Romola

Florence. lies in Oltrarno, or that portion of the

the city got its pavement - of dangerously unstable consistence when penetrated by rains; its left-hand buildings flanking the river and making on their northern side a length of quaint, irregularly-pierced facade, of which the waters give a softened loving reflection

sly signalised only a few years later as standing in the very front of European commerce - the Christian Rothschilds of that time - undertaking to furnish specie for the wars of our Edward the Third, and having revenues 'in kind' made over to them, especially in wool, most precious of freights for Florentine galleys. Their august debtor left them with an august deficit, and alarmed Sicilian creditors made a too sudden demand for the payment of deposits, causing a ruinous shock to the credit of the Bardi and of associated houses, which was felt as a commercial calamity along all the coasts of the Mediterranean. But, like more modern bankrupts, they did not, for all that, hide their heads in humiliation; on the contrary, they seemed to have held them higher than ever, and to have been among the most arrogant of those grandees, who under certain noteworthy circumstances, open to all who will read the honest pages of Giovanni Villani, drew upon themselves the exasperation of the armed people in 1343. The Bardi, who had made themselves fast

er altered conditions: this descendant of the Bardi was not a man swift in street warfare, or one who loved to play the signor, fortifying strongholds and asserting the right to hang vassals, or a merchant and usurer of keen daring, who delighted in the generalship of wide commercial schemes: he was a man with a deep-veined hand cramped by much copying of manuscripts, who ate sparing

window defended by iron bars, opened on a groined entrance-court, empty of everything but a massive lamp-iron suspended from the centre of the groin. A smaller grim door on the left hand admitted to the stone staircase, and the rooms on the ground-floor. These last were used as a warehouse by the proprietor; so was the first floor; and both were filled with precious stores, destined to be carried, some perhaps

hich we pass as he opens it. He merely looks in and nods, while a clear young

limbs severed from the trunk, inviting the lips to kiss the cold marble; some well-preserved Roman busts; and two or three vases from Magna Grecia. A large table in the centre was covered with antique bronze lamps and small vessels in dark pottery. The colour of these objects was chiefly pale or sombre: the vellum bindings, with their deep-ridged backs,

a reddish gold colour, enriched by an unbroken small ripple, such as may be seen in the sunset clouds on grandest autumnal evenings. It was confined by a black fillet above her small ears, from which it rippled forward again, and made a

ame refinement of brow and nostril in both, counterbalanced by a full though firm mouth and powerful chin, which gave an expression of proud tenacity and latent impetuousness: an expression carried out in the backward poise of the girl's head, and the grand line of her neck and shoulders. It was a type of face of which one could not venture to say whether it would inspire love or o

iately became blind. For it 'is declared in the Saturnian laws, that he who beholds the gods 'against their will, shall atone for it by a heavy penalty . . . When 'Teiresias had fallen into this calamity, Pallas, moved by the 'tears of Chariclo, endowed him with prophecy and length of 'days, and even caused his prudence and wisdom to continue 'after he had entered among the shades, so that an oracle

which he had that moment uplifted; but she had not looked round, and was going on, though with a voice a

y in Poliziano's hands, for I made emendations in it which have not yet been com

y step which was the simple action of her tall, finely-wrough

ly seeking the assurance that the outward fact continued to corres

from the bottom, behind the bust of Hadrian, above Apollonius

she hastened to lay the book on his lap, and kneeled down by him, looking up at him as if she believed that the love in her face must surely make its way through the dark obstruction that shut out everything else. At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to

ance, looked flushed and agitated as his hand

owed in these thirt

ill - fine Roman letters; and the Greek character,' she continued, laying the book open

sudden darkness or obstacle across his path? And even these mechanical printers who threaten to make learning a base and vulgar thing - even they must depend on the manuscript over which we scholars have bent with that insight into the poet's meaning which is closely akin to the mens

's knee, Romola took the book on her lap and read t

est and left us to glean in their furrows? For me, Romola, even when I could see, it was with the great dead that I lived; while the living often seemed to me mere spectres - shadows dispossessed of true feeling and intelligence; and unlike those Lamiae, to whom Poliziano, with that superficial ingenuity which I do not deny to him, compares our inquisitive Florentines, because they put on

old man's disposition to dilate in this way; 'for he used to look at his copy of Homer and think sadly that the Gre

as into a firm web, all the threads that my research had laboriously disentangled, and which would have been the vintage of my life, was cut off by the failure of my sight and my want of a fitting coadjutor. For the sustained zeal a

tone, 'I read anything you wish me to read; and I will look

perform all the five feats of the palaestra with the limbs of a nymph. Have I forgotten thy fai

e books, and Maso can help me; it was

the already-travelled channels and hindering the course onward. If my son had not forsaken me, deluded by debasing fanatical dreams, worthy only of an energumen whose dwelling is among tombs, I might have gone on and seen my path broadeni

nd when she turned away from the shelf again, she remained standing at some distance from him, stretching her arms downwards and clasping her fingers tightly as she looke

ager to trace them, was now too entirely preoccupied by the p

ven a lamp whereby men might have studied the supreme productions of the past. For why is a young man like Poliziano (who was not yet born when I was already held worthy to maintain a discussion with Thomas of Sarzana) to have a glorious memory as a commentator on the Pandects - why is Ficino, whose Latin is an offence to me, and who wanders purblind among the superstitious fancies that marked the decline at once of art, literature, and philosophy, to descend to posterity as the very high priest of Platonis

ing her eyes again towards the blind aged face, felt her heart swell with forgiving pity. She seated herself by her father again, and placed her hand on his

evote myself to collecting the precious remains of ancient art and wisdom, and leave them, after the example of the munificent Romans, for an everlasting possession to my fellow-citizens. But why do I say Florence only? If Florence remembers me, will not the world remember me? . . . Yet,' added Bardo, after a short pause, his voice falling again into a saddened key, 'Lorenzo's untimely death has raised a new diffficulty. I

besides, it is useless: wait till so

ot so held by the ancients, and in this respect Florent

e as useful to you as if I had been a boy, and then perhaps some great scholar will want to marry me, and will not mind about a dowry; and

n Bardo. He stretched his hand upward a little in search of her golden hair, and as she placed her head

ires as thy mother did. It is true, I have been careful to keep thee aloof from the debasing influence of thy own sex, with their sparrow-like frivolity and their enslaving superstition, except, indeed, from that of our cousin Brigida, who may well serve as a scarecrow and a warning. And though - since I agree with the divine Petrarca, when he declares, quoting the "Aulularia" of Plautus, who again was indebted for the truth to the supreme Greek intellect, "Optimam foeminam nullam esse, alia licet alia pejor sit" - I cannot boast that thou art entirely lifted out of that lower category to which Nature assigned thee, nor even that in erudition thou art on a par with the more learned women

s chair. While Bardo had been sitting, he had seemed hardly more than sixty: his face, though pale, had that refined texture in which wrinkles and lines are never deep; but now that he bega

was contemptible compared with mine. It will be a great gift to unborn scholars. And there is nothing else. For even if I were to yield to the wish of Aldo Manuzio when he sets up his press at Venice, and give him the aid of my annotated manuscripts, I know well what would be the result: some other scholar's name would stand on the title-page of the edition - some scholar who would have fed on my honey, and then declared in his preface that he had gathered it all himself fresh from Hymettus. Else, why have I refused the loan of many an annotated codex? why have I refused to make public any of my translations? why? but

ly-cut features, while the habitually raised attitude of his head gave the idea that behind the curtain of

re lay the same large claims, and the same spirit of struggle against th

and meanness. Yours is a higher lot, never to have lied and truckled, than to have shared honours won by dish

sophy. "For men," says Epictetus, "are disturbed not by things themselves, but by their opinions or thoughts concerning those things." And again, "whosoever will be free, let him not desire or dread that which it is in the power of others either to deny or inflict: otherwis, he is a slave." And of all such gifts as are dependent on

beant, est qui n

s justly to the tributes men pay us with their lips and their pens, which are also matters of purcha

ess over the passion which had been moving him, as if they had been written on parchment and hun

brary in Florence. They will speak coldly of me, perhaps: "a diligent collector and transcriber," they will say, "and also of some critical ingenuity, but one who could hardly be conspicuous in an age so fruitful in illustrious scholars. Yet he merits our pity, for in the latter years of his life he was blind, and his only son, to whose education he had devoted his best years -" Nevertheless, my name will be remembered,

nnounced that Nello, the barber, had desired him to say, that he wa

id the old man.

ll height, in quiet majestic self-possession, when the visitors entered; and the most penetrating observer would hardly have divined that this proud pale face, at the slightest touch on the fibres of affection or pity, could