“Yes, you ought to have been there,” said Piero, in his biting way, “just to see your favourite Greek look as frightened as if Satanasso had laid hold of him. I like to see your ready-smiling Messeri caught in a sudden wind and obliged to show their lining in spite of themselves. What colour do you think a man’s liver is, who looks like a bleached deer as soon as a chance stranger lays hold of him suddenly?”
“Piero, keep that vinegar of thine as sauce to thine own eggs! What is it against my bel erudito that he looked startled when he felt a pair of claws upon him and saw an unchained madman at his elbow? Your scholar is not like those beastly Swiss and Germans, whose heads are only fit for battering-rams, and who have such large appetites that they think nothing of taking a cannon-ball before breakfast. We Florentines count some other qualities in a man besides that vulgar stuff called bravery, which is to be got by hiring dunderheads at so much per dozen. I tell you, as soon as men found out that they had more brains than oxen, they set the oxen to draw for them; and when we Florentines found out that we had more brains than other men we set them to fight for us.”
“Treason, Nello!” a voice called out from the inner sanctum; “that is not the doctrine of the State. Florence is grinding its weapons; and the last well-authenticated vision announced by the Frate was Mars standing on the Palazzo Vecchio with his arm on the shoulder of San Giovanni Battista, who was offering him a piece of honeycomb.”
“It is well, Francesco,” said Nello. “Florence has a few thicker skulls that may do to bombard Pisa with; there will still be the finer spirits left at home to do the thinking and the shaving. And as for our Piero here, if he makes such a point of valour, let him carry his biggest brush for a weapon and his palette for a shield, and challenge the widest-mouthed Swiss he can see in the Prato to a single combat.”
“Va, Nello,” growled Piero, “thy tongue runs on as usual, like a mill when the Arno’s full—whether there’s grist or not.”
“Excellent grist, I tell thee. For it would be as reasonable to expect a grizzled painter like thee to be fond of getting a javelin inside thee as to expect a man whose wits have been sharpened on the classics to like having his handsome face clawed by a wild beast.”
“There you go, supposing you’ll get people to put their legs into a sack because you call it a pair of hosen,” said Piero. “Who said anything about a wild beast, or about an unarmed man rushing on battle? Fighting is a trade, and it’s not my trade. I should be a fool to run after danger, but I could face it if it came to me.”
“How is it you’re so afraid of the thunder, then, my Piero?” said Nello, determined to chase down the accuser. “You ought to be able to understand why one man is shaken by a thing that seems a trifle to others—you who hide yourself with the rats as soon as a storm comes on.”
“That is because I have a particular sensibility to loud sounds; it has nothing to do with my courage or my conscience.”
“Well, and Tito Melema may have a peculiar sensibility to being laid hold of unexpectedly by prisoners who have run away from French soldiers. Men are born with antipathies; I myself can’t abide the smell of mint. Tito was born with an antipathy to old prisoners who stumble and clutch. Ecco!”