No one said anything after this indignant burst of Cennini’s till he himself spoke again.
“Hark! the trumpets of the Signoria: now comes the last stage of the show, Melema. That is our Gonfaloniere in the middle, in the starred mantle, with the sword carried before him. Twenty years ago we used to see our foreign Podesta, who was our judge in civil causes, walking on his right-hand; but our Republic has been over-doctored by clever Medici. That is the Proposto (Spokesman or Moderator) of the Priori on the left; then come the other seven Priori; then all the other magistracies and officials of our Republic. You see your patron the Segretario?”
“There is Messer Bernardo del Nero also,” said Tito; “his visage is a fine and venerable one, though it has worn rather a petrifying look towards me.”
“Ah,” said Nello, “he is the dragon that guards the remnant of old Bardo’s gold, which, I fancy, is chiefly that virgin gold that falls about the fair Romola’s head and shoulders; eh, my Apollino?” he added, patting Tito’s head.
Tito had the youthful grace of blushing, but he had also the adroit and ready speech that prevents a blush from looking like embarrassment. He replied at once—
“And a very Pactolus it is—a stream with golden ripples. If I were an alchemist—”
He was saved from the need for further speech by the sudden fortissimo of drums and trumpets and fifes, bursting into the breadth of the piazza in a grand storm of sound—a roar, a blast, and a whistling, well befitting a city famous for its musical instruments, and reducing the members of the closest group to a state of deaf isolation.
During this interval Nello observed Tito’s fingers moving in recognition of some one in the crowd below, but not seeing the direction of his glance he failed to detect the object of this greeting—the sweet round blue-eyed face under a white hood—immediately lost in the narrow border of heads, where there was a continual eclipse of round contadina cheeks by the harsh-lined features or bent shoulders of an old spadesman, and where profiles turned as sharply from north to south as weathercocks under a shifting wind.
But when it was felt that the show was ended—when the twelve prisoners released in honour of the day, and the very barberi or race-horses, with the arms of their owners embroidered on their cloths, had followed up the Signoria, and been duly consecrated to San Giovanni, and every one was moving from the window—Nello, whose Florentine curiosity was of that lively canine sort which thinks no trifle too despicable for investigation, put his hand on Tito’s shoulder and said—
“What acquaintance was that you were making signals to, eh, giovane mio?”