The fact that this is taken from a very popular halfpenny work indicates the remarkable familiarity with such a name as that of Giotto among the people.
THE GOBLIN OF THE TOWER BELLA TRINITA, OR THE PORTA SAN NICCOLO
“They do not speak as mortals speak,
Nor sing as others sing;
Their words are gleams of starry light,
Their songs the glow of sunset light,
Or meteors on the wing.”
I once begun a book—the ending and publishing of it are in the dim and remote future, and perhaps in the limbo of all things unfinished. It was or is “The Experiences of Flaxius the Immortal,” a sage who dwells for ever in the world, chiefly to observe the evolution of all things absurd, grotesque, quaint, illogical—in short, of all that is strictly human. And on him I bestowed a Florentine legend which is perhaps of great antiquity, since there is a hint in it of an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi ben Mozeltoff or the learned Gedauler Chamar—I forget which—besides being found in poetic form in my own great work on Confucius.
That money is the life of man, and that treasure buried in the earth is a sin to its possessor, forms the subject of one of Christ’s parables. The same is true of all talent unemployed, badly directed, or not developed at all. The turning-point of evolution and of progressive civilisation will be when public opinion and state interests require that every man shall employ what talent he has, and every mere idler be treated as a defaulter or criminal. From this truly Christian point of view the many tales of ghosts who walk in agony because of buried gold are strangely instructive.
“Midnight was ringing from the cloister of San Miniato in Florence on the hill above, and Flaxius sat by the Arno down below, on the bank by the square grey tower of other days, known as the Niccolò, or Torre delta Trinità, because there are in it three arches. . . .
“It was midnight in mid-winter, and a full moon poured forth all its light over Florence as if it would fain preserve it in amber, and over the olive groves as if they had become moss agates. . . .
[“‘Or I,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘a fly in hock.’]
“Yes, it was a clear, cold, Tuscan night, and as the last peal of bells went out into eternity and faded in the irrevocable, thousands of spirits of the departed began to appear, thronging like fireflies through the streets, visiting their ancient haunts and homes, greeting, gossiping, arranging their affairs just as the peasants do on Friday in the great place of the Signoria, as they have done for centuries.