, _mi pare_: it doesn't
alter the meaning--_va_!" answered the fat man, with some contempt.

"Meaning? no, no; that's clear enough," said several voices at once, and
then followed a confusion of tongues, in which "Lights shooting over San
Lorenzo for three nights together"--"Thunder in the clear
starlight"--"Lantern of the Duomo struck with the sword of Saint
Michael"--"_Palle_" [Arms of the Medici]--"All smashed"--"Lions tearing
each other to pieces"--"Ah! and they might well"--"_Boto [Note 1] caduto
in Santissima Nunziata_!"--"Died like the best of Christians"--"God will
have pardoned him"--were often-repeated phrases, which shot across each
other like storm-driven hailstones, each speaker feeling rather the
necessity of utterance than of finding a listener. Perhaps the only
silent members of the group were Bratti, who, as a new-comer, was busy
in mentally piecing together the flying fragments of information; the
man of the razor; and a thin-lipped, eager-looking personage in
spectacles, wearing a pen-and-ink case at his belt.

"_Ebbene_, Nello," said Bratti, skirting the group till he was within
hearing of the barber. "It appears the Magnifico is dead--rest his
soul!--and the price of wax will rise?"

"Even as you say," answered Nello; and then added, with an air of extra
gravity, but with marvellous rapidity, "and his waxen image in the
Nunziata fell at the same moment, they say; or at some other time,
whenever it pleases the Frati Serviti, who know best. And several cows
and women have had still-born calves this Quaresima; and for the bad
eggs that have been broken since the Carnival, nobody has counted them.
Ah! a great man--a great politician--a greater poet than Dante. And yet
the cupola didn't fall, only the lantern. _Che miracolo_!"

A sharp and lengthened "Pst!" was suddenly heard darting across the
pelting storm of gutturals. It came from the pale man in spectacles,
and had the effect he intended; for the noise ceased, and all eyes in
the group were fixed on him with a look of expectation.

"'Tis well said you Florentines are blind," he began, in an incisive
high voice. "It appears to me, you need nothing but a diet of hay to
make cattle of you. What! do you think the death of Lorenzo is the
scourge God has prepared for Florence? Go! you are sparrows chattering
praise over the dead hawk. What! a man who was trying to slip a noose
over every neck in the Republic that he might tighten it at his