ishops of Fiesole? They would rest on the way from
Florence at Riposo de' Vescovi, and leave their coach at S. Domenico. By
the old way, too, you pass Le Tre Pulzelle, the hostel of the Three
Maidens, or at least the place where it stood, and where Leo X stayed in
1516. Farther, too, is the little church of S. Ansano, where there is a
host of fair pictures, and then suddenly you are in the great Piazza,
littered with the booths of the straw-plaiters, in the keen air of
Fiesole, among a ruder and more virile people, who look down on Florence
all day long.

[Illustration: COSTA S. GEORGIO]

And indeed, whatever the historians may say, scorning wise tales of
old Villani, the Fiesolani are a very different people from the
Florentines; and whether Atlas, with Electra his wife, born in the fifth
degree from Japhet son of Noah, built this city upon this rock by the
counsel of Apollinus, midway between the sea of Pisa and Rome and the
Gulf of Venice, matters little. The Fiesolani are not Florentines,
people of the valley, but Etruscans, people of the hills, and that you
may see in half an hour any day in their windy piazzas and narrow
climbing ways. Rough, outspoken, stark men little women keen and full of
salt, they have not the assured urbanity of the Florentine, who, while
he scorns you in his soul as a barbarian, will trade with you, eat with
you, and humour you, certainly without betraying his contempt. But the
Fiesolano is otherwise; quarrelsome he is, and a little aloof, he will
not concern himself overmuch about you, and will do his business whether
you come or go. And I think, indeed, he still hates the Fiorentino, as
the Pisan does, as the Sienese does, with an immortal, cold, everlasting
hatred, that maybe nothing will altogether wipe out or cause him to
forget. All these people have suffered too much from Florence, who
understood the art of victory as little as she understood the art of
empire. From the earliest times, as it might seem, Florence, a Roman
foundation after all, hated Fiesole, which once certainly was an
Etruscan city. Time after time she destroyed it, generally in
self-defence. In 1010, for instance, Villani tells us that "the
Florentines, perceiving that their city of Florence had no power to rise
much while they had overhead so strong a fortress as the city of
Fiesole, one night secretly and subtly set an ambush of armed men in
divers parts of Fiesole. The Fiesolani, feeling secure as to the
Flore