or an _e_, and say if
you do not feel an unwonted clearness on the point. Only, if you decide
for the _i_, keep it to yourself till your fortune is made, for the _e_
hath the stronger following in Florence. Ah! I think I see a gleam of
still quicker wit in your eye. I have it on the authority of our young
Niccolo Macchiavelli, himself keen enough to discern _il pelo nell'
uovo_, as we say, and a great lover of delicate shaving, though his
beard is hardly of two years' date, that no sooner do the hairs begin to
push themselves, than he perceives a certain grossness of apprehension
creeping over him."

"Suppose you let me look at myself," said the stranger, laughing. "The
happy effect on my intellect is perhaps obstructed by a little doubt as
to the effect on my appearance."

"Behold yourself in this mirror, then; it is a Venetian mirror from
Murano, the true _nosce teipsum_, as I have named it, compared with
which the finest mirror of steel or silver is mere darkness. See now,
how by diligent shaving, the nether region of your face may preserve its
human outline, instead of presenting no distinction from the physiognomy
of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape. I have seen men whose beards have so
invaded their cheeks, that one might have pitied them as the victims of
a sad, brutalising chastisement befitting our Dante's Inferno, if they
had not seemed to strut with a strange triumph in their extravagant
hairiness."

"It seems to me," said the Greek, still looking into the mirror, "that
you have taken away some of my capital with your razor--I mean a year or
two of age, which might have won me more ready credit for my learning.
Under the inspection of a patron whose vision has grown somewhat dim, I
shall have a perilous resemblance to a maiden of eighteen in the
disguise of hose and jerkin."

"Not at all," said Nello, proceeding to clip the too extravagant curls;
"your proportions are not those of a maiden. And for your age, I myself
remember seeing Angelo Poliziano begin his lectures on the Latin
language when he had a younger beard than yours; and between ourselves,
his juvenile ugliness was not less signal than his precocious
scholarship. Whereas you--no, no, your age is not against you; but
between ourselves, let me hint to you that your being a Greek, though it
be only an Apulian Greek, is not in your favour. Certain of our
scholars hold that your Greek learning is but a wayside degenerate plant
until it ha