The rain was over, and the north wind had banished the clouds. Stars scintillated in the moonless heaven, like little wind-blown lamps. Resin-torches flared and fluttered, scattering sparks. The horsemen took their way by the Via Ricasoli, past San Marco and the serrated gate of San Gallo. Here the sentinels argued and swore, but were too sleepy to perceive what was on foot; and presently egress was secured by a good bribe. Outside the gate, the road followed the deep and narrow valley of the Mugnone. After passing several meagre villages, where the streets were even narrower than those in Florence, and the rough stone houses were as tall as fortresses, the party emerged into an olive-grove owned by the contadini of San Gervaso. Dismounting at the junction of two roads, they walked to the Hill of the Mill, hard by Messer Cipriano's vineyard. Here men awaited them with spades and mattocks; and here, behind the hill, beyond the marsh known as the Humid Hollow, the villa walls showed shadowy white through the darkness of the trees. Tall cypresses stood up black from the summit of the hill, and down below on the Mugnone was the name-giving watermill.
Grillo signified where, to his thinking, they ought to dig; Merula suggested another place; and Strocco, the gardener, swore they must go lower down, much nearer to the Humid Hollow, because the devils always hide themselves nearest to the slough. Cipriano, however, bade dig where Grillo advised; the spades grated, and soon there was an odour of new-dug earth. Giovanni shuddered, for a bat had brushed his face with its weird pinions; but Merula clapped him on the shoulder, crying, 'Fear nothing, little monk! we shall find no devil here. This Grillo is an ass. Thank heaven, it's not the sort of excavation I'm used to. At Rome, in the 45th Olympiad' (Merula scorned the Christian calendar), 'in the days of Pope Innocent VIII., diggers from Lombardy, who were working on the Appian Way close to the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, found an ancient sarcophagus with the inscription, "Julia, daughter of Claudius," and in it a body clothed in wax—a fair maid of fifteen, with the semblance of one asleep. You would have sworn she breathed: the flush of life was on her cheek. Multitudes flocked to the tomb and refused to leave it; for such was Julia's beauty, as to be incredible to those who had not beheld it. But it ill-suited the Pope that his children should adore a dead heathen, and he caused the body to be interred secretly under the Pincian Hill. Do you take me, lad? That was something like excavating!'
And Merula contemptuously kicked the clods which the diggers were throwing up at his feet. Suddenly all the onlookers started, for a jarring sound had come from one of the spades.
'Bones!' said the gardener; 'the ancient burying-place was here.'
At this moment the long-drawn howl of a dog was heard from San Gervaso, and Giovanni thought, 'We are profaning a grave. May it prove nothing worse!'
'Bones of a horse!' cried Strocco contemptuously, and dragged out a mouldered, long-shaped skull.
'Grillo,' said Messer Cipriano anxiously, 'were it not better we tried elsewhere?'
'Did I not say so?' cried Merula; and taking two of the workmen with him he began new operations at the base of the hill. Strocco also had detached a party to dig in the Humid Hollow.
Presently excited shouts were heard from Messer Giorgio.
'Hither all ye simpletons! Did not I know where ye should dig?'