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It was the crowd of votive waxen images, the effigies of great personages, clothed in their habit as they lived: Florentines of high name in their black silk lucco, as when they sat in council; popes, emperors, kings, cardinals, and famous condottieri with plumed morion seated on their chargers; all notable strangers who passed through Florence or had aught to do with its affairs Mohammedans, even, in well-tolerated companionship with Christian cavaliers; some of them with faces blackened and robes tattered by the corroding breath of centuries, others fresh and bright in new red mantle or steel corselet, the exact doubles of the living.
There, near the gate, a platform and canopy had been erected for the Signoria; and Messer Luca Corsini, doctor of law, felt his heart palpitating a little with the sense that he had a Latin oration to read; and every chief elder in Florence had to make himself ready, with smooth chin and well-lined silk lucco, to walk in procession; and the well-born youths were looking at their rich new tunics after the French mode which was to impress the stranger as having a peculiar grace when worn by Florentines; and a large body of the clergy, from the archbishop in his effulgence to the train of monks, black, white, and grey, were consulting betimes in the morning how they should marshal themselves, with their burden of relics and sacred banners and consecrated jewels, that their movements might be adjusted to the expected arrival of the illustrious visitor, at three o'clock in the afternoon.
The carabiniere knew the Prince by sight, and he listened with all his might, but they spoke English, and he dared not turn to stare at the girl until the tall figure in the red lucco had passed up the steps and gone in again, and by that time she had slipped away out of sight.
"For the present it will suffice," said Dicky, softening as he crinkled the envelope and looked down at the half-inch thickness of smooth, dingy bills. "The long green!" he said, gently, with a new reverence in his gaze. "Is there anything it will not buy, Captain?" "I had three friends," replied De Lucco, who was a bit of a philosopher, "who had money.
A waiter brought the tea and set it on a little table between them. "You had coffee yesterday," she said. "It seems years ago." "I have forgotten yesterday, Incipit vita nuova! Do you remember I came to you dressed in Dante's red lucco?" "Yes, but you are not a bit like him." She came to the point presently. "Filippo, you say you want me?" "More than anything in this world."
His red hair could not detract from his attitude of severe dignity as he stood, tall and calm, with his now grim mouth forming a horizontal line. "Captain De Lucco, I believe I still have funds in the hands of your company ample and personal funds. I ordered a remittance last week. The money has not arrived. You know what is needed in this game. Money and money and more money.
They'll get their Great Council finally voted to-morrow that's certain enough and they'll think they've found out a new plan of government; but as sure as there's a human skin under every lucco in the Council, their new plan will end like every other, in snarling or in licking. That's my view of things as a plain man.
And since Giovan Francesco had a great affection for that place, he would set out at times from Florence to go there just as he was, in his lucco; and once out of the city he would throw it over his shoulder and slowly wander all by himself, lost in contemplation, until he was there.
She did not know what she passed in the pillared court or up the wide stairs; she only knew that she asked an usher for the Gonfaloniere, giving her name, and begging to be shown into a private room. She was not left long alone with the frescoed figures and the newly-lit tapers. Soon the door opened, and Bernardo del Nero entered, still carrying his white head erect above his silk lucco.
It was certainly a handsome souvenir, perhaps six inches by four in size, engraved as in a shield, yielding a view of the sea, with the setting sun, and on a wreath the words, "Lucco discendens, ancto splendore resurgam," while at the top was the General's crest, bearing the words, "Vive Vale."
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