Croce on the south-east, where the richest of
_Palii_, or velvet and brocade banners with silk linings and fringe of
gold, such as became a city that half-clothed the well-dressed world,
were mounted on a triumphal car awaiting the winner or winner's owner.

And thereafter followed more dancing; nay, through the whole day, says
an old chronicler at the beginning of that century, there were weddings
and the grandest gatherings, with so much piping, music and song, with
balls and feasts and gladness and ornament, that this earth might have
been mistaken for Paradise!

In this year of 1492, it was, perhaps, a little less easy to make that
mistake. Lorenzo the magnificent and subtle was dead, and an arrogant,
incautious Piero was come in his room, an evil change for Florence,
unless, indeed, the wise horse prefers the bad rider, as more easily
thrown from the saddle, and already the regrets for Lorenzo were getting
less predominant over the murmured desire for government on a broader
basis, in which corruption might be arrested, and there might be that
free play for everybody's jealousy and ambition, which made the ideal
liberty of the good old quarrelsome, struggling times, when Florence
raised her great buildings, reared her own soldiers, drove out would-be
tyrants at the sword's point, and was proud to keep faith at her own
loss. Lorenzo was dead, Pope Innocent was dying, and a troublesome
Neapolitan succession, with an intriguing, ambitious Milan, might set
Italy by the ears before long: the times were likely to be difficult.
Still, there was all the more reason that the Republic should keep its
religious festivals.

And Midsummer morning, in this year 1492, was not less bright than
usual. It was betimes in the morning that the symbolic offerings to be
carried in grand procession were all assembled at their starting-point
in the Piazza della Signoria--that famous piazza, where stood then, and
stand now, the massive turreted Palace of the People, called the Palazzo
Vecchio, and the spacious Loggia, built by Orcagna--the scene of all
grand State ceremonial. The sky made the fairest blue tent, and under
it the bells swung so vigorously that every evil spirit with sense
enough to be formidable, must long since have taken his flight; windows
and terraced roofs were alive with human faces; sombre stone houses were
bright with hanging draperies; the boldly soaring palace tower, the yet
older square tower of the Bargello