e it was unaccompanied by any smile.

"Well, god-daughter," said the stately man, as he touched Romola's
shoulder; "Maso said you had a visitor, but I came in nevertheless."

"It is thou, Bernardo," said Bardo. "Thou art come at a fortunate
moment. This, young man," he continued, while Tito rose and bowed, "is
one of the chief citizens of Florence, Messer Bernardo del Nero, my
oldest, I had almost said my only friend--whose good opinion, if you can
win it, may carry you far. He is but three-and-twenty, Bernardo, yet he
can doubtless tell thee much which thou wilt care to hear; for though a
scholar, he has already travelled far, and looked on other things
besides the manuscripts for which thou hast too light an esteem."

"Ah, a Greek, as I augur," said Bernardo, returning Tito's reverence but
slightly, and surveying him with that sort of glance which seems almost
to cut like fine steel. "Newly arrived in Florence, it appears. The
name of Messere--or part of it, for it is doubtless a long one?"

"On the contrary," said Tito, with perfect good-humour, "it is most
modestly free from polysyllabic pomp. My name is Tito Melema."

"Truly?" said Bernardo, rather scornfully, as he took a seat; "I had
expected it to be at least as long as the names of a city, a river, a
province, and an empire all put together. We Florentines mostly use
names as we do prawns, and strip them of all flourishes before we trust
them to our throats."

"Well, Bardo," he continued, as if the stranger were not worth further
notice, and changing his tone of sarcastic suspicion for one of sadness,
"we have buried him."

"Ah!" replied Bardo, with corresponding sadness, "and a new epoch has
come for Florence--a dark one, I fear. Lorenzo has left behind him an
inheritance that is but like the alchemist's laboratory when the wisdom
of the alchemist is gone."

"Not altogether so," said Bernardo. "Piero de' Medici has abundant
intelligence; his faults are only the faults of hot blood. I love the
lad--lad he will always be to me, as I have always been `little father'
to him."

"Yet all who want a new order of things are likely to conceive new
hopes," said Bardo. "We shall have the old strife of parties, I fear."

"If we could have a new order of things that was something else than
knocking down one coat of arms to put up another," said Bernardo, "I
should be ready to say, `I belong to no party: I am a Florentine.' But
as long as parties are