himself and Romola had been raised by the impossibility of such
concealment with her. He shrank from condemnatory judgments as from a
climate to which he could not adapt himself But things were not so
plastic in the hands of cleverness as could be wished, and events had
turned out inconveniently. He had really no rancour against Messer
Bernardo del Nero: he had a personal liking for Lorenzo Tornabuoni and
Giannozzo Pucci. He had served them very ably, and in such a way that
if their party had been winners he would have merited high reward; but
was he to relinquish all the agreeable fruits of life because their
party had failed? His proffer of a little additional proof against them
would probably have no influence on their fate; in fact, he felt
convinced they would escape any extreme consequences; but if he had not
given it, his own fortunes, which made a promising fabric, would have
been utterly ruined. And what motive could any man really have, except
his own interest? Florentines whose passions were engaged in their
petty and precarious political schemes might have no self-interest
separable from family pride and tenacity in old hatreds and attachments;
a modern simpleton who swallowed whole one of the old systems of
philosophy, and took the indigestion it occasioned for the signs of a
divine afflux or the voice of an inward monitor, might see his interest
in a form of self-conceit which he called self-rewarding virtue;
fanatics who believed in the coming Scourge and Renovation might see
their own interest in a future palm-branch and white robe: but no man of
clear intellect allowed his course to be determined by such puerile
impulses or questionable inward fumes. Did not Pontanus, poet and
philosopher of unrivalled Latinity, make the finest possible oration at
Naples to welcome the French king, who had come to dethrone the learned
orator's royal friend and patron? and still Pontanus held up his head
and prospered. Men did not really care about these things, except when
their personal spleen was touched. It was weakness only that was
despised; power of any sort carried its immunity; and no man, unless by
very rare good fortune, could mount high in the world without incurring
a few unpleasant necessities which laid him open to enmity, and perhaps
to a little hissing, when enmity wanted a pretext.

It was a faint prognostic of that hissing, gathered by Tito from certain
indications when he was before the counc