n of our great families for
borrowing from each other that furniture of the table at their
entertainments. But in the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its
applause."

"Laughter, indeed!" burst forth Monna Brigida again, the moment, Bardo
paused. "If anybody wanted to hear laughter at the wedding to-day they
were disappointed, for when young Niccolo Macchiavelli tried to make a
joke, and told stories out of Franco Sacchetti's book, how it was no use
for the Signoria to make rules for us women, because we were cleverer
than all the painters, and architects, and doctors of logic in the
world, for we could make black look white, and yellow look pink, and
crooked look straight, and, if anything was forbidden, we could find a
new name for it--Holy Virgin! the Piagnoni looked more dismal than
before, and somebody said Sacchetti's book was wicked. Well, I don't
read it--they can't accuse _me_ of reading anything. Save me from going
to a wedding again, if that's to be the fashion; for all of us who were
not Piagnoni were as comfortable as wet chickens. I was never caught in
a worse trap but once before, and that was when I went to hear their
precious Frate last Quaresima in San Lorenzo. Perhaps I never told you
about it, Messer Tito?--it almost freezes my blood when I think of it.
How he rated us poor women! and the men, too, to tell the truth, but I
didn't mind that so much. He called us cows, and lumps of flesh, and
wantons, and mischief-makers--and I could just bear that, for there were
plenty others more fleshy and spiteful than I was, though every now and
then his voice shook the very bench under me like a trumpet; but then he
came to the false hair, and, O misericordia! he made a picture--I see it
now--of a young woman lying a pale corpse, and us light-minded widows--
of course he meant me as well as the rest, for I had my plaits on, for
if one is getting old, one doesn't want to look as ugly as the Befana,
[Note 1]--us widows rushing up to the corpse, like bare-pated vultures
as we were, and cutting off its young dead hair to deck our old heads
with. Oh, the dreams I had after that! And then he cried, and wrung
his hands at us, and I cried too. And to go home, and to take off my
jewels, this very clasp, and everything, and to make them into a packet,
_fu tutt'uno_; and I was within a hair of sending them to the Good Men
of Saint Martin to give to the poor, but, by heaven's mercy, I bethought
me of going