ontending for the value of his own labours; and that
his discontent was a little inconsistent in a man who had been openly
regardless of religious rites, and who in days past had refused offers
made to him from various quarters, on the slight condition that he would
take orders, without which it was not easy for patrons to provide for
every scholar. But since Tito's coming, there was no longer the same
monotony in the thought that Bardo's name suggested; the old man, it was
understood, had left off his plaints, and the fair daughter was no
longer to be shut up in dowerless pride, waiting for a _parentado_. The
winning manners and growing favour of the handsome Greek who was
expected to enter into the double relation of son and husband helped to
make the new interest a thoroughly friendly one, and it was no longer a
rare occurrence when a visitor enlivened the quiet library. Elderly men
came from that indefinite prompting to renew former intercourse which
arises when an old acquaintance begins to be newly talked about; and
young men whom Tito had asked leave to bring once, found it easy to go
again when they overtook him on his way to the Via de' Bardi, and,
resting their hands on his shoulder, fell into easy chat with him. For
it was pleasant to look at Romola's beauty; to see her, like old
Firenzuola's type of womanly majesty, "sitting with a certain grandeur,
speaking with gravity, smiling with modesty, and casting around, as it
were, an odour of queenliness;" [Note 1] and she seemed to unfold like a
strong white lily under this genial breath of admiration and homage; it
was all one to her with her new bright life in Tito's love.

Tito had even been the means of strengthening the hope in Bardo's mind
that he might before his death receive the longed-for security
concerning his library: that it should not be merged in another
collection; that it should not be transferred to a body of monks, and be
called by the name of a monastery; but that it should remain for ever
the Bardi Library, for the use of Florentines. For the old habit of
trusting in the Medici could not die out while their influence was still
the strongest lever in the State; and Tito, once possessing the ear of
the Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, might do more even than Messer
Bernardo towards winning the desired interest, for he could demonstrate
to a learned audience the peculiar value of Bardi's collection. Tito
himself talked sanguinely of such a re