hty preacher, who frightens the
very babies of Florence into laying down their wicked baubles."

"Come, come, Francesco, you are out of humour with waiting," said the
conciliatory Nello. "Let me stop your mouth with a little lather. I
must not have my friend Cronaca made angry: I have a regard for his
chin; and his chin is in no respect altered since he became a Piagnone.
And for my own part, I confess, when the Frate was preaching in the
Duomo last Advent, I got into such a trick of slipping in to listen to
him that I might have turned Piagnone too, if I had not been hindered by
the liberal nature of my art; and also by the length of the sermons,
which are sometimes a good while before they get to the moving point.
But, as Messer Niccolo here says, the Frate lays hold of the people by
some power over and above his prophetic visions. Monks and nuns who
prophesy are not of that rareness. For what says Luigi Pulci?
`Dombruno's sharp-cutting scimitar had the fame of being enchanted;
but,' says Luigi, `I am rather of opinion that it cut sharp because it
was of strongly-tempered steel.' Yes, yes; Paternosters may shave
clean, but they must be said over a good razor."

"See, Nello!" said Macchiavelli, "what doctor is this advancing on his
Bucephalus? I thought your piazza was free from those furred and
scarlet-robed lackeys of death. This man looks as if he had had some
such night adventure as Boccaccio's Maestro Simone, and had his bonnet
and mantle pickled a little in the gutter; though he himself is as sleek
as a miller's rat."

"A-ah!" said Nello, with a low long-drawn intonation, as he looked up
towards the advancing figure--a round-headed, round-bodied personage,
seated on a raw young horse, which held its nose out with an air of
threatening obstinacy, and by a constant effort to back and go off in an
oblique line showed free views about authority very much in advance of
the age.

"And I have a few more adventures in pickle for him," continued Nello,
in an undertone, "which I hope will drive his inquiring nostrils to
another quarter of the city. He's a doctor from Padua; they say he has
been at Prato for three months, and now he's come to Florence to see
what he can net. But his great trick is making rounds among the
contadini. And do you note those great saddle-bags he carries? They
are to hold the fat capons and eggs and meal he levies on silly clowns
with whom coin is scarce. He vends his own secret m