ile you are about
it, then, make it a hundred, for I have great need just now of
another fifty crowns.'"

Prisoners in the Bargello, as elsewhere, were subject to the most
appalling injustice and cruelty. Thus we are told of Cosimo di Medici,
when he was doing all in his power to assassinate or poison Piero
Strozzi, that he was always very circumspect as regarded the venom, "and
did not use it till he had studied the effects and doses on condemned
prisoners in the Bargello." But "condemned prisoners" here means
doubtless those who were simply condemned to be made the subjects of such
experiments, as may be supposed, when we learn that Cosimo obtained the
recipe of making up a poison from Messer Apollino, secretary of Piero
Luigi, by _torturing_ him. It was thus they did in good old pious times.
Poisoning, as a most familiar and frequent thing, even in England, did
not pass out of practice, even in politics, until that great beginning of
a moral era, the Reformation.

"_Haec fabula docet_," wrote the good and wise Flaxius on the revise,
"that as a _Zoccolone_ friar is the best priest for a peasant, so even a
_buon diavolo_, or jolly devil, or a boon blackguard who knows his men,
is, perhaps, generally the best guide for certain kinds of rough sinners,
often setting them aright in life where a holy saint would be _inter
sacrem et saxum_, or in despair. As for poisoning, I fear _that_ cup,
far from passing away, is, under another form, passed round far more
frequently now than it ever was. For Francois Villon declared that lying
gossip, tittle-tattle, and second-hand slander were worse than poison
(which simply kills the body), and this with infinite refinement prevails
far more in modern society (being aided by newspapers) than it ever did
of yore anywhere. _This_ is the poison of the present day, which has
more _veneficae_ to spread it than the Locustan or Borgian venoms ever
found. Now for a merrier tale!"

"If all that's written, talked or sunge
Must be of the follies of menne,
'Twere better that no one moved his tongue,
Or that none could use a penne.

"Jog on, jog on the footpath-waye,
And cheerily jump the stile;
A merry heart goes all the daye,
A sad one tires in a mile!"

LEGENDS OF SAN LORENZO
THE CANON AND THE DEBTOR, AND THE CATS IN THE CLOISTER

"Pazienza, paziendum!
Disse il diavolo a Sant Antonium."

"A scratching he hea