Then the labourers descended into the pit, carefully turning over the brickwork ruins. Giovanni, stretched on the ground, looked down into the vault, from which came the chill of a grave, and the mouldy breath of long-covered damp.
Messer Cipriano bade the men stand aside, and Giovanni could see in the profundity between the walls of ancient red brick, a white and naked body which lay like a corpse upon a bier, yet in the flaring of the torchlight seemed rosy and warm with life.
'Venus!' cried Messer Giorgio: 'As I live, the Venus of Praxiteles! I cry you honour, friend Cipriano! Not the dukedoms of Milan or Genoa could bring you greater felicity!'
As for Grillo, they dug him out; and though his face was clotted with blood, and his arm had swelled into uselessness, in his old eyes shone the pride of a conqueror.
'Grillo! friend! beloved! benefactor! And I scorned you for a fool: and you—you are the cleverest of men!' cried Messer Giorgio, and falling into his arms he kissed him with deep emotion.
'Once,' he continued garrulously, 'Filippo Brunelleschi found a Hermes in just such a vault under his own house. Doubtless the pagans, knowing the value of these statues, hid them from the fury of the Christians, who were exterminating the old worship.'
Grillo listened, smiling beatifically, inattentive to the pipe of the shepherd and the bleating of sheep. He saw not that the sky shone now with a white and watery brilliance, nor knew that from Florence the belfries were exchanging their morning salutation.
'Gently! gently! To the right there! So! Keep it out from the wall!' cried Messer Cipriano. 'Five silver pieces to each, if you can get it out without breakage.'
By this time the stars had all disappeared with the exception of the orb of Venus, which still sparkled like a diamond in the glow of day. And slowly, slowly, with her ineffable smile, the goddess herself arose—as once she had risen from the foam of the sea, so now she ascended from her millennial tomb in the darkness of the earth:—
'Glory to thee, golden-limbed Aphrodite,