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 THE TOWER OF TADDEO
 
 THREE NEW NOVELS 
 
 A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE FEATHER. By 
 
 Tasma, Author of ' The Penance of Portia 
 James.' Jn 2 vols. At all Libraries. 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. A Novel. By 
 By I. Zangwill, Author of ' The Old Maids' 
 Club.' In 3 vols. At all Libraries. 
 Athcnaum.—' Truly admirable.' 
 
 CAPT'N DAVY S HONEYMOON, Etc. By Hall 
 Caine. Uniform with 'The Bondman' and 
 'The Scapegoat.' In 1 vol. Crown 8vo, 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 Scotsman.— 'These stories are simply delightful.' 
 
 London : 
 IIEINEMANN, 21, Bedford Stree-, W.C.
 
 THE 
 
 TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 BY 
 
 O U I D A 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' fXDER TWO FLAG«;,* ETC. 
 
 IX THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINE M A N N 
 1892 
 
 \AU rights rese>-7'ed]
 
 f^3 
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was a high square tower, brown and 
 gray, standing in a narrow street ; one of 
 the oldest of the once numerous towers 
 of Florence. It was of great height, and 
 dark with age, and rose above the lofty 
 houses which surrounded it ; its machi- 
 colated roofs and its iron vane and 
 wooden flagstaff looked black against 
 the sky. But warlike, and stalwart, and 
 austere as it was, it had been given both 
 grace and poetry by its builders, who 
 
 VOL. 1. I
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 had belonged to that age in which men 
 knew so well how to unite the useful 
 and the beautiful, how to harmonize the 
 lovely with the formidable, and how to 
 use the sports of peace to hide the 
 strength of war. For it had been built 
 by the great builder of its neighbour, 
 the Jeweller's Bridge, and it was called 
 now, as it had been called in the days of 
 its rising, the Tower of Taddeo. 
 
 Tradition indicated it also as at one 
 time his residence, but this rested only 
 on rumour ; that he had been its archi- 
 tect the archives of the city proved 
 beyond any doubt. He had built it as 
 he built and painted so much else that 
 was beautiful. Beauty in those days was 
 necessary as air to those men, so much 
 greater in every art than are the men of
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 3 
 
 these days ; and the makers of all these 
 mighty mediaeval streets of Italy loved to 
 decorate them w^ith marble and majolica 
 and terra-cotta, and to put niches in 
 them for Madonna's shrines and statues 
 of the saints, and allegorical devices, and 
 inscriptions in the Latin tongue and iron 
 scrollwork made by hand into the utmost 
 delicacy of flower and foliage. 
 
 This tower was rich in all such 
 decoration, and was sometimes called as 
 well the House of the Loves (Casa 
 degli Amorini), from the winged 
 children, by Luca delle Robbia, which 
 clustered together over its archway, and 
 held aloft the shield of the great family 
 for whom it had been built, a Tuscan 
 branch of those Brancaleone who once 
 were lords of Cesena and Imola.
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Above their shield was a shrine, with 
 the Virgin and Child seated beneath a 
 canopy, which had, it was said, wrought 
 a miracle in the plague, and a framework 
 of white and green lilies was around 
 them. Above these were other winged 
 children, and other garlands of lilies, and 
 above these, again, was the figure of a 
 bishop with a lamb at his feet ; and all 
 this ornament went upward, upward, 
 upward, until figures and flowers . 
 mounted as high as the lines of the 
 battlements, and were full of bright 
 colour, and wholly unspoiled, although 
 four centuries, if one, had gone by since 
 they had been placed there to brighten 
 the dark and gruesome walls, which 
 were pierced with ogive windows and 
 kneeling windows, barred with iron
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 gratings, while below these were iron 
 rings for torches, and iron sconces for 
 lamps, and one massive oaken iron- 
 studded door. 
 
 A narrow and dark staircase oi stone, 
 very steep, went from top to bottom of 
 the tower ; half its lower chambers 
 served as a store place for oils, cheeses, 
 and pastes to a chandler ; and a seller of 
 fuel had the other half filled with his 
 charcoal wood and pine cones ; on the 
 narrow mezzanina above lived a cabinet- 
 maker, a tailor, and a shoemaker, whilst 
 the first, second, and third floors were 
 occupied by a bookseller and librarian, 
 and were known in the quarter as the 
 Libre ria Ardiglione. 
 
 On these floors every yard of space 
 was filled to overflowing with books.
 
 6 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 There was a little kitchen, a little sitting- 
 room, two little bedrooms, mere closets ; 
 and all the rest served as storage for 
 books, books, books, nothing but books 
 — and old books all of them, moreover — 
 for their owner would no more have sold 
 new books than he would have sold daily 
 newspapers ; either were abominations in 
 his sight. A place of business might 
 easily have been put in a more accessible 
 locality than the Tower of Taddeo. But 
 his father had been there before him, 
 and his grandfather also ; and if the dark, 
 steep, breakneck stairs deterred customers 
 from mounting them, its present pro- 
 prietor, Francesco Ardiglione, commonly 
 called Ser Checchi, had more leisure 
 time in which to pore over his treasures, 
 and chase the mice away from them, and
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 add to them by visits to bookstalls in the 
 town, and to any remote ancient rural 
 place where it was known that there were 
 any volumes of interest or age to be pur- 
 chased. Books, even choice and antique 
 ones, fetch but little in Italy ; and many 
 scores of valuable volumes rot away in 
 old rooms or granaries, or cellars, no one 
 noticing them except the rats. In the 
 country which once produced the noblest 
 literature in the world, books are in the 
 present era the least esteemed, are read 
 the least, and are regarded with the 
 most indifference and contempt. 
 
 Ardiglione was a man of some sixty- 
 five years old ; he had the true scholar's 
 stoop of the throat and shoulders, and the 
 true scholar's eyes, luminous and benign 
 and dreamy ; his head was fine, with
 
 8 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 white hair which fell softly off a 
 broad and noble forehead, and a com- 
 plexion smooth, pale, and delicate, of the 
 faint yellow hue oi old ivory. In stature 
 he was short, and in build frail and spare. 
 His clothes were always very shabby, and 
 his gait was awkward ; but no one who 
 looked on him could doubt that he had 
 gentle blood in his veins and vast learn- 
 ing in his brain. 
 
 Everyone called him Ser Checchi, 
 which is the Tuscan diminutive of Fran- 
 cesco, and he was the jest of the neigh- 
 bourhood for his absence of mind and 
 his simplicity in money matters ; but no 
 one, not the boldest and most impudent 
 little rascal of the streets, would have 
 dared to joke at him to his face, and the 
 rudest rough of the populace stood aside
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 respectfully to let him go by on the 
 curbstone. 
 
 He had married late in life, but his 
 wife had long been dead, having be- 
 queathed to him a ceaseless regret and 
 two young children — a son, Cirillo, and 
 a daughter, Beldia. Cirillo was a cause 
 of trouble, Beldia was a perennial spring 
 of joy. Their mother had been a Ger- 
 man Swiss from the Canton of Freiburg, 
 and they and her great-grandmother, a 
 woman of Leyden, had given to the girl 
 her sweet serenity oi temper, as well as 
 her fair hair, her fair skin, and her fine 
 health. The boy had gone back for his 
 type to far-oflF ancestors of more violent 
 and headstrong temper, and had the dark 
 brows, the black close- curling hair, the 
 olive skin, the olive face, the slender
 
 lo THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 
 
 limbs, of the young men of Luca Signor- 
 elli. In bygone days the Ardiglione had 
 been amongst the territorial nobility 
 of the Casentino, wild and arrogant 
 people, riding out from their own castle 
 gates, and holding their own against the 
 Pope and the devil. In recent genera- 
 tions their impoverished descendants had 
 become harmless, plodding, laborious 
 citizens, tradespeople, and the like, living 
 quietly, plainly, and honestly; but Cirillo 
 seemed to have soared high over the 
 heads of these his nearer progenitors, and 
 to have come straight down from the 
 days of the free lances and the mountain 
 lords. 
 
 * Race is a strange thing !' said Ser 
 Checchi, whenever he looked at his 
 young son. ' You may bury the warrior's
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 seed in a trader's till for centuries and 
 centuries, and at the end of them it will 
 start up armed, and cry for blood/ 
 
 He was sorely troubled by his son ; 
 and shaken by his exorbitant demands 
 out of that peaceful, dusty, fragrant at- 
 mosphere which surrounds those who 
 live amongst old books. Beldia, on the 
 contrary, never had given him a mo- 
 ment's uneasiness since her babyish limbs 
 had been strapped down in her swaddling 
 clothes, and laid out in the sun by her 
 country nurse, amongst the honeyed figs, 
 and the drying tomatoes on the bench of 
 a farmhouse door in the southern hills. 
 
 Despite the infantine captivity of her 
 swaddling bands, she had grow into a 
 tall and gracious woman, very finely 
 formed, and having the more massive
 
 12 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 muscle of her mother's race and her 
 mother's sunny hair and milk-white 
 complexion. On her reposed all the 
 governrnent of the family : the domestic 
 direction, the tutelage of the youths who 
 helped to carry on such business as was 
 done, and all matters great and small 
 appertaining to the Ardiglione house- 
 hold and to the small country place 
 lying to the south of the city which be- 
 longed to her father. All larger financial 
 questions were settled by Ser Checchi 
 himself, but all smaller ones were the 
 affair of Beldia ; and even at seventeen 
 years old her hands and her mind were 
 full, and her thoughts as busied as 
 though she were a matron of fifty. She 
 had a single servant who cooked, swept, 
 ironed and dusted ; a sturdy widow, by
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 13 
 
 name Veronica, who did the marketing, 
 saw to the Hnen, and cleaned as much as 
 the presence of so many books allowed 
 to be cleaned ; but this was all the help 
 which Ser Checchi's daughter ever had, 
 and she worked diligently and cheerfully 
 herself all the year round. 
 
 It was she who set the flowers in fresh 
 water under the Madonna's shrine every 
 morning, who kept pots of geraniums 
 and clove pinks and lemon verbena 
 growing behind the broad casements, 
 who, on the flat roof behind the battle- 
 ments, had a little garden of young 
 lemon-trees and rose-bushes, mignonette 
 and sweet herbs, protected by matting in 
 winter- time from the north winds which 
 sweep down from the Apennines. It 
 was Beldia who freed the mice from the
 
 14 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 traps which Veronica set, and cherished 
 the swallows who built beneath the ma- 
 chicolations, and petted Lillo the ware- 
 house mastiff, and her own white 
 Maremma dog Folko; and threw crumbs 
 to the sparrows perching among the 
 plants on the roofs, and carried carrots, 
 and crusts, and cabbage-leaves to the 
 charcoal-seller's mule, who was stabled 
 in the basement. 
 
 ' If she were not so clever, one would 
 say she was daft,' said Veronica, a good- 
 natured soul, to whom, nevertheless, a 
 sparrow only existed for the spit, and 
 mice for the cats, and the food of a dog 
 and the provender of a mule only 
 concerned those who owned them. 
 
 Beldia had inherited from her mother 
 one of those benignant and tender souls
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 15 
 
 whose compassion is as wide as the sea 
 and whose kindness embraces all earth's 
 creatures. 
 
 ' The heart of St. Francis came back 
 into the world in your body,' her father 
 said to her once, seeing her standing on 
 the roof in the sunshine amongst the 
 young lemon-trees, with the pigeons and 
 sparrows and swallows flying about her. 
 
 ' Beldia was only a nurse, not a saint,' 
 she said with a smile. Her namesake 
 was nurse to Santa Fina, oi San Ge- 
 mignano, and so has a humble place in 
 Hagiology. 
 
 '• It is well for me that I shall have 
 you to be mine,' said Ser Checchi, think- 
 ing that the day might not be so far dis- 
 tant from him when he should grow dull 
 of sight, and stiff of limb, and able only
 
 1 6 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 
 
 to sit and dream of books long read, and 
 days long dead, as Petrarca used to sit in 
 the loggia at Arqua. 
 
 At present, however, he was, though 
 of slight frame, strong, and active after 
 his own serious and leisurely fashion, and 
 his physical and mental strength had 
 been little impaired by his sedentary 
 habits and his preference of the study to 
 the air. His daughter incessantly medi- 
 tated on and provided for his comfort 
 and safety ; and dry shoes after a muddy 
 walk, warm possets after a chilly day, 
 well-aired linen, and well-cooked food, 
 had not a little to do with his excellent 
 enjoyment of health. 
 
 When he always found his coffee 
 ready at six in the morning, his dinner 
 ready at mid-day, his linen fresh and
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 17 
 
 whole, his papers arranged and docketed, 
 his beloved books classified as far as he 
 would permit such classification to dis- 
 turb their chaos, he owed it all to Beldia, 
 but it never occurred to him that it 
 was so. 
 
 ' Good child, good child !' he said 
 sometimes to her dreamily, and she was 
 more than content. 
 
 ' He never sees that the signorina is 
 letting all her youth and playtime go 
 by for his sake,' the servant Veronica 
 grumbled to herself. ' He thinks a 
 sight more of that graceless, heartless, 
 devil-may-care spendthrift, Cirillo.' 
 
 Yet it was not that Ser Checchi 
 thought little of his daughter : he 
 thought much of her, but he was so 
 used to rely on her, to turn to her, and 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 THE TOWER OT TADDEO 
 
 to have all his material necessities fore- 
 stalled by her, that he noticed what he 
 owed to her no more than most people — 
 alas for them ! — notice the beauty of 
 sunshine and sky. 
 
 Beldia was esteemed by the few, the 
 very few, who knew her as a grave, 
 strong, energetic maiden, careful as to 
 pence, watchful as to waste, thinking 
 constantly of the little clerk's misde- 
 meanours, the price of fish and meat, 
 the cost of clothing, the rise in charcoal, 
 the wear and tear of linen. But under- 
 neath that prosaic surface there were in 
 her a musing and poetic nature, an 
 . imagination which was mute, but none 
 the less vitally and quickly touched to 
 fine excess. When she sat in the dusk 
 of the early evening, or in the faint
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 19 
 
 lamplight of the later night, whilst her 
 father was busied amongst his books 
 below her, and the serving-woman in 
 her kitchen above, she would let her 
 work drop on her lap, and the sha- 
 dowy spirits of the past come about 
 her. 
 
 As a little child she had been brought 
 up on their farm in the Casentino ; and 
 those early years had filled her with a 
 need of and longing for country sights 
 and sounds, wide landscapes and broad 
 skies. But the tower was still more dear 
 to her, too, in its own way, and when 
 the wood burned on its hearth, and the 
 lamplight flickered on its grated win- 
 dows, and its oaken chests, and its dusky 
 ancient pictures, it had for her the warm, 
 deep, abiding charm of home : that
 
 20 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 
 
 charm of which those of her generation 
 usually understood nothing. 
 
 It is a charm which takes most hold, 
 and can best be felt, in ancient houses, 
 where many generations have lived and 
 loved, where the suffering of birth and of 
 death has gone on for centuries, where 
 the painted angels on the ceilings have 
 looked down in pity on so many beds of 
 pain, and the bright cherubs on the walls 
 have laughed through their maze of 
 flowers on so many lovers whose bones 
 have mouldered for so many years ; in 
 ancient houses, whence emanates a sense 
 of multitudinous life, of sacred and soft- 
 ened death, of ghosts who come tenderly 
 and in affection amongst the living who 
 have replaced them ; and in such houses 
 there is a sanctity which endears them to
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 21 
 
 the dwellers in them, if these have eyes 
 to see the unseen, and souls tender enough 
 to venerate the dead. 
 
 The back of the tower rose above the 
 Arno amidst red-roofed and brown-roofed 
 buildings, gray and moss-grown with age, 
 with terraces on which linen was blow- 
 ing, and wallflowers were blossoming, 
 and weather-vanes of all kinds and colours 
 and shapes were shifting about to the 
 winds. From her own platform at the 
 top of the tower Beldia could see the 
 river-reaches to right and left of her, 
 and the beautiful lines of the mountains ; 
 the cool dark woods of the Cascine and 
 the shining marbles of San Miniato ; and 
 across the water, above the palaces on 
 the opposite quay, the dome oi the 
 cathedral and the lantern-tower of the
 
 22 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Palazzo Vecchio. It was her supreme 
 happiness and recreation to stand there 
 at sunrise or at sunset, and look up at 
 the glad and glorious sky above, and the 
 gliding stream beneath, now green, now 
 brown, now dun coloured, with the re- 
 flections of the lights trembling on its 
 surface, and all the sounds of the city 
 softened and spiritualized by distance. 
 
 There were so many of those towers 
 once in this city ; and now they are 
 nearly all levelled and destroyed by 
 people who prefer factory chimneys 
 with their hellish stench, and the 
 frightful follies of the jerry-builder. 
 Dante would have sat quite content 
 amongst its book-lined walls, and Fra 
 Angelico would have painted happily at 
 its barred casement, and Leonardo would
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 23 
 
 have drawn and modelled joyfully on its 
 flat roof so near the clouds, amidst the 
 pigeons and the bells ; but what could 
 any one of them do in a machine-room 
 or in a modern villa ? 
 
 The old tower dated far back to the 
 earliest days of the Republic. It had 
 felt iron and lead and flame. It had 
 seen combat rage and blood flow like 
 water down its narrow street. It had 
 known all that full, rich, various, 
 splendid life which came with the 
 efl^ulgence of the Renaissance. It was 
 itself a part and parcel of all that noble 
 and splendid existence, and as such it 
 was doubly dear to this quiet maiden, 
 deep down in whose heart was the 
 reverence for all great things, and heroic 
 lives, and beautiful creations.
 
 24 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 She could make a fritter ably, and 
 could iron like a clear-starcher, and 
 could see quickly when the butcher and 
 the baker tried to cheat her ; but all the 
 same she honoured art and nature, and 
 when she saw them outraged she was 
 herself ashamed. She had been born 
 with the eves which see, and the ears 
 which hear, and the scholarly and his- 
 toric atmosphere in which she had been 
 reared from her babyhood made her 
 perceptions clearer, and her thoughts 
 finer, than are those of most women. 
 She loved these things which were 
 around her ; and she knew why she 
 loved them, which was more. 
 
 For an unintelligent love, whether 
 for man or for nature, is of little benefit 
 to either, because it knows not what it
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 does ; and so does ofttimes more harm 
 than good, and only tortures when it 
 seeks to serve. 
 
 When she had leisure to dream, she 
 liked to lay her head back against her 
 chair, and close her eyes, and think of 
 all those scenes on which the iron torch- 
 rings and stanchions and the dark and 
 gruesome w^alls had gazed. Full many 
 a time must they have seen their creator, 
 Gaddi himself, watching them in their 
 rising, his fine straight profile like a 
 cameo against the light, and the woollen 
 lucco wrapped about his head to keep 
 out the north wind. 
 
 She had a great reverence for the 
 elder Gaddi ; it seemed to her that he 
 had never got his full meed of fame. 
 He built the Campanile, and it is called
 
 26 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Giotto's; he built San Michele, and it is 
 called Orcagna's. True, those masters 
 did design both belfry and church ; but 
 he built them, and all alone he both 
 designed and built the Ponte Vecchio, 
 the Goldsmith's Bridge, which has no 
 rival anywhere except the arch named 
 after the alta Riva of Venice, and which 
 has stood the sieges and floods and 
 storms of six hundred years, and will 
 stand six centuries more unless the 
 accursed greed of municipal speculation 
 seizes on its stones. Taddeo Gaddi led 
 one of the loveliest, happiest, manliest 
 lives ever led on earth, such a life as it 
 is impossible to lead now, because the 
 atmosphere which then made it possible 
 nowhere now exists. But oi fame in the 
 mouths of posterity he has not had his
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 27 
 
 full portion. Of the many thousands 
 who every season pass over his bridge, 
 scarce one Florentine, or one foreigner, 
 in a million remembers its architect. 
 
 In old times the tower had been a 
 fortress, and had felt the tramp of steel- 
 clad feet and the roar of discharging 
 arquebuses ; many a dead body had been 
 flung or dragged down its stairs, many 
 an awful night of flame and fury had 
 settled darkly down upon its roof ; 
 torches had flared in its rings to light 
 many a mortal combat, and many a 
 foeman had fallen stiff and stark upon 
 its stones. It had stood there in the 
 Borgo San Jacopo ever since a.d. 1230, 
 the date carved on the stone of its 
 threshold, and the whole course of 
 Florentine history had passed through
 
 28 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 the deep and narrowed street on which 
 its frontage looked. Like its street, it 
 had seen the citizens in mortal feud 
 with the mercenaries, and the artisans in 
 fierce struggle with the ducal or imperial 
 soldiers ; and had seen also many lovelier, 
 happier, gayer scenes, when the white 
 palfreys had ambled with a nuptial party 
 beneath its walls, and the carnival masques 
 had danced and rioted. It had heard 
 the rousing calls of trumpet and bugle ; 
 and the mellow rhythm of chant and 
 anthem ; the hiss of burning oil and the 
 shriek oi ravaged women ; the resound- 
 ing tread of the warhorse and the sweet 
 singing of the Virgin's litany. It had 
 beheld the Conte Verde pace gaily over 
 the bridge, and the standard of justice 
 rise in Michel di Lando's hand, and
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 29 
 
 Cosimo de' Medici sally out with his 
 attendant dwarf to the siege of Siena, 
 and Tasso pass on his tired horse, 
 travelling from Ferrara, and Bianca 
 Cappello go by with her fatal beauty, 
 and Boccaccio hasten daily on his visits 
 to his friend and scribe Francesco 
 Manelli ; and the Bardia's Dianora watch 
 for her lover with her silken rope ; and 
 Ariosto and his lady oi the golden palms 
 come forth from the Hospice of the 
 Knights of Malta and walk in peace 
 together. 
 
 Once, tradition said. Saint Catherine 
 had come up these very stairs when on 
 her visit hard by to Nicolo Soderini ; 
 and Charles VIII. 's superb entry and 
 stealthy exit had both passed along under 
 it, and troops of wild condottiere had
 
 30 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 ridden past in festal bravery, and ladies' 
 silken litters had been borne in gay- 
 procession, and painters and singers had 
 sung May-day lays and Christmas carols 
 to their mistresses in the moonlight ; 
 and it had seen the green maio blossom- 
 ing and swinging in its doorway ; and 
 on the night of the Fierucolone had 
 been alive with sparkling, waving, fiery 
 tow ; and the rusty big bell which hung 
 below its flagstaff had added its voice to 
 the clamour of the Carmine chimes 
 ringing in the rising of the Ciompi ; 
 and Francesco Ferruccio had run about 
 under its shadow, a bright, bold baby 
 with fearless eyes and sturdy limbs ; and 
 its stones had bee#-Jiot with the re- 
 flection of the fires burning the Bardi 
 palaces and towers ; and Baccio della
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 31 
 
 Porta and Giovanni di San Giovanni 
 had passed by there in gentler times, 
 going to their studios by the Romano 
 Gate ; and in the Httle church of San 
 Jacopo close at hand the nobles had 
 once met to defend their rights and 
 demand their share of government ; and 
 in the greater church of Santo Spirito 
 hard by Piero Capponi had been brought 
 to his burial with torches and banners 
 countless, and the whole magistracy and 
 populace weeping for his loss. 
 
 For anyone deeply versed in the 
 traditions of the past, and amorous of 
 their beauty, as she was, the dead arise 
 and live again in such historic and hero- 
 haunted precincts. 
 
 To the fool, to the vain, to the puffed- 
 up ape of modernity, they are but dark
 
 32 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 walls, narrow ways, dumb stones, closed 
 portals : but to those who love them 
 with humility and tenderness they are 
 full of eloquent and undying life. 
 
 Beldia dreamed of these dead people 
 often in her rare enjoyment of un- 
 occupied time, and when she lay in her 
 bed in the narrow chamber under the 
 roof they came about her, smiling gladly 
 or weeping wearily, and telling her 
 many things.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 But her moments of leisure were few 
 and always brief, for she had a great 
 deal of various work to do, and when 
 she was not actively occupied her father 
 gave her many papers to copy, and 
 manuscripts to write out clearly, for he 
 loved to pen learned dissertations on 
 disputed points of history or archaeology, 
 and printed some of these at his own 
 cost for the small, very small, number of 
 persons who were interested in the ab- 
 struse subjects which interested himself. 
 Those square, solid rooms between 
 VOL. 1. 3
 
 34 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 the four brick and stone walls of his 
 tower, encumbered with hundreds and' 
 thousands of books, bound and unbound, 
 were the whole world of Ser Checchi ; 
 and the chiming of the church bells, 
 the cries and noises of the street, the 
 twittering of the busy swallows, and the 
 clang of the belfry clocks, had no power 
 to disturb him, as he plodded through a 
 black letter treatise of some extinct eccle- 
 siastical order, or noticed respectfully, but 
 doubtingly, some questionable copy of 
 some of the Fathers of the Church, or 
 penned a learned essay on some disputed 
 point in Florentine history, or discoursed 
 upon the publications of the Giuntina 
 Classics, or the worth of some early 
 quarto from Bernardo Cennini's press. 
 Custom came rarely, and money came
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 35 
 
 sparsely to the tower of the amorini ; 
 too sparsely for all except its master, 
 who lived in the quiet shelter of his 
 book-shelves, and only woke up unwill- 
 ingly to perceive now and then that 
 there were people around him who 
 needed such tiresome and common 
 things as oil and charcoal, boots and 
 shoes, beans and bread. 
 
 To the scholar his own need of such 
 things is always an odious necessity, 
 importunate and disagreeable ; and Ser 
 Checchi, like Vespasino and Maglia- 
 becchi and Anton Cocchi before him, 
 was a scholar to the inmost fibre of his 
 heart, although only nominally a librarian 
 and a bookseller. 
 
 At such rare occasions as he was 
 absent on book-buying errands or anti-
 
 36 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 quarian researches, Beldia stayed in those 
 two sacred chambers of the Hbrary to be 
 in readiness for any customers who might 
 come thither ; but few customers of any 
 kind climbed the steep stair. She sat at 
 a Uttle ancient desk amongst a sea of 
 books, and watched the boy-clerk Poldo, 
 who was as agile as a squirrel and as 
 mischievous as a monkey, and answered 
 in her grave, sweet voice all such ques- 
 tions and demands as people put to 
 her. 
 
 The clientela of the tower was a 
 sparse but a cultured one ; it consisted 
 chiefly of aged men, grown gray in 
 meditation, bibliophiles, antiquarians, 
 philologists, professors of abstruse sciences, 
 students of ecclesiastical history, lovers 
 of what was old and obscure and difficult
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 37 
 
 to procure or decipher. From these 
 learned priests and professors, who were 
 friends of her father, she acquired a 
 mass of information of a grave and 
 noble kind, though not of the kind 
 which is popular or usual in a world 
 busied with modern things. She knew 
 as well as her father what volumes 
 treated of this, that, or the other subject, 
 and could find such authorities unerringly 
 amongst the thousands of books tossed 
 all together in a great heap, like the stones 
 on a wayside cairn. * We will ask the 
 maiden,' said all these rusty scholars one 
 to another, when they wanted any trea- 
 tise found, or any monograph on a for- 
 gotten theme discovered. Beldia could 
 find it, if anybody could. Altogether 
 unknown to herself, the name of Ser
 
 38 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 
 
 Checchi's daughter became spoken of 
 beyond these reverend gentlemen by 
 younger and more imaginative men ; a 
 narrow circle still, for it was limited to 
 scholars, and scholars of a certain kind, 
 but these, though few, brought others, 
 less learned, but equally curious about a 
 pretty girl enshrined in musty books 
 like a flower glowing among sand and 
 rocks. These younger visitants, lawyers, 
 teachers, professors, architects, and the 
 like, received but a cold welcome from 
 Beldia, and a suggestion that they could as 
 well pursue their studies at the Maglia- 
 becchian or Laurentian libraries. Never- 
 theless, two or three of them had, un- 
 daunted by her reception, made her 
 offers of marriage, which she had at 
 once, and without consideration, re-
 
 THE TO WER OF TAD DEO 39 
 
 jected; not even disturbing the peace 
 of her father by telHng him of such 
 folUes. 
 
 She loved the books and the city, the 
 country and the mountains ; and that 
 was all. She had hardly even read of 
 love, for, from the severity of her father's 
 intellectual tastes, most of the poets and 
 all the novelists were banished. She 
 knew that men and women loved, and 
 sometimes were married and sometimes 
 were not ; but it all seemed very foolish, 
 and altogether out oi her own path. Ser 
 Checchi always told her that Beatrice 
 was only a metaphor, and Laura only a 
 symbol, and it seemed to her that any 
 love which she might ever feel would 
 be also only a metaphor, only a symbol. 
 But the young men who were patronized
 
 40 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 by Veronica did not suggest to her either 
 of these. 
 
 For the moment she had no sentiment 
 save for her father, who, if he did not 
 fully appreciate her value, was most 
 gentle, kind, and reverent to her, as he 
 was to all living and dead things, from 
 the chandler's mastiff who kept guard at 
 the warehouse, to the nuns who came to 
 solicit alms at his door ; from the old 
 woman who sold vegetables on the other 
 side of the street, to the beautiful bronze 
 Bacchus which stands in a niche at the 
 corner of his street, to which he took 
 off his hat once a day regularly in me- 
 mory of the classic past which it sym- 
 bolized. It was not because he was 
 neglectful or unfeeling that it never oc- 
 curred to him that the life led by Beldia
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 41 
 
 was a dull and sad one for a woman of 
 her years ; he had taught her Latin, 
 and she had free and unrestricted access 
 to all his books : what more could any 
 human soul desire ? Moreover, when 
 the heats of July came, he went away 
 reluctantly, for her sake, to their little 
 place in the Casentino; locking up the 
 beloved books with enormous iron keys, 
 which had in other times served to lock 
 in human prisoners in the precincts of 
 the tower. He descended twice a week 
 into the city to visit them, and carried 
 up into the hill with him new purchases 
 which required looking into, or reback- 
 ing, or were worthy of study or annota- 
 tion; but these summer months at Antella 
 were painful to him, though he bore 
 them meekly, and he was never really
 
 42 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 happy until he was down again in the 
 narrow, dusky street, under the wings of 
 his own angels and amorini. To Beldia 
 the return was not so joyful : she loved 
 the breezy hills, the windswept stretches 
 of heather and gorse, the pomp of the 
 sunset, the spirituality of the sunrise, the 
 tall, straight trunks of the pine-trees with 
 the woodpeckers and the cuckoos flitting 
 between them ; the steep, narrow, sandy 
 roads, with the mule-carts of the char- 
 coal-burners winding down them ; the 
 divine rural stillness in which the distant 
 bells rang softly as with a blessing. 
 
 She loved all these things with that 
 ardour which lovers of the country know 
 so well ; and when she came back into 
 the city life, its confinement, and want 
 of light and restricted horizon were
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 43 
 
 painful to her, but she said nothing, and 
 took up her yoke of daily tasks, and 
 bore it bravely ; and after all she loved 
 the tower w^ith a fonder passion, a more 
 filial affection, than she felt for any other 
 thing or place. 
 
 She rarely w^ent out when in the 
 town for pleasure : she attended Mass at 
 one of the many churches near at hand, 
 and bought what she wanted at the 
 shops of her quarter ; sometimes she 
 went to market on such days as her 
 woman was busy ironing the linen 
 which had been washed in the country, 
 or bottling off into flasks the barrels of 
 oil and of wine which had come from 
 there. 
 
 Other generations will not know the 
 old Florence market as Beldia and
 
 44 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Veronica knew it, under the gloomy and 
 noble shadows of the ancient towers and 
 palaces ; a union of colour, form, light, 
 shade, costume, and architecture which 
 was delightful to the eyes and which 
 now is to be no more seen, because 
 greed, and bad taste, and passion for 
 change, and shame of ancient ways, and 
 jealousy of ancient fame, have conspired 
 together and decided to raze its precincts 
 to the ground". The old market, with 
 its amber-hued leathern awnings, its 
 good-humoured populace, its piles of 
 fruits, and herbs, and vegetables, its 
 centre of jest and bargain, its ever- 
 turning public spits, its noisy and joyous 
 animation, gathered underneath the 
 stately walls, the high roofs, the grated 
 casements, was a picture meet for the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 45 
 
 burin of Callot and the brush of Car- 
 paccio. Now it is no more ; the venders 
 are shut up in cases of iron and glass 
 hideous to behold, and the buyers hurry 
 over their purchases, cross and can- 
 tankerous, and the old grace and the old 
 mirth and old colours are things dead 
 and gone for ever. 
 
 But when Beldia dwelt in the tower 
 of Taddeo they were still existent ; and 
 she was wont to take her way, as soon 
 as the sun was up, over the Jeweller's 
 Bridge to the market ; always giving a 
 thought backward over the centuries to 
 Cammilla Martelli, who, for her sorrow, 
 was once seen sitting at her lone case- 
 ment on that bridge by the great Medici, 
 and knew a sultry, brief summer of love 
 and happiness, followed by a long life-
 
 46 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 
 
 time of enforced seclusion and unavailing 
 
 regret. 
 
 And yet Cammilla's had been an 
 enviable fate, she thought ; to have 
 knov^n that w^ondrous magical trans- 
 formation of circumstance, and to be 
 remembered by the poets and the scholars 
 and the artists, w^henever they pass over 
 the paved road between the little quaint, 
 glittering shops ; to live in memory thus, 
 associated for ever with the stories of 
 the city — such a destiny seemed to 
 Beldia the most beautiful kind of im- 
 mortality that anyone could wish or 
 gain. 
 
 But her remembrance of Cammilla 
 and of many another lovely legend did 
 not prevent her, when she came to the 
 market stalls, from looking very shrewdly
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 47 
 
 at the feet of the chickens she bought, 
 and at the gills of the fish she purchased, 
 to be sure of their age and freshness, 
 and no one would have been able by 
 specious words to persuade her that 
 stale spinach was fresh, or that eggs 
 from a crate were new-laid. The poetic 
 side of her nature made her say a prayer 
 for the soul of Cammilla ; but the 
 practical side of her character made her 
 get due value for every centime she 
 spent. She would give to the poor as 
 though she had Ceres' horn of plenty ; 
 but she would not be cheated out of a 
 bronze halfpenny. 
 
 Veronica scolded, shrieked, bullied, 
 and wrangled violently for an hour, 
 only to be put off at last with inferior 
 victuals ; but Beldia, though she never
 
 48 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 raised her voice a semitone higher, and 
 never said a harsh word to anyone, v^as 
 not to be imposed upon, and all the 
 market knew it. 
 
 ' It is the maiden of Taddeo's tower. 
 She must have her own way,' said the 
 sellers of fish, flesh, and fowl, provoked, 
 and yet admiring. 
 
 In these early morning excursions she 
 was dressed like a girl of the people, 
 with thick shoes and a short kirtle ; a 
 handkerchief, woollen or silken accord- 
 ing to the season, was tied over her 
 shining hair, and a big basket was poised 
 upon her arm. But there was some- 
 thing in her walk, and in the carriage of 
 her head, and in her soft, clear, low 
 speech, which spoke of race and of 
 culture, and opened a free, unmolested
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 49 
 
 passage for her amongst the noisy and 
 rough throng there. Many young men 
 looked at, followed, and would have 
 addressed her, but she daunted them by 
 the absolute unconsciousness which she 
 seemed to have of their existence, and a 
 certain severity of pride which now and 
 then hardened her features, which were 
 attractive, gentle, and fair, not unlike 
 the Madonnas of Lippo Lippi. 
 
 ' One could paint her with a nimbus, 
 and a little Christ sucking at her breast, 
 and a St. John with a lily standing at her 
 knee,' thought one of these persons 
 watching her as she stood for a moment 
 at the flower-stall : he was a teacher at 
 the Belle Arte, and spoke to a friend 
 younger than himself, who was an archi- 
 tect from Lombardy. 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 * Yes ; I see/ said the younger man. 
 ' I would sooner make her a statue of 
 Charity, with a rod of white hlies in 
 her hand, and her foot on a snake, and a 
 star on her brow shedding rays of Hght ; 
 that is my idea of Charity — the Charity 
 which thinks no evil. We have had 
 enough of Charities modelled on nursing 
 mothers. No, I am not disrespectful to 
 Correggio and Holbein, nor even to 
 Bouguereau.' 
 
 They were standing by the pillar 
 which is called the Column of Mars, 
 and where it is said that Buondelmonte 
 fell. Beldia had just passed them carry- 
 ing her basket, and had stopped at the 
 corner of the Strozzi palace to look at 
 the flowers which were there for sale. 
 
 ' How admirably she walks !' the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 51 
 
 Lombard added. ' Who is she ? A 
 poor girl ? A maiden or a matron ?' 
 
 * Not poor and not married. She is 
 the daughter of the old librarian at the 
 old tower of the Brancaleone which Tad- 
 deo Gaddi built/ replied the Florentine. 
 
 * I know the tower, I think/ said his 
 companion. ' What kind of books does 
 he sell?' 
 
 ' Old books, ecclesiastical, historical, 
 philosophical, architectural, which will 
 suit you. He is a droll old fellow, 
 crammed with useless learning ; we 
 go there sometimes to see him and his 
 girl : she is often all alone amongst the 
 books, and knows a good deal about 
 them also.' 
 
 ' She looks like some learned daughter 
 of docta Bonnonia' 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSirr OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 * Despite the market basket and the 
 handkerchief on her head ?' 
 
 ' Yes ; she wears the one till it looks 
 like Minerva's casque, and carries the 
 other as if it contained the books of the 
 Sibyl.' 
 
 ^ She is more a Madonna than a Sibyl, 
 I think.' 
 
 * Then let us hope, for her own sake, 
 that she will have the sucking Gesu, not 
 the Sibylline tomes.' 
 
 They parted company a few moments 
 later, the Florentine to go to his class at 
 the Accademia, where he was a teacher 
 of perspective ; the other, a stranger in 
 the town, strolled towards the river, 
 which was in a flood from recent rain- 
 falls, yellow and brown with earth, and 
 carrying shrubs, and trees, and hay, and
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 53 
 
 Straw, and planks, and rocks which it 
 had loosened and whirled down on its 
 way. 
 
 Insensibly following a romantic im- 
 pulse, the Lombard, a man of Brescia, 
 crossed the bridge of the Holy Trinity 
 and bent his steps to that old shady 
 quarter of Oltarno, where the tower of 
 the loves was to be found. It was very 
 little past eight of the clock ; a fine, 
 clear, breezy morning after the storms 
 of the night. The deep bell of Santo 
 Spirito was tolling sonorously for some 
 citizen's death. 
 
 ' It is too early to go and buy a book,' 
 he thought ; ' I had better go and break- 
 fast first.' 
 
 Nearly opposite to the tower which 
 he wished to observe was a humble eat-
 
 54 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 ing place, half bakery, half coffee-house, 
 with round, big loaves, and baskets of 
 eggs, and a card which intimated that 
 within might be had a cup of coffee and 
 a white roll for the small price of thirty 
 centimes. 
 
 ' This collation will not ruin me,' 
 thought the student of Brescia, whose 
 purse was scantily furnished ; and he 
 pushed open the door and entered, 
 disturbing a sleek white and gray cat by 
 his entrance. 
 
 They served him quickly, for the 
 coffee was already on the fire in a back- 
 kitchen behind the shop ; the air was 
 full of the sweet, appetising smell of 
 newly-baked bread ; the cat came and 
 had a share of the milk. Whilst he ate 
 and drank the Brescian looked at the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 55 
 
 tower, which was visible a few yards 
 farther down the street, the morning 
 sunshine gUstening on its amorini, and 
 its garlands, and its saints. 
 
 ' A fine old tower, that,' he said to 
 the woman who had served him, a 
 clean, buxom young woman, with red 
 Titian-coloured hair, and a yellow cotton 
 jacket. ' It was built by Taddeo, was 
 it not ?' 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 ' We call it Taddeo's tower, or the 
 tower of the loves, if you like that 
 better. You see all those little loves 
 gambolling above the doorway ? It be- 
 longs to old Maso Donati, the grain 
 merchant, and Ser Checchi has lived in 
 it all his life, and so did his fathers 
 before him.'
 
 56 IHE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 ' Ser Checchi ?' repeated the Brescian 
 inquiringly. 
 
 ' The old man who lives in the books 
 like a worm. The whole place is full of 
 books up to the roof; he could fill the 
 cellars, too, only Nani and Peppino have 
 them for their goods. Ser Checchi is a 
 little cracked, you know. Those over- 
 learned people always are half daft. If 
 you overfill the barrel it will leak some- 
 where.' 
 
 ' No doubt. But I am fond of books 
 myself Will he sell any ?' 
 
 * Surely ! Selling them is his trade ; 
 but nobody ever buys. They go there, 
 the old ones to read and jabber and steal 
 his learning, and the young ones to 
 make court to the signorina, for she is 
 handsome, and some think she will have
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 57 
 
 money; but I know better — che ! — the 
 old man is a leaking barrel, I tell you, 
 and his money trickles away with his 
 wits.' 
 
 She looked very knowing, and made a 
 gesture as of one who pours water upon 
 the ground, and struck the silver pin in 
 her hair a smart blow, with the air of a 
 person who could tell a great deal if she 
 chose. The Brescian conceived an in- 
 stantaneous hatred of her. 
 
 ' Do they buy your bread V he said 
 with curt significance. 
 
 * Che ! not they. They make their 
 own. They bake once a week, and so 
 eat well one day in seven, and all the 
 other six eat crusts as hard as bricks.' 
 
 * I see,' said her customer, and thought 
 to himself, ' When you want a baker's
 
 58 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 
 
 good word do not eat home-made 
 bread.' 
 
 ' There is old Ser Checchi ! — look !' 
 said the young woman, pointing to a 
 stooping figure, clothed in old-fashioned 
 clothes, which came forth from the 
 doorway underneath the playing loves. 
 
 ' Going to buy more books, I will 
 warrant !' she said with supreme con- 
 tempt. * That is the way his daughter's 
 dower goes, in old musty, fusty, mouldy, 
 mildewed, worm-eaten things which no- 
 body in their senses would ever use to wrap 
 up a pat of butter. And when I asked 
 him once if he could sell me a copy of 
 the Sesto Astrologer's Calendar, which 
 tells you all that is going to happen all 
 through the year, he laughed at me, and 
 said he did not keep such silly rubbish
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 59 
 
 in his place. Silly ! the Astrologer of 
 Sesto ! Did ever you know such impu- 
 dence ?' 
 
 ' Rank blasphemy/ replied the Lom- 
 bard, gazing curiously and reverently at 
 the venerable figure of Ser Checchi as 
 it went down the narrow street in 
 the shadow cast by the tall dark 
 houses. 
 
 ' But the librarian is away now/ he 
 added. ' If anyone wanted to buy books, 
 or to look over some in stock, would the 
 shop be open ?' 
 
 ' Shop ! Che ! He has no shop — 
 he has nothing so sensible. There are 
 rooms and rooms, and there are books 
 in all of them, one over another, like 
 the flotsam and jetsam floating and toss- 
 ing on Arno to-day, and there is
 
 6o THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Madonna Beldia to tell you all about 
 them as if she were a printed book 
 herself. If there were a shop where the 
 warehouse is, with some glass and 
 gilding and fine-bound books behind it, 
 in red and blue and yellow, as you see 
 them in Tornabuoni Street, I dare say he 
 would sell some and wouldn't be out at 
 elbows, as he is, they say, and at his 
 wits' end how to pay Cirillo's debts. 
 Yes, Cirillo is the son : a fine lad, the 
 only one of them who has any spirit or 
 sense. He has been a soldier, and now 
 he is a painter down in Rome.' 
 
 ' Art is a poor trade to all but the 
 few who " arrive," as the French say,' 
 answered the Brescian as he rose, paid 
 his three bronze coins, thanked her 
 courteously, and left the place.
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 6t 
 
 With that instinct of secrecy which 
 accompanies the dawn of all amorous 
 fancy, he did not choose that the loqua- 
 cious and malicious neighbour should 
 see him go to the tower. So he 
 sauntered in a leisurely fashion along the 
 street, lighted a cigarette and smoked it, 
 and went as far as the Piazza of Santo 
 Spirito, where he stood awhile gazing at 
 the massive dome and the graceful 
 campanile ; then he turned back and 
 retraced his steps, and before many 
 minutes had passed found himself back 
 again in that most ancient street, where 
 the loves of Luca della Robbia guarded 
 the tower portal. Arrived before the 
 door, he threw away the cigarette, and 
 began to ascend the staircase — Lillo, the 
 big brindled mastiff who belonged to
 
 62 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 the warehouse, smelling in a distant but 
 not unfriendly manner at him as he 
 went by ; he was a stranger, but Lillo 
 let him go by unchallenged. 
 
 The staircase was dark as night, being 
 lighted only by small slits in the wall 
 like portholes, through which in other 
 ages the defenders of the place had been 
 able to fire their arquebuses, or pour 
 their hot pitch on their assailants below 
 in the street. On the first floor he 
 found an open door, above which he 
 could read in a dim light the words 
 ' Libreria Ardiglione ' written on a 
 placard, and underneath them the in- 
 scription which used to be above the 
 entrance of the Marrucillian library : 
 ' Publican Maxime Pauperum Utilitatio.* 
 With uncovered head he entered this
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 63 
 
 chamber, and found himself, as the 
 bakeress had told him that he would do, 
 in a sea of books tossed one over another 
 like the petrified waves of a once- 
 heaving ocean. That chamber was only 
 occupied by the books, but in a farther 
 room he saw a boy writing at a desk, 
 and at another desk was seated the 
 woman or girl whom he had seen by 
 the Column of Mars. 
 
 Then a great diffidence came over 
 him, and although in Brescia, in Cre- 
 mona, in Bergamo, he had always been 
 ready to talk and laugh with women, he 
 stood now on the threshold of the inner 
 room hesitating and mute. 
 
 Then Beldia saw him and rose. 
 
 ' Good-morning, sir,' she said to him 
 in her serene, harmonious tones. * Is
 
 64 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 there anything in which I can have the 
 pleasure to serve you ?' 
 
 She was dressed in a plain gray gown, 
 and had no ornament of any sort, and her 
 hair was as closely wound around her 
 head as its large coils would allow ; but 
 standing there amongst the sea of books, 
 she looked to his already captured fancy, 
 as she leaned one arm upon her desk, 
 like the Sibylla Persica of Guercino : she 
 had the Sibyl's serious and yet smiling 
 expression, a look at once of meditation 
 and of expectation, of brightness and of 
 repose. 
 
 He gazed at her with such earnestness 
 • that he embarrassed her, and, seeing that 
 he did so, he stammered some request for 
 works on architecture. 
 
 ' That is rather a vague demand,' said
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 65 
 
 Beldia doubtfully. ' Of what kind, of 
 what epoch, of what tongue ?' 
 
 * Any age you will,' answered her 
 customer incoherently, ' and whether 
 Italian or Latin, it is the same to 
 me.' 
 
 Beldia hesitated, feeling that the re- 
 quest was only a feint to excuse his 
 entrance. 
 
 ' If you could return in the afternoon 
 my father would be here,' she said at 
 last. ' He is more acquainted with such 
 works than I ; he is an archaeologist, and 
 very learned.' 
 
 ' I should be honoured to make the 
 acquaintance of Ser Francesco,' replied 
 the Brescian, recovering his address as 
 he observed her embarrassment. ' But 
 I need- — I greatly need — at once a copy 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 of Piranesi : or, at least, I cannot afford 
 to purchase it, but might I be allowed to 
 verify one passage ?' 
 
 ' We have a before-letter copy of 
 Piranesi here,' said Beldia, ' and you are 
 welcome to look through any of the 
 volumes/ 
 
 She went to one spot in the crowded 
 shelves where various works of that date 
 were gathered, and pointed out the 
 ' Antichit^ Romanae ' to the stranger, 
 whilst she bade the boy Poldo take 
 the books down and carry them to the 
 table. 
 
 ' You are too good,' murmured the 
 young man ; ' I am ashamed to give so 
 much trouble.' 
 
 ^ It is no trouble,' she answered. 
 ' And my father is always glad if he can
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 67 
 
 be of use to scholars. Ours is a library 
 rather than a shop.' 
 
 ^ And a very hospitable one,' he said 
 gratefully. ' I am an architect from the 
 north, I know no one in your city, and 
 can have no claim upon your literary 
 hospitality. My name is Odisio Fon- 
 tano,' he added timidly. * Is it familiar 
 to you ?' he asked, as he saw a light 
 as of recognition pass over her face. 
 
 ' Oh, in the past,' she answered. ' It 
 was a good and great name of Lom- 
 bardy.' 
 
 ' That is a very long while ago,* said 
 the young man. ' We have fallen from 
 our high estate, and have been poor 
 people for centuries.' 
 
 ' That does not alter anything. What 
 was, was ; and the Fontano shield hangs.
 
 68 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 
 
 I believe, on the Broletto of Ber- 
 gamo.' 
 
 * Yes, truly, we were lords in Ber- 
 gamo. But that is long, long ago, as I 
 said. Now we are very poor.' 
 
 * But how did your people change 
 irom Bergamo to Brescia ?' 
 
 ' It was in the last century. My great 
 grandfather married a gentlewoman of 
 Brescia.' 
 
 ' Indeed !' said Beldia, intimating by 
 her accent that this colloquy had lasted 
 long enough. 
 
 It took him a long while to find the 
 plate or the passage which he required, 
 and ever and again he kept looking off 
 divers volumes to where Beldia sat, who 
 was writing diligently, making a copy 
 for her father of some monograph or
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 69 
 
 some annotated paragraph, and was 
 wholly undisturbed by the presence of a 
 stranger. 
 
 The sound from the narrow street 
 came muffled to that height, seeming far 
 away as in a dream ; Poldo caught flies 
 and yawned, and furtively nibbled nuts, 
 where he sat at his desk with his back 
 turned to his mistress ; the mouldy yet 
 fragrant smell of old books and of old 
 walls filled the chamber ; a stray sun- 
 beam came in through the thick, dull 
 glass, and touched the maiden's throat 
 and hair. 
 
 The young man sighed, and closed a 
 copy of Marco Recci's designs as the 
 clock tolled eleven. 
 
 ' Can you not find what you want ? 
 Tell me what it is, and perhaps I can
 
 70 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 help you/ said Beldia, as she ended the 
 last line of her copy. 
 
 He coloured and murmured his thanks 
 and excuses. 
 
 As he wanted nothing that any books 
 could give him and his search was 
 wholly fictitious, he could not reply 
 more clearly ; he could not say : ' I only 
 wanted to look at you, and see the sun- 
 shine play amongst the little curls above 
 your throat.' 
 
 ' May I return to have the honour of 
 seeing your father V he asked her, as he 
 rose and replaced the big volume with 
 respect upon its shelf. 
 
 ^ Our library is always open until six,' 
 said Beldia, taking his inquiry literally, 
 ' and my father is always glad to be of 
 use to scholars, as I told you.'
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 71 
 
 She remained standing, as a hint to 
 him to take his departure. But he still 
 lingered, fascinated by the still, ancient, 
 studious place, and its fair-haired occu- 
 pant. 
 
 * Have you anything to say ?' she asked 
 at last, a little impatiently. ' Is there 
 any message which you wish to leave — 
 any work or passage which you wish 
 especially to consult ?' 
 
 ' No, no ; nothing,' said the Lombard 
 hurriedly. ' Pardon me, madamigella ; 
 I have intruded so long. I will return 
 at three, by your kind permission.' 
 
 Then at last he went ; and Beldia, 
 returning to her seat, sought out other 
 work to do, and bent her' fair head over 
 her inkstand. 
 
 The stranger had made little impres-
 
 72 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 sion upon her ; she was so used to see 
 men come and go, and she did not con- 
 cern herself with them except as scholars. 
 This one had seemed to her a desultory 
 and half-hearted student by the dis- 
 traught manner in which he had turned 
 over the precious pages of the famous 
 works.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 At eleven Ser Checchi returned, and at 
 two o'clock they sat down to their 
 dinner in a little room which, though 
 nominally set aside for eating, was over- 
 flowing with books and papers. Their 
 dinner was frugal, but Beldia had been 
 taught by her mother that good cooking 
 means good digestion, and the dishes 
 were savoury and excellent, though few 
 in number ; the wine was the sound 
 though simple drink of their own vine- 
 yards, and artistic instinct had made her
 
 74 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 set a few daffodils and late anemones in 
 a vase of Casteldurante pottery four 
 centuries old. The slovenliness and un- 
 loveliness and disorder of ordinary Italian 
 ways were alien to her ; and the antique 
 silver shone, the old china was bright, 
 and the homespun Hnen was white and 
 scented with iris and rosemary, upon her 
 table. Ser Checchi did not notice these 
 things, but he derived a vague, uncon- 
 scious gratification from them, and would 
 have missed them had they been wanting 
 there. 
 
 To him his daughter remained always 
 a little girl. He never realized that she 
 was now twenty-three years old, and that 
 her life had not much more pleasure in 
 it than a nun's, except in so far as her 
 intelligence and her perceptions gave her
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 75 
 
 joys and interests, and her power of 
 ruling her house taught her that inde- 
 pendence which is to the character what 
 a fresh sea-wind blowing over it is to an 
 expanse of waters. 
 
 It was a very simple, regular, retired 
 life which she led in her old tower. 
 She had few friends and no distractions ; 
 but she was happy and interested in her 
 many occupations, and whether she sat 
 in winter by the open hearth with its 
 brass dogs, or in summer on her terrace 
 amongst the carnations and mignonettes, 
 her hand was busied with work, and 
 her eyes regaled themselves on a book. 
 
 It was what most women of her age 
 would have called a dull life, but she 
 was never dull ; there was so much to 
 do, so much to see to, so much to think
 
 76 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 of, and her rare leisure was never long 
 enough to learn all that she desired to 
 learn from history and art. 
 
 Her father was the great occupation 
 of her existence. To forestall all his 
 wishes, to get the best and uttermost 
 that could be got out of their means for 
 him, to spare him all trouble and worry, 
 and to be, as it were, a lamp before his 
 feet in all shadows, was her constant 
 desire and effort. Ser Checchi, man- 
 like, never guessed or measured all the 
 continual thought and care and sacrifice 
 which went to make up the sum of his 
 daily comforts and customs, and kept 
 the atmosphere of his household clear 
 and serene about him. 
 
 He loved his daughter with a great 
 and most tender love, but he thought
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 77 
 
 her lot an enviable one, and underrated, 
 because he did not understand, the un- 
 selfishness of her devotion to himself. 
 For the rest, gentle and sweet of temper 
 although he was, he held to ancient 
 views concerning parental authority, and 
 had unconsciously something of the old 
 Greek and Roman contempt for the 
 mind and the opinions of women. 
 
 She, indeed, could read Latin well, and 
 could quote great authors without error, 
 and could find chapter and verse in the 
 classics and the Fathers of the Church ; 
 and this he knew, because it was his 
 own doing that her studies had taken 
 this bent ; still, he would never have 
 consulted her seriously upon any matter 
 of business or learning, and would not 
 have deemed her opinion worth asking
 
 78 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 on anything beyond a fruit-pudding, a 
 roll of linen, or a sack of fresh coffee- 
 berries. 
 
 Therefore of his affairs, and of his 
 possessions, she knew little or nothing ; 
 all she had to do was to lay out to the 
 utmost of her ability the sum given her 
 for household expenses, rent, taxes, and 
 the wages of Veronica ; the boy, Poldo, 
 was in a manner apprenticed, and re- 
 ceived nothing but his food, which was 
 no small matter, for his appetite was 
 huge, as the human appetite usually is 
 when it can be indulged at another 
 person's expense. 
 
 To the Lombard she seemed like a 
 fair and fine lily growing in a sunless 
 garden-border ; but to her father, as to 
 herself, she appeared a maiden excep-
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 79 
 
 tionally blest, and safe, and happy, with 
 little money indeed, but otherwise most 
 ravoured. 
 
 Many a time Veronica longed to take 
 her master to task for his negligence of 
 his daughter's interest, in not having 
 had her married, or at least betrothed, 
 before her twentieth year, a period 
 which seems in Italy the commencement 
 of old age for every woman. But Ser 
 Checchi, with his dreamy gentleness, 
 inspired a respect which amounted to 
 awe in the breast of his dependents. 
 Out of his sight she despised him as a 
 useless oddity who did not know his 
 right hand from his left, and who would 
 drink vinegar for wine without perceiv- 
 ing it ; but in his presence the rough, 
 coarse, sensual mind of the servant felt
 
 8o THE TOWER OE TADDEO 
 
 the influence which emanates from a 
 high intelHgence and a stainless char- 
 acter ; she did not dare to blame her 
 employer to his face. She had never, 
 in the twenty years that she had been 
 in his service, seen him seriously angry, 
 except once. It was when Cirillo was 
 about twelve years of age ; he had stolen 
 a cake of panforte (a kind of petrified 
 plum-pudding dear to the appetite of 
 Tuscans) from the cupboard of a neigh- 
 bour, and then the wrath of the gentle 
 scholar had been terrible, and had left 
 an ineffaceable impression on the me- 
 mories of all around him. " Since then 
 Cirillo had done many worse things, but 
 Veronica had never forgotten that scene 
 after the theft of the cake. * From the 
 anger of meek Ser Checchi the saints
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 8i 
 
 deliver me !' she said often whilst cross- 
 ing herself. 
 
 ' Why will you send all the youths 
 away?' she asked her young mistress 
 once ; she had many a silver coin 
 slipped into her hand by these suitors, 
 and favoured them one and all impar- 
 tially. ' I suppose you will not spend 
 all your life dusting books and copying 
 papers, and tending on Ser Checchi day 
 and night?' 
 
 ' I dare say I shall,' replied Beldia 
 tranquilly. * Do you think that I should 
 have to work, and dust, and write, and 
 sew the less for any one of those young 
 men ? They all wish to marry me be- 
 cause they know I am useful.' 
 
 * But you are beautiful, too, my 
 dear,' said Veronica. ' And the lads see 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 that, and they would make a queen of 
 you.' 
 
 ' For a week or two, yes. And then 
 they would want their shirts, and their 
 soup, and their cigarettes, and their 
 absinthe ; and I should be the slave. I 
 would rather be my father's slave. He 
 is a tender master.' 
 
 ' Ser Checchi is good. I never said 
 he was not good,' said Veronica crossly. 
 ' But there is such a thing as pleasure, 
 and such a thing as love ; and like goes 
 to like, and youth to youth.' 
 
 ' Oh !' Beldia laughed a little with the 
 supreme derision of ignorance. ' You 
 know I do not think of these follies, 
 'Nica, and the youngsters you patronize 
 are not likely to inspire them.' 
 
 ' What do you wait for ?' grumbled
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 the old servant. ' Do you think a god 
 will come down from the skies or a 
 knight out of the tapestry ?' 
 
 ' I wait for Ulysses,' said Beldia gaily. 
 
 ' Anybody over seas ? A stranger ?' 
 said Veronica sharply, with sudden sus- 
 picion : could her young mistress have 
 an affection unknown to her faithful ser- 
 vant ? 
 
 ' Very far over seas,' replied Beldia. 
 ' Over the far, far seas of death.' 
 
 ' Pish ! Some of your rubbishing 
 history men !' said Veronica, with scorn; 
 to her thinking a living lover, who wore 
 a gold watch, chain, and a ruby ring, and 
 who could take his dama to the Pagliano 
 and the Politeama, was worth all the 
 heroes of Greece and of Rome. 
 
 To Beldia, whose mind was filled with
 
 84 2 HE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 the heroic figures of the men of old, from 
 the days of Troy to the days of Monte- 
 murlo, the young men of her own gene- 
 ration, with their round hats, their foul 
 cigars, their checked trousers, their 
 cropped pates, their bad manners, seemed 
 rather like apes, corrupted in morals and 
 ill-dressed in person, than beings of the 
 same humanity as Odysseus or Carac- 
 ciolo, Leonidas or Ferruceio. 
 
 Her heart had never been touched to 
 even so much as a passing sentiment by 
 any of these suitors of modern days. 
 She loved her father, she loved her 
 brother, she loved the tower of Taddeo, 
 and these three filled up her heart. 
 
 Of all outside worlds, the worlds of 
 great passions and great ambitions, of 
 ceaseless movement and breathless ex-
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 85 
 
 citement, she knew nothing whatever. 
 She saw, indeed, the equipages rolling 
 by along the river's length, with the 
 young and graceful people in them, to 
 whom, surely, she thought, life must be 
 like one long play-hour. But she knew 
 nothing of these, and they never troubled 
 her. Envy was not in her nature, and 
 her days were full of contentment. The 
 only anxiety which she had was the 
 culpable extravagance of her brother 
 and the harmless extravagance of her 
 father. Neither of these male creatures 
 attached the smallest value to money. 
 It was always Beldia on whom the 
 burden devolved of making ends meet 
 in the household. If everything, in- 
 deed, had been in her hands, the task 
 would have been easier ; but in many
 
 86 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 
 
 matters Ser Checchi kept his own 
 counsel carefully ; she was ignorant of 
 all the resources which he possessed and 
 of many things which he did. 
 
 Scarcely was their dinner over this 
 afternoon, and she had peeled for him 
 a Bergamot pear, preserved in straw 
 through the winter, than a knock came 
 at the door of the dining-room, and a 
 pleasant, cheerful voice asked through 
 the keyhole : 
 
 ' May Vestuccio speak a moment with 
 the honoured master ?' 
 
 Even as the words were being uttered, 
 the door was softly opened, and the 
 speaker advanced into the room. 
 
 He was a man of middle age, and of 
 that indefinable class to which belong 
 working men who have made money ;
 
 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 87 
 
 he had a candid, kind, and attractive 
 countenance, his eyes were clear and 
 laughing, and his mouth good-natured, 
 with a quiet smile very familiar to it ; 
 his glance was quick, too, and not so 
 frank as was his smile. 
 
 Across the calm, thoughtful features of 
 Ser Checchi a shadow of troubled im- 
 patience passed. He rose hurriedly, 
 leaving the pear untasted, and passed to 
 the door. 
 
 ' Not here, not here, Vestuccio,' he 
 said quickly. ' Go to my own room ; in 
 a moment I will be with you.' 
 
 ' Your servant, Ser Checchi,' said the 
 new-comer, pausing a moment in the 
 doorway, whilst his eyes rested on the 
 Casteldurante vase with an expression of 
 inquisitive appreciation.
 
 88 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 ' Good-morning, Signor Aurelio/ said 
 Beldia courteously; and Aurelio Vestuccio 
 bowed his salutation in return with flat- 
 tered eagerness and his brightest smile. 
 
 Ser Checchi, in a hurried manner, 
 unlike his slow and quiet movements, 
 did not return to his seat, but led his 
 visitor away. 
 
 ' Oh, father! the pear!' cried Beldia, 
 in dismay at such neglect of her finest 
 fruit. 
 
 ' Eat it yourself, my love,' said Ser 
 Checchi, as he hastily closed the door 
 behind him. 
 
 ' The master seems troubled,' said 
 Veronica to her mistress, and Beldia 
 looked at her apprehensively and wist- 
 fully. 
 
 ' No, no ; he is always pleased to see
 
 1HE TOWER OF TADDEO 89 
 
 Ser Aurelio,' she said, with a trace of 
 anxiety in her glance at the closed door- 
 way. ' I dare say Vestuccio has come 
 to let him know that some manuscript 
 or copy he wishes for is beyond his 
 reach, and that vexes him.' 
 
 ' Some people speak ill of Vestuccio,' 
 said the servant dubiously. 
 
 ' Some people speak ill of the saints 
 in heaven,' replied Beldia. 
 
 ' Ugh ! He is no saint,' said Veronica. 
 ' But he has a good name on the Piazza, 
 that I grant.' 
 
 A good name on the Piazza means a 
 fair repute amongst your fellows. It is 
 derived from the habit which the Italian 
 citizens had in the past, and still have in 
 the present, of congregating in some 
 public square, generally before the com-
 
 90 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 munal palace, to make their bargains 
 and discuss the solvency or insolvency 
 of their debtors. A good name on the 
 Piazza will carry a man far and well in 
 his commercial transactions, as a fair 
 breeze carries a sailing boat. 
 
 Aurelio Vestuccio had this good name. 
 
 ' I hope they will not be away long,' 
 said Beldia ; ' for that stranger of this 
 forenoon is returning to see my father 
 and talk about architecture. If you 
 hear anyone coming up the stairs, ask 
 him to wait in the book-room.' 
 
 Veronica grumbled inaudibly, and 
 began to clear away the dinner dishes, 
 leaving the Casteldurante pot and the 
 spring-tide flowers sole occupants of the 
 table. 
 
 At that moment the bell attached to
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 91 
 
 the entrance door, which opened on the 
 staircase, rang gently. There is a great 
 deal of character shown in ringing a 
 bell, and the temper of the ringer is 
 often disclosed in its tintinnabulations. 
 
 ^ You must go: that is the Brescian 
 student, Veronica,' said Beldia. 
 
 ' I cannot ; you know that, signorina,' 
 said the serving woman crossly. ' Who 
 is to do my work ? All the washing up 
 and the ironing ? Three o'clock now, 
 and the days getting so short there is 
 hardly room to turn round in them.' 
 
 ' Go and open the door, and show the 
 stranger in,' said Beldia. ' He can amuse 
 himself amongst the books till my father 
 is free.' 
 
 Veronica went, grumbling ; she was 
 always reduced to obedience when her
 
 92 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 young mistress spoke with that tone of 
 decision. Beldia went to her own 
 chamber. It was a Httle narrow place, 
 with a grated window looking only on 
 the red-brick, moss-grown tiles of the 
 houses at the back of the tower; but it 
 was picturesque and home-like, with a 
 timber ceiling, and some pieces of old 
 tapestry on its walls, and a little stair led 
 up from it to the platform where her 
 air-garden was ; and swallows had nested 
 under its cornice for more centuries than 
 could be counted on the fingers of each 
 hand ; they were at this moment circling 
 round and round above the house roof, 
 arranging for that autumn flight which 
 caused so much regret every year to 
 Beldia. Even the bats, at the approach 
 of winter, would withdraw themselves
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 93 
 
 into their homes in the belfries, *and 
 lofts, and old monastic turrets and cloisters 
 round, and no winged creatures would re- 
 main there except the sparrows. 
 
 This afternoon she could give little 
 thought to the birds or the flowers ; she 
 had received a letter from her brother, 
 w^hich she re-read in the solitude ot her 
 chamber, whilst her father was closeted 
 with his visitor Vestuccio. It caused 
 her long and painful thought, for it was 
 one with which it seemed to her wholly 
 impossible to comply. 
 
 Cirillo asked for money, money, 
 money, as if money could be gathered 
 off the stonecrop growing on the tiles, 
 or the Madonna's herb flourishing in the 
 crevices of the parapet. 
 
 ' My dearest child,' he wrote to her,
 
 94 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 
 
 ' I want two thousand francs at once. 
 Get them from the old man for me, and 
 post them as soon as you receive this. 
 If I do not get them I shall be dis- 
 honoured in the sight of all my friends. 
 You know, my little angel, what a man's 
 honour means.' 
 
 ' Yes,' thought Beldia sadly; 'it means 
 to take all he wishes for from others, 
 however he may pain or ruin them !' 
 
 The letter was long, the same argu- 
 ments being again and again repeated in 
 it with ingenuity and eloquence, but 
 with that false ring in them all which 
 comes from insincerity in the writer. 
 The perception of this want of candour 
 jarred on his sister, and hurt her as his 
 clever and heartless impositions had often 
 troubled her in their childhood ; her
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 95 
 
 finer moral sense becoming conscious of 
 them, whilst her love and affection turned 
 in vain from them, striving resolutely to 
 be blind. 
 
 The plea of honour offended her. It 
 was a note he was too found of sounding. 
 She tried with all her might to believe in 
 the necessity which he pleaded ; but she 
 could not. It was a necessity, perhaps, 
 but one of coarser mould than the kind 
 alleged. Well as she loved Cirillo, she 
 knew that he constantly tampered with 
 the exigencies of honour, and wore its 
 yoke but lightly. 
 
 It was often difficult for her to make 
 the weekly allowance which her father 
 gave suffice for all their needs, and when 
 each Saturday came round, and she dis- 
 charged her household accounts, inclusive
 
 96 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 of the woman's wage, there was no 
 margin left. Besides which, she knew 
 that large sums slipped away in the pur- 
 chase of those multitudinous books which 
 were for ever increasing : and the de- 
 mands of her brother were numerous 
 and unsparing upon the family purse. 
 He was an artist of promise, but an extra- 
 vagant one ; and he never denied himself 
 any pleasure for so simple a reason as the 
 mere fact that he had not the money to 
 pay for it. 
 
 Cirillo never credited that his father 
 was not rich ; he thought the librarian 
 old - fashioned, prejudiced, abstemious, 
 eccentric ; but he argued that no man 
 would ever throw away such large sums 
 on musty folios and decaying pamphlets, 
 unless there were plenty of money be-
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 97 
 
 hind the bookshelves ; besides, there was 
 always the land in the Casentino. He 
 had never known anv particulars ot his 
 father's means ; but he always supposed 
 him to be well off, and spoke of him to 
 all his Roman comrades as a rich old 
 fellow with queer, miserlv ways ; so that 
 he never hesitated to worrv and impor- 
 tune his sister to obtain whatever funds 
 he wanted, and he wanted much often. 
 
 Many women are not good to men ; 
 manv women are niggardly, suspicious, 
 foolish, jealous, and unkind in their 
 relations with the men belonging to 
 them ; but when they are good to such 
 men they are very good, and Beldia was 
 one of those. Her affection, patience, 
 and comprehension were of infinite dura- 
 tion and elasticity. And she understood, 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 
 
 what few young women ever do under- 
 stand, that the measure which was abun- 
 dant for herself could not possibly- 
 content Cirillo. He was one year older 
 than herself, and she had always been 
 accustomed to obey him without criti- 
 cism or hesitation ; what he wished she 
 never doubted must be accomplished. 
 
 She had read and re-read this letter, 
 with pain and perplexity, when the voice 
 of Veronica roused her, shouting up the 
 shaft of the ladder-like staircase. 
 
 ' Signorina ! the master says you are to 
 come down into the library and see this 
 strange gentleman ; he himself has busi- 
 ness with Vestuccio which will take him 
 a half-hour or more. Come down, do 
 you hear ?' 
 
 Beldia heard, and obeyed, because it
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 99 
 
 was her habit to obey. She went with- 
 out even casting a glance at herself in the 
 little old silver-framed mirror which had 
 belonged in the Trecento to some lady 
 of the Brancaleone race, and now served 
 herself. Old men or young, good-look- 
 ing or ill-favoured, thev counted nothing 
 to her ; they were merely buyers or 
 sellers of books ; or else graceless robbers 
 of her father's erudition. 
 
 The Brescian student was waitino; in 
 the inner back room ; he had changed 
 his clothes ; he wore the velvet coat and 
 broad-leaved hat common to artists ; his 
 crisp auburn hair and soft silken beard 
 were carefully brushed. He had a look 
 of distinction and grace, and an air 
 which would have better suited the 
 times in which the tower of Taddeo had
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 
 
 been built, than these in which the 
 modest and dusty Hbrary of Ser Checchi 
 was estabHshed in it ; it seemed to Beldia 
 difficult to believe that he could be only 
 a poor architect seeking his fortunes, and 
 the doubt made her suspicious of, and 
 cold to, him. 
 
 Old races have been too often im- 
 poverished and vulgarized, all their 
 features are too often obliterated and 
 stamped down into the common, mean- 
 ingless, banal modern type, but still in 
 Italy at times one meets the knights of 
 Giorgione in Venice, the youths of 
 Massaccio in Florence, the men and 
 women of Sodoma in Siena, the forms 
 and physiognomies of Signorelli in 
 Orvieto, the children and the virgins 
 of Correggio under the vines of Lom-
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 bardy ; still often there stands beneath a 
 stone archway, or leans over a bridge 
 parapet, or comes across a marble pave- 
 ment, a figure which seems to have 
 stepped down from the heroic pageants 
 emblazoned on the storied walls, or to 
 be the statue of the Discobolus or of 
 the Faun, animated, and breathing once 
 more the sunny air in which they were 
 begotten. 
 
 The blood of Lombard nobles ran 
 quick and warm in the veins of this 
 artist, who owned nothing in the world 
 except a little old house under the shadow 
 of the Broletto where he had been born, 
 the only relic left of what had once been 
 a wide and princely heritage; and though 
 he was but a poor wanderer who had to 
 push his own way to fortune with his
 
 I02 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 pencil and compasses, if ever he reached 
 it at all, he had the carriage of a knight 
 and the head of a troubadour. 
 
 He now saluted Beldia gravely, apolo- 
 gizing for his too early arrival. 
 
 ' Nay, you are very punctual. It is 
 my father w^ho is engaged at the hour I 
 named to you,' she answered, not well 
 pleased to be forced to attend to him. 
 ' He will be here, I think, before very 
 long ; meantime, what works can I show 
 you ?' 
 
 He gave some names at random, but 
 they were of authors too recent to be 
 found in the Ardiglione collection; then, 
 though he could ill afford to do so, he 
 purchased some odd volumes of Giuseppe 
 Vasi and some sheets of plans by Bal- 
 dassare Peruzzi.
 
 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 103 
 
 He telt ashamed to come here again 
 and trouble this stately maiden for 
 nothing, and again go away with empty 
 hands. He leaned over the counters 
 strewn with old books and old pam- 
 phlets of all kinds, and did his best to 
 draw her on from architectural subjects 
 into general conversation ; but she was 
 reserved by habit and from a secluded 
 life, seldom going farther off her own 
 doorstep than the church close by in the 
 Piazza, and was so accustomed to treat 
 the younger visitors who came thither 
 with formality, that he did not make 
 much progress with her until he spoke 
 of the tower in which she dwelt. Then 
 her eyes lightened, her lips smiled, her 
 voice became full of feeling. She an- 
 swered readily as to its architect, its age.
 
 I04 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 its traditions ; she told him the history 
 of its building; she grew eloquent over 
 the legends attached to its loves and 
 garlands, and the tale of the plague, 
 w^hich was associated with its shrine of 
 the Madonna. She never tired of talk- 
 ing of her home, and of all it had seen 
 and heard and known, and in him she 
 found an eager listener, ready to share 
 her enthusiasm and veneration for its 
 dark and massive stones. In turn he 
 told her of Brescia and Bergamo, and of 
 his own little house there, once the mere 
 loggia to the great palace owned by the 
 Fontana family. Its arches had been 
 filled in towards the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, and its columns had 
 then been roofed, and its once stately 
 frescoed beauty changed into a humble
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 dwelling-house such as it was still, and 
 in which his mother now lived, a 
 widow, all alone, pious, gentle, and 
 cheerful, thinking ever of his graceless 
 self in many sleepless nights and useless 
 prayers. 
 
 He had succeeded in interesting his 
 companion, when Ser Checchi at last 
 appeared ; a shadow on his calm features 
 as of worried moments lately passed, but 
 ready to enter into any subjects, classical 
 or mediaeval, which it might please his 
 customer to suggest. It is at once the 
 joy and the peril of scholars, like artists, 
 that their mundane and prosaic interests 
 are immediately laid aside and forgotten, 
 if the impersonal topics which attract 
 them are mooted in their presence. To 
 them the abstract far outweighs and
 
 io6 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 eclipses the practical ; and to the scholar's, 
 as to the artist's, mind, the impersonal is 
 so infinitely greater than the personal 
 that the claims of the latter are cast 
 aside for the charms of the former, 
 without a moment's hesitation or con- 
 trition. Whatever the business was on 
 which Vestuccio had come to the old 
 librarian, its vexatious recollections were 
 now put aside and forgotten the moment 
 that the new-comer questioned him as 
 to the place of burial of II Magni- 
 fico, a disputed point amongst Tuscan 
 scholars. 
 
 They conversed long and cordially, 
 with that satisfaction which comes from 
 mutual tastes and opinions, whilst Beldia 
 listened, working at a piece of sewing 
 which she kept in a drawer under the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 107 
 
 desk, to fill up her idle moments in the 
 book-room. 
 
 She perceived reluctantly, but clearly, 
 the use which many unscrupulous 
 visitors made so frequently of her father; 
 the avidity with which they drove the 
 sharp pickaxe of their minor intelligence 
 into the gold-mine of his long-amassed 
 knowledge, and took thence all they 
 needed to make their paltry storehouse 
 rich. 
 
 He, in the single-hearted devotion of 
 the humanist, out of the generous 
 abundance of the enthusiast, delighted 
 to aid, to encourage, to enhghten, to 
 assist all who came to him ; was blind 
 to all the petty larcenies by which he 
 was robbed of information and expe- 
 rience, of authoritv and data, while the
 
 io8 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 gems Stolen from his store were set up 
 in the caps of these beardless knaves, 
 without acknowledgment or thanks. 
 
 Many an article in newspaper and 
 review was brilliant with the borrowed 
 learning which he had unconsciously 
 supplied to some young scribbler of the 
 public press, and more than one ambi- 
 tious aspirant to public life had forced 
 himself into notice in high quarters by 
 the antiquarian and philological investi- 
 gations opened out by the elder scholar, 
 which had been innocently shown and 
 liberally lent to him. 
 
 The old man in his book-room, with 
 the sun-rays from the window, or the 
 lamp from the table, shed on his benign 
 and noble countenance, felt like Erasmus 
 or Boethius amongst the pupils of a
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEn 109 
 
 golden time, as these young men pressed 
 around him, plying him with questions, 
 listening to his suggestions, putting 
 down his dates and judgments with 
 their pencils. He was touched, flat- 
 tered, mollified, and thought that those 
 of his contemporaries who complained 
 of the rudeness and indifference and 
 cynicism of the younger generation did 
 it wrong. 
 
 But Beldia, sitting apart, silent, over 
 her ledgers or her linen, saw what he 
 did not see, overheard what he did not 
 hear, and understood the motives with 
 which these callous and scornful young- 
 sters affected so much deference to age 
 and so much desire of instruction. 
 
 There was one amongst them in 
 especial whom she distrusted and de-
 
 no THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 tested. He was a young lawyer, by 
 name Pampilio Querci ; he was clever, 
 cunning, and of an ambition reaching 
 far beyond the desk and stool of an 
 attorney's office ; he had mental power, 
 and had education enough to be able to 
 estimate and admire the vast accumu- 
 lation of Ser Checchi's learning ; and he 
 had skill enough to send his own little 
 bucket of a mind deep down again and 
 again into the profound wells of the 
 librarian's intellect, and to draw up the 
 waters of knowledge, which he knew 
 how to pour forth again thinly and 
 carefully, as if brought from his own 
 especial springs. 
 
 Again and again could Beldia recog- 
 nise her father's erudition, so generously 
 and imprudently displayed, retailed by
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO it 
 
 this young man in the pubHc press, 
 without acknowledgment of or allusion 
 to its giver, in papers signed ' Lex et 
 Lux,' which was the press-name of 
 Pampilio Querci. Once or twice she 
 had pointed out these articles to her 
 father ; but he, in whose character there 
 were mingled simplicity and vanity, had 
 waived them aside impatiently. 
 
 ' If the youngster can find pleasure in 
 these abstruse questions, it is well, it is 
 laudable,' he answered to her ; ' let us 
 not check his zeal, my daughter. After 
 all, the fount of learning is open to high 
 and low, to old and young. Let who 
 will drink thereof. God forbid that I 
 should send such away thirsty.' 
 
 And Beldia felt with a pang how 
 noble he was, and how foolish ; how
 
 112 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 liberal and how unwise. He set open 
 his jar of honey from Mount Parnassus, 
 and let these flies and wasps come round 
 and upon it, and they sucked their fill, 
 and stung him as their only thanks. 
 
 But she could do nothing to make 
 him perceive and believe this, and the 
 antiquarian and philological articles con- 
 tinued to be compiled and printed, 
 signed ' Lex et Lux/ until they attracted 
 the attention of the Minister of Educa- 
 tion, who said to the Prefect of Florence 
 that the young writer of them must be 
 a brilliant scholar, and had better be 
 looked after and secured to the interest 
 of the Government with some good 
 official place, lest he should be taken 
 away by the clericals, for whom he 
 seemed to have a leaning, Querci
 
 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 113 
 
 knowing well how to run with the hare 
 and hunt with the hounds. 
 
 Beldia, who saw his drift, and guessed 
 the reward he tried to obtain, was 
 impatient of the sight of the lean, small, 
 spruce figure, and the pale, aquiline, 
 demure profile of the young attorney, 
 and begrudged all the hours which her 
 father wasted on him, all the volumes 
 he borrowed for an indefinite time, and 
 often forgot to return, and all the infor- 
 mation which he angled for so dex- 
 terously and absorbed so ravenously. 
 
 Therefore she looked now with pre- 
 judice and ill-favour upon the entry of 
 the Brescian architect, seeing in him 
 only another of his younger generation 
 which used and abused her father's 
 good -nature. To allow students to 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 
 
 transcribe from and consult manuscripts 
 and folios in the book-room was not the 
 way to sell books and make money by 
 them ; this the sober and practical side 
 of her temperament told her, and a 
 volume or a pamphlet was indeed 
 hardly ever sold out of the thousands 
 filling the shelves and cumbering the 
 floors. It pleased Ser Checchi that this 
 should be so, to see any work go away 
 in the hands of a stranger was always 
 painful to him ; if it were a rare and 
 valuable work, to sell it was to him like 
 selling a child in bondage. There were 
 hundreds of books in his tower which 
 he had purchased in the days of his 
 youth, and that they should remain 
 there all these years was delightful to 
 him. But they did not fill his purse by
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 115 
 
 remaining there, and the additional 
 purchases which he was continually 
 adding to them drained it. 
 
 ' Another young man to read, and 
 smile, and listen, and go away laden 
 with borrowed learning, which he will 
 sell to editors and publishers,' thought 
 Beldia, glancing impatiently at the 
 auburn head of the Lombard stranger. 
 But she could not refuse to admit that 
 the newcomer had a different physiog- 
 nomy to the bloodless face of Pampilio 
 Querci, and he left off his studies to 
 choose some plates of Palladio's plans, 
 which he again paid for, honestly, and 
 at once, without tryino- to obtain an 
 abatement in their price. 
 
 He was of a manlier, finer, bolder 
 type than the undersized young scribes
 
 ii6 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 and quill-drivers who came thither to 
 suck the brain of her father. There 
 was something daring, chivalrous, 
 candid, and adventurous in his person 
 and features and manners, before which 
 her suspicions and antipathies melted 
 away despite herself. 
 
 He asked frankly if he might return 
 there. 
 
 ' You have so many volumes of 
 architectural and mechanical drawings,' 
 he added, ' I may find so much here 
 that I have sought for vainly in my 
 native town. But I am well aware that 
 it is most unfair to expect to use a 
 private bookseller's collection as though 
 it were a public library, to be studied in 
 at pleasure.' 
 
 Before she could reply, Ser Checchi
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 117 
 
 intervened with his benignant smile and 
 his grave nod ot the head. 
 
 ' That is a very honest and thoughttul 
 scruple, young sir,' he answered. ' But 
 it is a needless scruple here. I am 
 delighted if you or anyone can find any 
 profit in what I am fortunate enough to 
 have gathered about me. My poor 
 place is wholly at your service, at any 
 hour of the day.' 
 
 Beldia reddened with vexation. There 
 were already so many of these idlers 
 and thieves, who choked up what little 
 space there was left free in the book- 
 rooms, and wasted her time, and the 
 boy's, and her father's. But at least 
 those frequenters of the place were 
 townsfolk, youths and old men well 
 known from their birth up in their
 
 THE TO WER OE TADDEO 
 
 native streets ; it seemed natural, it 
 might be only proper, to afford them 
 what advantages were to be secured 
 there ; but this was a stranger, a 
 foreigner, a Lombard. There could be 
 no need or obligation to open wide 
 house and heart to him like this. 
 
 But Ser Checchi took no heed of her 
 imploring glances, nor of the restraining 
 touch with which she gently pulled the 
 skirt of his long coat. He reiterated 
 his invitation to come and study, and the 
 Brescian accepted it with cordiality and 
 gratitude ; and as the latter at last leil: 
 the library, carrying his Palladian en- 
 gravings with him, the old man looked 
 after his tall figure approvingly. 
 
 ' A well-made and well-mannered 
 youth/ he said with satisfaction. ' They
 
 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 119 
 
 grow fine manhood in the north. Child, 
 did you mark how eager he was con- 
 cerning the Domenican Fathers as 
 printers at Rifredi ? Let him come ; 
 let him come; if there be anything here 
 which can profit him, he is heartily 
 welcome to it.' 
 
 Beldia sighed. 
 
 She had heard those generous words 
 spoken so many times, and she had 
 never known any gratitude shown for 
 them from those for whose benefit they 
 were spoken. 
 
 ' An accomplished man and a modest 
 one,' added Ser Checchi, turning over 
 the volumes used by his visitor ; ' I 
 shall be glad to afford him any possible 
 opportunities for study that he may be 
 able to find here. Mind that you make
 
 I20 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 him welcome in my absence, Beldia, 
 and let him search for all the dates 
 and authorities which he may wish to 
 find; 
 
 ' Certainly, father,' she answered, a 
 little unwillingly. ' But no one will 
 ever buy books if you allow all your 
 visitors to come and glean all they want 
 here without paying for the privilege.' 
 
 ' What a speech for my daughter to 
 make !' cried Ser Checchi, displeased 
 and scandalized. ' Let the State be vile 
 enough to put a tax on art and learning, 
 as it does at its libraries and galleries, I 
 will never grudge the free use of my 
 book-shelves to any serious scholar.' 
 
 ' But they will not buy if they can 
 turn over a hundred volumes for 
 nothing.'
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 121 
 
 ' Perhaps they cannot buy. Perhaps 
 they are honest and earnest lovers of 
 learning who are very scantily supplied 
 with this w^orld's goods. Shall I grudge 
 them a ray from my poor lantern on 
 their path to help their search ? Shall 
 I refuse them a crust from my cup- 
 board, when they are honestly hunger- 
 ing for the truth ? Fie, fie ! for shame, 
 my child ! You have not lived amongst 
 the eloquence of the dead to hide such 
 sordid thoughts within your breast ? 
 Surely, surely not, Beldia Y 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 She was too docile to contradict her 
 father, and too generous not to appre- 
 ciate his generosity ; but she knew what 
 all these volumes cost, and she knew 
 what rent and taxes cost, and she knew
 
 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 
 
 that the hbrary of the tower was kept 
 open year after year at a dead loss. 
 
 She knew, also, enough of commerce 
 to know that trade cannot be carried on 
 successfully on such romantic principles 
 as her father's. But he, vaguely sensible 
 of the disagreement implied by her 
 silence, waxed warmer and warmer on 
 the theme. 
 
 ' Who knows but that some one of 
 these youths may not be on the highway 
 to immortality, though he look to our 
 purblind eyes but a needy idler ?' he said 
 vehemently. 'Was not Cervantes poor? 
 was not Tasso deemed a madman ? was 
 not Giotto a shepherd on the hills? was 
 not Camoens sold for a slave ? Has not 
 Genius been impoverished, and starved, 
 and persecuted in every age of the
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 world ? If we help these stumbling feet 
 on to even the lowest rung of the ladder 
 of renown — nay, if we do what is better 
 still, happier still, help to confirm the 
 bias of a youth to the choice of the arts 
 of peace and of light, instead of the 
 pursuit of gain or the lust of war — is it 
 not some little good done for the Muses, 
 as they were used to say, for Humanity 
 as men say now ? Ah ! my dear, surely, 
 surely, in learning, yet more than in life, 
 what is done to the least of these is as if 
 it were done to Deity itself.' 
 
 Beldia's eyes grew soft and suffused as 
 they dwelt on her father's face, which 
 was lighted up with the radiance of a 
 high and impersonal passion. Her heart 
 ached at this noble and guileless en- 
 thusiasm. She knew how men traded on
 
 124 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 it to their own base profit. She knew 
 that it was not genius, but cunning, which 
 came there to glean the gold of his know- 
 ledge and kindness ; that it was not the 
 ingenuous youth of a Platonic Academy 
 which sought his counsels and teachings, 
 but the keen, sharp, narrow wits of 
 modern youngsters pilfering to prosper. 
 She knew how his ideas were stolen, 
 his culture was borrowed, his library 
 shelves were ransacked by the journalists, 
 writers, professors, attorneys, and the 
 like, who came to him to carry off a 
 harvest of quotation and knowledge 
 which they would have been incapable 
 of gleaning for themselves. 
 
 She knew this well ; it was why she 
 received all younger men so coldly, and 
 only smiled on the aged scholars.
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 125 
 
 But how was she to say this to him ? 
 How damp that good faith, and lower 
 that exaltation which had carried on 
 into old age the beautiful ignorance and 
 confidence of youth ?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 She turned the subject by an allusion to 
 Vestuccio. 
 
 ' Did Messer Aurelio vex you to-day, 
 father ?' she asked him. ' I thought 
 you looked disturbed at his arrival. 
 Was his business so very urgent that 
 he need have come at dinner-time ?' 
 
 Her father's face clouded. 
 
 * Vestuccio came about a financial 
 matter/ he said evasively. ' He is a 
 careful man. It aWays vexes me to lay 
 aside study for practical matters. Busi-
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 127 
 
 ness is Martha, and study is Mary. I 
 have dwelt with Mary all my days, and 
 walked with her in green and shady 
 places ; I am ill fitted for the noise and 
 clatter, however usefial and well meant, 
 which her ruder sister makes about her 
 work.' 
 
 ' Could not I see to this matter, 
 whatever it is, for you V asked Beldia 
 wistfully. 
 
 ' Certainly not,' said her father 
 peremptorily. ' Buy your marketings, 
 my love, and your linen, and your sugar 
 and spice, but leave graver business to 
 me. You are Mary and Martha in one 
 person, I know, but that is not a reason 
 for overstepping your duties. Attend 
 to your daisy-roots on the roof, and 
 your pigeons, and sweet herbs, and do
 
 128 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 not offer me counsel until I ask for 
 it.' 
 
 ' I did not mean any forwardness or 
 officiousness/ she murmured, distressed 
 and ashamed at his reproof. 
 
 ' No, no ; you meant nothing but 
 what was right/ he said kindly. ' You 
 are only too anxious to spare me trouble, 
 I know. Women should confine them- 
 selves to household cares. Now go to 
 your room, or out-of-doors, if you will. 
 I will attend to the library this after- 
 noon, and I am expecting Don Gervasio 
 and Massimo. We are in doubt still 
 if we have read aright that passage in 
 Avicenna. It is very obscure.' 
 
 Don Gervasio was a priest, the vicar 
 of a small church near, and Massimo 
 was the baptismal name of an aged
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 129 
 
 teacher of Greek and Arabic, who was 
 the bosom friend of Ser Checchi. With 
 these two cronies he spent the happiest 
 hours of every year, re-reading dis- 
 puted passages, questioning received 
 readings, searching obscure authorities, 
 and faniiharizing themselves with the 
 forgotten authors whose bones were 
 dust. 
 
 Beldia retired, as he bade her do ; but 
 not to work or to amuse herself. She 
 had all the household needs upon her 
 head and hands, all those daily and small 
 labours which go together to make up 
 the guidance of a house, and upon the 
 discharge of which, well or ill done, 
 depends the comfort or discomfort of 
 that house. 
 
 Men rarely understand the labour 
 
 VOL. 1.
 
 I30 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 which this involves, and have neither 
 compassion nor gratitude for the efforts 
 which surround them with creature- 
 comforts and create around them a 
 serene domestic atmosphere. Like other 
 men, Ser Checchi believed that his 
 house ordered itself, and thought of his 
 daughter's life as of one long holiday 
 of perfect and continual ease. 
 
 He never dreamed of the constant 
 supervision by which the naturally noisy 
 and careless servant was kept quiet and 
 made careful, the constant attention by 
 which the -dusky old chambers were 
 kept fresh and sweet, the constant 
 economy by which the best possible 
 was obtained and the least possible 
 spent, and the constant industry with 
 which linen was repaired, conserves
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 131 
 
 were made, accounts were kept, and 
 stores were husbanded. Beldia knew 
 that the means of her father were not 
 large, and that his habits were costly 
 from liberality of temper, and the ab- 
 sence of mind of a man whose thoughts 
 were with the dead rather than with his 
 butcher, and his baker, and his tallow- 
 chandler. Keeping the accounts, in- 
 deed, as she did, she saw that the 
 commerce of the library was almost at 
 a standstill — that few buyers ever came 
 thither, and that the purchases of books 
 were a hundred times in excess of the 
 demand for them. But as the books of 
 which she saw the entry were all bought 
 cheaply at sales, and those more costly 
 purchases were unexplained to her, the 
 real price paid for such additions re-
 
 132 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 mained unknown to her, and the outlay 
 which the Hbrary caused was, as far as 
 she knew, to be placed at a low figure. 
 She thought it rather her father's hobby 
 than his trade, and was not as uneasy as 
 she would have been had she known the 
 true price of the beautiful and ancient 
 copies which were being every now and 
 then added to the already overflowing 
 sea of literature which surrounded her. 
 The love of books was such a holy 
 and noble passion that it seemed to her 
 impossible any harm should ever come 
 out of it. 
 
 Yet she could not but perceive that 
 her father was often preoccupied, often 
 troubled, and received visits and letters 
 which caused him perplexities of which 
 he explained nothing to her ; he did not
 
 TFJE TOWER OF TAD DEO 133 
 
 even permit her to allude to them. And 
 Vestuccio — she did not understand them, 
 but she was afraid of his relations with 
 Vestuccio. 
 
 The prosperous citizen who bore this 
 name had been born of poor parents, 
 rope-makers and sail-menders at a dirty 
 but romantic village nestled under a cliff 
 near a large seaport on the Italian 
 Riviera. He had run about half naked 
 in the sun and sand and surf, and grown 
 strong and healthy on his diet of fish 
 and rye-bread. He had made friends 
 with the skippers of brigs at the port 
 near, and they had given him odds and 
 ends of foreign trifles, which he sold 
 about the streets with such pretty shells 
 and seaweed, or bits of agate and cor- 
 nelian, as he had picked up along the
 
 134 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 shore. He was a clever, agile, merry- 
 child, with an engaging smile and bright 
 blue eyes ; and people bought of him 
 because he asked them so nicely, his 
 white teeth shining, his brown curls 
 blowing, and his tray slung in front of 
 his little bare chest. 
 
 Most boys would have either spent 
 the pence thus gained on food and drink 
 or carried them home to their mothers. 
 He did neither ; he saved them up and 
 put them by, and, when he had enough 
 to do so, lent out little sums to his com- 
 panions or to the fishermen and mariners, 
 and did it so well that he multiplied his 
 pence very quickly, and yet, strange to 
 say, never made an enemy, and none 
 grudged him his gains. 
 
 Little by little, the pence and the
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 135 
 
 francs swelled till they became a goodly 
 sum, and Aurelio, now become a youth 
 of eighteen, opened a little shop in the 
 seaport town — a little den under an arch 
 — where coral and shells and such cheap 
 bits of Oriental finery as he could buy, 
 half damaged, oif the quays, were put 
 together in the darkness ; and he him- 
 self sat or stood, ever smiling, behind 
 the board which served him as a 
 counter. 
 
 To buy something of 'Rello, as he 
 was called, became the fashion with the 
 seafaring folks and their sweethearts ; 
 and many of the sailors brought him 
 pretty outlandish articles, ivories and 
 parrots and ostrich feathers, and little 
 jade idols, in exchange for the good 
 tobacco and brandy which he smuggled
 
 136 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 in for them undetected ; and at his Httle 
 cabin the seafaring men, native and 
 foreign, met the buxom blowsy women 
 of their hearts, and he could turn an 
 honest penny by helping on such 
 amorous intercourse. 
 
 After a few years of this small trading 
 he had realized enough to leave the sea- 
 town, with its disreputable associations, 
 and quietly and sagaciously he estab- 
 lished himself in Florence, in a very 
 modest manner, as a seller of curios and 
 foreign trifles ; his old comrades, the 
 sailors, still often put him in the way of 
 bargains from the east and west, and he 
 was always cordial and unassuming, and 
 content with a moderate percentage on 
 what he sold. 
 
 It was a humble little dusky corner.
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 137 
 
 hardly bigger than a dog-kennel, but in 
 it were sometimes found really good and 
 strange things, and before many more 
 years had passed over his head he was 
 able to move from this obscure dwelling 
 to a large although unpretending shop 
 in the Piazza della Madonna, over the 
 door of which he had painted in bold 
 lettering, 'Aurelio Vestuccio, Antiquario,' 
 where, in a little office in a back-court, 
 under a plane-tree, he did much business 
 beside his ostensible traffic in majolica 
 and bronzes and old furniture. His 
 career was made. 
 
 * All gained by hard work and honest 
 dealing,' he said, with a glow of pride 
 and self-respect. He had married the 
 daughter of a tallow-chandler with a 
 round little dowry of her own, and had
 
 138 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 put out her little fortune in his business 
 with the same prudence and sagacity 
 with which, as a child, he had sold shell 
 and seaweed. He had always a pleasant, 
 good-humoured, clean-shaved face, and 
 was always willing to do anyone a good 
 turn. He had become popular and 
 respected in the town ; and, from the 
 dilettante who wanted a piece of old 
 stamped leather, to the embarrassed 
 tradesman who wanted a loan of twenty 
 pounds, everyone who required some- 
 thing quickly found out, and cheerfully 
 arranged for, went to the little office 
 under the plane-tree, where Aurelio 
 Vestuccio was to be seen from nine till 
 four. 
 
 He was a model of what industry 
 and thrift can make of a man by the
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 139 
 
 time he is forty, though all the circum- 
 stances of his early life had been against 
 him, and he had had no advantages 
 except his shrewd and cautious mind 
 and his pleasant and politic manner. 
 Many half-naked boys sell shells and 
 seaweed on many shores ; but to few of 
 them is it given to be born with a brain 
 as quick as mercury, a clever tongue 
 which can chatter constantly yet reveal 
 nothing, and a heart as hard as a nether 
 millstone. This last possession was 
 the most useful of all his many gifts 
 from nature, but it would have availed 
 nothing without the ever-watching, 
 and ever-bright, intelligence behind 
 it. 
 
 Many people have hard hearts, but 
 not many have long heads : he had both,
 
 T40 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 
 
 and he had also a most admirable 
 cordiality and simplicity of manner 
 which stood him in good stead. Then, 
 he was known to be a good father and 
 husband; and on Sunday, at noon, might 
 be seen listening to the military music 
 in the Piazza of San Marco, or in the 
 Piazzone of the Cascine, with a tribe of 
 nice-looking and neatly-clad children 
 about him, hostages and warrants of his 
 many civic virtues. 
 
 SerChecchi had known and helped him 
 from the earliest years of his establish- 
 ment in his first modest little shop ; and 
 Vestuccio had ingratiated himself with 
 the old scholar by putting in his way 
 many an old pamphlet or volume which 
 had come under his hand in his various 
 expeditions to far-off villages or castles
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 141 
 
 in the mountains north and south in 
 search of curiosities. 
 
 Some seven years before the arrival 
 of the Lombard student in the city, 
 an incident had occurred which had 
 brought the bric-a-brac seller and the 
 librarian in closer commerce and com- 
 munication. 
 
 Ser Checchi, when at Antella, was 
 much given to roaming over the hills 
 and valleys of the Casentino in the 
 summer season in search of old books, 
 such as lie forgotten and neglected in 
 many a sacristy cupboard where the 
 good priest is more learned in village 
 news and wine diseases than in the value 
 of Hor^ and Evangeliarium. Though 
 he walked apparently with feebleness, 
 because his shoulders were bowed and
 
 142 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 his gait was slow, he could cover many 
 a mile without fatigue, with no steed 
 except his ebony-handled stick, and no 
 companion except the white dog Folko, 
 who always went into the country when 
 his master did. 
 
 In one of these country rambles he 
 grew thirsty, and paused to ask for 
 a draught of water at the forge of a 
 blacksmith called lo. The forge was 
 high up in the hills, and the anvil and 
 hammer had little work to do, but the 
 smith was also in a small way a land- 
 owner and farmer, having inherited part, 
 and bought part, of the arable land and 
 of the pine-wood around and about his 
 smithy. lo was a well-known man in 
 the district, by name lorio Lencioni, 
 and was a familiar acquaintance of Ser
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDhO 143 
 
 Checchi's, whom he now welcomed 
 with dehght, and for whom he insisted 
 on opening a flask of old Chianti, which 
 his visitor, sorely to his distress, in- 
 sisted for his part on mixing with 
 spring water. 
 
 It was three o'clock, and the June day 
 was hot. Ser Checchi was tired, for he 
 had strolled more miles than he had 
 counted along the fragrant hillside, 
 where nightingales sang under the bay 
 thickets and the yellow gorse was blos- 
 soming and the wild rose. 
 
 ' You are fatigued, sir ; rest for an 
 hour or two,' said the blacksmith, a 
 big, good-tempered, middle-aged man, 
 with his reaping-hook in his hand and 
 his shirt - sleeves rolled up to his 
 shoulder.
 
 144 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 ' Thanks to you, I will do so/ said 
 Ser Checchi ; ' at least, if you will pro- 
 mise me to go back to your field-work, 
 for your corn is over-ripe, and I fear me 
 that there is rain in the air for this 
 evening, and your grain is not half 
 cut.' 
 
 ' Sit and rest, then, and we will go 
 and finish cutting the corner field,' said 
 lorio to him ; ' and, by the way, Ser 
 Checchi, there is an old chest which 
 you may like to look over — there are 
 papers and such-like in it. I found it 
 under a heap of old hay in the loft. It 
 has been there, I be bound, as many 
 years as the house is old. We hoped 
 there was something good in it ; but 
 there was nothing but an odd lot of 
 books, so we threw them back again,
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 145 
 
 being spited not to have laid our hand 
 heartily on something better. You are 
 welcome to it if there be any paper or 
 book as may please you ; they are only 
 a pack of rubbish, I fear — copybooks 
 and ciphering-books and the like ; but 
 if you care to look over them the house 
 is yours, and we will get, by your leave, 
 to our reaping/ 
 
 Ser Checchi thanked him and looked 
 longingly towards a dusty, worm-eaten 
 old wooden chest of solid nutwood, 
 with a coat-of-arms carved heavily on 
 its lid, and with rusty iron handles. 
 
 Old books 1 — the sound of the word 
 was as sweet to him as the promise of 
 bridal gifts to a maiden, or winter toys 
 to a child by the fireside. They might 
 most probably be of no value, but old 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 volumes were always of interest, were 
 they only records of household expendi- 
 ture or of clerkly memoranda. 
 
 A few minutes later the whole family 
 trooped out through the open doorway 
 to go to finish their reaping, even the 
 small children clinging to the women's 
 skirts and eager to be taken to the field, 
 to lie and sleep amongst the warm wheat 
 whilst the sickles of their elders were at 
 work. Ser Checchi and Folko were 
 left alone in the blacksmith's kitchen, 
 with the sunshine streaming in through 
 the green tracery of the window and the 
 old clock drowsily ticking the minutes 
 in a corner. 
 
 Ser Checchi slumbered a little while 
 in the heat and the stillness and the 
 fragrant hill air, the dog outstretched at
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 147 
 
 his feet. Then he shook himself awake, 
 drank a little more of the watered wine, 
 and stooped over the chest, which the 
 smith had considerately drawn close to 
 the window for his easier inspection. 
 There were quantities of yellow docu- 
 ments written in crabbed characters — 
 household and farm books for the most 
 part, belonging to the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, records of the credit and debit of 
 the large estate of which the house and 
 lands now owned by lorio had formed a 
 portion. They were large books, massive, 
 heavy, covering the expenditure of well- 
 nigh a century. Ser Checchi, with 
 fatigue, lifted them up one after the 
 other over the tall sides of the chest. 
 They interested him, like everything 
 which belonged to a past age and had
 
 148 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 been written by dead hands, but to 
 examine them thoroughly would take 
 days and weeks, and he had many 
 similar ones at home. Beneath all 
 these ancient folios were, however, a 
 few bound volumes lying under numbers 
 of loose pages and deeds, which all 
 appeared to have reference to what had 
 once been the great estate of a great 
 family now extinct. 
 
 He took these volumes out and 
 brushed from them tenderly the dust, 
 the dirt, and the seeds of hay with 
 which they were covered. They were 
 all books of the same date, the seven- 
 teenth century, to which the ledgers 
 and household books belonged ; there 
 were prayer-books, lives of saints, copies 
 of ecclesiastical works, in all some dozen
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 149 
 
 volumes, none of any rarity or especial 
 mark, none of any uncommon binding 
 or unusual typography. But one volume 
 much longer and larger than the others, 
 with a binding of another epoch, caught 
 his instructed eyes where it lay in a 
 corner of the desk, more than half 
 hidden under the loose and dusty hay- 
 seed. 
 
 His hands trembled as he drew it 
 forth. His sight swam as he opened its 
 pages. His hands shook, his whole 
 person quivered, his eyes were full ot 
 longing and light ; they were the eyes 
 of a man of twenty years old. 
 
 Learned in such things as he was, he 
 knew its antiquity and its value at a 
 glance. To find such a treasure moul- 
 dering neglected in a dusty chest in a
 
 150 2 HE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 cottage had been the dream of his whole 
 hfe. Indignation, amaze, awe, dehght, 
 all held him breathless and entranced 
 before the worm-eaten bench on which 
 it lay. Oh, how happy the scribe who 
 had penned it, though long ago his hand 
 had crumbled to ashes ! 
 
 The sun poured in through the strings 
 of flowering beans which were running 
 up the window, and the gentle air blew 
 the yellow dry leaves to and fro irre- 
 verently. He remained on his knees 
 before the manuscript, gazing with a 
 lover's ardour and a devotee's devotion 
 at the marvellous fine regular lines of 
 the penman, the serried ranks of this 
 black letter, in which not a blot, nor 
 a deviation, nor an erasure was visible. 
 Oh, the marvel of it ! Look what the
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 151 
 
 handwriting of men had become since 
 the days of printing ! Who wrote now 
 what would be clear and beautiful for 
 ever as this was ? What would the 
 sprawled, careless, hurried, blotted cali- 
 graphy of the present age tell men, as 
 this work told them, of the beauty and 
 holiness of ardour, of perseverance, and 
 of labour, where the hand was but the 
 instrument of the soul ? 
 
 It was a Codex of the ' Divina Com- 
 media,' dated under the colophon as 
 finished at Ravenna in May, 1320. 
 
 There are but few such in the world, 
 and those few are numbered and known 
 to all bibliophiles, like the folios of 
 Shakespeare. To have discovered one 
 other was to a lover and student of 
 books what the discovery of a new
 
 152 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 world was to navigators of old — an 
 ecstasy, an honour, a miracle, an intoxi- 
 cation of happiness. 
 
 He examined the parchment, the 
 capitals, the writing, the headpiece, the 
 colophon, the binding, which was of 
 leather much eaten and gnawed by 
 mice, with some unpolished cornelians, 
 cut and mounted on silver, on its clasps; 
 he scarcely breathed as he bent over it, 
 whilst the full sun fell warm and golden 
 on to these pages, which had once, like 
 enough, been touched and seen by 
 Dante's self. There could be no ques- 
 tion of its age and its authenticity ; 
 indeed, the finding of it in such a place 
 was proof enough of these. How many 
 other treasures there are, doubtless, 
 lying unknown in attic and cella-*, in
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 153 
 
 granary and wood-house in remote 
 country places, where even the tireless 
 feet of the collector and the dealer 
 never wander, and the wand of the 
 modern Hermes of the book-inart is 
 unknown ! 
 
 The binding was of a much later 
 date, and the folio had been probably 
 laid away by some scholar, when the 
 blast of trumpet or the smoke of torches 
 had told of the tide of war rolling up 
 towards that calm hillside, and there it 
 had remained in its obscurity ever since, 
 visited only by the mice, who had 
 nibbled its edges and peeled its leather 
 here and there. 
 
 For the first time in all his pure and 
 upright, life, a great temptation to an 
 act of dishonour, of dishonesty, assailed
 
 154 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 him as he knelt there before it. No 
 one knew that it was there ; no one 
 around him even beholding it would 
 see in it anything more than an old 
 book, quite worthless, only fit, perhaps, 
 to be torn up to kindle a fire or to stop 
 a leak in a cask. Nothing could be 
 simpler, nothing more easy, than to put 
 it in his pocket or take it away under 
 his arm. No one on that hillside 
 would ever know or care. Unless his 
 learning enlightened their ignorance, no 
 one of the people around him would 
 ever dream that this old brown volume, 
 moth-eaten and mice-gnawed, would be 
 worth its weight in gold to the libraries 
 of great cities and great men. There 
 was not a soul near, not even in sight ; 
 all the family were out in the fields ;
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 155 
 
 there was not even a child asleep in the 
 cradle, nor a dog, save his own by the 
 threshold. He had only to walk out of 
 the open doorway along the grass paths 
 of the hillside towards his own home, 
 and carry the precious manuscript with 
 him. 
 
 Never was any temptation made more 
 easy and more alluring to an innocent 
 soul ! 
 
 He bent over the Codex, his hands, 
 pressed around it lovingly as a woman's 
 hands round the body of her child ; his 
 was no cold appetite of a dryasdust, but 
 a passion infinitely tender, and yearning, 
 and even romantic ; beside all that old 
 books said to him as a scholar, they 
 awoke his affections and his imagina- 
 tions ; to hold thus, what likely enough
 
 156 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Dante once had held, thrilled him to 
 his utmost soul ; he could never see a 
 volume which had weathered centuries, 
 a manuscript which had been written in 
 other ages, without a strong emotion" as 
 of tears. 
 
 He would have given half the few 
 years remaining to him to have had this 
 one in his own possession, safe locked 
 under his own keys ; and to so possess 
 it he had nothing to do but to put it 
 under his arm and walk quietly away 
 down the hillside ; no one would ever 
 have known. 
 
 It was so intense a temptation that 
 the dew stood on his temples, and the 
 blue veins swelled in his throat, as he 
 knelt there, his hands about the old dark 
 rusty cover of it. There it had lain so
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 157 
 
 long, and no eyes but his could 
 have recognised it for what it was. It 
 was his own by all right of affinity, all 
 title of sympathy. What was it to 
 those who owned it ? 
 
 He stayed there gazing on it so long 
 that his limbs grew cramped and stag- 
 nated, and he lost all sense of nerve and 
 pulse whilst the sun sank down out of 
 sight behind the mountain afar off in 
 the west. 
 
 The sound of voices laughing and 
 talking and singing came to his ear 
 as the reapers approached from the 
 fields. Then he arose slowly, for 
 his knees were stiff" and bruised by 
 the bricks on which he had so lone 
 knelt. 
 
 He took the volume in his hand, and
 
 158 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 crossed the kitchen, and met the pea- 
 sants at the threshold. 
 
 ' My friend ! my friend !' he said to 
 the blacksmith. ' Here is a treasure I 
 have found for you in that which you 
 thought was a mere heap of rubbish. 
 This volume is worth its weight in 
 gold, if it be truly that which I think. 
 To-morrow we will go together into 
 the city and have it fully appraised.' 
 
 lorio drew near with startled round 
 eyes, alight with joy and covetousness, 
 and the women with him pressed close 
 also in excitement and wonder, expecting 
 to see some vessels of gold and silver or 
 some jewelled pyx or cross. 
 
 ' An old book ! a leather book !' said 
 the smith's wife with derision and dis- 
 appointment. ' You are joking, Ser
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 159 
 
 Checchi ! You are so fond of books 
 that your head gets turned about them. 
 Any rubbish bewitches you.' 
 
 ' You mistake,' said Ser Checchi 
 almost harshly, for his temptation to say 
 otherwise was almost greater than his 
 strength. ' Take my word on a matter 
 of which you are yourself utterly igno- 
 rant. This book is so old, and of such 
 a nature, that it is extremely valuable. 
 Keep it carefully all the night, and to- 
 morrow I will take you to those in the 
 town who will confirm what I say. 
 You will learn from them precisely its 
 worth. Only, good man,' he added, as 
 he clasped the volume in both hands 
 and gazed at it with swimming, reverent 
 eyes, * if that value be what I can pay 
 you, you will let me become the pur-
 
 i6o THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 chaser of it at its due price, will you 
 not?' 
 
 The smith, brawny, bare-legged, bare- 
 armed, sunburnt till he was almost black, 
 stared sheepishly at the volume, which 
 to him looked worth no more than, nay, 
 not half as much as, a clod of good 
 b:-own earth. The other men, with the 
 women and children, were all gaping 
 with wide-open mouths, and nudging 
 one another, and whispering that it was 
 commonly said that the good Ser 
 Checchi was in his dotage on certain 
 matters. 
 
 ' You will find what I say is true,' 
 said the old man abruptly ; ' and — and 
 — you will give me the preference over 
 other buyers, if the price come within 
 mv means ?'
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO i6i 
 
 *' About what might be the price ?' 
 asked lorio in a shamefaced, awed tone, 
 the avarice of the Tuscan peasant begin- 
 ning to stir in him at the idea of a 
 possible gain. 
 
 ' That I would not rather say, since I 
 intend to be, if possible, a buyer,' replied 
 Ser Checchi a little austerely, for what 
 he had done had cost him a sharp effort, 
 and he suffered at the idea of this 
 precious treasure-trove going away from 
 his own hands, even for this one short 
 summer night. 
 
 ' Keep it as the apple of your eye,' he 
 said to the smith, and reluctantly relin- 
 quished it to the dirty rough hand out- 
 stretched to take it, 
 
 ' Lord ! It's been in that chest, I will 
 be bound, for hundreds and hundreds of 
 
 VOL. I. I I
 
 i62 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 years/ said the smith, staring confusedly 
 down on this dingy, mouse - nibbled 
 leathern folio, of which such wonders 
 were told him. 
 
 ' I will meet you at the foot of the 
 hill at daybreak,' said Ser Checchi, 
 hastily averting his eyes from the sight 
 of the volume in those ignorant and 
 impious hands. 
 
 Then he turned his back on them 
 and went down the steep grass path 
 under the olive boughs, through the 
 sheaves of wheat. 
 
 ' *' Lead us not into temptation," ' he 
 thought. ' Who has not need to say that ?' 
 
 All the night he could not sleep for 
 the memory of the manuscript confided 
 to the stupid care of a peasant ignorant 
 and contemptuous of its value, and it
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 163 
 
 made him restless and ashamed to feel 
 how nearly, how closely, the temptation 
 to secrecy had assailed him. 
 
 ' We are wretched creatures, and can 
 find fair sophisms to cover all our evil- 
 doing,' he thought sadly as he lay wide 
 awake looking at the clouds sweeping 
 slowly past his moonlit casement, and 
 hearing the prolonged and harmonious 
 call of the scops owl through the 
 shadows. 
 
 In the morning he kept his word, 
 and went down with the blacksmith 
 into the city, lorio wholly incredulous, 
 but carrying with him, wrapped in a 
 bit of cotton stufl?" which his wife had 
 given him, the dingy volume which in 
 his soul he utterly despised. 
 
 After long and careful examination
 
 i64 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 the book was pronounced by those most 
 competent to judge on such matters to 
 be undoubtedly one of the very earhest 
 copies of the great poem extant, worth 
 many thousand francs in private sale, 
 likely to be sold for its weight in gold 
 in an auction-room. 
 
 The smith was stupefied. That a 
 common old book, all nibbled and dog- 
 eared as it looked, should be likely to 
 realize such a vast sum of money 
 seemed to turn the very world topsy- 
 turvy to him. 
 
 ' Sure the wisest men are the biggest 
 fools/ he said to his wife, who had 
 come with him to see that he should 
 not be cheated. ' An old black book 
 all in gnawed leather ! Could any soul 
 in his senses care for it ?'
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 165 
 
 ' Well, they do, and it's no business of 
 yours to put them out of grace with it,' 
 said his helpmeet. ' Take time by the 
 forelock, and the cat when she jumps/ 
 
 ' But Ser Checchi might have kept it 
 to himself, and we been none the wiser!' 
 
 * Ay, ay,' said his wife. * The good 
 man always was three parts daft, or he'd 
 have kept his tongue behind his teeth.' 
 
 ' lorio,' said Ser Checchi at that 
 moment, ' you see what I said is true. 
 You have heard from sound judges the 
 value of your volume. Now, what will 
 you do with it ? Will you offer it to 
 the State, or will you let me have it, or 
 will you wait your chance to meet with 
 some great fancier and collector of these 
 things ?' 
 
 He spoke quietly, but his hands
 
 1 66 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 shook as they had done when he had 
 first touched the precious manuscript, 
 and his eyes dwelt longingly on it 
 where it lay wrapped in the piece of 
 flowered cotton. 
 
 ' Why, Ser Checchi, sure the volume 
 is half yours already, for you found it,' 
 began lorio, who was a simple and 
 amiable man, but he was checked 
 suddenly by his wife, who said quickly : 
 
 * Of course, sir, we would sooner sell 
 it to you than to any mortal creature, 
 so crazy fond of these things as you are, 
 and no oflfence meant ; but we are very 
 poor people, as your honour knows, and 
 with nine children and times so bad and 
 taxes what they are> we cannot follow 
 just the first wish of our hearts, sir, and 
 the book these gentlemen seem to say is
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 167 
 
 worth ten times its weight in gold and 
 more/ 
 
 ' Nay, nay — not so much as that/ 
 murmured lorio. 
 
 Ser Checchi was very pale. He saw 
 that the folio was slipping from his 
 hands. His stanch rectitude forced 
 him to admit the truth of what the 
 woman had said. 
 
 ' You may realize a fancy price by it, 
 certainly/ he answered ; ' but to make 
 one of those sensational prices you 
 must wait the propitious season, and 
 find the willing purchaser. If you like 
 to sell it to me for the small sum which 
 the public libraries here would give 
 you, I will buy it at that. If you 
 prefer to take your chance, you must 
 wait till you find your rich amateur.
 
 1 68 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 But amateurs do not come up in your 
 hills. You will have to trust to some 
 dealer to find you one, and you may 
 trust unwisely.' 
 
 lorio opened his mouth to speak, but 
 his wife spoke before him. 
 
 ' Quite so, sir, we can see that,' she 
 said, taking up the volume in its 
 flowered wrapper. ' But a waiting race 
 is always a safe race to ride. We will 
 wait about this rare book. It lay long 
 years enough in the old walnut chest, 
 and it can go back there, and no harm 
 done. I will clean up the red stones 
 on it a bit, and we will ponder well 
 what is best to be done. I saw Vestuccio 
 just now, and he spoke of our sending it 
 to Paris. But there's time enough for 
 Paris, say J.'
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 169 
 
 ' You have shown it to Vestuccio ?' 
 asked Ser Checchi, with anxious lines 
 on his brow, his eyes resting longingly 
 on the treasure where it lay in the 
 woman's stout arms. 
 
 * He had heard of it somehow al- 
 ready,' replied the smith with some 
 confusion, ' and asked to be allowed to 
 look at it. *^ Ser Checchi would give 
 you a barrow-load of gold plate for it," 
 says he ; but you know, sir, he always 
 has a merry way. One never knows if 
 he be in joke or in earnest.' 
 
 ' I have no gold plate to give, nor 
 silver,' said Ser Checchi sadly. ^ Truly, 
 to those who honour the things of the 
 spirit the volume were worth more than 
 many tons' weight of either.' 
 
 He murmured the last words rather
 
 I70 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 to himself than to the man and woman. 
 His heart was heavy. He had dealt by 
 them with all candour, loyalty, and 
 honour. He had hoped that they 
 would show some sensibility of what he 
 had done. He offered the fair library 
 price ; it seemed to him hard that they 
 would not give it him for that, when 
 but for him they would never have 
 known that it was theirs at all. 
 
 ^ Good-day,' he said to them with a 
 swelling heart, and turned away. He 
 was proud, and he was, like all sensitive 
 people, quickly rebuffed. 
 
 Their colloquy had taken place in 
 the piazza of San Lorenzo, in front of 
 the warehouse where there are sold 
 terra-cotta images, and flower-pots, and 
 lemon-vases. The cart waited for the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 171 
 
 smith and his wife, with the patient 
 horse in the dusty shafts dropping his 
 nose over his bag of chaff and shaking 
 his worsted tassels. Ser Checchi went 
 on towards the Canto di' NelH with 
 slow steps and head hung down. He 
 longed inexpressibly for the Dante, with 
 that love of the bibliophile which has 
 in it all the tenderness of a lover, all the 
 eagerness of a child, all the devotion of 
 a slave, all the hunger of a miser. He 
 had found it, he had aroused it from its 
 slumber beneath the dust of centuries, 
 and restored it to the light of earth, and 
 yet he could have no share in it. A 
 peasant, who could not tell what its 
 initial letters meant, could bear it away 
 from him, held in her stout stubborn 
 arms, and covered with her unlovely
 
 172 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 cotton chintz. He did not repent him 
 of his honesty, because he was an inte- 
 grally honest man. But he felt, what 
 honest men feel sadly often, that honesty 
 costs very dear. 
 
 ^ It's cruel to take it from him, when 
 he loves the senseless old parcel so, God 
 knows why,' whispered lorio, with an 
 uneasy sense that there must be some- 
 thing uncanny in the volume of which 
 he knew nothing. 
 
 ' Do not you be soft,' said his wife ; 
 ' softness never earned a penny yet.' 
 
 But the smith did not assent. He 
 was a good-hearted man, though his 
 means were small and his cupidity 
 was excited by the idea of these vast 
 sums circling in the air above this 
 strange, darksome old volume. He
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 173 
 
 overtook Ser Checchi with a few quick 
 strides, while his wife vainly screamed 
 to him from the seat to which she had 
 climbed in the cart. 
 
 ' Ser Checchi,' he whispered, ' if it 
 be really that your heart is set on this 
 book, why, it would be a shame that 
 you should not have it, if you will pay 
 the price the dealers here would give. 
 You pay that, sir, and you shall have it. 
 No, do not say any more now. My 
 woman is looking after us ; the women 
 are always unreasoning and niggard. 
 I would give it to you, sir,' he added, 
 * give it you and right welcome, for 
 nothing ; but a man with a wife and 
 children is always a man bound ; he can- 
 not help himself when he is bid to do 
 dirty things.'
 
 174 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Then he left the old librarian's side 
 as quickly as he had overtaken him, and 
 got up into his cart. 
 
 *You have never promised him any- 
 thing ?' said the woman with suspicious 
 anger. 
 
 * Set your mind easy/ said lorio 
 curtly. ' YouVe made me as close and 
 as nasty as yourself. I never did a thing 
 I was right-down ashamed of before 
 to-day, but to-day I have.' 
 
 Ser Checchi's heart had given a great 
 leap of joy, and the dusty stones of the 
 crowded Canto di' Nelli seemed to him 
 precious gems glowing with colour and 
 light : the sky was blue between the 
 walls, roses and carnations were glowing 
 in bunches on the corner of the lane, 
 the bells of the great church were
 
 THE TOWER OE TAD DEO 175 
 
 clanging and vibrating excellently, the 
 whole morning seemed full of light and 
 gladness to him. He would be the 
 owner of the manuscript of 1320 ! 
 
 To pay for it indeed would cause 
 some difficulty, but that question he 
 put aside for the moment. Paid for it 
 should be, and within the week ; but 
 like a lover, like a child, he did not 
 stay to count the cost which might 
 attend the fulfilment of his infinite 
 desire. As he went through the streets, 
 strangers turned to look at the old man 
 with his bowed shoulders on which his 
 silvery hair floated, for on his face there 
 was a radiance as of earliest youth. The 
 joys of the spirit illumine the coun- 
 tenance as a light shining through a 
 shell.
 
 176 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 * Good-morrow, Ser Checchi/ said a 
 pleasant voice at his elbow, as Vestuccio, 
 with his good-natured smile and de- 
 ferential salutation, paused beside him 
 somewhat later by the Croce al Treb- 
 bia. 
 
 * Good - day to you,' answered Ser 
 Checchi dreamily, his thoughts always 
 with the manuscript Dante, and far 
 from the throngs about him. 
 
 * Might I have a word with you, 
 Ser ?' asked the younger man with 
 hesitation. 
 
 ' Certainly,' said the elder, a vague 
 disquietude stirring in him ; the smith 
 had said that the dealer had seen the 
 folio. 
 
 ' We are near my little place, if you 
 would honour me by stepping in and
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 177 
 
 sitting down ; the sun is very warm 
 to-day/ said Vestuccio. 
 
 His little place, where he had lately 
 opened business, was the shop in the 
 Piazza della Madonna degli x\ldobran- 
 dini ; modest and unassuming, with 
 ' Aurelio Vestuccio, Antiquario ' painted 
 above its door, and the artistic medley 
 of a bric-a-brac dealer's odds and ends 
 shown in its larger window ; bronzes, 
 carvings, jars, vases, marbles, woodwork, 
 mosaics, and brasses, most of them clever 
 imitations of what they pretended to be, 
 filling up the rooms, which opened one 
 out of another. Ser Checchi passed 
 within its doors. He liked Vestuccio, 
 who had such a civil, pleasant, intelli- 
 gent manner, and who had more than 
 once put in his way rare books which 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 the dealer had fallen in with, and of 
 which, as he said, he would have 
 known nothing of the value but for the 
 lessons received from the librarian. 
 
 'Walk \x\ here, sir,' said Vestuccio 
 now, opening an inner door into a small 
 den only big enough to hold a desk and 
 two stools, with some shelves filled by 
 ledgers. 
 
 He shut the door, although there was 
 no one in hearing. 
 
 The little office looked on a yard in 
 which his workmen were used to pack 
 up sold goods, furbish up old rubbish, 
 fit plain old furniture with metal brass 
 handles and locks, and render more 
 attractive and picturesque all objects 
 which required such embellishment. 
 It was now noonday ; and there was no
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 179 
 
 one in the yard ; the only living thing 
 there was a gray striped cat, asleep on 
 a rusty and rickety kneeling-chair. 
 
 ' You want to speak to me V asked 
 Ser Checchi uneasily, his mind ever 
 following the Dante where it was jog- 
 ging along, wrapped in the flowered 
 print and nursed on the fat woman's 
 knees. 
 
 ' The smith of Giogoli brought me a 
 manuscript,' began Vestuccio. 
 
 'Ah !' said Ser Checchi, with a little 
 gasping sigh of inquiry and uneasiness. 
 He understood that the book was going 
 away from him, that some rich pur- 
 chaser had been found. 
 
 ' He told me of your goodness in 
 acquainting him with its date and 
 value,' continued Vestuccio. ' Is it really
 
 i8o THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 worth SO much ? You know, Ser, I 
 am very ignorant of manuscripts and 
 their like/ 
 
 ^ Its worth is incalculable/ said Ser 
 Checchi, with courageous integrity, 
 though the admission tore at his heart- 
 strings ; ' that is, if it be sold to 
 foreigners. Our libraries have no 
 money. Did lorio speak to you of 
 selling it to me ?' 
 
 * He did,' answered Vestuccio. * He 
 is grateful, and feels that you have no 
 little right to command its purchase. 
 What would he have known of its very 
 existence even, had it not been for you ? 
 I ventured to inquire if you wished to 
 buy it, because I have a client, a 
 German dealer, who would be anxious 
 to get it, before it could be offered to
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 181 
 
 our own Government or to the foreign 
 libraries. But, of course, if you intend 
 to buy it yourself, your prior claim 
 would never be disputed by me.' 
 
 * I wish to buy it ; I mean to buy 
 it,' said Ser Checchi, with incautious 
 haste. . 
 
 Vestuccio's merry blue eyes smiled, as 
 a grown person's eyes may smile at the 
 silliness of a child ; but he answered 
 seriously, and with great respect of 
 tone : 
 
 ' That is enough, sir ; for my part, I 
 shall tell the man from Hamburg that 
 the volume is already disposed of, and 
 will never come into the market at 
 all.' 
 
 ' Yes, yes,' said Ser Checchi hurriedly. 
 * Quite so. If lorio will cede it at the
 
 i82 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 price he would obtain in Italy, I will 
 purchase it.' 
 
 * Ready money ?' murmured Ves- 
 tuccio, with a vague apology in his 
 tone for his mention of the two words. 
 
 Ser Checchi hesitated. He was the 
 most candid of all men, and transparent 
 as an alabaster vase. He knew that he 
 could not pay ready money for the 
 book ; that to pay for it at all would 
 require thought, negotiation, sacrifice, 
 time. He had drooped his head on his 
 chest, his delicate pale hand played 
 nervously with a sheet of blotting- 
 paper on the office desk before him. 
 Vestuccio, to whom all his neighbours' 
 affairs were as well known as the brass 
 nails which he had driven into a 
 leathern chair, or the new gilding with
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 183 
 
 which he revived the glory of a 
 mediaeval nimbus, watched him with a 
 gentle and compassionate amusement. 
 He knew that Ser Checchi could no 
 more put his hand at the moment on 
 a thousand francs than he could have 
 taken hold of the moon or the sun in 
 the heavens. 
 
 He saw the trouble and the perplexity 
 of mind which his two words had 
 caused, and he left the old man for a 
 few minutes to his own meditations, 
 while he himself went out into the 
 yard to drive the cat away over the 
 wall. When he came back Ser Checchi 
 was still nervously folding the blotting- 
 paper to and fro, a shadow cast on his 
 mobile features. Ready money ! Ready 
 money should and must be found.
 
 1 84 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 ' The truth is, Ser Checchi/ said the 
 dealer, coming in, and removing the 
 square smoking -cap he wore — 'the 
 truth is, that this good fellow of 
 Giogoli knows the wish which you 
 have for this volume. It was a thou- 
 sand pities you let him know it ; a 
 thousand pities you did not keep the 
 worth of the manuscript dark ' 
 
 ' What ! Oh, hush ! how can you ?' 
 said the bookseller, lifting his head in 
 pained indignation. 
 
 Vestuccio smiled and waved his hand. 
 
 * Well, well, sir, pardon me ; I know 
 that honour and generosity rule your 
 life. It was noble, very noble, but you 
 throw pearls before swine, you know. 
 However, what is done is done. This 
 smith knows now ; and, having the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 185 
 
 knowledge, he will take the money too. 
 We cannot blame him. Of course your 
 conscience ruled you. Mine rules me, 
 and loses me many a hundred-franc note 
 in the year. It is terrible — yes, it is 
 terrible in this knavish world to be an 
 honest man.' 
 
 Ser Checchi made an impatient and 
 slightly haughty movement. 
 
 ' It is an elementary virtue !' he said, 
 with a sarcastic intonation. ' It is 
 known even amongst savages.' 
 
 Vestuccio perceived that he had 
 taken a wrong tack ; that to con- 
 gratulate a man of integrity upon his 
 integrity is an affront not easily con- 
 doned. 
 
 Ser Checchi rose and took his hat. 
 
 ' I thought you said that you had
 
 1 86 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 business with me. I see I mistook. 
 Good-day, Vestuccio.' 
 
 ' Stay a moment, sir/ said the dealer 
 obsequiously. ' Pray do not go in 
 anger. I am a blunt, unpolished fellow, 
 but my heart is sound — my heart is 
 sound. The truth is, sir, knowing how 
 you wished for this Dante folio, I 
 ventured to hope that, if you cannot 
 find it quite convenient to pay for it 
 down on the nail, you would let me 
 have the pleasure of doing so for you, 
 and you could then repay me when you 
 pleased at your leisure. I owe you 
 much, Ser Checchi ; many a rare bit of 
 knowledge and many a date and secret 
 of art have I, a poor, ignorant, common 
 fellow, learned from you and been your 
 debtor for, in my commerce.'
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 187 
 
 The elder man was silent. A faint 
 flush came on his cheeks and forehead : 
 the proud and delicate spirit in him 
 winced and shrank at the idea that his 
 necessities, however slight, were known 
 to others. 
 
 ' You mean well, and I thank you, 
 my good Aurelio,' he said a little 
 distantly. ' But I have not asked your 
 help.' 
 
 * Help ! I would never give it such a 
 name,' cried Vestuccio. ' It would be 
 a favour which you would do me, for I 
 owe you much, and though I am a 
 rough man, I am not a thankless one. 
 I know how you wish for this old book, 
 which is, by all right of treasure-trove, 
 yours, and the fellow who owns it has 
 placed the sale of it in my hands. I
 
 1 88 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 suppose you are sure of its authenti- 
 city ?' 
 
 Ser Checchi smiled with the pity of 
 culture for ignorance. 
 
 'It is a Codex which the poet him- 
 self may have had written !' 
 
 ' Well, well, sir ; I take your word 
 for it, you are a learned man,' said Ves- 
 tuccio, who desired to depreciate or 
 appear sceptical of its value. 
 
 With that he lifted the lid of the 
 desk, and took out, from the hollow 
 underneath, the Dante, and with a care- 
 less touch opened it, and turned the 
 yellow parchment pages, whilst the sun- 
 light slanting in from the window shone 
 on the regular lines of its black-letter 
 columns. 
 
 Ser Checchi thrilled from head to
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 189 
 
 foot like a man who beholds a beloved 
 mistress. 
 
 ' lorio has sold it to you!' he ex- 
 claimed involuntarily. ' He promised 
 me — he promised me — the preference.' 
 
 Vestuccio smiled. 
 
 ' The good fellow has a wife ; and the 
 gray mare is the better horse. He left it 
 with me because he wished you to have it. 
 The woman would have allowed him 
 no peace if it had remained with them.' 
 
 Ser Checchi leaned over the desk, 
 touching the manuscript caressingly 
 with his long slender fingers ; the colour 
 came and went on his face ; he felt as if 
 he had been degraded and soiled by 
 Vestuccio's praise of his action and by 
 his own sense of how sharp a struggle it 
 had cost him. And the sight of the
 
 ipo THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Dante on the dealer's desk brought 
 home to him the sense of how certainly, 
 if it did not become his own then and 
 there, it would soon pass forever out of 
 his vision and grasp. 
 
 Vestuccio watched him smilingly — an 
 indulgent smile as of a man looking 
 down on a whimsical and half-witted 
 child ; after a pause he said gently : 
 
 ' See now, Ser Checchi, your heart is 
 set on this thing, and for sure, as I say, it 
 is yours already by all the right of trea- 
 sure-trove. I will buy it of the smith, 
 and you shall buy it of me at your per- 
 fect convenience. You will sign me a 
 little paper, just for form's sake, to set 
 your mind at ease because you are so 
 proud and solitary ; and you can take the 
 Dante home with you and put it under
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 191 
 
 your pillow if you like to-night, if it will 
 make you sleep the better. Leave me to 
 deal with lorio. I know those bumpkins ; 
 they are sharp as needles, though they 
 look such simple souls. Take the 
 Codex, as you call it, sir ; you and I 
 shall never quarrel.' 
 
 ' No, no ; I could not be so deeply 
 beholden to you or to anyone,' said Ser 
 Checchi, as he closed the volume and 
 laid it inside the desk. ' You mean well, 
 that I am sure, but I should not be at 
 peace a moment if I took it on those 
 terms. I do not do business so.' 
 
 ' Then the book must go to the Ham- 
 burg people,' said Vestuccio, with a sigh, 
 as he turned the key on his safe. 
 ' Think twice of what I have said, sir ; 
 it is no obligation : you will just sign to
 
 192 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 pay me at three months, six, twelve — 
 at any date you please — and the Dante 
 will belong to you, the one man in 
 Europe who is worthy of it !' 
 
 ' But why should you do this service 
 to me?' asked Ser Checchi, with a flash 
 of insight lightening the placid, even 
 tenor of his trust in human nature. 
 
 ' It is no service,' said Vestuccio, 
 ' and, to prevent your feeling that it is 
 one, we will put it in as regular a busi- 
 ness form as you may please that it shall 
 take. I wish you to have the book, sir : 
 first of all because justice is justice, and 
 should be done when it can ; and 
 secondly because you have been a good 
 friend to me, and I am glad if I can do 
 you ever so slight a benefit. Take the 
 volume home with you, honoured sir,
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 193 
 
 and we will write out the memorandum 
 some other day/ 
 
 Ser Checchi knew the ways of com- 
 merce, although so little trade came 
 nigh his tower, and he ought to have 
 remembered what had been his ex- 
 periences all his life, that he who leaves 
 a signature behind him gives the cost- 
 liest of hostages to fortune. 
 
 But the manuscript folio allured him 
 irresistibly ; even shut away beneath the 
 lid of the desk, like a dead friend 
 beneath a coffin lid, it seemed to draw 
 him towards it with a subtle and mag- 
 netic power, and when he left the shop 
 of Aurelio Vestuccio that day, he carried 
 the Codex of the ' Commedia' with him; 
 and in the desk, in its stead, was lying 
 a small oblong piece of stamped paper 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 bearing his clear, fine handwriting upon 
 it, and at which Vestuccio looked with 
 a satisfied smile. 
 
 ' Chi va piano va sano/ murmured 
 that shrewd tradesman to himself; 
 heaven had sent fools into the world to 
 be the support of clever men, as little 
 fish are made to be the food of big 
 ones. 
 
 He watched the figure of Ser Checchi 
 passing through the artistic lumber of 
 his yard with benevolent compassion, 
 and saw the gates close on him with 
 that triumphant sense of cruel success 
 which moves the trapper in the woods 
 when he sees the gentle beast for v/hom 
 the trap is set walk guilelessly within 
 its meshes. 
 
 And he turned his admirable mind on
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 195 
 
 the morrow to the successful and secret 
 persuasion of the smith of GiogoH that 
 there had been a mistake about the value 
 of the old vellum book ; but that no- 
 thing must be said about that to Ser 
 Checchi, whose brain was softening and 
 growing childish.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ser Checchi displayed the Codex to 
 his daughter with pride and joy, and 
 found in her all the sympathy with his 
 pleasure which a cultured intelligence 
 and a warm heart could give. But he 
 offered no explanation of how it had 
 come into his possession, beyond saying 
 that he had discovered it amongst some 
 musty and worthless volumes, which 
 lorio the blacksmith had turned out of 
 an old chest ; and Beldia, who was but 
 sixteen at that time, was too respectful
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 197 
 
 to ask more than he chose to explain, 
 and too loyal to inquire from others 
 any details which he did not himself 
 proffer to her. She was not curious ; 
 and she was even then so accustomed to 
 have entire liberty in all household 
 matters, but to be wholly excluded 
 from the affairs of her father's business, 
 that it never seemed to her rather odd 
 or ominous that the cost of the early 
 Dante was concealed from her. 
 
 Vestuccio had his own reasons for not 
 speaking of the matter ; and lorio had 
 been so rated by his wife for not 
 waiting for some princely purchaser, 
 that the subject was a sore one to 
 him. But it was the beginning of 
 serious financial transactions between 
 Ser Checchi and the dealer in the
 
 198 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Fi^tzzz della Madonna ; and sometimes 
 when he unlocked the drawer in which 
 the precious volume lay, even though 
 he loved it so dearly, the elder man 
 almost found it in his soul to wish that 
 he had never stopped for that fatal 
 draught of watered wine on the hillside 
 of Giogoli. There were moments of 
 exquisite happiness, when he displayed 
 his treasure to scholars by whom it 
 could be appreciated, and it was a 
 source of profound joy to him always 
 to have a contemporary Dante Codex 
 for his very own ; but at times he 
 realized that he had entered into bondage 
 through and for it. 
 
 To get money by merely writing 
 your name is so easy that its ease has 
 been the ruin of tens of thousands ; and
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 199 
 
 Vestuccio beyond all others knew how 
 to render it so easy, that a inan of absent 
 mind, of scholarly extravagance, and of 
 dreamful indolence, like Ser Checchi, 
 never perceived what it might ultimately 
 cost him to possess himself of monastic 
 manuscripts and precious palimpsests by 
 the mere stroke of a pen in his fine, 
 small, clear, clerkly handwriting. 
 
 He did not even know how manv 
 times he had written ' Francesco Ardig- 
 lione ' upon those stamped sheets of 
 paper, which the dealer put aw^ay with 
 as apparent a carelessness as though he 
 were merely going to light his pipe 
 with them. 
 
 The bibliophile, like the artist, and 
 the poet, and the lover, will do any- 
 thing wise or unwise, good or bad, to
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 reach the object of his desires. Some- 
 times Beldia thought with a pang of 
 what a source of happiness his literary 
 passion would have been to him had he 
 been a rich man. Alas ! rich men 
 usually look upon their libraries as 
 mere show places to assist their pomp, 
 or as mere inherited wealth, to be 
 quickly sent to the hammer. Percep- 
 tion is so seldom united with posses- 
 sions ; the wisdom of the soul is so 
 rarely given with the power of the 
 purse ! 
 
 Beldia was the most dutiful of 
 daughters ; and the infinite respect 
 which she entertained for him never 
 permitted her to blame what he did, 
 even in her own thoughts ; but he did 
 not care all the same to meet the
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 201 
 
 questioning gravity of her eyes when 
 he had been making unwise purchases, 
 so that Httle by little he had grown to 
 conceal from her any unusually costly 
 book or manuscript, and the various 
 straits to which he was sometimes put 
 to pay for them. For Ser Checchi 
 would no more have bought a book on 
 credit than a fond mother would get 
 into debt for her child's christening 
 robe. It would have been difficult to 
 do so, for most rare volumes were found 
 at auction rooms, or in antiquaries' 
 shops, or in remote presbyteries and 
 church-closets, where immediate pay- 
 ment was the sine qua non of purchase. 
 But when he could have bought on 
 credit he would not ; credit would have 
 seemed to him to soil the pure grave
 
 202 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 faces of the beloved books and manu- 
 scripts, which he would touch with 
 such a reverent, caressing gesture of the 
 hand, as you will see in a sculptor 
 when he passes his fingers softly down 
 some marble curve of arm or hip or 
 breast. 
 
 * It will sell for ten times its value, 
 my dear,' he would invariably say when 
 she observed it ; but as buyers of such 
 costly goods hardly ever came to the 
 tower, and as, whenever they did so, 
 he invariably shrank from losing his 
 favourite volumes, and to that end 
 either hid them, or named some pre- 
 posterous and prohibitive price, she 
 knew by experience that what their 
 worth would or would not realize 
 mattered very little to her father.
 
 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 203 
 
 except in so far as his pride as a 
 bibliophile was flattered by the posses- 
 sion. 
 
 * If he vv^ere a rich man collecting a 
 library to enjoy it, there could be no 
 healthier or happier pursuit/ she 
 thought ; ' but when it is his trade, 
 when he should only buy and sell, and 
 do both wisely, his adoration of his 
 books is fatal.' 
 
 All the filial veneration of her soul 
 could not blind her clear and keen 
 intelligence to the fact that the com- 
 merce of books, as Ser Checchi con- 
 ducted it, could only be more ruinous 
 than to pursue no trade at all. 
 
 ' He is as dilettante as if he were a 
 duke !' said Cirillo angrily once. He, 
 for his part, would have made a bonfire
 
 204 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 of all the books with the utmost 
 pleasure. 
 
 Beldia would not admit the truth of 
 it, but in her heart she felt that it was 
 only too true. All the delicate research, 
 the fastidious judgment, and the severe 
 taste of her father would have made the 
 joy and the renown of an amateur 
 collector, but in a librarian were but so 
 many costly impediments. Ser Checchi 
 knew this himself, and it made his con- 
 science twinge and tremble at times ; but 
 he thrust the consciousness aside. He 
 was ruled by his master passion, and 
 when he saw an old copy, of undoubted 
 age and value, or any manuscript of some 
 great dead hand, his whole gentle and 
 unassuming person was transformed ; he 
 became indifferent to everything, except
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 205 
 
 the means by which he might become 
 the owner of such a treasure, and he 
 had even developed a clever and in- 
 genious, though childlike, cunning, in 
 concealing the temptations of this sort 
 which he met with in his daily saunter- 
 ings through the street. Once he had 
 discovered several pages of autograph 
 verse of Politziano's in a chandler's 
 shop, enwrapping some butter, and this 
 discovery had served him for excuse and 
 warrant ever since. True, his honesty 
 had compelled him to acquaint the 
 butterman with the value of his wrap- 
 ping-paper before offering money for it, 
 but the butterman had been incredulous, 
 and had said with a pitying, benignant 
 smile that it was only robaccia (rubbish), 
 so that he had taken his Politziano
 
 2o6 THE TO WER OF TADDEO 
 
 home for the price of the butter itself, 
 and this lucky chance had served as an 
 example, and as an incentive to pur- 
 chases, ever since. Many things, how- 
 ever, cost him much more than a pound 
 of butter ; and for some of his manu- 
 scripts and folios he had paid as heavily 
 as though he had been a curator 
 for the Luxembourg or for the Bod- 
 leian. 
 
 ' They will be a fine dower for 
 Beldia,' he told his conscience. But at 
 that thought his heart contracted and 
 his bowels yearned ; for to become a 
 dower for her they would have, of 
 necessity, to be sold. And the thought 
 of selling them was torture to him. He 
 would have liked to think that his 
 coffin would be filled with them, and
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 207 
 
 that he would lie in his tomb with his 
 folios on his breast, as knights have 
 their shields on theirs. 
 
 From the time of the purchase of the 
 Dante, Vestuccio had become the chief 
 adviser and assistant in financial matters 
 of the librarian, by whom money matters 
 had always been esteemed the most 
 vulgar and debasing of all mundane 
 concerns. 
 
 Ser Checchi, though too trustful and 
 compliant, was no fool, however, and at 
 times there came over him with uneasi- 
 ness the perception that he was trusting 
 too much and leaving too much to his 
 good friend of the Piazza della Ma- 
 donna. Nor did he desire that his 
 daughter should know how thoroughly 
 Vestuccio had ingratiated himself with
 
 2o8 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 him, and wound himself into his con- 
 fidence. 
 
 Ser Checchi, like all scholars and 
 people who love impersonal meditation, 
 was reluctant to be roused out of his 
 studies and pursuits, and forced into 
 contact with the vulgar and common- 
 place interests of daily and practical life. 
 The eminently practical mind of Ves- 
 tuccio quickly found out this tendency, 
 and knew how to turn it and humour it 
 to serve his own purpose. While the 
 old philosopher floated in an empyrean 
 of fine thought, or pursued some philo- 
 logical or historical question, which for 
 him seemed of as vast import as the 
 conquest of Asia seemed to Alexander, 
 he was very glad to find a quick-witted, 
 pleasant-tempered, and unobtrusive per-
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 209 
 
 son, who spared him much trouble and 
 attended to many things in his name. 
 
 * The Signorina Beldia does not like 
 me, though she is so good to my little 
 one,' said Vestuccio regretfully more 
 than once. 
 
 And Ser Checchi answered more 
 than once : 
 
 ' Tut, tut ! what does a young 
 woman's fancy matter, my good fellow, 
 to you ? My daughter is always very 
 slow to give her liking, except to 
 animals and children.' 
 
 * If she does not approve of men, 
 who shall say that she has not right on 
 her side ?' answered the dealer with his 
 good-humoured smile, and added more 
 seriously : ' The signorina is certainly 
 fitter for babes and saints than for our 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 clumsy and rough company. They all 
 call her Madonna Beldia, and for certain 
 such a woman as she is puts most of us 
 to shame/ 
 
 Being shrewd and full of tact, he did 
 not try to force his good qualities on 
 her attention, but contented himself 
 with greeting her respectfully whenever 
 he met her, and kept carefully away 
 from her knowledge the transactions 
 which he and her father had together. 
 Something of them, however, she dimly 
 suspected, and the mere suspicion made 
 her uneasy. Aurelio Vestuccio had a 
 good name on the Piazza, and had a 
 pleasant countenance and manner ; but 
 Folko growled when he approached, 
 and Folko's mistress felt the same 
 instinct of distrust and apprehension as
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 211 
 
 the dog. She liked his little girls, 
 nevertheless, and the children were never 
 so happy as when they could climb the 
 steep stone stair of the tower, and 
 mount the ladder which led on to the 
 roof amongst the flowering plants and 
 the pigeons. 
 
 They were pretty little girls, with 
 long fair hair and dancing blue eyes, 
 like what their father's had been when 
 he had sold his shells and seaweed at 
 their age ; they were known as Gemma 
 and Dina, and they were often seen 
 tying up the pinks, drying the rose- 
 leaves for pot-pourri, feeding the birds, 
 or otherwise aiding, or imagining that 
 they aided, Ser Checchi's daughter. 
 Every Christmas their father sent them 
 with a bouquet and some dried fruit to
 
 212 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 her, and every Easter they brought her 
 a basket of eggs and lemons in acknow- 
 ledgment of, and return for, the many 
 kindnesses she showed to them, and the 
 courage with which she had nursed 
 them in their sickness. 
 
 * Always be pretty behaved, my trea- 
 sures,* said Vestuccio to them. 
 
 Pretty behaviour had stood himself in 
 such good stead, and had paid him a 
 hundred per cent, on it. Vestuccio 
 could never understand why people were 
 rough and rude, and coarse and repel- 
 lent, and told the truth and swore at 
 their neighbours. It was so much 
 simpler and nicer to behave well, and 
 speak as if the world were a pot of 
 cream and a bowl of sugar. 
 
 You could put what poison you liked
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 213 
 
 in the cream, and you could disguise so 
 many things with the sugar. 
 
 Beldia was used to seeing Vestuccio 
 come and go about her father's cham- 
 bers. She gave no thought to his 
 frequent visits, but she did not like him 
 any better than she liked the advocate 
 Querci. She knew, however, that her 
 father esteemed him and employed him, 
 and therefore she endeavoured to restrain 
 her own prejudices, and at the end of 
 each year made pretty little presents for 
 his children, of whom he had many, as 
 behoved a good citizen. 
 
 ' The signorina is an angel,' said 
 Vestuccio more than once, and said so 
 with genuine tears in his eyes when she 
 saved the life of his eldest little girl by 
 her judicious and courageous nursing
 
 214 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 during diphtheria, when the child's 
 mother was helpless and useless from 
 fright, and lay on the floor in hysterics 
 all day long. 
 
 But he did not for that reason cease 
 to accumulate Ser Checchi's signatures 
 within his desk. 
 
 He would have said that the one 
 thing had nothing to do with the other. 
 Feelings and accounts are as far apart 
 from each other as the rose in your 
 button-hole from the boots on your feet. 
 
 He one day gave orders to his fore- 
 man never to sell anything to a certain 
 person ; the certain person could not 
 pay. The foreman, foolish and new to 
 the business, bluntly told the impecu- 
 nious client that it was of no use to 
 come to the shop ; he would be given
 
 THE TOWER OE TADDEO 215 
 
 nothing. Vestuccio, on learning this 
 coarse and unpardonable blunder, was as 
 violently angry as so good-tempered a 
 man could be. 
 
 ' This is how you should get rid of 
 people without offending them/ he said 
 to the foreman, and planted a tall, high- 
 backed chair in the middle of the ware- 
 house, and bowed to it with many 
 smiles, softly rubbing his hands together. 
 ' Represent to yourself that this chair is 
 a well-born, well-bred person, without 
 credit, whom we know well — and know 
 will never pay in twenty years' time, 
 and has nothing to render it worth our 
 having the law upon him. Now behold 
 me receive him when he wishes to pur- 
 chase.' 
 
 And he walked in front of the chair.
 
 2i6 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 courteously bending his supple back- 
 bone. 
 
 * Most illustrious Sir Chair,' he said 
 unctuously, ' my very soul is rent, my 
 pain is inexpressible, but, alas ! that 
 article which you desire is sold already ; 
 and this, and this, and this also — all, 
 alas ! that you see around you. I will 
 telegraph to the purchaser to try and 
 obtain a release of these objects for your 
 most eminent self; for there is no 
 monarch or minister in Europe whom I 
 would serve with such joy as I would 
 serve you. Your taste is so perfect. 
 You appreciate so exquisitely. It is de- 
 lightful to feel that a beautiful object 
 passes to your hands. I will telegraph 
 instantly, but if the buyer will not 
 release them, alas ! what can I do ? I
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 217 
 
 would lose twenty per cent, to know the 
 joy of selling to you, dear Sir Chair, 
 but they are already promised, more 
 than promised — sold ! And, alas ! one's 
 commercial word is one's bond !' 
 
 Then he rubbed his hands and made 
 three graceful bows, and walked back- 
 wards from the chair, smiling and 
 sighing. 
 
 * There, idiot !' he said, turning to the 
 foreman with a frown, ' that is how you 
 should rid yourself of a bad customer 
 without making an enemy of him. You 
 will never give him a centime's worth, 
 but he will believe that you would trust 
 him with millions. Never make a foe, 
 even of an insolvent debtor !' 
 
 The foreman, a stupid young man, 
 unworthy of the school in which it
 
 2i8 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 
 
 was happiness to dwell, shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 ' Life is too short for all that farce/ 
 he said sheepishly, replacing the high- 
 backed chair amongst its fellows. 
 
 His master eyed him with compas- 
 sionate contempt. 
 
 ' Life is long, my friend,' he answered, 
 ' to those who know how to play the 
 farce — long and sweet. Sweet!' he 
 repeated, smacking his lips with unction. 
 ' And, besides, one should never give 
 pain unnecessarily — not even to a debtor 
 who cannot pay.' 
 
 The foreman looked at his employer 
 and grinned : the grin was disrespectful, 
 but Aurelio Vestuccio did not resent it. 
 He smiled broadly and brightly him- 
 self, the same smile with which — when
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 219 
 
 a little lad on the seashore — he had sold 
 shells which were cracked and rotting 
 star-fish. 
 
 Life was sweet to him, whatever it 
 might be to his clients and customers, 
 and everything in it was sweet to him, 
 from that straight, tall, ebony chair 
 which he had had made a few hours 
 before — with 1547 carved on its back, 
 and the worm- holes drilled along its 
 legs — to the round sums lent out at 
 compound interest, which multiplied 
 themselves like ants and rabbits. 
 
 Any bystander overhearing him talk 
 of Ser Checchi, as they sat at a little 
 round marble table in some coffee-house, 
 would have heard only such tender and 
 reverent praises, such fine phrases of 
 respect and esteem, as would have
 
 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 warmed his heart to hear ; he only 
 sighed over the old librarian's too credu- 
 lous virtue. 
 
 ' Business cannot be done as our dear 
 Ser Checchi does it/ he observed to 
 Pampilio Querci one day when they 
 met at the Birraria Cornelio. 
 
 ' He believes everyone is as pure of 
 mouth and of hand as him.self/ answered 
 the young lawyer. 
 
 ' He is as trustful as a lamb/ said the 
 dealer. 
 
 ' He is a saint and a sage, and thinks 
 men's breasts are made of glass/ said the 
 man of law. 
 
 * His own is so/ replied the other, and 
 added warmly and solemnly as he 
 drained his glass, ' Woe be to those who 
 wrong him !'
 
 THE TOWER OF TAD DEO 221 
 
 * Woe be to them indeed !' said the 
 lawyer, finishing his vermuth. 
 
 So they spoke together, understanding 
 one another. 
 
 Rude, rough. Northern men would 
 have said bluntly to each other : 
 
 * This client is a goose — let us pluck 
 him.' 
 
 Vestuccio and Querci wrapped up the 
 same meaning in admirable and admiring 
 sentences, which deceived no one, indeed, 
 but soothed and pleased themselves, and 
 preserved their self-respect in their own 
 sight and that of each other. 
 
 Vestuccio and Querci never trusted 
 each other an inch, and they always 
 kept up an elaborate comedy for each 
 other's benefit. To each of them the 
 world was a stage, on which, as on the
 
 222 THE TOWER OF TADDEO 
 
 Stage of the Greeks, the masks and the 
 stihs mattered more than the words 
 Each of these worthies knew that he 
 did not for a moment deceive the other ; 
 yet to play the comedy pleased both, 
 gratified their consciousness of wit and 
 wisdom, and gave the agreeable sense of 
 security which is given by a domino and 
 mask. 
 
 Cicero's countrymen have still the 
 same sense of propriety and politeness 
 which characterized his gentle and 
 polished utterance of vixerunt when his 
 enemies lay dying with throats bleeding 
 like slaughtered pigs. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.