esser Tito? for you go into the world. Not but what one must sin a
little--Messer Domeneddio expects that of us, else what are the blessed
sacraments for? And what I say is, we've got to reverence the saints,
and not to set ourselves up as if we could be like them, else life would
be unbearable; as it will be if things go on after this new fashion.
For what do you think? I've been at the wedding to-day--Dianora
Acciajoli's with the young Albizzi that there has been so much talk of--
and everybody wondered at its being to-day instead of yesterday; but,
_cieli_! such a wedding as it was might have been put off till the next
Quaresima for a penance. For there was the bride looking like a white
nun--not so much as a pearl about her--and the bridegroom as solemn as
San Giuseppe. It's true! And half the people invited were _Piagnoni_--
they call them _Piagnoni_ [funeral mourners: properly, paid mourners]
now, these new saints of Fra Girolamo's making. And to think of two
families like the Albizzi and the Acciajoli taking up such notions, when
they could afford to wear the best! Well, well, they invited me--but
they could do no other, seeing my husband was Luca Antonio's uncle by
the mother's side--and a pretty time I had of it while we waited under
the canopy in front of the house, before they let us in. I couldn't
stand in my clothes, it seemed, without giving offence; for there was
Monna Berta, who has had worse secrets in her time than any I could tell
of myself, looking askance at me from under her hood like a
_pinzochera_, [a Sister of the Third Order of Saint Francis: an
uncloistered nun] and telling me to read the Frate's book about widows,
from which she had found great guidance. Holy Madonna! it seems as if
widows had nothing to do now but to buy their coffins, and think it a
thousand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying themselves a
little when they've got their hands free for the first time. And what
do you think was the music we had, to make our dinner lively? A long
discourse from Fra Domenico of San Marco, about the doctrines of their
blessed Fra Girolamo--the three doctrines we are all to get by heart;
and he kept marking them off on his fingers till he made my flesh creep:
and the first is, Florence, or the Church--I don't know which, for first
he said one and then the other--shall be scourged; but if he means the
pestilence, the Signory ought to put a stop to such preaching, for it's
e