and had had the
most splendid wedding in the memory of Florentine upholstery; and for
these and other virtues he had been sent on embassies to France and
Venice, and had been chosen Gonfaloniere; he had not only built himself
a fine palace, but had finished putting the black and white marble
facade to the church of Santa Maria Novella; he had planted a garden
with rare trees, and had made it classic ground by receiving within it
the meetings of the Platonic Academy, orphaned by the death of Lorenzo;
he had written an excellent, learned book, of a new topographical sort,
about ancient Rome; he had collected antiquities; he had a pure
Latinity. The simplest account of him, one sees, reads like a laudatory
epitaph, at the end of which the Greek and Ausonian Muses might be
confidently requested to tear their hair, and Nature to desist from any
second attempt to combine so many virtues with one set of viscera.

His invitation had been conveyed to Tito through Lorenzo Tornabuoni,
with an emphasis which would have suggested that the object of the
gathering was political, even if the public questions of the time had
been less absorbing. As it was, Tito felt sure that some party purposes
were to be furthered by the excellent flavours of stewed fish and old
Greek wine; for Bernardo Rucellai was not simply an influential
personage, he was one of the elect Twenty who for three weeks had held
the reins of Florence. This assurance put Tito in the best spirits as
he made his way to the Via della Scala, where the classic garden was to
be found: without it, he might have had some uneasy speculation as to
whether the high company he would have the honour of meeting was likely
to be dull as well as distinguished; for he had had experience of
various dull suppers even in the Rucellai gardens, and especially of the
dull philosophic sort, wherein he had not only been called upon to
accept an entire scheme of the universe (which would have been easy to
him), but to listen to an exposition of the same, from the origin of
things to their complete ripeness in the tractate of the philosopher
then speaking.

It was a dark evening, and it was only when Tito crossed the occasional
light of a lamp suspended before an image of the Virgin, that the
outline of his figure was discernible enough for recognition. At such
moments any one caring to watch his passage from one of these lights to
another might have observed that the tall and graceful pers