casting the noisy waves right and left from its prow, "this
is hot work; but for what, in the holy Mother's name, do ye crowd so?
See you not, Sir Ribald, that my right arm is disabled, swathed, and
bandaged, so that I cannot help myself better than a baby? And yet you
push against me as if I were an old wall!"

"Ah, Cecco del Vecchio!--what, man! we must make way for you--you are
too small and tender to bustle through a crowd! Come, I will protect
you!" said a dwarf of some four feet high, glancing up at the giant.

"Faith," said the grim smith, looking round on the mob, who laughed loud
at the dwarf's proffer, "we all do want protection, big and small. What
do you laugh for, ye apes?--ay, you don't understand parables."

"And yet it is a parable we are come to gaze upon," said one of the mob,
with a slight sneer.

"Pleasant day to you, Signor Baroncelli," answered Cecco del Vecchio;
"you are a good man, and love the people; it makes one's heart smile to
see you. What's all this pother for?"

"Why the Pope's Notary hath set up a great picture in the marketplace,
and the gapers say it relates to Rome; so they are melting their brains
out, this hot day, to guess at the riddle."

"Ho! ho!" said the smith, pushing on so vigorously that he left the
speaker suddenly in the rear; "if Cola di Rienzi hath aught in the
matter, I would break through stone rocks to get to it."

"Much good will a dead daub do us," said Baroncelli, sourly, and turning
to his neighbours; but no man listened to him, and he, a would-be
demagogue, gnawed his lip in envy.

Amidst half-awed groans and curses from the men whom he jostled aside,
and open objurgations and shrill cries from the women, to whose robes
and headgear he showed as little respect, the sturdy smith won his way
to a space fenced round by chains, in the centre of which was placed a
huge picture.

"How came it hither?" cried one; "I was first at the market."

"We found it here at daybreak," said a vender of fruit: "no one was by."

"But why do you fancy Rienzi had a hand in it?"

"Why, who else could?" answered twenty voices.

"True! Who else?" echoed the gaunt smith. "I dare be sworn the good man
spent the whole night in painting it himself. Blood of St. Peter! but it
is mighty fine! What is it about?"

"That's the riddle," said a meditative fish-woman; "if I could make it
out, I should die happy."

"It is something about liberty and taxes, no doubt," said Luigi, the