One day, when Gerard had undermined his health, and taken the bloom off his beauty, and run through most of his money, Vanucci got up a gay party to mount the Tiber in a boat drawn by buffaloes. Lorenzo de' Medici had imported these creatures into Florence about three years before. But they were new in Rome, and nothing would content this beggar on horseback, Vanucci, but being drawn by the brutes up the Tiber.
Each libertine was to bring a lady; and she must be handsome, or he be fined. But the one, that should contribute the loveliest, was to be crowned with laurel, and voted a public benefactor. Such was their reading of "Vir bonus est quis?" They got a splendid galley, and twelve buffaloes. And all the libertines and their female accomplices assembled by degrees at the place of embarkation. But no Gerard.
They waited for him some time, at first patiently, then impatiently.
Vanucci excused him. "I heard him say he had forgotten to provide himself with a fardingale. Comrades, the good lad is hunting for a beauty fit to take rank among these peerless dames. Consider the difficulty, ladies, and be patient!"
At last Gerard was seen at some distance with a female in his hand.
"She is long enough," said one of her sex; criticizing her from afar.
"Gemini! what step she takes," said another; "Oh! it is wise to hurry into good company," was Pietro's excuse.
But when the pair came up, satire was choked.
Gerard's companion was a peerless beauty; she extinguished the boat-load, as stars the rising sun. Tall, but not too tall; and straight as a dart, yet supple as a young panther. Her face a perfect oval, her forehead white, her cheeks a rich olive with the eloquent blood mantling below; and her glorious eyes fringed with long thick silken eyelashes, that seemed made to sweep up sensitive hearts by the half-dozen. Saucy red lips, and teeth of the whitest ivory.
The women were visibly depressed by this wretched sight; the men in ecstasies; they received her with loud shouts and waving of caps, and one enthusiast even went down on his knees upon the boat's gunwale, and hailed her of origin divine. But his chère amie pulling his hair for it—and the goddess giving him a little kick—cotemporaneously, he lay supine: and the peerless creature frisked over his body without deigning him a look, and took her seat at the prow. Pietro Vanucci sat in a sort of collapse, glaring at her, and gaping with his mouth open like a dying cod-fish.