"Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur,
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire a leur bonheur,
Et leur chanson se mele au clair de lune,

"Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rever les oiseaux dans les arbres,
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres."

But the gardens of the Viale are in spring, at any rate, full of the joy
of roses, banks, hedges, cascades of roses, armsful of them, drowsy in
the heat and heavy with sweetness.

"I'mi trovai, fanciulle, un bel mattino
Di mezzo maggio, in un verde giardino."

[Illustration: THE BOBOLI]

And if it be not the very place of which Poliziano sang in the most
beautiful verses he ever wrote, certainly to-day there is nothing more
lovely in Florence in spring, and in autumn too, than this Hill of
Gardens. In autumn too; for then the way that winds there about the
hills is an alley of gold, strewn with the leaves of the plane-trees
that the winds have scattered in countless riches under your feet; that
whisper still in golden beauty over your head. There, as you walk in
spring, while the city unfolds herself before you, a garden of roses in
which a lily has towered, or in the autumn afternoons when she is caught
in silver mist, a city of fragile and delicate beauty, that is soon lost
in the twilight, you may see Florence as she remains in spite of every
violation, Citta dei Fiori, Firenze la Bella Bellissima, the sweet
Princess of Italy. And, like the way of life, this road among the
flowers ends in a graveyard, the graveyard of S. Miniato al Monte, under
which nestles S. Salvatore, that little brown bird among the cypresses,
over the grey olives.

The story of S. Miniato makes one of the more quiet chapters of Villani.
"Our city of Florence,"[113] he tells you, returning from I know not
what delightful digression, "was ruled long time under the government
and lordship of the Emperors of Rome, and oft-times the Emperors came to
sojourn in Florence, when they were journeying into Lombardy and into
Germany and into France to conquer provinces. And we find that Decius
the Emperor, in the first year of his reign, which was in the year of
Christ 270, was in Florence, the treasure-house and chancelry of the
empire, sojourning there for his pleasure; and the said Decius cruelly
persecuted the Christians wheresoever he could hear of them or find them