larger; but take any collection which
is the work of a single man--that of the great Boccaccio even--mine will
surpass it. That of Poggio was contemptible compared with mine. It
will be a great gift to unborn scholars. And there is nothing else.
For even if I were to yield to the wish of Aldo Manuzio when he sets up
his press at Venice, and give him the aid of my annotated manuscripts, I
know well what would be the result: some other scholar's name would
stand on the title-page of the edition--some scholar who would have fed
on my honey, and then declared in his preface that he had gathered it
all himself fresh from Hymettus. Else, why have I refused the loan of
many an annotated codex? why have I refused to make public any of my
translations? why? but because scholarship is a system of licenced
robbery, and your man in scarlet and furred robe who sits in judgment on
thieves, is himself a thief of the thoughts and the fame that belong to
his fellows. But against that robbery Bardo de' Bardi shall struggle--
though blind and forsaken, he shall struggle. I too have a right to be
remembered--as great a right as Pontanus or Merula, whose names will be
foremost on the lips of posterity, because they sought patronage and
found it; because they had tongues that could flatter, and blood that
was used to be nourished from the client's basket. I have a right to be
remembered."

The old man's voice had become at once loud and tremulous, and a pink
flush overspread his proud, delicately-cut features, while the
habitually raised attitude of his head gave the idea that behind the
curtain of his blindness he saw some imaginary high tribunal to which he
was appealing against the injustice of Fame.

Romola was moved with sympathetic indignation, for in her nature too
there lay the same large claims, and the same spirit of struggle against
their denial. She tried to calm her father by a still prouder word than
his.

"Nevertheless, father, it is a great gift of the gods to be born with a
hatred and contempt of all injustice and meanness. Yours is a higher
lot, never to have lied and truckled, than to have shared honours won by
dishonour. There is strength in scorn, as there was in the martial fury
by which men became insensible to wounds."

"It is well said, Romola. It is a Promethean word thou hast uttered,"
answered Bardo, after a little interval in which he had begun to lean on
his stick again, and to walk on. "And I in