his comb, and pushed Tito gently
backward into the chair, wrapping the cloth round him.

"Never talk of rivalry, bel giovane mio: Bernardo Dovizi is a keen
youngster, who will never carry a net out to catch the wind; but he has
something of the same sharp-muzzled look as his brother Ser Piero, the
weasel that Piero de' Medici keeps at his beck to slip through small
holes for him. No! you distance all rivals, and may soon touch the sky
with your forefinger. They tell me you have even carried enough honey
with you to sweeten the sour Messer Angelo; for he has pronounced you
less of an ass than might have been expected, considering there is such
a good understanding between you and the Secretary."

"And between ourselves, Nello mio, that Messer Angelo has more genius
and erudition than I can find in all the other Florentine scholars put
together. It may answer very well for them to cry me up now, when
Poliziano is beaten down with grief, or illness, or something else; I
can try a flight with such a sparrow-hawk as Pietro Crinito, but for
Poliziano, he is a large-beaked eagle who would swallow me, feathers and
all, and not feel any difference."

"I will not contradict your modesty there, if you will have it so; but
you don't expect us clever Florentines to keep saying the same things
over again every day of our lives, as we must do if we always told the
truth. We cry down Dante, and we cry up Francesco Cei, just for the
sake of variety; and if we cry you up as a new Poliziano, heaven has
taken care that it shall not be quite so great a lie as it might have
been. And are you not a pattern of virtue in this wicked city? with
your ears double-waxed against all siren invitations that would lure you
from the Via de' Bardi, and the great work which is to astonish
posterity?"

"Posterity in good truth, whom it will probably astonish as the universe
does, by the impossibility of seeing what was the plan of it."

"Yes, something like that was being prophesied here the other day.
Cristoforo Landino said that the excellent Bardo was one of those
scholars who lie overthrown in their learning, like cavaliers in heavy
armour, and then get angry because they are over-ridden--which pithy
remark, it seems to me, was not a herb out of his own garden; for of all
men, for feeding one with an empty spoon and gagging one with vain
expectation by long discourse, Messer Cristoforo is the pearl. Ecco!
you are perfect now." Here Nello dr