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Romola
The Loggia de’
Cerchi stood in the heart of old Florence,
within a labyrinth of narrow streets behind the
Badia, now rarely threaded by the stranger,
unless in a dubious search for a certain
severely simple doorplace, bearing this
inscription:
Qui Nacque Il Divino Poeta.
To the ear of Dante, the same streets rang with
the shout and clash of fierce battle between
rival families; but in the fifteenth century,
they were only noisy with the unhistorical
quarrels and broad jests of woolcarders in the
cloth-producing quarters of San Martino and
Garbo.
Under this loggia, in the early morning of the
9th of April 1492, two men had their eyes fixed
on each other: one was stooping slightly, and
looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity;
the other, lying on the pavement, was looking
upward with the startled gaze of a suddenly-awakened
dreamer.
The standing figure was the first to speak. He
was a grey-haired, broad-shouldered man, of the
type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded with
the fist and polished with the pickaxe; but the
self-important gravity which had written itself
out in the deep lines about his brow and mouth
seemed intended to correct any contemptuous
inferences from the hasty workmanship which
Nature had bestowed on his exterior. He had
deposited a large well-filled bag, made of
skins, on the pavement, and before him hung a
pedlar’s basket, garnished partly with small
woman’s-ware, such as thread and pins, and
partly with fragments of glass, which had
probably been taken in exchange for those
commodities...
![](../../../../cuaderno_mes/imagenes/10_jun/imagen00.gif) The
Lifted Veil
The time of my end approaches. I have
lately been subject to attacks of angina
pectoris; and in the ordinary course of things,
my physician tells me, I may fairly hope that my
life will not be protracted many months. Unless,
then, I am cursed with an exceptional physical
constitution, as I am cursed with an exceptional
mental character, I shall not much longer groan
under the wearisome burthen of this earthly
existence. If it were to be otherwise—if I were
to live on to the age most men desire and
provide for—I should for once have known whether
the miseries of delusive expectation can
outweigh the miseries of true prevision. For I
foresee when I shall die, and everything that
will happen in my last moments.
Just a month from this day, on September 20,
1850, I shall be sitting in this chair, in this
study, at ten o’clock at night, longing to die,
weary of incessant insight and foresight,
without delusions and without hope. Just as I am
watching a tongue of blue flame rising in the
fire, and my lamp is burning low, the horrible
contraction will begin at my chest. I shall only
have time to reach the bell, and pull it
violently, before the sense of suffocation will
come. No one will answer my bell. I know why. My
two servants are lovers, and will have
quarrelled....
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