One skull, for example, he asserts to have belonged to a lunatic, who
wandered for half a lifetime in the Val d'Ema, subsisting precariously
upon entirely vegetable food--roots, herbs, and the like; another is the
superior part of a convict, hung in Arezzo for numerous offences; a
third is that of a very old man who lived a celibate from his youth up,
and by his abstinence and goodness exercised an almost priestly
influence upon the borghesa. When, by this miscellaneous lecture, he has
both amused and edified his hearers, he ingeniously turns the discourse
upon his own life, and finally introduces the subject of the marvellous
cures he has effected. The story of his medical preparations alone,
their components and method of distillation, is a fine piece of
popularized art, and he gives a practical exemplification of his skill
and their virtues by calling from the crowd successively, a number of
invalid people, whom he examines and prescribes for on the spot. Whether
these subjects are provided by himself or not, I am unable to decide;
but it is very possible that by long experience, Christoforo--who has no
regular diploma--has mastered the simpler elements of Materia Medica,
and does in reality effect cures. I class him among what are popularly
known as humbugs, however, for he is a pretender to more wisdom than he
possesses. It was to me a strange and suggestive scene--the bald,
beak-nosed, coal-eyed charlatan, standing in the market-place, so
celebrated in history, peering through his gold spectacles at the
upturned faces below him, while the bony skeleton at his side swayed in
the wind, and the grinning skulls below, made grotesque faces, as if
laughing at the gullibility of the people. Behind him loomed up the
massive Palazzo Vecchio, with its high tower, sharply cut, and set with
deep machicolations; to the left, the splendid Loggia of Orgagna, filled
with rare marbles, and the long picture-gallery of the Uffizi, heaped
with the rarest art-treasures of the world; to his right, the Giant
Fountain of Ammanato, throwing jets of pure water--one drop of which
outvalues all the nostrums in the world; and in front, the Post Office,
built centuries before, by Pisan captives. If any of these things moved
the imperturbable Creso, he showed no feeling of the sort; but for three
long hours, two days in the week, held his hideous clinic in the open
daylight.

Seeing the man so often, and interested always in his manner--as m