it of her walls
remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make
resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's
tower and Arnolfo's Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction
to her streets and squares. Her churches were splendid with frescoes in
their bloom, and with painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but
a few brief years had passed. Her palaces, that are as strong as
castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant,
refined, and haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists,
intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old
factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by
flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted
Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke
in a terrestrial paradise of natural and aesthetic beauty. Which of us
who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture
to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world,
incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the
Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their impulse no doubt was to
pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces
the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. But
in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found
loveliness of which they had not dreamed before.

Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. He had entered and laid
hands on hospitable Florence like a foe. What would he now do with
her--reform the republic--legislate--impose a levy on the citizens, and
lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a huge sum of money, and
began to bargain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. He
insisted. Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were
written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 'I shall
sound my trumpets.' Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells.'
Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed
by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a
menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the
tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be
barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by
hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way,
covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: _Ah,