e vengeance. He
had avoided addressing himself to any one whom he suspected of intimacy
with Tito, lest an alarm raised in Tito's mind should urge him either to
flight or to some other counteracting measure which hard-pressed
ingenuity might devise. For this reason he had never entered Nello's
shop, which he observed that Tito frequented, and he had turned aside to
avoid meeting Piero di Cosimo.

The possibility of frustration gave added eagerness to his desire that
the great opportunity he sought should not be deferred. The desire was
eager in him on another ground; he trembled lest his memory should go
again. Whether from the agitating presence of that fear, or from some
other causes, he had twice felt a sort of mental dizziness, in which the
inward sense or imagination seemed to be losing the distinct forms of
things. Once he had attempted to enter the Palazzo Vecchio and make his
way into a council-chamber where Tito was, and had failed. But now, on
this evening, he felt that his occasion was come.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.

A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS.

On entering the handsome pavilion, Tito's quick glance soon discerned in
the selection of the guests the confirmation of his conjecture that the
object of the gathering was political, though, perhaps, nothing more
distinct than that strengthening of party which comes from
good-fellowship. Good dishes and good wine were at that time believed
to heighten the consciousness of political preferences, and in the
inspired ease of after-supper talk it was supposed that people
ascertained their own opinions with a clearness quite inaccessible to
uninvited stomachs. The Florentines were a sober and frugal people; but
wherever men have gathered wealth, Madonna della Gozzoviglia and San
Buonvino have had their worshippers; and the Rucellai were among the few
Florentine families who kept a great table and lived splendidly. It was
not probable that on this evening there would be any attempt to apply
high philosophic theories; and there could be no objection to the bust
of Plato looking on, or even to the modest presence of the cardinal
virtues in fresco on the walls.

That bust of Plato had been long used to look down on conviviality of a
more transcendental sort, for it had been brought from Lorenzo's villa
after his death, when the meetings of the Platonic Academy had been
transferred to these gardens. Especially on every thirteenth of
November, reputed ann