e magistracy were so many
necromancers. And it's true Lorenzo might have hindered such work if he
would--and for the bull with the flaming horns, why, as Ser Cioni says,
there may be many meanings to it, for the matter of that; it may have
more to do with the taxes than we think. For when God above sends a
sign, it's not to be supposed he'd have only one meaning."

"Spoken like an oracle, Goro!" said the barber. "Why, when we poor
mortals can pack two or three meanings into one sentence, it were mere
blasphemy not to believe that your miraculous bull means everything that
any man in Florence likes it to mean."

"Thou art pleased to scoff, Nello," said the sallow, round-shouldered
man, no longer eclipsed by the notary, "but it is not the less true that
every revelation, whether by visions, dreams, portents, or the written
word, has many meanings, which it is given to the illuminated only to
unfold."

"Assuredly," answered Nello. "Haven't I been to hear the Frate in San
Lorenzo? But then, I've been to hear Fra Menico in the Duomo too; and
according to him, your Fra Girolamo, with his visions and
interpretations, is running after the wind of Mongibello, and those who
follow him are like to have the fate of certain swine that ran headlong
into the sea--or some hotter place. With San Domenico roaring _e vero_
in one ear, and San Francisco screaming _e falso_ in the other, what is
a poor barber to do--unless he were illuminated? But it's plain our
Goro here is beginning to be illuminated for he already sees that the
bull with the flaming horns means first himself, and secondly all the
other aggrieved taxpayers of Florence, who are determined to gore the
magistracy on the first opportunity."

"Goro is a fool!" said a bass voice, with a note that dropped like the
sound of a great bell in the midst of much tinkling. "Let him carry
home his leeks and shake his flanks over his wool-beating. He'll mend
matters more that way than by showing his tun-shaped body in the piazza,
as if everybody might measure his grievances by the size of his paunch.
The burdens that harm him most are his heavy carcass and his idleness."

The speaker had joined the group only in time to hear the conclusion of
Nello's speech, but he was one of those figures for whom all the world
instinctively makes way, as it would for a battering-ram. He was not
much above the middle height, but the impression of enormous force which
was conveyed by his c