rds, and make it their business to sprinkle gall in every man's broth
who is prospering. Let me tell you--for you are a stranger--this is a
city where every man had need carry a large nail ready to fasten on the
wheel of Fortune when his side happens to be uppermost. Already there
are stories--mere fables doubtless--beginning to be buzzed about
concerning you, that make me wish I could hear of your being well on
your way to Arezzo. I would not have a man of your metal stoned, for
though San Stefano was stoned, he was not great in medicine like San
Cosmo and San Damiano..."

"What stories? what fables?" stammered Maestro Tacco. "What do you
mean?"

"_Lasso_! I fear me you are come into the trap for your cheese,
Maestro. The fact is, there is a company of evil youths who go prowling
about the houses of our citizens carrying sharp tools in their
pockets;--no sort of door, or window, or shutter, but they will pierce
it. They are possessed with a diabolical patience to watch the doings
of people who fancy themselves private. It must be they who have done
it--it must be they who have spread the stories about you and your
medicines. Have you by chance detected any small aperture in your door,
or window-shutter? No? Well, I advise you to look; for it is now
commonly talked of that you have been seen in your dwelling at the Canto
di Paglia, making your secret specifics by night: pounding dried toads
in a mortar, compounding a salve out of mashed worms, and making your
pills from the dried livers of rats which you mix with saliva emitted
during the utterance of a blasphemous incantation--which indeed these
witnesses profess to repeat."

"It is a pack of lies!" exclaimed the doctor, struggling to get
utterance, and then desisting in alarm at the approaching razor.

"It is not to me, or any of this respectable company, that you need to
say that, doctor. _We_ are not the heads to plant such carrots as those
in. But what of that? What are a handful of reasonable men against a
crowd with stones in their hands? There are those among us who think
Cecco d'Ascoli was an innocent sage--and we all know how he was burnt
alive for being wiser than his fellows. Ah, doctor, it is not by living
at Padua that you can learn to know Florentines. My belief is, they
would stone the Holy Father himself, if they could find a good excuse
for it; and they are persuaded that you are a necromancer, who is trying
to raise the pestilence