l activity
which the troubled public life of Florence was likely enough to find
occasion for. But the fresh dread of Baldassarre, waked in the same
moment, had lain like an immovable rocky obstruction across that path,
and had urged him into the sale of the library, as a preparation for the
possible necessity of leaving Florence, at the very time when he was
beginning to feel that it had a new attraction for him. That dread was
nearly removed _now_: he must wear his armour still, he must prepare
himself for possible demands on his coolness and ingenuity, but he did
not feel obliged to take the inconvenient step of leaving Florence and
seeking new fortunes. His father had refused the offered atonement--had
forced him into defiance; and an old man in a strange place, with his
memory gone, was weak enough to be defied.

Tito's implicit desires were working themselves out now in very explicit
thoughts. As the freshness of young passion faded, life was taking more
and more decidedly for him the aspect of a game in which there was an
agreeable mingling of skill and chance.

And the game that might be played in Florence promised to be rapid and
exciting; it was a game of revolutionary and party struggle, sure to
include plenty of that unavowed action in which brilliant ingenuity,
able to get rid of all inconvenient beliefs except that "ginger is hot
in the mouth," is apt to see the path of superior wisdom.

No sooner were the French guests gone than Florence was as agitated as a
colony of ants when an alarming shadow has been removed, and the camp
has to be repaired. "How are we to raise the money for the French king?
How are we to manage the war with those obstinate Pisan rebels? Above
all, how are we to mend our plan of government, so as to hit on the best
way of getting our magistrates chosen and our laws voted?" Till those
questions were well answered trade was in danger of standing still, and
that large body of the working men who were not counted as citizens and
had not so much as a vote to serve as an anodyne to their stomachs were
likely to get impatient. Something must be done.

And first the great bell was sounded, to call the citizens to a
parliament in the Piazza de' Signori; and when the crowd was wedged
close, and hemmed in by armed men at all the outlets, the Signoria (or
Gonfaloniere and eight Priors for the time being) came out and stood by
the stone lion on the platform in front of the Old Palace,