ldiers with lance and
shield, dancing maidens, animals, trees and fruits, and in fine, says
the old chronicler, "all things that could delight the eye and the
heart;" the hollowness having the further advantage that men could stand
inside these hyperbolic tapers and whirl them continually, so as to
produce a phantasmagoric effect, which, considering the towers were
numerous, must have been calculated to produce dizziness on a truly
magnificent scale.

"_Pestilenza_!" said Piero di Cosimo, moving from the window, "those
whirling circles one above the other are worse than the jangling of all
the bells. Let me know when the last taper has passed."

"Nay, you will surely like to be called when the contadini come carrying
their torches," said Nello; "you would not miss the country-folk of the
Mugello and the Casentino, of whom your favourite Leonardo would make a
hundred grotesque sketches."

"No," said Piero, resolutely, "I will see nothing till the car of the
Zecca comes. I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both with
and without cowls, to last me for my life."

"Here it comes, then, Piero--the car of the Zecca," called out Nello,
after an interval during which towers and tapers in a descending scale
of size had been making their slow transit.

"_Fediddio_!" exclaimed Francesco Cei, "that is a well-tanned San
Giovanni! some sturdy Romagnole beggar-man, I'll warrant. Our Signoria
plays the host to all the Jewish and Christian scum that every other
city shuts its gates against, and lets them fatten on us like Saint
Anthony's swine."

The car of the Zecca or Mint, which had just rolled into sight, was
originally an immense wooden tower or _cero_ adorned after the same
fashion as the other tributary _ceri_, mounted on a splendid car, and
drawn by two mouse-coloured oxen, whose mild heads looked out from rich
trappings bearing the arms of the Zecca. But the latter half of the
century was getting rather ashamed of the towers with their circular or
spiral paintings, which had delighted the eyes and the hearts of the
other half, so that they had become a contemptuous proverb, and any
ill-painted figure looking, as will sometimes happen to figures in the
best ages of art, as if it had been boned for a pie, was called a
_fantoccio da cero_, a tower-puppet; consequently improved taste, with
Cecca to help it, had devised for the magnificent Zecca a triumphal car
like a pyramidal catafalque, with ingenious wheels