. For the most part they carry ambulances
to the scenes of accident and perform the last offices for the dead
in the poorer districts. When on duty they wear black robes and
hoods. Their headquarters comprise a chapel, with an altar by Andrea
della Robbia, and a statue of the patron saint of the Misericordia,
S. Sebastian. But their real patron saint is their founder, a common
porter named Pietro Borsi. In the thirteenth century it was the custom
for the porters and loafers connected with the old market to meet
in a shelter here and pass the time away as best they could. Borsi,
joining them, was distressed to find how unprofitable were the hours,
and he suggested the formation of a society to be of some real use,
the money to support it to be obtained by fines in payment for oaths
and blasphemies. A litter or two were soon bought and the machinery
started. The name was the Company of the Brothers of Mercy. That was
in 1240 to 1250. To-day no Florentine is too grand to take his part,
and at the head of the porter's band of brethren is the King.

Passing along the Via Calzaioli we come on the right to a noble square
building with statues in its niches--Or San Michele, which stands on
the site of the chapel of San Michele in Orto. San Michele in Orto,
or more probably in Horreo (meaning either in the garden or in the
granary), was once part of a loggia used as a corn market, in which
was preserved a picture by Ugolino da Siena representing the Virgin,
and this picture had the power of working miracles. Early in the
fourteenth century the loggia was burned down but the picture was
saved (or quickly replaced), and a new building on a much larger and
more splendid scale was made for it, none other than Or San Michele,
the chief architect being Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's pupil and later
the constructor of the Ponte Vecchio. Where the picture then was, I
cannot say--whether inside the building or out--but the principal use
of the building was to serve as a granary. After 1348, when Florence
was visited by that ravaging plague which Boccaccio describes in
such gruesome detail at the beginning of the "Decameron" and which
sent his gay company of ladies and gentlemen to the Villa Palmieri
to take refuge in story telling, and when this sacred picture was
more than commonly busy and efficacious, it was decided to apply
the enormous sums of money given to the shrine from gratitude in
beautifying the church still more, and chiefly in prov