Romola

sorry to be handed over by that patron of mine to one who has a less barbarous accent, and a less enigmatical business. Is it a commo

nings when the game is over. He has had his will made to that effect on the cheapest terms a notary could be got for. But I have often said to him, "Bratti, thy bargain is a limping one, and thou art on the lame side of it. Does it not make thee a little sad to look at the pictures of the Paradiso? Thou wilt never be able there to chaffer for rags and rusty nails: the saints and angels want neither pins nor tinder; and except with San Bartolommeo, who carries his skin about in an in

ger, appearing to have dwelt with too anxious an interest on th

f the Duomo leaping in desperation, and cause the lions of the Republic to feel under an immediate necessity to devour on

doubt whether Athens, even in the days of Peri

pardon me, I am lost in wonder: your Italian is better than his, though he has been in Italy forty years - better even than that of the accomplish

ped over again by long abode and much travel in the land of gods and heroes. And, to confess something of my private affairs to you, this same Greek dye, with a few ancient gems I have about me, is the only fortune shipwreck has left me. But - when the towers fall, you know it is an ill business for the small nest-builders - the death of your Pericles makes

o, am your man. It seems to me a thousand years till I can be of service to a bel erudito like yourself. And, first of all, in the matter of your hair. That beard, my fine young man, must be parted with, were it as dear to you as the nymph of your dreams. Here at Florence, we love not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair

lly if your Florentine maidens are many of them as pret

nd, you must not have the air of a sgherro, or a man of evil repute: you must look like a courtier, and a scholar of the more polished sort, su

e Florentine Graces demand it, I am willing to

strious prince Pico di Mirandola in his prime. And here we are in good time in the Piazza San Giovanni, and at the door of my shop. But you are pausing, I see: naturally, you want to look at our wonder of the world, our Duomo, our

ory of their original gilding. The inlaid marbles were then fresher in their pink, and white, and purple, than they are now, when the winters of four centuries have turned their white to the rich ochre of well-mellowed meerschaum; the facade of the cathedral did not stand ignominious in faded stucco, but had upon it the magnificent promise of the half-completed ma

e stood with his arms folded and his curls falling backward, there was a slight touch of scorn on his lip, and when

ike to know if you have ever seen finer work than our Giotto's tower, or any cupola that would not look a mere mushroom by the side of Brunelleschi's there, or any marbles fin

of Christian barbarism for my taste. I have a shuddering sense of what there is inside - hideous smoked Madonnas; fleshless saints in mosaic, staring down idiotic astonishment and rebuke from the apse; skin-clad skeletons hanging on crosses, or stuck all over with arrows, or stretched on gridirons; women and monks with heads aside in perpetual lamentation.

orentine art is not in a state of barbarism. These gates, my fine young man, were moulded h

ave heard that your Tuscan sculptors and painters have been studying the antique a little. But with monks for models,

in again: "My ears," he says, "are sufficiently flayed by the barbarisms of the learned, and if the vulgar are to talk Latin I would as soon have been in Florence the day they took to beating all the kettles in the city because the bells were not enough to stay the wrath of the saints." Ah, Messer Greco, if you want to know the flavour of our scholarship, you must frequent my shop: it is the focus of Florentine intellect,

k-eyed youth, who made way for them on the threshold. 'And now make all clear for this signor

which divided the shop from a room of about equal size, opening into a still smaller walled enclosure,

hop is a no less fitting haunt of the Muses, as you will acknowledge when you feel the sudden illumination of understanding and the serene vigour of inspiration that will come to you with a clear chin. Ah! you can make that lute discourse, I perceive. I, too, have some skill that

h lay between them, the rigid, cold face of a Stoic: the masks rested obliquely on the lap of a little child, whose cherub features r

he Golden Age, wanting neither worship nor philosophy. And the Golden Age can always come back as long as men are born in the form of babies, and don't come

as been pleased to make to the universe, and if any man is in doubt what they mean, he had better inquire of Holy Church. He has been asked to paint a picture after the sketch, but he pu

d in fur and scarlet, waiting for his prey; or even see him blocking up the doorway seated on a bony hack, inspecting saliva. (Your chin a little elevated, if it please you: contemplate that angel who is blowing the trumpet at you from the ceiling. I had it painted expressly for the regulation of my clients' chins.) Besides, your druggist, who herborises and decocts, is a man of prejudices: he has poisoned people according to a system, and is obliged to stand up for his system to justify the consequences. Now a barber can be dispassionate; the only thing he necessarily stands by is the razor, always providing he is not an author. That was the flaw in my great predecessor Burchiello: he was a poet, and had consequently a prejudice about his own poetry. I have escaped that; I saw very early that authorship is a narrowing business, in conflict with the

ughing. 'The happy effect on my intellect is perhaps obstr

igent shaving, the nether region of your face may preserve its human outline, instead of presenting no distinction from the physiognomy of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape. I have seen men whose beards have so invade

I mean a year or two of age, which might have won me more ready credit for my learning. Under the inspection of a patron whose

. Whereas you - no, no, your age is not against you; but between ourselves, let me hint to you that your being a Greek, though it be only an Apulian Greek, is not in your favour. Certain of our scholars hold that your Greek learning is but a wayside degenerate plant until it has been transplanted into Italian brains, and that now there is such a plenti

quiring anxiety; 'the question is, in what quarter I am to carry my princely air, so as to rise from the said fallen condition. If your Florentine patr

and encrusted with a barbarous utterance of Italian, that makes their converse hardly more euphonious than that of a Tedesco in a state of vinous loquacity. And then again, excuse me - we Florentines have liberal ideas about speech, and consider that an instrument which can flatter and promise so cleverly as the tongue, must have been partly made for those purposes; and that truth is a riddle for eyes

so natural a movement of resentment, that the good-na

in a more mocking tone, and with a significant grimace, 'the fact is, you are heretics, Messer - jealousy has nothing to do with it: if you would just change your opinion about leaven, and alter your Doxology a little, our Italian scholars would think it a thousand years till they could give up their ch

he Greek, who had recovered himself, and se

lox, audacia

et Isaeo t

ady eloquence may carry

pkin-head. For, let me give you one bit of advice, young man - trust a barber who has shaved the best chins, and kept his eyes and ears open for twenty years - oil your tongue well when you talk of the ancient Latin

ho inherits his tastes? Or is there any other wealthy Florentine specially addicted to purchasing antique gems? I have a fine Cleopatra cut in sardonyx, and one or two other intaglios and cameos, both curious and beautiful, worthy of being added to the cabinet of a prince. Happily, I had taken

bristling all over with critical tests, but one whose Greek and Latin are of a comfortable laxity. And that man is Bartolommeo Scala, the secretary of our Republic. He came to Florence as a poor adventurer himself - a miller's son - a "branny monster," as he has been nicknamed by our honey-lipped Poliziano, who agrees with him as well as my teeth agree with lemon-juice. And, by the by, that may be a reason why the secretary may b

his great man?' said the

t in the meantime, I could take you to a man who, if he has a mind, can help you to a chance of a favourable interview with Scala sooner than anybody else in Florence - wor

mola makes collections, why should he n

e no more of his daughter than, as he says, a glimmering of something bright when she comes very near him: doubtless her golden hair, which, as Messer Luigi Pulci says of his