probably
under a cloud, for when a man of your speech and presence takes up with
so sorry a night's lodging, it argues some misfortune to have befallen
him."

"What Lorenzo is that whose death you speak of?" said the stranger,
appearing to have dwelt with too anxious an interest on this point to
have noticed the indirect inquiry that followed it.

"What Lorenzo? There is but one Lorenzo, I imagine, whose death could
throw the Mercato into an uproar, set the lantern of the Duomo leaping
in desperation, and cause the lions of the Republic to feel under an
immediate necessity to devour one another. I mean Lorenzo de' Medici,
the Pericles of our Athens--if I may make such a comparison in the ear
of a Greek."

"Why not?" said the other, laughingly; "for I doubt whether Athens, even
in the days of Pericles, could have produced so learned a barber."

"Yes, yes; I thought I could not be mistaken," said the rapid Nello,
"else I have shaved the venerable Demetrio Calcondila to little purpose;
but pardon me, I am lost in wonder: your Italian is better than his,
though he has been in Italy forty years--better even than that of the
accomplished Marullo, who may be said to have married the Italic Muse in
more senses than one, since he has married our learned and lovely
Alessandra Scala."

"It will lighten your wonder to know that I come of a Greek stock
planted in Italian soil much longer than the mulberry-trees which have
taken so kindly to it. I was born at Bari, and my--I mean, I was
brought up by an Italian--and, in fact, I am a Greek, very much as your
peaches are Persian. The Greek dye was subdued in me, I suppose, till I
had been dipped over again by long abode and much travel in the land of
gods and heroes. And, to confess something of my private affairs to
you, this same Greek dye, with a few ancient gems I have about me, is
the only fortune shipwreck has left me. But--when the towers fall, you
know it is an ill business for the small nest-builders--the death of
your Pericles makes me wish I had rather turned my steps towards Rome,
as I should have done but for a fallacious Minerva in the shape of an
Augustinian monk. `At Rome,' he said, `you will be lost in a crowd of
hungry scholars; but at Florence, every corner is penetrated by the
sunshine of Lorenzo's patronage: Florence is the best market in Italy
for such commodities as yours.'"

"_Gnaffe_, and so it will remain, I hope," said Nello, "Lorenzo was not