ew away the cloth. "Impossible to
add a grace more! But love is not always to be fed on learning, eh? I
shall have to dress the zazzera for the betrothal before long--is it not
true?"

"Perhaps," said Tito, smiling, "unless Messer Bernardo should next
recommend Bardo to require that I should yoke a lion and a wild boar to
the car of the Zecca before I can win my Alcestis. But I confess he is
right in holding me unworthy of Romola; she is a Pleiad that may grow
dim by marrying any mortal."

"_Gnaffe_, your modesty is in the right place there. Yet fate seems to
have measured and chiselled you for the niche that was left empty by the
old man's son, who, by the way, Cronaca was telling me, is now at San
Marco. Did you know?"

A slight electric shock passed through Tito as he rose from the chair,
but it was not outwardly perceptible, for he immediately stooped to pick
up the fallen book, and busied his fingers with flattening the leaves,
while he said--

"No; he was at Fiesole, I thought. Are you sure he is come back to San
Marco?"

"Cronaca is my authority," said Nello, with a shrug. "I don't frequent
that sanctuary, but he does. Ah," he added, taking the book from Tito's
hands, "my poor Nencia da Barberino! It jars your scholarly feelings to
see the pages dog's-eared. I was lulled to sleep by the well-rhymed
charms of that rustic maiden--`prettier than the turnip-flower,' `with a
cheek more savoury than cheese.' But to get such a well-scented notion
of the contadina, one must lie on velvet cushions in the Via Larga--not
go to look at the Fierucoloni stumping in to the Piazza della Nunziata
this evening after sundown."

"And pray who are the Fierucoloni?" said Tito, indifferently, settling
his cap.

"The contadine who came from the mountains of Pistoia, and the
Casentino, and heaven knows where, to keep their vigil in the church of
the Nunziata, and sell their yarn and dried mushrooms at the Fierucola
[the little Fair], as we call it. They make a queer show, with their
paper lanterns, howling their hymns to the Virgin on this eve of her
nativity--if you had the leisure to see them. No?--well, I have had
enough of it myself, for there is wild work in the Piazza. One may
happen to get a stone or two about one's ears or shins without asking
for it, and I was never fond of that pressing attention. Addio."

Tito carried a little uneasiness with him on his visit, which ended
earlier than he had expected