Romola

e made his way round the piazza to the Corso degli Adimari, that he might encounter the pair of blue eyes which had looked up towards him from under the square bit of wh

d as other impulses do, without any conscious motive, and, like all people to whom concealment is easy, he would now

ent pink flush on Romola's face and neck, which subtracted nothing from her majesty, but only gave it the exquisite charm of womanly sensitiveness, heightened still more by what seemed the paradoxical boy-like frankness of her look and smile. They were the best comrades in the world during the hours they passed together round the blind man's chair: she was constantly appealing to Tito, and he was informing her, yet he felt himself strangely in subjection to Romola with that simplicity of hers: he felt for the first time, without defining it to himself, that loving awe in the presence of noble womanhood, which is perhaps something like the worship paid of old to a great nature-goddess, who was not all-knowing, but whose life and power were something deeper and more primordial than knowledge. They had never been alone together, and he could frame to himself no probable image of love-scenes between them: he could only fancy a

en if it had held no other magnet. Politian was professor of Greek as well as Latin at Florence, professorial chairs being maintained there, although the university had been removed to Pisa; but for a long time Demetrio Calcondila, one of the most eminent and respectable among the emigrant Greeks, had also held a Greek chair, simultaneously with the too predominant Italian. Calcondila was now gone to Milan, and there was no counterpoise or rival to Politian such as was desired for him by the friends who wished him to be taught a little propriety and humility. Scala was far from being the

e there was much more plate than the circle of enamelled silver in the centre of the brass dishes, and where it was not forbidden by the Signory to wear the richest brocade. For where could a handsome young scholar not be welcome when he could touch the lute and troll a gay song? That bright fac

sold all his jewels, except the ring he did not choose to pa

the shadow as it dogged his footsteps, at last rushed upon him and grasped him: he was obliged to pause and decide whether he would surrender and obey, or whether he would give the refusal that must carry irrevocable cons

has been too much the fashion of scholars, especially when, like our Pietro Crinito, they think their scholarship needs to be scented and broidered, to squander with one hand till they have been fain to beg with the other. I have brought you the money, and you are free to make a wise choice or an unwise: I shall see on which side the balance dips.

eyes on the table where the florins lay. He made no other movement, but stood with his thumbs in his belt, lo

s to Venice; he will have raised money, and will never rest till he finds me out'? If that were certain, could he, Tito, see the price of the gems lying before him, and say, 'I will stay at Florence, where I am fanned by soft airs of promised love and prosperity: I will not risk myself for his sake'? No, surely not, if it were certain. But nothing could be farther from certainty. The galley had been taken by a Turkish vessel on its way to Delos: that was known by the report of the companion galley, which had escaped. But there had been resistance, and probable bloodshed; a man had been seen falling overboard: who were the survivors, and what had befallen them amo

tain that Baldassarre Calvo was alive, and that I could free him, by whatever exertions or perils, I would go now - now I have the money: it was useless to debate the matter before. I would go now to Bardo and Bartolommeo Scala, and tell them the whole truth.' Tito did not say to himself so distinctly that if those two men had known the whole truth he was aware there would have been no alternative for him but to go in searc

d to know who it was that had fallen overboard. But such thoughts spring inevitably out of a relation that is irksome. Baldassarre was exacting, and had got stranger as he got older: he was constantly scrutinising Tito's mind to see whether it answered to his own exaggerated expectations: and age - the age of a thick-set, heavy-browed, bald man beyond sixty, whose intensity and eagerness in the grasp of ideas have long taken the character of monotony and repetition, may be looked at from many po

aldassarre had rescued him from blows, had taken him to a home that seemed like opened paradise, where there was sweet food and soothing caresse

on for himself. If he were silent when his father expected some response, still he did not look moody; if he declined some labour - why, he flung himself down with such a charming, half-smiling, half-pleading air, that the pleasure of looking at him made amends to one who had watched his growth with a sense of claim and possession: the curve

d; but it was not certain that Baldassarre wa

down at the florins. 'Before I quit everything, and incur again all the risks of which I am even now weary, I must at least have a reasonable hope

o his wishes. He had made it impossible that he should not from henceforth desire it to be the truth that his father was dead; imposs

n lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires - the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the p

and ascertain his father's fate: he had now made a definite excuse to himself for not taking that course; he had avowed to himself a choice which he would have been ashamed to avow to others, and which would have made him ashamed in the resurgent presence of his father. But the inward shame, the reflex of that outward law which the great heart of mankind makes for every individual man, a