Then I heard a snatch of a Neapolitan song that better fitted the look of the court, and then a bit of opera. . . . The troubadour faltered on that, and right in the middle of it he stopped, repeated one phrase, and then called, “Hi, Gino, old Top! Ta tum, ta tum, ta ta, ta tum—that right?”
And Gino echoed it in his voice, and answered excitedly, “Si, si, Signor! Brava! Brava, Signor! Brrrava!”
And then, warmed and cheered and quite myself again, I went back to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SIGNOR PAGGI’S COMPLIMENTS
Signor Paggi’s studio is high up in one of those old palaces that seem to frown at you, and the palace is on the Via Tornabuoni, which is a street where lots of the wealthy and great people of old Florence lived, hundreds of years ago.
At that time of course—years back, in the middle ages—they knew nothing of modern improvements like portable houses or the sort of stucco bungalows that get full of cracks after the first frost, and so they put their houses up in the old-fashioned way, which does seem to wear well, for they stand to-day as they stood when they were built.
I liked looking at them; there is a great deal in my nature that answers to a real fight, and those houses were built for convenient fighting. Probably then, the architects were fussing over nice, little windows through which the owner could pour hot oil on a passing enemy, instead of the sun porches and breakfast rooms and the kind of truck that now occupies them.
It gave me a romantic, chilly thrill to see the blank walls of the first stories, which make the streets where the palaces exist look so cold and stern, for I realized that they didn’t have low windows in them because if they had had, people who felt like it could throw in bricks and things of such forceful nature, too easily.
They needed this type of dwelling because they scrapped so much. The Medicis, an old Florentine family, and all dead, but still somewhat talked about, were always fighting somebody or other, and so were the Strozzis and Tornabuonis, who were also prominent hundreds of years ago, but still remembered, I found, by a good many. I, personally, don’t wonder, and I must admit that more than once during my stay in Florence I wished I could skip back into the Middle Ages for a day or so, and root at just one good fight.
However, I realize that this is not a natural wish for “A young woman of refinement,” as Leslie would say.