se of the great
pyramid.

"What think you of this folly, Madonna Romola?" said a brusque voice
close to her ear. "Your Piagnoni will make _l'inferno_ a pleasant
prospect to us, if they are to carry things their own way on earth.
It's enough to fetch a cudgel over the mountains to see painters, like
Lorenzo di Credi and young Baccio there, helping to burn colour out of
life in this fashion."

"My good Piero," said Romola, looking up and smiling at the grim man,
"even you must be glad to see some of these things burnt. Look at those
gewgaws and wigs and rouge-pots: I have heard you talk as indignantly
against those things as Fra Girolamo himself."

"What then?" said Piero, turning round on her sharply. "I never said a
woman should make a black patch of herself against the background. Va!
Madonna Antigone, it's a shame for a woman with your hair and shoulders
to run into such nonsense--leave it to women who are not worth painting.
What! the most holy Virgin herself has always been dressed well; that's
the doctrine of the Church:--talk of heresy, indeed! And I should like
to know what the excellent Messer Bardo would have said to the burning
of the divine poets by these Frati, who are no better an imitation of
men than if they were onions with the bulbs uppermost. Look at that
Petrarca sticking up beside a rouge-pot: do the idiots pretend that the
heavenly Laura was a painted harridan? And Boccaccio, now: do you mean
to say, Madonna Romola--you who are fit to be a model for a wise Saint
Catherine of Egypt--do you mean to say you have never read the stories
of the immortal Messer Giovanni?"

"It is true I have read them, Piero," said Romola. "Some of them a
great many times over, when I was a little girl. I used to get the book
down when my father was asleep, so that I could read to myself."

"_Ebbene_?" said Piero, in a fiercely challenging tone.

"There are some things in them I do not want ever to forget," said
Romola; "but you must confess, Piero, that a great many of those stories
are only about low deceit for the lowest ends. Men do not want books to
make them think lightly of vice, as if life were a vulgar joke. And I
cannot blame Fra Girolamo for teaching that we owe our time to something
better."

"Yes, yes, it's very well to say so now you've read them," said Piero,
bitterly, turning on his heel and walking away from her.

Romola, too, walked on, smiling at Piero's innuendo, with a sort of
tend