w more to the
point.--Then all the statuary in the Loggia! But that is a mistake. It
looks too much like the yard of a monumental mason.

The great, naked men in the rain, under the dark-grey November sky, in
the dark, strong inviolable square! The wonderful hawk-head of the old
palace. The physical, self-conscious adolescent, Michelangelo's David,
shrinking and exposing himself, with his white, slack limbs! Florence,
passionate, fearless Florence had spoken herself out.--Aaron was
fascinated by the Piazza della Signoria. He never went into the town,
nor returned from it to his lodging, without contriving to pass through
the square. And he never passed through it without satisfaction. Here
men had been at their intensest, most naked pitch, here, at the end of
the old world and the beginning of the new. Since then, always rather
puling and apologetic.

Aaron felt a new self, a new life-urge rising inside himself. Florence
seemed to start a new man in him. It was a town of men. On Friday
morning, so early, he heard the traffic. Early, he watched the rather
low, two-wheeled traps of the peasants spanking recklessly over the
bridge, coming in to town. And then, when he went out, he found the
Piazza della Signoria packed with men: but all, all men. And all
farmers, land-owners and land-workers. The curious, fine-nosed Tuscan
farmers, with their half-sardonic, amber-coloured eyes. Their curious
individuality, their clothes worn so easy and reckless, their hats with
the personal twist. Their curious full oval cheeks, their tendency to be
too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs. Their close-sitting dark hair.
And above all, their sharp, almost acrid, mocking expression, the silent
curl of the nose, the eternal challenge, the rock-bottom unbelief,
and the subtle fearlessness. The dangerous, subtle, never-dying
fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief. But men! Men! A town of men, in
spite of everything. The one manly quality, undying, acrid fearlessness.
The eternal challenge of the un-quenched human soul. Perhaps too acrid
and challenging today, when there is nothing left to challenge. But
men--who existed without apology and without justification. Men who
would neither justify themselves nor apologize for themselves. Just men.
The rarest thing left in our sweet Christendom.

Altogether Aaron was pleased with himself, for being in Florence. Those
were early days after the war, when as yet very few foreigners had
returned, and t