the French.
There was a party of six or seven assembled at the rather unusual hour
of three in the afternoon; for it was a day on which all Florence was
excited by the prospect of some decisive political event. Every
lounging-place was full, and every shopkeeper who had no wife or deputy
to leave in charge, stood at his door with his thumbs in his belt; while
the streets were constantly sprinkled with artisans pausing or passing
lazily like floating splinters, ready to rush forward impetuously if any
object attracted them.

Nello had been thrumming the lute as he half sat on the board against
the shop-window, and kept an outlook towards the piazza.

"Ah," he said, laying down the lute, with emphasis, "I would not for a
gold florin have missed that sight of the French soldiers waddling in
their broad shoes after their runaway prisoners! That comes of leaving
my shop to shave magnificent chins. It is always so: if ever I quit
this navel of the earth something takes the opportunity of happening in
my piazza."

"Yes, you ought to have been there," said Piero, in his biting way,
"just to see your favourite Greek look as frightened as if Satanasso had
laid hold of him. I like to see your ready-smiling Messeri caught in a
sudden wind and obliged to show their lining in spite of themselves.
What colour do you think a man's liver is, who looks like a bleached
deer as soon as a chance stranger lays hold of him suddenly?"

"Piero, keep that vinegar of thine as sauce to thine own eggs! What is
it against my _bel erudito_ that he looked startled when he felt a pair
of claws upon him and saw an unchained madman at his elbow? Your
scholar is not like those beastly Swiss and Germans, whose heads are
only fit for battering-rams, and who have such large appetites that they
think nothing of taking a cannon-ball before breakfast. We Florentines
count some other qualities in a man besides that vulgar stuff called
bravery, which is to be got by hiring dunderheads at so much per dozen.
I tell you, as soon as men found out that they had more brains than
oxen, they set the oxen to draw for them; and when we Florentines found
out that we had more brains than other men we set them to fight for us."

"Treason, Nello!" a voice called out from the inner sanctum; "that is
not the doctrine of the State. Florence is grinding its weapons; and
the last well-authenticated vision announced by the Frate was Mars
standing on the Palazzo Vecchio