“Rather say, Cennini,” answered Cronaca, “that the chief secret lies in the Frate’s pure life and strong faith, which stamp him as a messenger of God.”
“I admit it—I admit it,” said Cennini, opening his palms, as he rose from the chair. “His life is spotless: no man has impeached it.”
“He is satisfied with the pleasant lust of arrogance,” Cei burst out, bitterly. “I can see it in that proud lip and satisfied eye of his. He hears the air filled with his own name—Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara; the prophet, the saint, the mighty preacher, who frightens the very babies of Florence into laying down their wicked baubles.”
“Come, come, Francesco, you are out of humour with waiting,” said the conciliatory Nello. “Let me stop your mouth with a little lather. I must not have my friend Cronaca made angry: I have a regard for his chin; and his chin is in no respect altered since he became a Piagnone. And for my own part, I confess, when the Frate was preaching in the Duomo last Advent, I got into such a trick of slipping in to listen to him that I might have turned Piagnone too, if I had not been hindered by the liberal nature of my art; and also by the length of the sermons, which are sometimes a good while before they get to the moving point. But, as Messer Niccolò here says, the Frate lays hold of the people by some power over and above his prophetic visions. Monks and nuns who prophesy are not of that rareness. For what says Luigi Pulci? ‘Dombruno’s sharp-cutting scimitar had the fame of being enchanted; but,’ says Luigi, ‘I am rather of opinion that it cut sharp because it was of strongly-tempered steel.’ Yes, yes; Paternosters may shave clean, but they must be said over a good razor.”
“See, Nello!” said Macchiavelli, “what doctor is this advancing on his Bucephalus? I thought your piazza was free from those furred and scarlet-robed lackeys of death. This man looks as if he had had some such night adventure as Boccaccio’s Maestro Simone, and had his bonnet and mantle pickled a little in the gutter; though he himself is as sleek as a miller’s rat.”
“A‑ah!” said Nello, with a low long-drawn intonation, as he looked up towards the advancing figure—a round-headed, round-bodied personage, seated on a raw young horse, which held its nose out with an air of threatening obstinacy, and by a constant effort to back and go off in an oblique line showed free views about authority very much in advance of the age.
“And I have a few more adventures in pickle for him,” continued Nello, in an undertone, “which I hope will drive his inquiring nostrils to another quarter of the city. He’s a doctor from Padua; they say he has been at Prato for three months, and now he’s come to Florence to see what he can net. But his great trick is making rounds among the contadini. And do you note those great saddlebags he carries? They are to hold the fat capons and eggs and meal he levies on silly clowns with whom coin is scarce. He vends his own secret medicines, so he keeps away from the doors of the druggists; and for this last week he has taken to sitting in my piazza for two or three hours every day, and making it a resort for asthmas and squalling bambini. It stirs my gall to see the toad-faced quack fingering the greasy quattrini, or bagging a pigeon in exchange for his pills and powders. But I’ll put a few thorns in his saddle, else I’m no Florentine. Laudamus! he is coming to be shaved; that’s what I’ve waited for. Messer Domenico, go not away: wait; you shall see a rare bit of fooling, which I devised two days ago. Here, Sandro!”
Nello whispered in the ear of Sandro, who rolled his solemn eyes, nodded, and, following up these signs of understanding with a slow smile, took to his heels with surprising rapidity.
“How is it with you, Maestro Tacco?” said Nello, as the doctor, with difficulty, brought his horse’s head round towards the barber’s shop. “That is a fine young horse of yours, but something raw in the mouth, eh?”
“He is an accursed beast, the vermocane seize him!” said Maestro Tacco, with a burst of irritation, descending from his saddle and fastening the old bridle, mended with string, to an iron staple in the wall. “Nevertheless,” he added, recollecting himself, “a sound beast and a valuable, for one who wanted to purchase, and get a profit by training him. I had him cheap.”
“Rather too hard riding for a man who carries your weight of learning: eh, Maestro?” said Nello. “You seem hot.”
“Truly, I am likely to be hot,” said the doctor, taking off his bonnet, and giving to full view a bald low head and flat broad face, with high ears, wide lipless mouth, round eyes, and deep arched lines above the projecting eyebrows, which altogether made Nello’s epithet “toad-faced” dubiously complimentary to the blameless batrachian. “Riding from Peretola, when the sun is high, is not the same thing as kicking your heels on a bench in the shade, like your Florence doctors. Moreover, I have had not a little pulling to get through the carts and mules into the Mercato, to find out the husband of a certain Monna Ghita, who had had a fatal seizure before I was called in; and if it had not been that I had to demand my fees—”
“Monna Ghita!” said Nello, as the perspiring doctor interrupted himself to rub his head and face. “Peace be with her angry soul! The Mercato will want a whip the more if her tongue is laid to rest.”
Tito, who had roused himself from his abstraction,
