If he demurs; the whole should prove enough
To pay for this same cousin's freak.

Beside,

What's better and what's all I care about,

Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!

Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
The cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.

I regret little, I would change still less.
Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
The very wrong to Francis !

- it is true

I took his coin, was tempted and complied,

And built this house and sinned, ́nd all is said.

My father and my mother died of want.

Well, had I riches of my own? you see

How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.

240

25

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:
And I have labored somewhat in my time

And not been paid profusely. Some good son
Paint my two hundred pictures — let him try!

No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,
You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance -
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel's reed,

For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me
To cover the three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So-still they overcome
Because there's still Lucrezia,

as I choose.

Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my love.

263. Leonard: Leonardo da Vinci.

260

FRA LIPPO LIPPI.

I AM poor brother Lippo, by your leave!

You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!
What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
And here you catch me at an alley's end
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,

Do,
- harry out, if you must show your zeal,
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,
And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,
Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!
Aha! you know your betters? Then, you'll take
Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat,
And please to know me likewise. Who am I?
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off — he's a certain... how d'ye call?
Master a... Cosimo of the Medici,

I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!
Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,

How you affected such a gullet's-gripe!

But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves
Pick up a manner, nor discredit you :

Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets
And count fair prize what comes into their net?

He's Judas to a tittle, that man is !

Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health

Of the munificent House that harbors me

ΤΟ

20

17. Cosimo of the Medici: Cosimo, or Cosmo, de' Medici, surnamed the Elder, a celebrated Florentine statesman, and a patron of learning and the arts; b. 1389, d. 1464.

23. pilchards: a kind of fish.

(And many more beside, lads! more beside !) And all's come square again. I'd like his face His, elbowing on his comrade in the door

With the pike and lantern, for the slave that holds
John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair

With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)
And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped !
It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,
A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!
Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.
What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,

You know them, and they take you? like enough!
I saw the proper twinkle in your eye

'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.

Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.
Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands
To roam the town and sing out carnival,

And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints
And saints again. I could not paint all night-
Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,

A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song-
Flower o' the broom,

Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!

Flower o' the quince,

I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?

Flower o' the thyme - and so on. Round they went.

Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter

30

40

50

Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight, three slim shapes,

And a face that looked up... zooks, sir, flesh and blood,

That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,

Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,

All the bed-furniture · a dozen knots,

34. John Baptist's head: an imaginary picture.

60

There was a ladder ! Down I let myself,

Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,
And after them. I came up with the fun

Hard by Saint Lawrence, hail fellow, well met,
Flower o' the rose,

If I've been merry, what matter who knows?

And so, as I was stealing back again,

To get to bed and have a bit of sleep

Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work

On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast

Ah, I see!

With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,
You snap me of the sudden.
Though your eye twinkles still,
Mine's shaved

you a monk, you say

shake your head

the sting's in that!

If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!
I was a baby when my mother died

And father died and left me in the street.

I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat,
The wind doubled me up and down I went.
Old aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand
(Its fellow was a stinger, as I knew), |

And so along the wall, over the bridge,

By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,
While I stood munching my first bread that month:
So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father
Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection-time,

67. Saint Lawrence: church of San Lorenzo, in Florence, famous for the tombs of the Medici, adorned with Michel Angelo's Day and Night, Morning and Evening, etc. See Hawthorne's Italian Note-Books.

88. Old aunt Lapaccia: Mona Lapaccia, his father's sister.

"To quit this very miserable world?

Will you renounce"... " the mouthful of bread?" thought I;
By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me ;

I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,
Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house,
Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici
Have given their hearts to - all at eight years old.
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,
'Twas not for nothing the good bellyful,

The warm serge and the rope that goes

And day-long blessed idleness beside!

all round,

"Let's see what the urchin's fit for ". - that came next.
Not overmuch their way, I must confess.

Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:
Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!
Flower o' the clove,

All the Latin I construe is, " Amo" I love!
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together as my fortune was,
Watching folk's faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse or kick him for his pains,
Which gentleman processional and fine,
Holding a candle to the Sacrament,

Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch

The droppings of the wax to sell again,

Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,

How say I?— nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street, -

100

IIO

120

121. the Eight: gli Otto di guerra, surnamed i Santi, the Saints; a magistracy composed of Eight citizens, instituted by the Florentines, during their war with the Church, in 1376, for the administration of the city government. Two were chosen from the Signori, three, from the Mediocri (Middle Classes), and three, from the Bassi (Lower Classes). For their subsequent history, see Le Istorie Fiorentine di Niccolò Machiavelli.

122. How say I?- nay, worse than that, which dog bites, etc.