arm mailed in iron, holding a sword, and above it
a golden lily in a blue field."

This extract is interesting, as showing how a family could rise by
industry and wealth, even in one generation, by the work of a single man,
to the highest honours in Florence. And it is very remarkable that some
impression of the origin of this vigorous artisan and merchant, of
peasant stock, is evident in the tale. He is there clever and strong,
but vulgar and familiar, so that he was not personally liked. He remains
standing open-mouthed, like a comic actor, when the fairy vanishes. In
fact the whole tale suggests the elements of a humorous melodrama or
operetta, a _bourgeois gentilhomme_.

"And should it come to pass that any read
This tale in Viesseux, his library,
In the Feroni palace, let them think
That, even in the rooms where they do read,
The things which I have told once came to pass--
Even so the echo ever haunts the shrine!"

LA VIA DELLE BELLE DONNE

"The church of San Gaetano, on the left of the Via Tornabuoni, faces
the Palazzo Antinori, built by Giuliano di San Gallo. Opposite is
the Via delle Belle Donne, a name, says Leigh Hunt, which it is a
sort of tune to pronounce."--HARE, _Cities of Central Italy_.

The name of this place is suggestive of a story of some kind, but it was
a long time before I obtained the following relative to the Street of
Pretty Women:

"In the Via delle Belle Donne there was a very large old house in which
were many lodgers, male and female, who, according to their slender
means, had two rooms for a family. Among these were many very pretty
girls, some of them seamstresses, others corset-makers, some milliners,
all employed in shops, who worked all day and then went out in the
evening to carry their sewing to the _maggazini_. And it was from them
that the street got its name, for it became so much the fashion to go and
look at them that young men would say, '_Andiamo nella Via delle Belle
Donne_,'--'Let us go to the Street of the Pretty Women;' so it has been
so-called to this day.

"And when they sallied forth they were at once surrounded or joined by
young men, who sought their company with views more or less honourable,
as is usual. Among these there was a very handsome and wealthy signore
named Adolfo, who was so much admired that he might have had his choice
of all these belles, but he had fixed his mind on one, a beautif