and vineyard and river, the cypress-clad heights
of San Miniato, and the distant mountain of Vallombrosa, more beautiful
far than all the gold Pactolus ever rolled, or all the gems that ever
glittered on crown or coronet.

There was one stall at the end of the bridge so humble-looking and so
scantily provided that no stranger was seen to linger beside it. A few
coral ornaments for peasant wear, some stamped medals for pious use,
and some of those little silver tokens hung up by some devout hands as
votive offerings at a holy shrine, were all that appeared; while, as
if to confirm the impression of the scanty traffic that went on, the
massive door was barred and bolted like the portal of a prison. An
almost erased inscription, unrenewed for nigh half a century, told that
this was the shop of "Racca Morlache."

There may have been much of exaggeration in the stories that went of
the Jew's enormous wealth; doubtless many of the accounts were purely
fabulous; but one fact is certain, that from that lowly roof went forth
sums sufficient to maintain the credit of many a tottering state, or
support the cost of warlike struggles to replace a dynasty. To him came
the heads of despotic governments, the leaders of rebellious democracy,
the Russian and the Circassian, the Carlist and the Cristino. To the
proud champion of divine right, or the fearless promulgator of equality,
to all he was accessible. Solvency and his profit were requirements he
could not dispense with; but, for the rest, in what channel of future
good and evil his wealth was to flow, whether to maintain a throne or
sap its foundation, to uphold a faith or to desecrate its altars, to
liberate a people or to bind their fetters more closely, were cares that
sat lightly on his heart.

He might, with his vast means, have supported a style like royalty
itself. There was no splendor nor magnificence he need have denied
himself; nor, as the world goes, any society from which he should be
debarred, gold is the picklock to the doors of palaces as of prisons;
but he preferred this small and miserable habitation, which for above
two centuries had never borne any other name than the "Casa Morlache."

Various reasons were given out for a choice so singular; among others,
it was said that the Grand-Duke was accustomed to visit the Jew by means
of a secret passage from the "Pitti;" while some alleged that the secret
frequenters of Morlache's abode all came by water, and that