pleasure! You like that; you like to have the election of your
magistrates turned into closet-work, and no man to use the rights of a
citizen unless he is a Medicean. That is what is meant by qualification
now: _netto di specchio_ [Note 2] no longer means that a man pays his
dues to the Republic: it means that he'll wink at robbery of the
people's money--at robbery of their daughters' dowries; that he'll play
the chamberer and the philosopher by turns--listen to bawdy songs at the
Carnival and cry `Bellissimi!'--and listen to sacred lauds and cry again
`Bellissimi!' But this is what you love: you grumble and raise a riot
over your _quattrini bianchi_" (white farthings); "but you take no
notice when the public treasury has got a hole in the bottom for the
gold to run into Lorenzo's drains. You like to pay for footmen to walk
before and behind one of your citizens, that he may be affable and
condescending to you. `See, what a tall Pisan we keep,' say you, `to
march before him with the drawn sword flashing in our eyes!--and yet
Lorenzo smiles at us. What goodness!' And you think the death of a
man, who would soon have saddled and bridled you as the Sforza has
saddled and bridled Milan--you think his death is the scourge God is
warning you of by portents. I tell you there is another sort of scourge
in the air."

"Nay, nay, Ser Cioni, keep astride your politics, and never mount your
prophecy; politics is the better horse," said Nello. "But if you talk
of portents, what portent can be greater than a pious notary? Balaam's
ass was nothing to it."

"Ay, but a notary out of work, with his inkbottle dry," said another
bystander, very much out at elbows. "Better don a cowl at once, Ser
Cioni: everybody will believe in your fasting."

The notary turned and left the group with a look of indignant contempt,
disclosing, as he did so, the sallow but mild face of a short man who
had been standing behind him, and whose bent shoulders told of some
sedentary occupation.

"By San Giovanni, though," said the fat purchaser of leeks, with the air
of a person rather shaken in his theories, "I am not sure there isn't
some truth in what Ser Cioni says. For I know I have good reason to
find fault with the _quattrini bianchi_ myself. Grumble, did he say?
Suffocation! I should think we do grumble; and, let anybody say the
word, I'll turn out into the piazza with the readiest, sooner than have
our money altered in our hands as if th