nsensical
dream--which is the less troublesome opinion. _Addio! bel giovane_!
don't forget to come back to me."

"No fear of that," said Tito, beckoning a farewell, as he turned round
his bright face at the door. "You are to do me a great service:--that
is the most positive security for your seeing me again."

"Say what thou wilt, Piero," said Nello, as the young stranger
disappeared, "I shall never look at such an outside as that without
taking it as a sign of a lovable nature. Why, thou wilt say next that
Leonardo, whom thou art always raving about, ought to have made his
Judas as beautiful as Saint John! But thou art as deaf as the top of
Mount Morello with that accursed tow in thy ears. Well, well: I'll get
a little more of this young man's history from him before I take him to
Bardo Bardi."

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE BLIND SCHOLAR AND HIS DAUGHTER.

The Via de' Bardi, a street noted in the history of Florence, lies in
Oltrarno, or that portion of the city which clothes the southern bank of
the river. It extends from the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza de' Mozzi at
the head of the Ponte alle Grazie; its right-hand line of houses and
walls being backed by the rather steep ascent which in the fifteenth
century was known as the hill of Bogoli, the famous stone-quarry whence
the city got its pavement--of dangerously unstable consistence when
penetrated by rains; its left-hand buildings flanking the river and
making on their northern side a length of quaint, irregularly-pierced
facade, of which the waters give a softened loving reflection as the sun
begins to decline towards the western heights. But quaint as these
buildings are, some of them seem to the historical memory a too modern
substitute for the famous houses of the Bardi family, destroyed by
popular rage in the middle of the fourteenth century.

They were a proud and energetic stock, these Bardi; conspicuous among
those who clutched the sword in the earliest world-famous quarrels of
Florentines with Florentines, when the narrow streets were darkened with
the high towers of the nobles, and when the old tutelar god Mars, as he
saw the gutters reddened with neighbours' blood, might well have smiled
at the centuries of lip-service paid to his rival, the Baptist. But the
Bardi hands were of the sort that not only clutch the sword-hilt with
vigour, but love the more delicate pleasure of fingering minted metal:
they were matched, too, with true Florentine eyes,