rived from his performance
was entirely unsocial, and confined to his own breast; for I could not
see that any of the _gamin_ fraternity noticed it, or cared about it,
any more than their seniors.

I remember another somewhat analogous adventure of mine, equally
illustrative of the Florentine habits of those days. I saw a man
suddenly stagger and fall in the street. It was in the afternoon, and
there were many persons in the street, some of them nearer to the
fallen man than I was, but nobody, attempted to help him. I stepped
forward to do so, and was about to take hold of him and try to raise
him, when one of the by-standers eagerly caught me by the arm, saying,
"He is dying, he is dying!" "Let us try to raise him," said I, still
pressing forward. "You mustn't, you mustn't! It is not permitted," he
added, as he perceived that he was speaking to a foreigner, and then
went on to explain to me that what must be done was to call the
Misericordia, for which purpose one must run and ring a certain bell
attached to the chapel of that brotherhood in the Piazza del Duomo.

Among the many things that have been written of the Florentine
Misericordia, I do not think that I have met with the statement that
it used to be universally believed in Florence that the law gave the
black brethren the privilege and the monopoly of picking up any dying
or dead person in the streets, and that it was forbidden to any one
else to do so. Whether any such _law_ really existed I much doubt, but
the custom of acting in accordance with it, and the belief that such
practice was imperative, undoubtedly did. And I have no doubt that
many a life has been sacrificed to it. The half hour or twenty minutes
which necessarily elapsed before the Misericordia could be called and
answer the call, must often have been supremely important, and in many
cases ought to have been employed in the judicious use of the lancet.

The sight of the black robed and black cowled brethren, as they went
about the streets on their errands of mercy, was common enough in
Florence. But the holiday visitor had very little opportunity of
hearing anything of the internal management and rules of that peculiar
mediaeval society or of the nature of the work it did.

The Florentine Misericordia was founded in the days when pestilence
was ravaging the city so fiercely that the dead lay uncared for in the
streets, because there was no man sufficiently courageous to bury or
to touch them