La Fornarina of the Uffizi, at Florence.
So we come out upon the streets of Florence again. Fair Florence, the narrow Arno dividing her, the purple Appennines shutting her in the Arno’s fertile valley. Flower-women stop us on the streets, and offer us flowers. Flower-women who are not as pretty as they are wont to be at fancy-dress parties; they are apt to be heavy and middle-aged, in fact, one of them, the handsomest of the band, has a scar on her face, and a tinge of romance attached to her name. It is whispered about that her lover’s dagger inflicted the scar, in a fit of jealousy. Once I myself saw a look flash into her eyes, when something was said to offend her by a passer-by on the street, which suggested the idea that she might have used her dagger in return. It was the look of a tiger aroused. And after that I never quite lost sight of the smothered fire in those black eyes of hers.
I used to wonder why I saw so few pretty faces in Florence. Moreover, how lovely the American ladies always looked in contrast with the swarthy, heavy Tuscan women. As a rule, that is. Of course, there were plain Americans and handsome Tuscans; but our countrywomen certainly bear off the palm for delicacy of feature and coloring. Still, the Tuscan peasant-girls make a fine show, with their broad flats of Leghorn straw; and when they are married they are invariably adorned with strings of Roman pearls about their necks. So many rows of pearls counts for so much worldly wealth.
I stroll on, stopping to look in at the picture stores, or coming to an enraptured pause before a cellar-way piled up with rare and fragrant flowers, such as one sees seldom out of Florence—the City of Flowers.
CHAPTER III.
ONE summer we lived in a villa a short distance outside the gates of Florence. For Florence had gates in those days, and was a walled city, kept by Austrian sentinels. That was the time of the Austrian occupation. Since then, Solferino and Magenta have been fought, and the treaty of Villa-franca has been signed, and now, “Italy’s one, from mountain to sea!”—
“King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
And his flag takes all heaven with its white, green and red.”
But then the Florentines bowed their necks under a hated foreign yoke, scowling when they dared at a retreating “maledetto Tedesco” (cursed German).