rsemanship, for we
excel all Italy in the sports of the Giostra, and the money we spend on
them. But you will see a finer show of our chief men by-and-by, Melema;
my brother himself will be among the officers of the Zecca."

"The banners are the better sight," said Piero di Cosimo, forgetting the
noise in his delight at the winding stream of colour as the tributary
standards advanced round the piazza. "The Florentine men are so-so;
they make but a sorry show at this distance with their patch of sallow
flesh-tint above the black garments; but those banners with their
velvet, and satin, and minever, and brocade, and their endless play of
delicate light and shadow!--_Va_! your human talk and doings are a tame
jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour."

"Ay, Piero, if Satanasso could paint, thou wouldst sell thy soul to
learn his secrets," said Nello. "But there is little likelihood of it,
seeing the blessed angels themselves are such poor hands at chiaroscuro,
if one may judge from their _capo-d'opera_, the Madonna Nunziata."

"There go the banners of Pisa and Arezzo," said Cennini. "Ay, Messer
Pisano, it is no use for you to look sullen; you may as well carry your
banner to our San Giovanni with a good grace. `Pisans false,
Florentines blind'--the second half of that proverb will hold no longer.
There come the ensigns of our subject towns and signories, Melema; they
will all be suspended in San Giovanni until this day next year, when
they will give place to new ones."

"They are a fair sight," said Tito; "and San Giovanni will surely be as
well satisfied with that produce of Italian looms as Minerva with her
peplos, especially as he contents himself with so little drapery. But
my eyes are less delighted with those whirling towers, which would soon
make me fall from the window in sympathetic vertigo."

The "towers" of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed
very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a
kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called
_ceri_. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and
literal fashion, these gigantic _ceri_, some of them so large as to be
of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their
surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded,
carved, and painted, as real sacred tapers often are, with successive
circles of figures--warriors on horseback, foot-so