Romola Page 6

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  THE BLIND SCHOLAR AND HIS DAUGHTER.

  The Via de' Bardi, a street noted in the history of Florence, lies inOltrarno, or that portion of the city which clothes the southern bank ofthe river. It extends from the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza de' Mozzi atthe head of the Ponte alle Grazie; its right-hand line of houses andwalls being backed by the rather steep ascent which in the fifteenthcentury was known as the hill of Bogoli, the famous stone-quarry whencethe city got its pavement--of dangerously unstable consistence whenpenetrated by rains; its left-hand buildings flanking the river andmaking on their northern side a length of quaint, irregularly-piercedfacade, of which the waters give a softened loving reflection as the sunbegins to decline towards the western heights. But quaint as thesebuildings are, some of them seem to the historical memory a too modernsubstitute for the famous houses of the Bardi family, destroyed bypopular rage in the middle of the fourteenth century.

  They were a proud and energetic stock, these Bardi; conspicuous amongthose who clutched the sword in the earliest world-famous quarrels ofFlorentines with Florentines, when the narrow streets were darkened withthe high towers of the nobles, and when the old tutelar god Mars, as hesaw the gutters reddened with neighbours' blood, might well have smiledat the centuries of lip-service paid to his rival, the Baptist. But theBardi hands were of the sort that not only clutch the sword-hilt withvigour, but love the more delicate pleasure of fingering minted metal:they were matched, too, with true Florentine eyes, capable of discerningthat power was to be won by other means than by rending and riving, andby the middle of the fourteenth century we find them risen from theiroriginal condition of _popolani_ to be possessors, by purchase, of landsand strongholds, and the feudal dignity of Counts of Vernio, disturbingto the jealousy of their republican fellow-citizens. These lordlypurchases are explained by our seeing the Bardi disastrously signalisedonly a few years later as standing in the very front of Europeancommerce--the Christian Rothschilds of that time--undertaking to furnishspecie for the wars of our Edward the Third, and having revenues "inkind" made over to them; especially in wool, most precious of freightsfor Florentine galleys. Their august debtor left them with an augustdeficit, and alarmed Sicilian creditors made a too sudden demand for thepayment of deposits, causing a ruinous shock to the credit of the Bardiand of associated houses, which was felt as a commercial calamity alongall the coasts of the Mediterranean. But, like more modern bankrupts,they did not, for all that, hide their heads in humiliation; on thecontrary, they seemed to have held them higher than ever, and to havebeen among the most arrogant of those grandees, who under certainnoteworthy circumstances, open to all who will read the honest pages ofGiovanni Villani, drew upon themselves the exasperation of the armedpeople in 1343. The Bardi, who had made themselves fast in their streetbetween the two bridges, kept these narrow inlets, like panthers at bay,against the oncoming gonfalons of the people, and were only made to giveway by an assault from the hill behind them. Their houses by the river,to the number of twenty-two (_palagi e case grandi_), were sacked andburnt, and many among the chief of those who bore the Bardi name weredriven from the city. But an old Florentine family was many-rooted, andwe find the Bardi maintaining importance and rising again and again tothe surface of Florentine affairs in a more or less creditable manner,implying an untold family history that would have included even morevicissitudes and contrasts of dignity and disgrace, of wealth andpoverty, than are usually seen on the background of wide kinship. [Note1.] But the Bardi never resumed their proprietorship in the old streeton the banks of the river, which in 1492 had long been associated withother names of mark, and especially with the Neri, who possessed aconsiderable range of houses on the side towards the hill.

  In one of these Neri houses there lived, however, a descendant of theBardi, and of that very branch which a century and a half before hadbecome Counts of Vernio: a descendant who had inherited the old familypride and energy, the old love of pre-eminence, the old desire to leavea lasting track of his footsteps on the fast-whirling earth. But thefamily passions lived on in him under altered conditions: thisdescendant of the Bardi was not a man swift in street warfare, or onewho loved to play the signor, fortifying strongholds and asserting theright to hang vassals, or a merchant and usurer of keen daring, whodelighted in the generalship of wide commercial schemes: he was a manwith a deep-veined hand cramped by much copying of manuscripts, who atesparing dinners, and wore threadbare clothes, at first from choice andat last from necessity; who sat among his books and his marble fragmentsof the past, and saw them only by the light of those far-off youngerdays which still shone in his memory: he was a moneyless, blind oldscholar--the Bardo de' Bardi to whom Nello, the barber, had promised tointroduce the young Greek, Tito Melema.

  The house in which Bardo lived was situated on the side of the streetnearest the hill, and was one of those large sombre masses of stonebuilding pierced by comparatively small windows, and surmounted by whatmay be called a roofed terrace or loggia, of which there are manyexamples still to be seen in the venerable city. Grim doors, withconspicuous scrolled hinges, having high up on each side of them a smallwindow defended by iron bars, opened on a groined entrance-court, emptyof everything but a massive lamp-iron suspended from the centre of thegroin. A smaller grim door on the left-hand admitted to the stonestaircase, and the rooms on the ground-floor. These last were used as awarehouse by the proprietor; so was the first floor; and both werefilled with precious stores, destined to be carried, some perhaps to thebanks of the Scheldt, some to the shores of Africa, some to the isles ofthe Aegean, or to the banks of the Euxine. Maso, the old serving-man,when he returned from the Mercato with the stock of cheap vegetables,had to make his slow way up to the second storey before he reached thedoor of his master, Bardo, through which we are about to enter only afew mornings after Nello's conversation with the Greek.

  We follow Maso across the ante-chamber to the door on the left-hand,through which we pass as he opens it. He merely looks in and nods,while a clear young voice says, "Ah, you are come back, Maso. It iswell. We have wanted nothing."

  The voice came from the farther end of a long, spacious room, surroundedwith shelves, on which books and antiquities were arranged in scrupulousorder. Here and there, on separate stands in front of the shelves, wereplaced a beautiful feminine torso; a headless statue, with an upliftedmuscular arm wielding a bladeless sword; rounded, dimpled, infantinelimbs severed from the trunk, inviting the lips to kiss the cold marble;some well-preserved Roman busts; and two or three vases from MagnaGrecia. A large table in the centre was covered with antique bronzelamps and small vessels in dark pottery. The colour of these objectswas chiefly pale or sombre: the vellum bindings, with their deep-ridgedbacks, gave little relief to the marble, livid with long burial; theonce splendid patch of carpet at the farther end of the room had longbeen worn to dimness; the dark bronzes wanted sunlight upon them tobring out their tinge of green, and the sun was not yet high enough tosend gleams of brightness through the narrow windows that looked on theVia de' Bardi.

  The only spot of bright colour in the room was made by the hair of atall maiden of seventeen or eighteen, who was standing before a carved_leggio_, or reading-desk, such as is often seen in the choirs ofItalian churches. The hair was of a reddish gold colour, enriched by anunbroken small ripple, such as may be seen in the sunset clouds ongrandest autumnal evenings. It was confined by a black fillet above hersmall ears, from which it rippled forward again, and made a natural veilfor her neck above her square-cut gown of black _rascia_, or serge. Hereyes were bent on a large volume placed before her: one long white handrested on the reading, desk, and the other clasped the back of herfather's chair.

  The blind father sat with head uplifted and turned a little asidetowards his daughter, as if he were looking at her. His delicatepaleness, set off by the black velvet cap which surmounted his droopingwhite hair, made all the more perceptible the likeness between his agedfeatures and those of t
he young maiden, whose cheeks were also withoutany tinge of the rose. There was the same refinement of brow andnostril in both, counterbalanced by a full though firm mouth andpowerful chin, which gave an expression of proud tenacity and latentimpetuousness: an expression carried out in the backward poise of thegirl's head, and the grand line of her neck and shoulders. It was atype of face of which one could not venture to say whether it wouldinspire love or only that unwilling admiration which is mixed withdread: the question must be decided by the eyes, which often seemcharged with a more direct message from the soul. But the eyes of thefather had long been silent, and the eyes of the daughter were bent onthe Latin pages of Politian's `Miscellanea,' from which she was readingaloud at the eightieth chapter, to the following effect:--

  "There was a certain nymph of Thebes named Chariclo, especially dear toPallas; and this nymph was the mother of Teiresias. But once when inthe heat of summer, Pallas, in company with Chariclo, was bathing herdisrobed limbs in the Heliconian Hippocrene, it happened that Teiresiascoming as a hunter to quench his thirst at the same fountain,inadvertently beheld Minerva unveiled, and immediately became blind.For it is declared in the Saturnian laws, that he who beholds the godsagainst their will, shall atone for it by a heavy penalty... WhenTeiresias had fallen into this calamity, Pallas, moved by the tears ofChariclo, endowed him with prophecy and length of days, and even causedhis prudence and wisdom to continue after he had entered among theshades, so that an oracle spake from his tomb: and she gave him a staff,wherewith, as by a guide, he might walk without stumbling... And hence,Nonnus, in the fifth book of the `Dionysiaca,' introduces Actreonexclaiming that he calls Teiresias happy, since, without dying, and withthe loss of his eyesight merely, he had beheld Minerva unveiled, andthus, though blind, could for evermore carry her image in his soul."

  At this point in the reading, the daughter's hand slipped from the backof the chair and met her father's, which he had that moment uplifted;but she had not looked round, and was going on, though with a voice alittle altered by some suppressed feeling, to read the Greek quotationfrom Nonnus, when the old man said--

  "Stay, Romola; reach me my own copy of Nonnus. It is a more correctcopy than any in Poliziano's hands, for I made emendations in it whichhave not yet been communicated to any man. I finished it in 1477, whenmy sight was fast failing me."

  Romola walked to the farther end of the room, with the queenly stepwhich was the simple action of her tall, finely-wrought frame, withoutthe slightest conscious adjustment of herself.

  "Is it in the right place, Romola?" asked Bardo, who was perpetuallyseeking the assurance that the outward fact continued to correspond withthe image which lived to the minutest detail in his mind.

  "Yes, father; at the west end of the room, on the third shelf from thebottom, behind the bust of Hadrian, above Apollonius Rhodius andCallimachus, and below Lucan and Silius Italious."

  As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear voiceand distinct utterance, a faint suggestion of weariness struggling withhabitual patience. But as she approached her father and saw his armsstretched out a little with nervous excitement to seize the volume, herhazel eyes filled with pity; she hastened to lay the book on his lap,and kneeled down by him, looking up at him as if she believed that thelove in her face must surely make its way through the dark obstructionthat shut out everything else. At that moment the doubtfulattractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to bequivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, wastransfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity andaffection: it was evident that the deepest fount of feeling within herhad not yet wrought its way to the less changeful features, and onlyfound its outlet through her eyes.

  But the father, unconscious of that soft radiance, looked flushed andagitated as his hand explored the edges and back of the large book.

  "The vellum is yellowed in these thirteen years, Romola."

  "Yes, father," said Romola, gently; "but your letters at the back aredark and plain still--fine Roman letters; and the Greek character," shecontinued, laying the book open on her father's knee, "is more beautifulthan that of any of your bought manuscripts."

  "Assuredly, child," said Bardo, passing his finger across the page, asif he hoped to discriminate line and margin. "What hired amanuensis canbe equal to the scribe who loves the words that grow under his hand, andto whom an error or indistinctness in the text is more painful than asudden darkness or obstacle across his path? And even these mechanicalprinters who threaten to make learning a base and vulgar thing--eventhey must depend on the manuscript over which we scholars have bent withthat insight into the poet's meaning which is closely akin to the _mensdivinior_ of the poet himself; unless they would flood the world withgrammatical falsities and inexplicable anomalies that would turn thevery fountain of Parnassus into a deluge of poisonous mud. But find thepassage in the fifth book, to which Poliziano refers--I know it verywell."

  Seating herself on a low stool, close to her father's knee, Romola tookthe book on her lap and read the four verses containing the exclamationof Actreon.

  "It is true, Romola," said Bardo, when she had finished; "it is a trueconception of the poet; for what is that grosser, narrower light bywhich men behold merely the petty scene around them, compared with thatfar-stretching, lasting light which spreads over centuries of thought,and over the life of nations, and makes clear to us the minds of theimmortals who have reaped the great harvest and left us to glean intheir furrows? For me, Romola, even when I could see, it was with thegreat dead that I lived; while the living often seemed to me merespectres--shadows dispossessed of true feeling and intelligence; andunlike those Lamiae, to whom Poliziano, with that superficial ingenuitywhich I do not deny to him, compares our inquisitive Florentines,because they put on their eyes when they went abroad, and took them offwhen they got home again, I have returned from the converse of thestreets as from a forgotten dream, and have sat down among my books,saying with Petrarca, the modern who is least unworthy to be named afterthe ancients, `Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, etviva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.'"

  "And in one thing you are happier than your favourite Petrarca, father,"said Romola, affectionately humouring the old man's disposition todilate in this way; "for he used to look at his copy of Homer and thinksadly that the Greek was a dead letter to him: so far, he had the inwardblindness that you feel is worse than your outward blindness."

  "True, child; for I carry within me the fruits of that fervid studywhich I gave to the Greek tongue under the teaching of the youngerCrisolora, and Filelfo, and Argiropulo; though that great work in whichI had desired to gather, as into a firm web, all the threads that myresearch had laboriously disentangled, and which would have been thevintage of my life, was cut off by the failure of my sight and my wantof a fitting coadjutor. For the sustained zeal and unconquerablepatience demanded from those who would tread the unbeaten paths ofknowledge are still less reconcilable with the wandering, vagrantpropensity of the feminine mind than with the feeble powers of thefeminine body."

  "Father," said Romola, with a sudden flush and in an injured tone, "Iread anything you wish me to read; and I will look out any passages foryou, and make whatever notes you want."

  Bardo shook his head, and smiled with a bitter sort of pity. "As welltry to be a pentathlos and perform all the five feats of the palaestrawith the limbs of a nymph. Have I forgotten thy fainting in the meresearch for the references I needed to explain a single passage ofCallimachus?"

  "But, father, it was the weight of the books, and Maso can help me; itwas not want of attention and patience."

  Bardo shook his head again. "It is not mere bodily organs that I want:it is the sharp edge of a young mind to pierce the way for my somewhatblunted faculties. For blindness acts like a dam, sending the streamsof thought backward along the already-travelled channels and hinderingthe course onward. If my son had not forsaken me, deluded by deb
asingfanatical dreams, worthy only of an energumen whose dwelling is amongtombs, I might have gone on and seen my path broadening to the end of mylife; for he was a youth of great promise. But it has closed in now,"the old man continued, after a short pause; "it has closed in now;--allbut the narrow track he has left me to tread--alone in my blindness."

  Romola started from her seat, and carried away the large volume to itsplace again, stung too acutely by her father's last words to remainmotionless as well as silent; and when she turned away from the shelfagain, she remained standing at some distance from him, stretching herarms downwards and clasping her fingers tightly as she looked with a saddreariness in her young face at the lifeless objects around her--theparchment backs, the unchanging mutilated marble, the bits of obsoletebronze and clay.

  Bardo, though usually susceptible to Romola's movements and eager totrace them, was now too entirely preoccupied by the pain of ranklingmemories to notice her departure from his side.

  "Yes," he went on, "with my son to aid me, I might have had my due sharein the triumphs of this century: the names of the Bardi, father and son,might have been held reverently on the lips of scholars in the ages tocome; not on account of frivolous verses or philosophical treatises,which are superfluous and presumptuous attempts to imitate theinimitable, such as allure vain men like Panhormita, and from which eventhe admirable Poggio did not keep himself sufficiently free; but becausewe should have given a lamp whereby men might have studied the supremeproductions of the past. For why is a young man like Poliziano (who wasnot yet born when I was already held worthy to maintain a discussionwith Thomas of Sarzana) to have a glorious memory as a commentator onthe Pandects--why is Ficino, whose Latin is an offence to me, and whowanders purblind among the superstitious fancies that marked the declineat once of art, literature, and philosophy, to descend to posterity asthe very high priest of Platonism, while I, who am more than theirequal, have not effected anything but scattered work, which will beappropriated by other men? Why? but because my son, whom I had broughtup to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me and allliberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight withbesotted friars--that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting menwho know of no past older than the missal and the crucifix?--left mewhen the night was already beginning to fall on me."

  In these last words the old man's voice, which had risen high inindignant protest, fell into a tone of reproach so tremulous andplaintive that Romola, turning her eyes again towards the blind agedface, felt her heart swell with forgiving pity. She seated herself byher father again, and placed her hand on his knee--too proud to obtrudeconsolation in words that might seem like a vindication of her ownvalue, yet wishing to comfort him by some sign of her presence.

  "Yes, Romola," said Bardo, automatically letting his left-hand, with itsmassive prophylactic rings, fall a little too heavily on the delicateblue-veined back of the girl's right, so that she bit her lip to preventherself from starting. "If even Florence only is to remember me, it canbut be on the same ground that it will remember Niccolo Niccoli--becauseI forsook the vulgar pursuit of wealth in commerce that I might devotemyself to collecting the precious remains of ancient art and wisdom, andleave them, after the example of the munificent Romans, for aneverlasting possession to my fellow-citizens. But why do I say Florenceonly? If Florence remembers me, will not the world remember me? ...Yet," added Bardo, after a short pause, his voice falling again into asaddened key, "Lorenzo's untimely death has raised a new difficulty. Ihad his promise--I should have had his bond--that my collection shouldalways bear my name and should never be sold, though the harpies mightclutch everything else; but there is enough for them--there is more thanenough--and for thee, too, Romola, there will be enough. Besides, thouwilt marry; Bernardo reproaches me that I do not seek a fitting_parentado_ for thee, and we will delay no longer, we will think aboutit."

  "No, no, father; what could you do? besides, it is useless: wait tillsome one seeks me," said Romola, hastily.

  "Nay, my child, that is not the paternal duty. It was not so held bythe ancients, and in this respect Florentines have not degenerated fromtheir ancestral customs."

  "But I will study diligently," said Romola, her eyes dilating withanxiety. "I will become as learned as Cassandra Fedele: I will try andbe as useful to you as if I had been a boy, and then perhaps some greatscholar will want to marry me, and will not mind about a dowry; and hewill like to come and live with you, and he will be to you in place ofmy brother... and you will not be sorry that I was a daughter."

  There was a rising sob in Romola's voice as she said the last words,which touched the fatherly fibre in Bardo. He stretched his hand upwarda little in search of her golden hair, and as she placed her head underhis hand, he gently stroked it, leaning towards her as if his eyesdiscerned some glimmer there.

  "Nay, Romola mia, I said not so; if I have pronounced an anathema on adegenerate and ungrateful son, I said not that I could wish thee otherthan the sweet daughter thou hast been to me. For what son could havetended me so gently in the frequent sickness I have had of late? Andeven in learning thou art not, according to thy measure, contemptible.Something perhaps were to be wished in thy capacity of attention andmemory, not incompatible even with the feminine mind. But as Calcondilabore testimony, when he aided me to teach thee, thou hast a readyapprehension, and even a wide-glancing intelligence. And thou hast aman's nobility of soul: thou hast never fretted me with thy pettydesires as thy mother did. It is true, I have been careful to keep theealoof from the debasing influence of thy own sex, with theirsparrow-like frivolity and their enslaving superstition, except, indeed,from that of our cousin Brigida, who may well serve as a scarecrow and awarning. And though--since I agree with the divine Petrarca, when hedeclares, quoting the `Aulularia' of Plautus, who again was indebted forthe truth to the supreme Greek intellect, `Optimam foeminam nullam esse,alia licet alia pejor sit'--I cannot boast that thou art entirely liftedout of that lower category to which Nature assigned thee, nor even thatin erudition thou art on a par with the more learned women of this age;thou art, nevertheless--yes, Romola mia," said the old man, his pedantryagain melting into tenderness, "thou art my sweet daughter, and thyvoice is as the lower notes of the flute, `dulcis, durabilis, clara,pura, secans aera et auribus sedens,' according to the choice words ofQuintilian; and Bernardo tells me thou art fair, and thy hair is likethe brightness of the morning, and indeed it seems to me that I discernsome radiance from thee. Ah! I know how all else looks in this room,but thy form I only guess at. Thou art no longer the little woman sixyears old, that faded for me into darkness; thou art tall, and thy armis but little below mine. Let us walk together."

  The old man rose, and Romola, soothed by these beams of tenderness,looked happy again as she drew his arm within hers, and placed in hisright-hand the stick which rested at the side of his chair. While Bardohad been sitting, he had seemed hardly more than sixty: his face, thoughpale, had that refined texture in which wrinkles and lines are neverdeep; but now that he began to walk he looked as old as he really was--rather more than seventy; for his tall spare frame had the student'sstoop of the shoulders, and he stepped with the undecided gait of theblind.

  "No, Romola," he said, pausing against the bust of Hadrian, and passinghis stick from the right to the left that he might explore the familiaroutline with a "seeing hand."

  "There will be nothing else to preserve my memory and carry down my nameas a member of the great republic of letters--nothing but my library andmy collection of antiquities. And they are choice," continued Bardo,pressing the bust and speaking in a tone of insistance. "Thecollections of Niccolo I know were larger; but take any collection whichis the work of a single man--that of the great Boccaccio even--mine willsurpass it. That of Poggio was contemptible compared with mine. Itwill be a great gift to unborn scholars. And there is nothing else.For even if I were to yield to the wish of Aldo Manuzio when he sets uphis press at Venice, and give him the ai
d of my annotated manuscripts, Iknow well what would be the result: some other scholar's name wouldstand on the title-page of the edition--some scholar who would have fedon my honey, and then declared in his preface that he had gathered itall himself fresh from Hymettus. Else, why have I refused the loan ofmany an annotated codex? why have I refused to make public any of mytranslations? why? but because scholarship is a system of licencedrobbery, and your man in scarlet and furred robe who sits in judgment onthieves, is himself a thief of the thoughts and the fame that belong tohis fellows. But against that robbery Bardo de' Bardi shall struggle--though blind and forsaken, he shall struggle. I too have a right to beremembered--as great a right as Pontanus or Merula, whose names will beforemost on the lips of posterity, because they sought patronage andfound it; because they had tongues that could flatter, and blood thatwas used to be nourished from the client's basket. I have a right to beremembered."

  The old man's voice had become at once loud and tremulous, and a pinkflush overspread his proud, delicately-cut features, while thehabitually raised attitude of his head gave the idea that behind thecurtain of his blindness he saw some imaginary high tribunal to which hewas appealing against the injustice of Fame.

  Romola was moved with sympathetic indignation, for in her nature toothere lay the same large claims, and the same spirit of struggle againsttheir denial. She tried to calm her father by a still prouder word thanhis.

  "Nevertheless, father, it is a great gift of the gods to be born with ahatred and contempt of all injustice and meanness. Yours is a higherlot, never to have lied and truckled, than to have shared honours won bydishonour. There is strength in scorn, as there was in the martial furyby which men became insensible to wounds."

  "It is well said, Romola. It is a Promethean word thou hast uttered,"answered Bardo, after a little interval in which he had begun to lean onhis stick again, and to walk on. "And I indeed am not to be pierced bythe shafts of Fortune. My armour is the _aes triplex_ of a clearconscience, and a mind nourished by the precepts of philosophy. `Formen,' says Epictetus, `are disturbed not by things themselves, but bytheir opinions or thoughts concerning those things.' And again,`whosoever will be free, let him not desire or dread that which it is inthe power of others either to deny or inflict: otherwise, he is aslave.' And of all such gifts as are dependent on the caprice offortune or of men, I have long ago learned to say, with Horace--who,however, is too wavering in his philosophy, vacillating between theprecepts of Zeno and the less worthy maxims of Epicurus, and attempting,as we say, `duabus sellis sedere'--concerning such accidents, I say,with the pregnant brevity of the poet--

  "`Sunt qui non habeant, est qui non curat habere.'

  "He is referring to gems, and purple, and other insignia of wealth; butI may apply his words not less justly to the tributes men pay us withtheir lips and their pens, which are also matters of purchase, and oftenwith base coin. Yes, `_inanis_'--hollow, empty--is the epithet justlybestowed on Fame."

  They made the tour of the room in silence after this; but Bardo'slip-born maxims were as powerless over the passion which had been movinghim, as if they had been written on parchment and hung round his neck ina sealed bag; and he presently broke forth again in a new tone ofinsistance.

  "_Inanis_? yes, if it is a lying fame; but not if it is the just meed oflabour and a great purpose. I claim my right: it is not fair that thework of my brain and my hands should not be a monument to me--it is notjust that my labour should bear the name of another man. It is butlittle to ask," the old man went on, bitterly, "that my name should beover the door--that men should own themselves debtors to the BardiLibrary in Florence. They will speak coldly of me, perhaps: `a diligentcollector and transcriber,' they will say, `and also of some criticalingenuity, but one who could hardly be conspicuous in an age so fruitfulin illustrious scholars. Yet he merits our pity, for in the latteryears of his life he was blind, and his only son, to whose education hehad devoted his best years--' Nevertheless, my name will be remembered,and men will honour me: not with the breath of flattery, purchased bymean bribes, but because I have laboured, and because my labours willremain. Debts! I know there are debts; and there is thy dowry, Romola,to be paid. But there must be enough--or, at least, there can lack buta small sum, such as the Signoria might well provide. And if Lorenzohad not died, all would have been secured and settled. But now..."

  At this moment Maso opened the door, and advancing to his master,announced that Nello, the barber, had desired him to say, that he wascome with the Greek scholar whom he had asked leave to introduce.

  "It is well," said the old man. "Bring them in."

  Bardo, conscious that he looked more dependent when he was walking,liked always to be seated in the presence of strangers, and Romola,without needing to be told, conducted him to his chair. She wasstanding by him at her full height, in quiet majestic self-possession,when the visitors entered; and the most penetrating observer wouldhardly have divined that this proud pale face, at the slightest touch onthe fibres of affection or pity, could become passionate withtenderness, or that this woman, who imposed a certain awe on those whoapproached her, was in a state of girlish simplicity and ignoranceconcerning the world outside her father's books.

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  Note 1. A sign that such contrasts were peculiarly frequent inFlorence, is the fact that Saint Antonine, Prior of San Marco, andafterwards archbishop, in the first half of this fifteenth century,founded the society of Buonuomini di San Martino (Good Men of SaintMartin) with the main object of succouring the _poveri vergognosi_--inother words, paupers of good family. In the records of the famousPanciatichi family we find a certain Girolamo in this century who wasreduced to such a state of poverty that he was obliged to seek charityfor the mere means of sustaining life, though other members of hisfamily were enormously wealthy.