“I will not contradict your modesty there, if you will have it so; but you don’t expect us clever Florentines to keep saying the same things over again every day of our lives, as we must do if we always told the truth. We cry down Dante, and we cry up Francesco Cei, just for the sake of variety; and if we cry you up as a new Poliziano, heaven has taken care that it shall not be quite so great a lie as it might have been. And are you not a pattern of virtue in this wicked city? with your ears double-waxed against all siren invitations that would lure you from the Via de’ Bardi, and the great work which is to astonish posterity?”
“Posterity in good truth, whom it will probably astonish as the universe does, by the impossibility of seeing what was the plan of it.”
“Yes, something like that was being prophesied here the other day. Cristoforo Landino said that the excellent Bardo was one of those scholars who lie overthrown in their learning, like cavaliers in heavy armour, and then get angry because they are over-ridden—which pithy remark, it seems to me, was not a herb out of his own garden; for of all men, for feeding one with an empty spoon and gagging one with vain expectation by long discourse, Messer Cristoforo is the pearl. Ecco! you are perfect now.” Here Nello drew away the cloth. “Impossible to add a grace more! But love is not always to be fed on learning, eh? I shall have to dress the zazzera for the betrothal before long—is it not true?”
“Perhaps,” said Tito, smiling, “unless Messer Bernardo should next recommend Bardo to require that I should yoke a lion and a wild boar to the car of the Zecca before I can win my Alcestis. But I confess he is right in holding me unworthy of Romola; she is a Pleiad that may grow dim by marrying any mortal.”
“Gnaffè, your modesty is in the right place there. Yet fate seems to have measured and chiselled you for the niche that was left empty by the old man’s son, who, by the way, Cronaca was telling me, is now at San Marco. Did you know?”
A slight electric shock passed through Tito as he rose from the chair, but it was not outwardly perceptible, for he immediately stooped to pick up the fallen book, and busied his fingers with flattening the leaves, while he said—
“No; he was at Fiesole, I thought. Are you sure he is come back to San Marco?”
“Cronaca is my authority,” said Nello, with a shrug. “I don’t frequent that sanctuary, but he does. Ah,” he added, taking the book from Tito’s hands, “my poor Nencia da Barberino! It jars your scholarly feelings to see the pages dog’s-eared. I was lulled to sleep by the well-rhymed charms of that rustic maiden—‘prettier than the turnip-flower,’ ‘with a cheek more savoury than cheese.’ But to get such a well-scented notion of the contadina, one must lie on velvet cushions in the Via Larga—not go to look at the Fierucoloni stumping in to the Piazza della Nunziata this evening after sundown.”
“And pray who are the Fierucoloni?” said Tito, indifferently, settling his cap.
“The contadine who came from the mountains of Pistoia, and the Casentino, and heaven knows where, to keep their vigil in the church of the Nunziata, and sell their yarn and dried mushrooms at the Fierucola (the little Fair), as we call it. They make a queer show, with their paper lanterns, howling their hymns to the Virgin on this eve of her nativity—if you had the leisure to see them. No?—well, I have had enough of it myself, for there is wild work in the Piazza. One may happen to get a stone or two about one’s ears or shins without asking for it, and I was never fond of that pressing attention. Addio.”