a Giocondo was very versatile, and delighted, in addition to the
pursuits already mentioned, in simples and in agriculture. Thus Messer
Donato Giannotti, the Florentine, who was very much his friend for many
years in France, relates that once, when living in that country, the
monk reared a peach-tree in an earthen pot, and that this little tree,
when he saw it, was so laden with fruit that it was a marvellous sight.
On one occasion, by the advice of some friends, he had set it in a place
where the King was to pass and would be able to see it, when certain
courtiers, who passed by first, plucked all the peaches off that little
tree, as suchlike people were sure to do, and, playing about with one
another, scattered what they could not eat along the whole length of the
street, to the great displeasure of Fra Giocondo. The matter coming to
the ears of the King, he first laughed over the jest with the courtiers,
and then, after thanking the monk for what he had done to please him,
gave him a present of such a kind that he was consoled.

[Illustration: THE MAGDALENE WITH SAINTS

(_After the painting by =Liberale da Verona=. Verona: S. Anastasia_)

_Anderson_]

Fra Giocondo was a man of saintly and most upright life, much beloved by
all the great men of letters of his age, and in particular by Domizio
Calderino, Matteo Bosso, and Paolo Emilio, the writer of the History of
France, all three his compatriots. Very much his friends, likewise, were
Sannazzaro, Bude, and Aldus Manutius, with all the Academy of Rome; and
he had a disciple in Julius Caesar Scaliger, one of the most learned men
of our times. Finally, being very old, he died, but precisely at what
time and in what place this happened, and consequently where he was
buried, is not known.

Even as it is true that the city of Verona is very similar to Florence
in situation, manners, and other respects, so it is also true that in
the first as well as in the second there have always flourished men of
the finest genius in all the noblest and most honourable professions.
Saying nothing of the learned, for with them I have nothing to do here,
and continuing to speak of the men of our arts, who have always had an
honourable abode in that most noble city, I come to Liberale of Verona,
a disciple of Vincenzio di Stefano, a native of the same city, already
mentioned in another place, who executed for the Church of Ognissanti,
belonging to the Monks of S. Benedict, at Mantua, in