mi_, or elsewhere; ask no questions about
trade in the Calimara; confuse yourself with no inquiries into
scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the sunlight and
shadows on the grand walls that were built solidly, and have endured in
their grandeur; look at the faces of the little children, making another
sunlight amid the shadows of age; look, if you will, into the churches,
and hear the same chants, see the same images as of old--the images of
willing anguish for a great end, of beneficent love and ascending glory;
see upturned living faces, and lips moving to the old prayers for help.
These things have not changed. The sunlight and shadows bring their old
beauty and waken the old heart-strains at morning, noon, and eventide;
the little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between
love and duty; and men still yearn for the reign of peace and
righteousness--still own _that_ life to be the highest which is a
conscious voluntary sacrifice. For the Pope Angelico is not come yet.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE SHIPWRECKED STRANGER.

The Loggia de' Cerchi stood in the heart of old Florence, within a
labyrinth of narrow streets behind the Badia, now rarely threaded by the
stranger, unless in a dubious search for a certain severely simple
doorplace, bearing this inscription:

Qui Nacque Il Divino Poeta.

To the ear of Dante, the same streets rang with the shout and clash of
fierce battle between rival families; but in the fifteenth century, they
were only noisy with the unhistorical quarrels and broad jests of
woolcarders in the cloth-producing quarters of San Martino and Garbo.

Under this loggia, in the early morning of the 9th of April 1492, two
men had their eyes fixed on each other: one was stooping slightly, and
looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity; the other, lying on the
pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a
suddenly-awakened dreamer.

The standing figure was the first to speak. He was a grey-haired,
broad-shouldered man, of the type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded
with the fist and polished with the pickaxe; but the self-important
gravity which had written itself out in the deep lines about his brow
and mouth seemed intended to correct any contemptuous inferences from
the hasty workmanship which Nature had bestowed on his exterior. He had
deposited a large well-filled bag, made of skins, on the pavement, and
before him hung a pedlar's basket, garnished