; and so announced with curtsies that she might enter the
litter as soon as she would. She was at the disposition of these ladies,
was her faltered reply. Emilia waved her hand out of the little window;
chords of music sounded from the street; the voices of men and ladies
rose upon a madrigal--

"Fior' di Maggio--Soave, pio e saggio--Salve, Ippolita!"--the work of
Alessandro's muse upon that night of discord from the Jew. So she went
downstairs.

The Vicolo Agnus Dei--a blind alley of low jutting houses over arcades,
full of squalor, pink wash, children, and cats--was on this early
morning ablaze with colour and music. From wall to wall (and eight feet
will measure that) it seemed packed with the nobility. Tousled heads
from above looked down curiously on heads elaborately frizzed, on
scarlet caps, on plumes, on garlands, on jewelled necks. Poverty and
riches touch at their extremes, like houses in the South. The shoulders
of the ladies at play were no barer than those of the slatterns who
gaped at them playing; but for Ippolita, who had always been a decent
girl, let us hope her blushes were a cloak. She felt naked. And the
bath, remember, had unnerved her.

What these neighbours of hers may have thought is no concern of ours,
since the actors in the play took no concern in it. Twenty pieces of
silver had bought an incomparable peg for their conceits. They were
rescuing, they said to each other, a lily from the gutter, taking a
jewel from a dirty finger, glorifying the glories--a pious act which
could not fail of returning honour to those who took honour in doing
it. The people! Sacks to be filled with garlic and black wine, liver and
blood-puddings--grunting hogs, let them keep their sty. Let them not
dare (and in truth it never occurred to them to dare) interfere with the
diversions of the great. Yet as the veiled sacrifice went to mount the
litter, one brown-eyed rascal from an upper window, holding a towel over
her neck, shrilled out in homely patois, "A vederti, 'Polita mia!" and
Ippolita turned her lovely head and showed for a moment her shining wet
eyes to those who watched. She smiled tenderly at the send-off, but
"Addio, Annina, addio!" she said softly, and turned bowing to her bowing
gaolers.

As the swaying litter of gold and white went out into the Pozzo Depinto
and turned up towards the Pontecorbo Gate; as the music and
chanting--"Candida Ippolita, premio d'Amore! Grazia insolita del sommo
Fattore!"--