he
service. But if the restaurants have odd ways, and a limited range of
dishes and those not very interesting, they make up for it by being
astonishingly quick. Things are cooked almost miraculously.

The Florentines eat little. But greediness is not an Italian fault. No
greedy people would have a five-syllabled word for waiter.

Continuing along the Via dell' Arcivescovado, which after the Piazza
becomes the Via Celimana, we come to that very beautiful structure
the Mercato Nuovo, which, however, is not so wonderfully new, having
been built as long ago as 1547-1551. Its columns and arched roof are
exquisitely proportioned. As a market it seems to be a poor affair,
the chief commodity being straw hats. For the principal food market one
has to go to the Via d'Ariento, near S. Lorenzo, and this is, I think,
well worth doing early in the morning. Lovers of Hans Andersen go to
the Mercato Nuovo to see the famous bronze boar (or "metal pig," as it
was called in the translation on which I was brought up) that stands
here, on whose back the little street boy had such adventures. The
boar himself was the work of Pietro Tacca (1586-1650), a copy from
an ancient marble original, now in the Uffizi, at the top of the
entrance stairs; but the pedestal with its collection of creeping
things is modern. The Florentines who stand in the market niches are
Bernardo Cennini, a goldsmith and one of Ghiberti's assistants, who
introduced printing into Florence in 1471 and began with an edition of
Virgil; Giovanni Villani, who was the city's first serious historian,
beginning in 1300 and continuing till his death in 1348; and Michele
Lando, the wool-carder, who on July 22nd, 1378, at the head of a mob,
overturned the power of the Signory.

By continuing straight on we should come to that crowded and fussy
little street which crosses the river by the Ponte Vecchio and
eventually becomes the Roman way; but let us instead turn to the
right this side of the market, down the Via Porta Rossa, because
here is the Palazzo Davanzati, which has a profound interest to
lovers of the Florentine past in that it has been restored exactly
to its ancient state when Pope Eugenius IV lodged here, and has been
filled with fourteenth and fifteenth century furniture. In those days
it was the home of the Davizza family. The Davanzati bought it late
in the sixteenth century and retained it until 1838. In 1904 it was
bought by Professor Elia Volpi, who restored it