rs lingering a little on his way perhaps to look at the progress
of that great palace which Messer Luca Pitti had set a-building with
huge stones got from the Hill of Bogoli [now Boboli] close behind, or
perhaps to transact a little business with the cloth-dressers in
Oltrarno. The exorbitant line of the Pitti roof is hidden from San
Miniato; but the yearning of the old Florentine is not to see Messer
Luca's too ambitious palace which he built unto himself; it is to be
down among those narrow streets and busy humming Piazze where he
inherited the eager life of his fathers. Is not the anxious voting with
black and white beans still going on down there? Who are the Priori in
these months, eating soberly--regulated official dinners in the Palazzo
Vecchio, with removes of tripe and boiled partridges, seasoned by
practical jokes against the ill-fated butt among those potent signors?
Are not the significant banners still hung from the windows--still
distributed with decent pomp under Orcagna's Loggia every two months?

Life had its zest for the old Florentine when he, too, trod the marble
steps and shared in those dignities. His politics had an area as wide
as his trade, which stretched from Syria to Britain, but they had also
the passionate intensity, and the detailed practical interest, which
could belong only to a narrow scene of corporate action; only to the
members of a community shut in close by the hills and by walls of six
miles' circuit, where men knew each other as they passed in the street,
set their eyes every day on the memorials of their commonwealth, and
were conscious of having not simply the right to vote, but the chance of
being voted for. He loved his honours and his gains, the business of
his counting-house, of his guild, of the public council-chamber; he
loved his enmities too, and fingered the white bean which was to keep a
hated name out of the _borsa_ with more complacency than if it had been
a golden florin. He loved to strengthen his family by a good alliance,
and went home with a triumphant light in his eyes after concluding a
satisfactory marriage for his son or daughter under his favourite loggia
in the evening cool; he loved his game at chess under that same loggia,
and his biting jest, and even his coarse joke, as not beneath the
dignity of a man eligible for the highest magistracy. He had gained an
insight into all sorts of affairs at home and abroad: he had been of the
"Ten" who managed