, and the spire of the neighbouring
Badia, seemed to keep watch above; and below, on the broad polygonal
flags of the piazza, was the glorious show of banners, and horses with
rich trappings, and gigantic _ceri_, or tapers, that were fitly called
towers--strangely aggrandised descendants of those torches by whose
faint light the Church worshipped in the Catacombs. Betimes in the
morning all processions had need to move under the Midsummer sky of
Florence, where the shelter of the narrow streets must every now and
then be exchanged for the glare of wide spaces; and the sun would be
high up in the heavens before the long pomp had ended its pilgrimage in
the Piazza di San Giovanni.

But here, where the procession was to pause, the magnificent city, with
its ingenious Cecca, had provided another tent than the sky; for the
whole of the Piazza del Duomo, from the octagonal baptistery in the
centre to the facade of the cathedral and the walls of the houses on the
other sides of the quadrangle, was covered, at the height of forty feet
or more, with blue drapery, adorned with well-stitched yellow lilies and
the familiar coats of arms, while sheaves of many-coloured banners
drooped at fit angles under this superincumbent blue--a gorgeous
rainbow-lit shelter to the waiting spectators who leaned from the
windows, and made a narrow border on the pavement, and wished for the
coming of the show.

One of these spectators was Tito Melema. Bright, in the midst of
brightness, he sat at the window of the room above Nello's shop, his
right elbow resting on the red drapery hanging from the window-sill, and
his head supported in a backward position by the right-hand, which
pressed the curls against his ear. His face wore that bland liveliness,
as far removed from excitability as from heaviness or gloom, which marks
the companion popular alike amongst men and women--the companion who is
never obtrusive or noisy from uneasy vanity or excessive animal spirits,
and whose brow is never contracted by resentment or indignation. He
showed no other change from the two months and more that had passed
since his first appearance in the weather-stained tunic and hose, than
that added radiance of good fortune, which is like the just perceptible
perfecting of a flower after it has drunk a morning's sunbeams. Close
behind him, ensconced in the narrow angle between his chair and the
window-frame, stood the slim figure of Nello in holiday suit, and at hi