‘The old fellow has vanished; went on towards Arezzo the next morning; not liking the smell of the French, I suppose, after being their prisoner. I went to the hospital to inquire after him; I wanted to know if those broth-making monks had found out whether he was in his right mind or not. However, they said he showed no signs of madness — only took no notice of questions, and seemed to be planting a vine twenty miles off. He was a mysterious old tiger. I should have liked to know something more about him.’
It was in Nello’s shop that Piero di Cosimo was speaking on the twenty-fourth of November, just a week after the entrance of the French. There was a party of six or seven assembled at the rather unusual hour of three in the afternoon; for it was a day on which all Florence was excited by the prospect of some decisive political event. Every lounging-place was full, and every shopkeeper who had no wife or deputy to leave in charge, stood at his door with his thumbs in his belt; while the streets were constantly sprinkled with artisans pausing or passing lazily like floating splinters, ready to rush forward impetuously if any object attracted them.
Nello had been thrumming the lute as he half sat on the board against the shop-window, and kept an outlook towards the piazza.
‘Ah,’ he said, laying down the lute, with emphasis, ‘I would not for a gold florin have missed that sight of the French soldiers waddling in their broad shoes after their runaway prisoners! That comes of leaving my shop to shave magnificent chins. It is always so: if ever I quit this navel of the earth something takes the opportunity of happening in my piazza.’
‘Yes, you ought to have been there,’ said Piero, in his biting way, ‘just to see your favourite Greek look as frightened as if Satanasso had laid hold of him. I like to see your ready-smiling Messeri caught in a sudden wind and obliged to show their lining in spite of themselves. What colour do you think a man’s liver is, who looks like a bleached deer as soon as a chance stranger lays hold-of him suddenly?’
‘Piero, keep that vinegar of thine as sauce to thine own eggs! What is it against my bel erudito that he looked startled when he felt a pair of claws upon him and saw an unchained madman at his elbow? Your scholar is not like those beastly Swiss and Germans, whose heads are only fit for battering-rams, and who have such large appetites that they think nothing of taking a cannon-ball before breakfast. We Florentines count some other qualities in a man besides that vulgar stuff called bravery, which is to be got by hiring dunderheads at so much per dozen. I tell you, as soon as men found out that they had more brains than oxen, they set the oxen to draw for them; and when we Florentines found out that we had more brains than other men we set them to fight for us.’
‘Treason, Nello!’ a voice called out from the inner sanctum; ‘that is not the doctrine of the State. Florence is grinding its weapons; and the last well-authenticated vision announced by the Frate was Mars standing on the Palazzo Vecchio with his arm on the shoulder of San Giovanni Battista, who was offering him a piece of honeycomb.’
‘It is well, Francesco,’ said Nello. ‘Florence has a few thicker skulls that may do to bombard Pisa with; there will still be the finer spirits left at home to do the thinking and the shaving. And as for our Piero here, if he makes such a point of valour, let him carry his biggest brush for a weapon and his palette for a shield, and challenge the widest-mouthed Swiss he can see in the Prato to a single combat.’
‘Va, Nello,’ growled Piero, ‘thy tongue runs on as usual, like a mill when the Arno’s full — whether there’s grist or not.’
‘Excellent grist, I tell thee. For it would be as reasonable to expect a grizzled painter like thee to be fond of getting a javelin inside thee as to expect a man whose wits have been sharpened on the classics to like having his handsome face clawed by a wild beast.’
‘There you go, supposing you’ll get people to put their legs into a sack because you call it a pair of hosen,’ said Piero. ‘Who said anything about a wild beast, or about an unarmed man rushing on battle? Fighting is a trade, and it’s not my trade. I should be a fool to run after danger, but I could face it if it came to me.’
‘How is it you’re so afraid of the thunder, then, my Piero?’ said Nello, determined to chase down the accuser. ‘You ought to be able to understand why one man is shaken by a thing that seems a trifle to others — you who hide yourself with the rats as soon as a storm comes on.’
‘That is because I have a particular sensibility to loud sounds; it has nothing to do with my courage or my conscience.’
‘Well, and Tito Melema may have a peculiar sensibility to being laid hold of unexpectedly by prisoners who have run away from French soldiers. Men are born with antipathies; I myself can’t abide the smell of mint. Tito was born with an antipathy to old prisoners who stumble and clutch. Ecco! ’
There was a general laugh at Nello’s defence, and it was clear that Piero’s disinclination towards Tito was not shared by the company. The painter, with his undecipherable grimace, took the tow from his scarsella and stuffed his ears in indignant contempt, while Nello went on triumphantly —
‘No, my Piero, I can’t afford to have my bel erudito decried; and Florence can’t afford it either, with her scholars moulting off her at the early age of forty. Our Pheenix Pico just gone straight to Paradise, as the Frate has informed us; and the incomparable Poliziano, not two months since, gone to — well, well, let us hope he is not gone to the eminent scholars in the Malebolge.’
‘By the way,’ said Francesco Cei, ‘have you heard that Camilla Rucellai has outdone the Frate in her prophecies? She prophesied two years ago that Pico would die in the time of lilies. He has died in November. “Not at all the time of lilies,” said the scorners. “Go to!” says Camilla; “it is the lilies of France I meant, and it seems to me they are close enough under your nostrils.” I say, “Euge, Camilla!” If the Frate can prove that any one of his visions has been as well fulfilled, I’ll declare myself a Piagnone to-morrow.’
‘You are something too flippant about the Frate, Francesco,’ said Pietro Cennini, the scholarly. ‘We are all indebted to him in these weeks for preaching peace and quietness, and the laying aside of party quarrels. They are men of small discernment who would be glad to see the people slipping the Frate’s leash just now. And if the Most Christian King is obstinate about the treaty to-day, and will not sign what is fair and honourable to Florence, Fra Girolamo is the man we must trust in to bring him to reason.’
‘You speak truth, Messer Pietro,’ said Nello; ‘the Frate is one of the firmest nails Florence has to hang on — at least, that is the opinion of the most respectable chins I have the honour of shaving. But young Messer Niccolo was saying here the other morning — and doubtless Francesco means the same thing — there is as wonderful a power of stretching in the meaning of visions as in Dido’s bull’s hide. It seems to me a dream may mean whatever comes after it. As our Franco Sacchetti says, a woman dreams over-night of a serpent biting her, breaks a drinking-cup the next day, and cries out, “Look you, I thought something would happen — it’s plain now what the serpent meant.” ’
‘But the Frate’s visions are not of that sort,’ said Cronaca. ‘He not only says what will happen — that the Church will be scourged and renovated, and the heathens converted — he says it shall happen quickly. He is no slippery pretender who provides loopholes for himself, he is —’
‘What is this? what is this?’ exclaimed Nello, jumping off the board, and putting his head out at the door. ‘Here are people streaming into the piazza, and sho............