ion;
and the "Jew's stone," with the lion-headed serpent enchased in it; both
of which the secretary agreed to buy--the latter as a reinforcement of
his preventives against the gout, which gave him such severe twinges
that it was plain enough how intolerable it would be if he were not well
supplied with rings of rare virtue, and with an amulet worn close under
the right breast. But Tito was assured that he himself was more
interesting than his gems. He had won his way to the Scala Palace by
the recommendation of Bardo de' Bardi, who, to be sure, was Scala's old
acquaintance and a worthy scholar, in spite of his overvaluing himself a
little (a frequent foible in the secretary's friends); but he must come
again on the ground of his own manifest accomplishments.

The interview could hardly have ended more auspiciously for Tito, and as
he walked out at the Porta Pinti that he might laugh a little at his
ease over the affair of the _culex_, he felt that fortune could hardly
mean to turn her back on him again at present, since she had taken him
by the hand in this decided way.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

A FACE IN THE CROWD.

It is easy to northern people to rise early on Midsummer morning, to see
the dew on the grassy edge of the dusty pathway, to notice the fresh
shoots among the darker green of the oak and fir in the coppice, and to
look over the gate at the shorn meadow, without recollecting that it is
the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist.

Not so to the Florentine--still less to the Florentine of the fifteenth
century: to him on that particular morning the brightness of the eastern
sun on the Arno had something special in it; the ringing of the bells
was articulate, and declared it to be the great summer festival of
Florence, the day of San Giovanni.

San Giovanni had been the patron saint of Florence for at least eight
hundred years--ever since the time when the Lombard Queen Theodolinda
had commanded her subjects to do him peculiar honour; nay, says old
Villani, to the best of his knowledge, ever since the days of
Constantino the Great and Pope Sylvester, when the Florentines deposed
their idol Mars, whom they were nevertheless careful not to treat with
contumely; for while they consecrated their beautiful and noble temple
to the honour of God and of the "Beato Messere Santo Giovanni," they
placed old Mars respectfully on a high tower near the River Arno,
finding in certain ancient memorials that he had been electe