Fra Tommaso looked after him and shook his head with an indulgent smile. Youth and romance appealed to the heart of him still, even as the dew and the sunshine penetrate to the heart of the gray old olive-tree and cause it to break out into leaf and fruit.
When Rinaldo reached the street the elder woman had disappeared, but "la Giannella" (he wished her name had not such a Florentine sound!) was standing before the vegetable stall apparently bargaining for tomatoes with the witch who presided there. The girl was smiling down at her, but the witch kept her eyes on her knitting and growled, "Take them or leave them. They are four baiocchi the pound to you as to others."
When Rinaldo, standing in the cover of his own doorway opposite, wondered what would happen next, Giannella stealthily drew the big key from her pocket and let it fall on the stones. The old lady looked up at the sudden clatter to find the girl still smiling at her and holding out three coppers in her hand.
"It is all I may spend, Sora Rosa," she said coaxingly. "Won't you be kind and give me the pound?"
"Ah, furba, cunning one!" exclaimed the other, "you always get what you want when you make me look at you. There, run along with my beautiful pomidori—and I hope they will choke the old miser you work for," she added viciously, as Giannella gathered up her spoils and went quickly down the street.
Of course Rinaldo followed her; that was a compliment one might pay to any woman so long as the regulation distance was maintained and no attempt made to attract her attention. He saw Giannella vanish into the palace, and then he slowly approached the portone, to try and find out which of the various stairways she would ascend. The building was so enormous, reaching the whole length of the street from Piazza Santafede to the Ripetta (on which thoroughfare its second façade opened) that it would be difficult to locate the modest apartment probably occupied by the Professor and his ministrants. Rinaldo gazed through the archway to where a fountain was bubbling in the courtyard, and found courage to put his question to the porter, who was lounging about, smoking a pipe while his wife scrubbed the lower steps of the chief staircase. It was so early that the maestro di casa had not come to open the cancelleria or office, a hall of sepulchral grimness on the ground floor, where the archives were kept and all the business of the household and estates carried on. The palace was still in dressing-gown and slippers, so to speak, and the porter in a fairly condescending mood, so Rinaldo was informed that to find Professor Bianchi he must take the third staircase to the right and ascend to the fourth floor, where he would see the name on the door. Rinaldo passed in, bent on discovering whether the apartment looked into the courtyard or out on the Via Santafede; if the latter, there might be some chance of catching another glimpse of that lovely girl at one of the windows. Passing along under the colonnade, where grooms were whistling and joking as they curried horses and sluiced down carriage wheels, he reached "Scala III." and raced up the long flights of steps, with two doors on every landing, and his heart beat more with exultation than exercise when at last he sprang on to the fourth of these and ascertained that "Bianchi" was the name on a shabby card nailed to the right-hand door. This was the street side.
Ten minutes later he was back on his own terrace, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the palace. Only a far corner was visible from where he stood. Between him and it, adjoining the side of his loggia, stretched the wide roof of the Fathers' dwelling, most picturesquely diversified, as he now perceived, by detached rooms opening on flowery terraces perched at different levels, connected by irregular little flights of steps, and here and there by a small bridge, railed in where it spanned the depth of some inner court designed to give light to the central rooms of the old pile.
All was deserted at this hour; the Fathers were busy in the church or with their pupils, far below; and Rinaldo, with a thrilling new sense of adventure, started on a voyage of discovery. Vaulting over his own parapet he landed on the flat gray tiles beyond and made his way, after one or two mistakes, which led him to closed doors, to the farther side of the little city on the roof. It struck him as a charming place, quite operatic in arrangement, and much more appropriate for dreaming lovers than meditating monks.
As he dropped over the last division he started back, dazed by a whirr of wings beating against his face. When they rose and hovered above his head he saw that he had disturbed a flock of pigeons who apparently had their home in this delightful retreat. He was standing on a narrow loggia some twenty feet long, protected on the street side by a solid parapet on whose broad top bloomed carnations, roses and verbenas; a big oleander at one end waved its pink fragrant flowers against the stainless blue of the sky; at the other, a fat little lemon-tree displayed its pale rich fruit. Sweet herbs in boxes filled all available corners, and against a side wall, shaded by a tile roof which projected over a glass door, was a neat dovecote, showing that the protesting pigeons were the rightful inhabitants of the place.