veals to Lorenzo
that Florence is threatened by enemies, just so it happened that unto
Saint Zenobio, standing rapt in divine contemplation in his cavern, it
was announced that the same city was about to be assailed by cruel
barbarians, who, as Sigbert relates in his Chronicle of 407 A.D., were
the two hundred thousand Goths led by Radagasio into Italy. But they
were soon driven away by the Saint's prayers and penitence. It would be
curious if one legend had here passed into another:

"So visions in a vision live again,
And dreams in dreams are wondrously transfused;
Gold turning into grey as clouds do change,
And shifting hues as they assume new forms."

Apropos of Saint Zenobio of Florence, I will here give something which
should have been included with the legend of the Croce al Trebbio, but
which I obtained too late for that purpose. It would appear from the
_Iscrizioni e Memorie di Firenze_, by F. Bigazzi (1887), that the
_pillar_ of the cross was really erected to commemorate a victory over
heretics, but that the cross itself was added by the Saints Ambrosio and
Zenobio, "on account of a great mystery"--which mystery is, I believe,
fully explained by the legend which I have given. The inscription when
complete was as follows:

SANCTUS AMBROSIUS CUM SANCTO ZENOBIO PROPTER GRANDE MISTERIUM
HUNC CRUCEM HIC LOCAVERUNT. ET IN MCCCXXXVIII NOVITER DIE
10 AUGUSTI RECONSECRATA EST P. D. M. FRANCISC. FLOR.
EPISCOPUM UNA CUM ALIIS EPISCOPIS M.

A slightly different reading is given by Brocchi (_Vite de' Santi
fiorentini_, 1742).

"Of which saint, be it observed," writes Flaxius, "that there is in
England a very large and widely extended family, or _stirps_, named
Snobs, who may claim that by affinity of name to Zenobio they are
lineally or collaterally his descendants, even as the Potts profess
connection with Pozzo del Borgo. But as it is said of this family or
_gens_ that they are famed for laying claim to every shadow of a shade of
gentility, it may be that there is truly no Zenobility about them. Truly
there are a great many more people in this world who are proud of their
ancestors, than there ever were ancestors who would have been proud of
them. The number of whom is as the sands of the sea, or as Heine says,
'more correctly speaking, as the mud on the shore.'

"'The which, more eath it were for mortall wight,
To sell the sands