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Spoken like an oracle, Goro! said the barber. Why, when we poor mortals can pack two or three meanings into one sentence, it were mere blasphemy not to believe that your miraculous bull means everything that any man in Florence likes it to mean.
Thou art pleased to scoff, Nello, said the sallow, round-shouldered man, no longer eclipsed by the notary, but it is not the less true that every revelation, whether by visions, dreams, portents, or the written word, has many meanings, which it is given to the illuminated only to unfold.
Assuredly, answered Nello. Havent I been to hear the Frate in San Lorenzo? But then, Ive been to hear Fra Menico in the Duomo too; and according to him, your Fra Girolamo, with his visions and interpretations, is running after the wind of Mongibello, and those who follow him are like to have the fate of certain swine that ran headlong into the seaor some hotter place. With San Domenico roaring è vero in one ear, and San Francisco screaming è falso in the other, what is a poor barber to dounless he were illuminated? But its plain our Goro here is beginning to be illuminated for he already sees that the bull with the flaming horns means first himself, and secondly all the other aggrieved taxpayers of Florence, who are determined to gore the magistracy on the first opportunity.
Goro is a fool! said a bass voice, with a note that dropped like the sound of a great bell in the midst of much tinkling. Let him carry home his leeks and shake his flanks over his wool-beating. Hell mend matters more that way than by showing his tun-shaped body in the piazza, as if everybody might measure his grievances by the size of his paunch. The burdens that harm him most are his heavy carcass and his idleness.
The speaker had joined the group only in time to hear the conclusion of Nellos speech, but he was one of those figures for whom all the world instinctively makes way, as it would for a battering-ram. He was not much above the middle height, but the impression of enormous force which was conveyed by his capacious chest and brawny arms bared to the shoulder, was deepened by the keen sense and quiet resolution expressed in his glance and in every furrow of his cheek and brow. He had often been an unconscious model to Domenico Ghirlandajo, when that great painter was making the walls of the churches reflect the life of Florence, and translating pale aerial traditions into the deep colour and strong lines of the faces he knew. The naturally dark tint of his skin was additionally bronzed by the same powdery deposit that gave a polished black surface to his leathern apron: a deposit which habit had probably made a necessary condition of perfect ease, for it was not washed off with punctilious regularity.
Goro turned his fat cheek and glassy eye on the frank speaker with a look of deprecation rather than of resentment.
Why, Niccolò, he said, in an injured tone, Ive heard you sing to another tune than that, often enough, when youve been laying down the law at San Gallo on a festa. Ive heard you say yourself, that a man wasnt a mill-wheel, to be on the grind, grind, as long as he was driven, and then stick in his place without stirring when the water was low. And youre as fond of your vote as any man in Florenceay, and Ive heard you say, if Lorenzo
Yes, yes, said Niccolò. Dont you be bringing up my speeches again after youve swallowed them, and handing them about as if they were none the worse. I vote and I speak when theres any use in it: if theres hot metal on the anvil, I lose no time before I strike; but I dont spend good hours in tinkling on cold iron, or in standing on the pavement as thou dost, Goro, with snout upward, like a pig under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzodead and gone before his timehe was a man who had an eye for curious iron-work; and if anybody says he wanted to make himself a tyrant, I say, Sia; Ill not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weathercock. But that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk, and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing. Though if there was any chance of a real reform, so that Marzocco (the stone Lion, emblem of the Republic) might shake his mane and roar again, instead of dipping his head to lick the feet of anybody that will mount and ride him, Id strike a good blow for it.
And that reform is not far off, Niccolò, said the sallow, mild-faced man, seizing his opportunity like a missionary among the too light-minded heathens; for a time of tribulation is coming, and the scourge is at hand. And when the Church is purged of cardinals and prelates who traffic in her inheritance that their hands may be full to pay the price of blood and to satisfy their own lusts, the State will be purged tooand Florence will be purged of men who love to see avarice and lechery under the red hat and the mitre because it gives them the screen of a more hellish vice than their own.
Ay, as Goros broad body would be a screen for my narrow person in case of missiles, said Nello; but if that excellent screen happened to fall, I were stifled under it, surely enough. That is no bad image of thine, Nannior, rather, of the Frates; for I fancy there is no room in the small cup of thy understanding for any other liquor than what he pours into it.
And it were well for thee, Nello, replied Nanni, if thou couldst empty thyself of thy scoffs and thy jests, and take in that liquor too. The warning is ringing in the ears of all men: and its no new story; for the Abbot Joachim prophesied of the coming time three hundred years ago, and now Fra Girolamo has got the message afresh. He has seen it in a vision, even as the prophets of old: he has seen the sword hanging from the sky.
Ay, and thou wilt see it thyself, Nanni, if thou wilt stare upward long enough, said Niccolò; for that pitiable tailors work of thine makes thy noddle so overhang thy legs, that thy eyeballs can see nought above the stitching-board but the roof of thy own skull.
The honest tailor bore the jest without bitterness, bent on convincing his hearers of his doctrine rather than of his dignity. But Niccolò gave him no opportunity for replying; for he turned away to the pursuit of his market business, probably considering further dialogue as a tinkling on cold iron.
Ebbene said the man with the hose round his neck, who had lately migrated from another knot of talkers, they are safest who cross themselves and jest at nobody. Do you know that the Magnifico sent for the Frate at the last, and couldnt die without his blessing?
Was it soin truth? said several voices. Yes, yesGod will have pardoned him.
He died like the best of Christians.
Never took his eyes from the holy crucifix.
And the Frate will have given him his blessing?
Well, I know no more, said he of the hosen, only Guccio there met a footman going back to Careggi, and he told him the Frate had been sent for yesternight, after the Magnifico had confessed and had the holy sacraments.
Its likely enough the Frate will tell the people something about it in his sermon this morning; is it not true, Nanni? said Goro. What do you think?
But Nanni had already turned his back on Goro, and the group was rapidly thinning; some being stirred by the impulse to go and hear new things from the Frate (new things were the nectar of Florentines); others by the sense that it was time to attend to their private business. In this general movement, Bratti got close to the barber, and said