guide but desire, and the path- | fragmentary garb, dim with hereditary dirt, and way where desire leads us seems suddenly closed; of obsolete stuffs and fashions, that made them he was ready to follow any beckoning that of-look, in the eyes of the city people, like a wayfered him an immediate purpose.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PEASANTS' FAIR.

THE moving crowd and the strange mixture of noises that burst on him at the entrance of the piazza, reminded Tito of what Nello had said to him about the Fierucoloni, and he pushed his way into the crowd with a sort of pleasure in the hooting and elbowing that filled the empty moments, and dulled that calculation of the future which had so new a dreariness for him, as he foresaw himself wandering away solitary in pursuit of some unknown fortune, that his thought had even glanced toward going in search of Baldassarre after all.

Just

worn ancestry returning from a pilgrimage on
which they had set out a century ago.
then it was the hardy, scant-feeding peasant-
women from the mountains of Pistoia, who were
entering with a year's labor in a moderate bun-
dle on their backs, and in their hearts that
meagre hope of good and that wide dim fear of
harm, which were somehow to be cared for by
the Blessed Virgin, whose miraculous image,
painted by the angels, was to have the curtain
drawn away from it on this Eve of her Nativity,
that its potency might stream forth without ob-
struction.

At another moment he was forced away toward the boundary of the piazza, where the more stationary candidates for attention and small coin had judiciously placed themselves, in order to be safe in their rear. Among these Tito recognized his acquaintance Bratti, who At each of the opposite inlets he saw people stood with his back against a pillar and his