e clasp,
and he could see silver forks on the table? And it was agreed on all
hands that the habits of posterity would be very surprising to
ancestors, if ancestors could only know them.

And while the silver forks were just dallying with the appetising
delicacies that introduced the more serious business of the supper--such
as morsels of liver, cooked to that exquisite point that they would melt
in the mouth--there was time to admire the designs on the enamelled
silver centres of the brass service, and to say something, as usual,
about the silver dish for confetti, a masterpiece of Antonio Pollajuolo,
whom patronising Popes had seduced from his native Florence to more
gorgeous Rome.

"Ah, I remember," said Niccolo Ridolfi, a middle-aged man, with that
negligent ease of manner which, seeming to claim nothing, is really
based on the lifelong consciousness of commanding rank--"I remember our
Antonio getting bitter about his chiselling and enamelling of these
metal things, and taking in a fury to painting, because, said he, `the
artist who puts his work into gold and silver, puts his brains into the
melting-pot.'"

"And that is not unlikely to be a true foreboding of Antonio's," said
Giannozzo Pucci. "If this pretty war with Pisa goes on, and the revolt
only spreads a little to our other towns, it is not only our silver
dishes that are likely to go; I doubt whether Antonio's silver saints
round the altar of San Giovanni will not some day vanish from the eyes
of the faithful to be worshipped more devoutly in the form of coin."

"The Frate is preparing us for that already," said Tornabuoni. "He is
telling the people that God will not have silver crucifixes and starving
stomachs; and that the church is best adorned with the gems of holiness
and the fine gold of brotherly love."

"A very useful doctrine of war-finance, as many a Condottiere has
found," said Bernardo Rucellai, drily. "But politics come on after the
confetti, Lorenzo, when we can drink wine enough to wash them down; they
are too solid to be taken with roast and boiled."

"Yes, indeed," said Niccolo Ridolfi. "Our Luigi Pulci would have said
this delicate boiled kid must be eaten with an impartial mind. I
remember one day at Careggi, when Luigi was in his rattling vein, he was
maintaining that nothing perverted the palate like opinion. `Opinion,'
said he, `corrupts the saliva--that's why men took to pepper.
Scepticism is the only philosophy that does