look at my poor bambinetto? I know I can't | Magnificent Council of Eight that they have pay you for it, but I took it into the Nunziata last night, and it's turned a worse color than before; it's the convulsions. But when I was holding it before the Santissima Nunziata, I remembered they said there was a new doctor come who cured every thing; and so I thought it might be the will of the Madonna that I should bring it to you." "Sit down, maestro, sit down," said Nello. "Here is an opportunity for you; here are honorable witnesses who will declare before the seen you practicing honestly and relieving a poor woman's child. And then if your life is in danger, the Magnificent Eight will put you in prison a little while just to insure your safety, and after that their sbirri will conduct you out of Florence by night, as they did the zealous Frate Minore, who preached against the Jews. What! our people are given to stone-throwing; but we have magistrates.' The doctor, unable to refuse, seated himself in the shaving chair, trembling, half with fear A FLORENTINE JOKE, and half with rage, and by this time quite unconscious of the lather which Nello had laid on with such profuseness. He deposited his medicine-case on his knees, took out his precious spectacles (wondrous Florentine device!) from his wallet, lodged them carefully above his flat nose and high ears, and lifting up his brows, turned toward the applicant. "O Santiddio! look at him," said the woman, with a more piteous wail than ever, as she held out the small mummy, which had its head completely concealed by dingy drapery wound round the head of the portable cradle, but seemed to be struggling and crying in a demoniacal fashion under this imprisonment. "The fit is on him! Ohimè! I know what a color he is; it's the evileye-oh!" The doctor, anxiously holding his knees together to support his box, bent his spectacles toward the baby, and said, cautiously, "It may be a new disease; unwind these rags, Monna!" The contadina, with sudden energy, snatched off the encircling linen, when out struggled scratching, grinning, and screaming-what the doctor in his fright fully believed to be a demon, but what Tito recognized as Vaiano's monkey, made more formidable by an artificial blackness, such as might have come from a hasty rubbing up the chimney. Up started the unfortunate doctor, letting his medicine box fall, and away jumped the no less terrified and indignant monkey, finding the first resting-place for his claws on the horse's mane, which he used as a sort of rope-ladder till he had fairly found his equilibrium, when he continued to clutch it as a bridle. The horse wanted no spur under such a rider, and, the already loosened bridle offering no resistance, darted off across the piazza with the monkey clutching, grinning, and blinking, on his neck. "Il cavallo! Il Diavolo!" was now shouted on all sides by the idle rascals who had gathered from all quarters of the piazza, and was echoed in tones of alarm by the stall-keepers, whose vested interests seemed in some danger; while the doctor, out of his wits with confused terror at the Devil, the possible stoning, and the escape of his horse, took to his heels with spectacles on nose, lathered face, and the shaving-cloth about his neck, crying, "Stop him! stop him! for a powder-a florin-stop him for a florin!" while the lads, outstripping him, clapped their hands and shouted encouragement to the runaway. The cerretano, who had not bargained for the flight of his monkey along with the horse, had caught up his petticoats with much celerity, and showed a pair of parti-colored hose above his contadina's shoes, far in advance of the doctor. And away went the grotesque race up the Corso degli Adimari-the horse with the singular jockey, the contadina with the remarkable hose, and the doctor in lather and spectacles, with furred mantle outflying. It was a scene such as Florentines loved, from the potent and reverend signor going to council in his lucco, down to the grinning youngster, who felt himself master of all situations when his bag was filled with smooth stones from the convenient dry bed of the torrent. The grayheaded Bernardo Cennini laughed no less heartily than the younger men, and Nello was triumphantly secure of the general admiration. "Aha!" he exclaimed, snapping his fingers when the first burst of laughter was subsiding, "I have cleared my piazza of that unsavory flytrap, mi pare. Maestro Tacco will no more come here again to sit for patients than he will take to licking marble for his dinner." "You are going toward the Piazza della Signoria, Messer Bernardo," said Macchiavelli. "I will go with you, and we shall perhaps see who has deserved the palio among these racers. Come, Melema, will you go too?" It had been precisely Tito's intention to accompany Cennini, but before he had gone many steps he was called back by Nello, who saw Maso approaching. Maso's message was from Romola. She wished Tito to go to the Via de' Bardi as soon as possible. She would see him under the loggia, at the top of the house, as she wished to speak to him alone. CHAPTER XVII. UNDER THE LOGGIA. THE loggia at the top of Bardo's house rose above the buildings on each side of it, and formed a gallery round quadrangular walls. On the side toward the street the roof was supported by columns; but on the remaining sides, by a wall pierced with arched openings, so that at the back, looking over a crowd of irregular, poorlybuilt dwellings toward the hill of Bogoli, Romola could at all times have a walk sheltered from observation. Near one of those arched openings, close to the door by which he had entered the loggia, Tito awaited her, with a sickening sense of the sunlight that slanted before him and mingled itself with the ruin of his hopes. He had never for a moment relied on Romola's passion for him as likely to be too strong for the repulsion created by the discovery of his secret; he had not the presumptuous vanity which might have hindered him from feeling that her love had the same root with her belief in him. But as he imagined her coming toward him in her radiant majesty, made so lovably mortal by her soft hazel eyes, he fell into wishing that she had been something lower, if it were only that she might let him clasp her and kiss her before they parted. He had had no real caress from hernothing but now and then a long glance, a kiss, a pressure of the hand; and he had so often longed that they should be alone together. They were going to be alone now; but he saw her standing inexorably aloof from him. His heart gave a great throb as he saw the door move: Romola was there. It was all like a flash of lightning: he felt, rather than saw, the glory about her head, the tearful appealing eyes; he | felt, rather than heard, the cry of love with which she said, "Tito!" And in the same moment she was in his arms, and sobbing with her face against his. "So changed, Tito! It pierced me to think that it was Dino. And so strangely hard: not a word to my father-nothing but a vision that he wanted to tell me. And yet it was so piteous -the struggling breath, and the eyes that seemed to look toward the crucifix, and yet not to see it. I shall never forget it; it seems as if it would come between me and every thing I shall look at." Romola's heart swelled again, so that she was forced to break off. But the need she felt to disburden her mind to Tito urged her to repress the rising anguish. When she began to speak again her thoughts had traveled a little. How poor Romola had yearned through the watches of the night to see that bright face! The new image of death; the strange bewildering doubt infused into her by the story of a life removed from her understanding and sympathy; the haunting vision, which she seemed not only to hear uttered by the low gasping voice, but to live through, as if it had been her own dream, had made her more conscious than ever that it "It was strange, Tito. The vision was about was Tito who had first brought the warm stream our marriage, and yet he knew nothing of you." of hope and gladness into her life, and who had "What was it, my Romola? Sit down and first turned away the keen edge of pain in the tell me," said Tito, leading her to the bench that remembrance of her brother. She would tell stood near. A fear had come across him lest Tito every thing; there was no one else to whom the vision should somehow or other relate to she could tell it. She had been restraining her- Baldassarre; and this sudden change of feeling self in the presence of her father all the morn-prompted him to seek a change of position. ing; but now that long pent-up sob might come forth. Proud and self-controlled to all the world besides, Romola was as simple and unreserved as a child in her love for Tito. She had been quite contented with the days when they had only looked at each other; but now, when she felt the need of clinging to him, there was no thought that hindered her. "My Romola! my goddess!" Tito murmured with passionate fondness, as he clasped her gently, and kissed the thick golden ripples on her neck. He was in paradise: disgrace, shame, parting there was no fear of them any longer. This happiness was too strong to be marred by the sense that Romola was deceived in him; nay, he could only rejoice in her delusion; for, after all, concealment had been wisdom. The only thing he could regret was his needless dread; if, indeed, the dread had not been worth suffering for the sake of this sudden rapture. Romola told him all that had passed from her entrance into San Marco, hardly leaving out one of her brother's words which had burned themselves into her memory as they were spoken. But when she was at the end of the vision she paused; the rest came too vividly before her to be uttered, and she sat looking at the distance almost unconscious for the moment that Tito was near her. His mind was at ease now; that vague vision had passed over him like white mist, and left no mark. But he was silent, expecting her to speak again. "I took it," she went on, as if Tito had been reading her thoughts; "I took the crucifix; it is down below in my bedroom." "And now, angiol mio," said Tito, entreatingly; "you will banish these ghastly thoughts. The vision was an ordinary monkish vision, bred of fasting and fanatical ideas. It surely has no weight with you." "No, Tito; no. But poor Dino, he believed it was a divine message. It is strange," she went on, meditatively, "this life of men possessed with fervid beliefs that seem like madness to their fellow-beings. Dino was not a vulgar fanatic; and that Fra Girolamo, his very voice seems to have penetrated me with a sense that there is some truth in what moves them-some truth of which I know nothing." The sob had satisfied itself, and Romola raised her head. Neither of them spoke; they stood looking at each other's faces with that sweet wonder which belongs to young love--she with her long white hands on the dark-brown curls, and he with his dark fingers bathed in the streaming gold. Each was so beautiful to the other; each was experiencing that undisturbed mutual consciousness for the first time. The cold pressure of a new sadness on Romola's heart made "It was only because your feelings were highher linger the more in that silent soothing sensely wrought, my Romola. Your brother's state of nearness and love; and Tito could not even seek to press his lips to hers, because that would be change. "Tito," she said, at last, "it has been altogether painful. But I must tell you every thing. Your strength will help me to resist the impressions that will not be shaken off by reason." "I know, Romola-I know he is dead," said Tito; and the long lustrous eyes told nothing of the many wishes that would have brought about that death long ago if there had been such potency in mere wishes. Romola only read her own pure thoughts in their dark depths, as we read letters in happy dreams. of mind was no more than a form of that theosophy which has been the common disease of excitable dreamy minds in all ages; the same ideas that your father's old antagonist, Marsilio Ficino, pores over in the New Platonists; only your brother's passionate nature drove him to act out what other men write and talk about. And for Fra Girolamo, he is simply a narrowminded monk, with a gift for preaching and infusing terror into the multitude. Any words or any voice would have shaken you at that moment. When your mind has had a little repose, you will judge of such things as you have always done before." "I banish those chill fancies, or shall you always be suspecting me as the Great Tempter?" said Tito, with his bright smile. "Not about poor Dino," said Romola. was angry with him; my heart seemed to close against him while he was speaking; but since then I have thought less of what was in my own mind, and more of what was in his. Oh, Tito! it was very piteous to see his young life coming to an end in that way. That yearning look at the crucifix when he was gasping for breath-I can never forget it. Last night I looked at the crucifix a long while, and tried to see that it would help him, until at last it seemed to me by the lamplight as if the suffering face shed pity." "Romola mia, promise me to resist such thoughts; they are fit for sickly nuns, not for my golden-tressed Aurora, who looks made to scatter all such twilight fantasies. Try not to think of them now; we shall not long be alone together." The last words were uttered in a tone of tender beseeching, and he turned her face toward him with a gentle touch of his right hand. Romola had had her eyes fixed absently on the arched opening, but she had not seen the distant hill; she had all the while been in the chapter-house, looking at the pale images of sorrow and death. Tito's touch and beseeching voice recalled her, and now in the warm sunlight she saw that rich dark beauty which seemed to gather round it all images of joy—purple vines festooned between the elms, the strong corn perfecting itself under the vibrating heat, bright-winged creatures hurrying and resting among the flowers, round limbs beating the earth in gladness, with cymbals held aloft; light melodies chanted to the thrilling rhythm of strings-all objects and all sounds that tell of Nature reveling in her force. Strange, bewildering transition from those pale images of sorrow and death to this bright youthfulness, as of a sun-god who knew nothing of night! What thought could reconcile that worn anguish in her brother's face-that straining after something invisible—with this satisfied strength and beauty, and make it intelligible that they belonged to the same world? Or was there never any reconciling of them-but only a blind worship of clashing deities, first in mad joy and then in wailing? Romola for the first time felt this questioning need like a sudden uneasy dizziness and want of something to grasp; it was an experience hardly longer than a sigh, for the eager theorizing of ages is compressed, as in a seed, in the momentary want of a single mind. But there was no answer to meet the need, and it vanished before the returning rush of young sympathy with the glad loving beauty that beamed upon her in new radiance, like the dawn after we have looked away from it to the gray west. "Your mind lingers apart from our love, my Romola," Tito said, with a soft reproachful mur"It seems a forgotten thing to you." She looked at the beseeching eyes in silence till the sadness all melted out of her own. "My joy!" she said, in her full clear voice. "Do you really care for me enough, then, to mur. "How should I not care for you more than for every thing else? Every thing I had felt before in all my life—about my father, and about my loneliness-was a preparation to love you. You would laugh at me, Tito, if you knew what sort of man I used to think I should marry-some scholar with deep lines in his face, like Alamanno Rinuccini, and with rather gray hair, who would agree with my father in taking the side of the Aristotelians, and be willing to live with him. I used to think about the love I read of in the poets, but I never dreamed that any thing like that could happen to me here in Florence in our old library. And then you came, Tito, and were so much to my father, and I began to believe that life could be happy for me too." "My goddess! is there any woman like you?" said Tito, with a mixture of fondness and wondering admiration at the blended majesty and simplicity in her. "But, dearest," he went on, rather timidly, "if you minded more about our marriage you would persuade your father and Messer Bernardo not to think of any more delays. But you seem not to mind about it.” Do "Yes, Tito, I will, I do mind. But I am sure my godfather will urge more delay now because of Dino's death. He has never agreed with my father about disowning Dino, and you know he has always said that we ought to wait until you have been at least a year in Florence. not think hardly of my godfather. I know he is prejudiced and narrow, but yet he is very noble. He has often said that it is folly in my father to want to keep his library apart, that it may bear his name; yet he would try to get my father's wish carried out. That seems to me very great and noble-that power of respecting a feeling which he does not share or understand." "I have no rancor against Messer Bernardo for thinking you too precious for me, my Romola," said Tito; and that was true. "But your father, then, knows of his son's death ?" "Yes, I told him-I could not help it-I told him where I had been, and that I had seen Dino die; but nothing else; and he has commanded me not to speak of it again. But he has been very silent this morning, and has had those restless movements which always go to my heart; they look as if he were trying to get outside the prison of his blindness. Let us go to him now. I had persuaded him to try to sleep, because he slept little in the night. Your voice will soothe him, Tito; it always does." "And not one kiss? I have not had one," said Tito, in his gentle reproachful tone, which gave him an air of dependence very charming in a creature with those rare gifts that seem to excuse presumption. The sweet pink flush spread itself with the quickness of light over Romola's face and neck as she bent toward him. It seemed impossible that their kisses could ever become common things. "Let us walk once round the loggia," said | the little thing alone again and undeceive her at Romola, "before we go down." once, or should he leave the disclosure to time "There is something grim and grave to me and chance? Happy dreams are pleasant, and always about Florence," said Tito, as they paused they easily come to an end with daylight and in the front of the house, where they could see the stir of life. The sweet, pouting, innocent, over the opposite roofs to the other side of the round thing! It was impossible not to think river, "and even in its merriment there is some- of her. Tito thought he should like some time thing shrill and hard-biting rather than gay. to take her a present that would please her, and I wish we lived in Southern Italy, where thought just learn if her step-father treated her more is broken not by weariness, but by delicious lan- cruelly now her mother was dead. Or, should guors such as never seem to come over the 'in- he at once undeceive Tessa, and then tell Romogenia acerrima Florentina.' I should like to la about her, so that they might find some hapsee you under that southern sun, lying among pier lot for the poor thing? No: that unfortuthe flowers, subdued into mere enjoyment, while nate little incident of the cerretano and the marI bent over you and touched the lute and sangriage, and his allowing Tessa to part from him to you some little unconscious strain that seem- in delusion, must never be known to Romola, ed all one with the light and the warmth. You have never known that happiness of the nymphs, my Romola." "No, Tito; but I have dreamed of it often since you came. I am very thirsty for a deep draught of joy-for a life all bright like you. But we will not think of it now, Tito; it seems to me as if there would always be pale sad faces among the flowers, and eyes that look in vain. Let us go." CHAPTER XVIII. THE PORTRAIT. and since no enlightenment could expel it from Tessa's mind, there would always be a risk of betrayal; besides, even little Tessa might have some gall in her when she found herself disappointed in her love-yes, she must be a little in love with him, and that might make it well that he should not see her again. Yet it was a trifling adventure such as a country girl would perhaps ponder on till some ruddy contadino made acceptable love to her, when she would break her resolution of secrecy and get at the truth that she was free. Dunque-good-by, Tessa! kindest wishes! Tito had made up his mind that the silly little affair of the cerretano should have no further consequences for himself; and people are apt to think that resolutions made on their own behalf will be firm. As for the fifty-five florins, the purchase-money of the ring, Tito had made up his mind what to do with some of them; he would carry out a pretty ingenious thought which would make him more at ease in accounting for the absence of his ring to Romola, and would also serve him as a means of guarding her mind from the recurrence of those monkish fancies which were especially re mind he went to the Via Gualfonda to find Piero di Cosimo, the artist who, at that time, was pre-eminent in the fantastic mythological design which Tito's purpose required. WHEN Tito left the Via de' Bardi that day in exultant satisfaction at finding himself thoroughly free from the threatened peril, his thoughts, no longer claimed by the immediate presence of Romola and her father, recurred to those futile hours of dread in which he was conscious of having not only felt but acted as he would not have done if he had had a truer foresight. He would not have parted with his ring; for Romola, and others to whom it was a familiar object, would be a little struck with the apparent sor-pugnant to him; and with this thought in his didness of parting with a gem he had professedly cherished, unless he feigned as a reason the desire to make some special gift with the purchase-money; and Tito had at that moment a nauseating weariness of simulation. He was well out of the possible consequences that might have fallen on him from that initial deception, and it was no longer a load on his mind; kind fortune had brought him immunity, and he thought it was only fair that she should. Who was hurt by it? Any results to Baldassarre were too problematical to be taken into account. But he wanted now to be free from any hidden shackles that would gall him, though ever so little, under his ties to Romola. He was not aware that that very delight in immunity which prompted resolutions not to entangle himself again was deadening the sensibilities which alone could save him from entanglement. But after all the sale of the ring was a slight matter. Was it also a slight matter that little Tessa was under a delusion which would doubtless fill her small head with expectations doomed to disappointment? Should he try to see Entering the court on which Piero's dwelling opened, Tito found the heavy iron knocker on the door thickly bound round with wool and ingeniously fastened with cords. Remembering the painter's practice of stuffing his ears against obtrusive noises, Tito was not much surprised at this mode of defense against visitors' thunder, and betook himself first to tapping modestly with his knuckles, and then to a more importunate attempt to shake the door. In vain! Tito was moving away, blaming himself for wasting his time on this visit, instead of waiting till he saw the painter again at Nello's, when a little girl entered the court with a basket of eggs on her arm, went up to the door, and standing on tip-toe, pushed up a small iron plate that ran in grooves, and putting her mouth to the aperture thus disclosed, called out in a piping voice, "Messer Piero!" In a few moments Tito heard the sound of |