leather seat
with scrolled ends, close to Bardo's elbow.

"Yes," he said, in his gentle way; "I have brought the new manuscript,
but that can wait your pleasure. I have young limbs, you know, and can
walk back up the hill without any difficulty."

He did not look at Romola as he said this, but he knew quite well that
her eyes were fixed on him with delight.

"That is well said, my son." Bardo had already addressed Tito in this
way once or twice of late. "And I perceive with gladness that you do
not shrink from labour, without which, the poet has wisely said, life
has given nothing to mortals. It is too often the `palma sine pulvere,'
the prize of glory without the dust of the race, that attracts young
ambition. But what says the Greek? `In the morning of life, work; in
the mid-day, give counsel; in the evening, pray.' It is true, I might
be thought to have reached that helpless evening; but not so, while I
have counsel within me which is yet unspoken. For my mind, as I have
often said, was shut up as by a dam; the plenteous waters lay dark and
motionless; but you, my Tito, have opened a duct for them, and they rush
forward with a force that surprises myself. And now, what I want is,
that we should go over our preliminary ground again, with a wider scheme
of comment and illustration: otherwise I may lose opportunities which I
now see retrospectively, and which may never occur again. You mark what
I am saying, Tito?"

He had just stooped to reach his manuscript, which had rolled down, and
Bardo's jealous ear was alive to the slight movement.

Tito might have been excused for shrugging his shoulders at the prospect
before him, but he was not naturally impatient; moreover, he had been
bred up in that laborious erudition, at once minute and copious, which
was the chief intellectual task of the age; and with Romola near, he was
floated along by waves of agreeable sensation that made everything seem
easy.

"Assuredly," he said; "you wish to enlarge your comments on certain
passages we have cited."

"Not only so; I wish to introduce an occasional _excursus_, where we
have noticed an author to whom I have given special study; for I may die
too soon to achieve any separate work. And this is not a time for
scholarly integrity and well-sifted learning to lie idle, when it is not
only rash ignorance that we have to fear, but when there are men like
Calderino, who, as Poliziano has well shown, have recourse to imp