I can
count at least a thousand around his pallet. No doubt he has angered
Lucifer himself, by drawing some horrible picture of him. 'Tis only too
likely these ten thousand imps here will leap upon him and carry him off
alive to Hell. His doom is fixed. And alack! I have myself figured, in
mosaic and other ways, very odious caricatures of Devils, and they have
good reason to bear me a grudge too."

The thought redoubled his fears, and hauling up his hose, he took to
his heels, too much terrified to think of facing the hundred thousand
hobgoblins he had seen wheeling round and round with bodies of fire, and
dashed down the stairs as fast as ever his old legs would carry him.
Buffalmacco had a fine laugh under the sheets, and for once in a way
slept on till broad daylight. Nor did his master ever again dare to go
and wake him.

II

THE ASCENDING UP OF ANDREA TAFI

Andrea Tafi, of Florence, being chosen to decorate the cupola of San
Giovanni with mosaics, carried out the said work in the most perfect
fashion. Every figure was treated in the Greek manner, which Tafi had
learned during his sojourn at Venice, where he had seen workmen busy
adorning the walls of San Marco. He had even brought back with him from
that city a Greek by name Apollonius, who knew excellent secrets for
designing in mosaic. This Apollonius was a skilful workman and a very
clever man. He knew the proportions to be given to the different parts
of the human body and the material for mixing the best cement.

Fearing the Greek might carry his knowledge and address to some other
painter of the city, Andrea Tafi never left his side day or night Every
morning he took him with him to San Giovanni, and brought him home
every evening to his own house, facing San Michele, and made him sleep
there with his two apprentices, Bruno and Buffalmacco, in a room
separated merely by a partition from his own bed-chamber. And as this
partition left half a foot between the top and the beams of the ceiling,
whatever was said in one room could easily be overheard in the other.

Now Tafi was a man of decent manners and pious. He was not like some
painters who, on leaving the Churches where they have been depicting God
creating the world and the infant Jesus in his holy mother's arms, go
straight to houses of ill fame to play dice and drink, play the pipes
and cuddle the girls. He had never wished for better than his good wife,
albeit she was by no means made and mould