Romola. I do not believe it! God's kingdom is something wider else let me stand outside it with the beings that I love. That's Eat eggs in Lent and the snow will melt. what I say to our people when they get noisy over their cups at San Gallo, and talk of raising a romor (insurrection) I say, never do you plan a romor; you may as well try to fill Arno with buckets. When there's water enough Arno will be full, and that will not be till the torrent is ready. : The Frate sees a long way before him; that I believe. But he doesn't see birds caught with winking at them, as some of our people try to make out. sees sense and not nonsense. He If there's hot metal on the anvil, I lose no time before I strike; but I don't spend good hours in tinkling on cold iron, or in standing on the pavement as thou dost, Goro, with snout upward, like a pig under an oak-tree. Sia; I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weathercock. It's made to cheat But, for my part, I would It's like carrying fear There, then, take the coat. sword, or poniard, or arrow. never put such a thing on. about with one. I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts. A philosopher is the last sort of animal I should choose to resemble. I find it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for life. Fowls cackle, asses bray, women chatter, and philosophers spin false reasons-that's the effect the sight of the world brings out of them. Well, I am an animal that paints instead of cackling, or braying, or spinning lies. Women think walls are held together with honey. A perfect traitor should have a face which vice can write no marks on-lips that will lie with a dimpled smile—eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them-cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard. Va, Nello, thy tongue runs on as usual, like a mill when the Arno's full-whether there's grist or not. -0· There you go, supposing you'll get people to put their legs into a sack because you call it a pair of hosen. Va! your human talk and doings are a tame jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour. Holy Madonna ! it seems as if widows had nothing to do now but to buy their coffins, and think it a thousand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying themselves a little when they've got their hands free for the first time.-Monna Brigida. Let Romola muffle herself as she will, every one wants to see what there is under her veil, for she has that way of walking like a procession.-Monna Brigida. Not but that the world is bad enough now-a-days, for the scandals that turn up under one's nose at every corner—I don't want to hear and see such things, but one can't go about with one's head in a bag.-Monna Brigida. What I say is, we've got to reverence the saints, and not to set ourselves up as if we could be like them, else life would be unbearable.—Monna Brigida. Blaspheme not against the usages of our city. There are new wits who think they see things more truly because they stand on their heads to look at them, like tumblers and mountebanks, instead of keeping the attitude of rational men. Doubtless it makes little difference to Maestro Vaiano's monkeys whether they see our Donatello's statue of Judith with their heads or their tails uppermost.—Pietro Cennini. There has been no great people without processions and the man who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to anything but contempt, is like the puddle that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed by.-Pietro Cennini. Our people-no offence to you, Cronaca-will run after anything in the shape of a prophet, especially if he prophesies terrors and tribulations.—Pietro Cennini. No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.-Pietro Cennini. I remember our Antonio getting bitter about his chiselling and enamelling of these metal things, and taking in a fury to painting, because, said he, 'the artist who puts his work into gold and silver, puts his brains into the melting-pot.'-Ridolfi. -0 After all the talk of scholars, there are but two sorts of government: one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest.-Ridolfi. I remember one day at Careggi, when Luigi was in his rattling vein, he was maintaining that nothing perverted the palate like opinion. 'Opinion,' said he, 'corrupts the saliva—that's why men took to pepper : Scepticism is the only philosophy that doesn't bring a taste in the mouth.' 'Nay,' says poor Lorenzo de' Medici, 'you must be out there, Luigi. Here is this untainted sceptic, Matteo Franco, who wants hotter sauce than any of us.' 'Because he has a strong opinion of himself, flashes out Luigi, 'which is the original egg of all other opinion. He a sceptic? He believes in the immortality of his own verses. He is such a logician as that preaching friar who described the pavement of the bottomless pit.' Poor Luigi! his mind was like sharpest steel that can touch nothing without cutting.-Ridolfi. Every revelation, whether by visions, dreams, portents, or the written word, has many meanings which it is given to the illuminated only to unfold.—Nanni. A wise dissimulation is the only course for moderate rational men in times of violent party feeling.—Tornabuoni. -O To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.-Pucci. Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.—Cei. END OF 'ROMOLA.' |