The priest shook his head. “The next time she may bring her own maid. Not another girl from our village shall she turn the head of, that Signorina,” and the very tone of his voice as he said it was witness that he affirmed what he knew to be false. The Signore understood and laughed.
“Put it all away, amico mio, for to-day, and go with me to Florence. Gioja has gone; and you can do nothing but listen to your people, who will deafen you before night. Come and see your bella Firenze in her festa dress. We will take a tram below and find a cab at the gates.”
The priest’s face brightened like a child’s.
“Ah, Signore, now it is I you are proposing to carry away! But why not? It is long since I was in Florence, and I have already said service here. But it is not necessary to say anything to my people. Discretion, Signore, discretion is a great thing!”
And thus it happened that when the village folk saw the good father depart in company with the Signore forestiere, they sagely concluded, with that sense of the importance of our own affairs common to the race, that the two had gone to Fiesole, or who knew but even Florence, to consult the authorities in the matter of that unhappy Gioja. And, in point of fact, though the priest was fairly running away from the subject, he was destined to run straight into its arms instead.
Florence was all in festa; and if there is anything lovelier than Florence in festa, who has seen it? The streets ran over with bright sunshine; and the Florentines, reinforced by contadini from all the neighboring towns, in holiday garb, made a bright, shifting mass for the sunbeams to play over. Arno rolled its now shallow stream like muddy gold, and pale golden palaces stood loftily up and looked down at her. Over her streaming Ways, Florence shook the bells in all her towers every fifteen minutes, and at intervals the deep, golden-throated voice in Giotto’s Tower answered with a rich hum, hum-m, hum-m-m, like a melodious summer bee. The strident notes of the grilli, in their little wicker cages, brought from the Cascine at dawn, completed the joyous pandemonium.
The Signore’s spirits ran at higher tide than even the bright tide of humanity about him. He laughed at all; he bought flowers of the boys and girls who ran after the carriage holding up glowing armfuls, until the carriage-seat was heaped, and the priest held up his hands at the extravagance. He climaxed his folly by buying all the remaining grilli in their cages, and letting them loose upon the grass of the Cascine.
“Do not scold, amico mio,” he said to the priest gayly; “I told you it is a festa. I have come into a fortune, and it is written that nobody must be shut up to-day or hungry.” He tossed a handful of soldi to a group of children.
“I am afraid your fortune will not last long,” replied the priest, shaking his head.
But he forgot his own prudence when, a little later, they went to a restaurant,—not Doney’s, where the foolish tourists go, fancying themselves in Italy, and where the priest would have been miserable,—but Gilli’s on the Piazza Signoria. There, it being a feast day, and his host newly come into a fortune, the good father ate, for the honor of religion and his own temporal good, such a meal as had never before found its way to his stomach, and washed it down with glasses of Chianti, not merely old (vecchio), but extravagantly old (stravecchio). Golden moments were these, and he put down his glass at last with a sigh of regret that it was impossible to prolong them further. His limit of possibility was reached.