“There was once a podestà sent from Rome to govern Florence, and truly he was of that kind who to a farthing’s worth of sense have ten ducats’ value in self-conceit; for if vanity could have kept a man warm, he never would have had need to buy blankets. And this was most shown in his belief that he was a great orator, though he was so intolerably stupid and slow that his speeches were like the post-rider of Giordano, who in good weather sometimes got as far as five miles a day.
“Now he was to be inducted into office in the Cathedral, in the presence of the priori, or notables of the city of Florence, and so begun a discourse in which he first of all described how great a man he had been as senator in Rome, and what he had done, and what everybody else connected with him had done, and all the details of his departure from the Eternal City; and then depicted a banquet given to him at Sutro, and so went on, telling everything about everybody, till, after several hours of terribly tiresome discourse, he had got no farther than Siena.
“Now by this time, as Poggio words it, ‘This excessive length of wearisome narration had so exhausted his auditors that they began to fear that the entire day would be spent on
the road,’ and at last, as the shades of night began to fall, one who was present rose and said:
“‘Monsignore, I beg you to remember that it is growing late, and you must really get on a little faster in your journey, for if you are not in Florence to-day, the gates will be shut, and unless you get here in time you will not be allowed to enter, and thus you will miss being ordained, and cannot enter on your office.’
“Which having heard, the man of many words promptly concluded his speech by saying that he was really in Florence.”
Southey, in “The Doctor,” has narrated a number of instances of tedious discourse, but none, I think, quite equal to this.
There is a shadow under every lamp, a devil’s chapel close by every church, and even of the venerable and holy Duomo of Florence there are such tales as the following:
La Messa de’ Villani.
“If there is any faith to be put in old stories and ancient books, even the ladies and gentleman, to say nothing of priests, used such language in their ordinary conversation, in good old Medici times, as would not be heard among any but the lowest people now-a-days. Well, as the saying is: