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Pedants found a pleasure in addressing municipal counsellors as 'Patres Conscripti, nuns as 'Virgines Vestales, and entitling every saint 'Divus' or 'Deus'; but men of better taste, such as Paolo Giovio, only did so when and because they could not help it.
Very possibly I had seen both of these memorable towers in my former Roman sojourn, but I did not remember them, whereas I renewed my old impressions of San Paolo fuori le Mura in almost every detail. That is the most majestic church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is, for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere.
Then, encouraged by the praises that he heard given to his work, Girolamo painted the altar of the Madonna in S. Paolo in a masterly manner, and also the picture of the Madonna with S. Anne, which is placed between the S. Sebastian of Il Moro and the S. Rocco of Cavazzuola in the Church of the Scala.
There is but little of interest in the present buildings at Vallombrosa, which date from the seventeenth century; nor does the church itself possess anything of importance, unless it be the relic of S. Giovanni enshrined in a casquet of the sixteenth century, a work of Paolo Soliano. About three hundred feet above the monastery is the old Hermitage the Celle now an hotel.
Yet it need not come to that. The lessons which Paolo taught me have been useful in more ways than one. I know that I at least need not be dependent. He used to say to me that if I chose to go on the stage and sing, I could do something better than gain a living or make a fortune. He said I could interpret the ideas of the Great Masters, and make myself a blessing to the world.
"Jacopo and Paolina Foscarelli, who lived in the little house at the corner of the Campo di San Pietro and Paolo," rejoined the monk, speaking in a dreamy far-away kind of manner. "I have truly heard that they lived there," said she; "but I was only four years old when they died, one very soon after the other, and since that I have lived with a friend of my mother's, Signora Steno."
The tenant had fitted it up in scholarly fashion. The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous, many of them, by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding, showing that probably they had been bound in Rome, or some other Italian city. With these were older volumes in their dark original leather, and recent ones in cloth or paper.
"You could not commit so black an act as to deceive me, and now, oh! hasten to put your good intentions into execution." On this Paolo told her of the fisherman's hut, to which he purposed to convey Captain Fleetwood, and hurried off to summon the old man.
The Venetians, as Paolo Antonio Soderini described them to Piero de' Medici, "are of opinion that to keep quiet, and to see other potentates of Italy spending and suffering, cannot but be to their advantage. They trust no one, and feel sure they have enough money to be able at any moment to raise sufficient troops, and so to guide events according to their inclinations."
Again I slept the black sleep; but it passed into other visions, so that in one of them I seemed to be lying awake in my own cabin, and the man Paolo stood over me, looking straight into my eyes; and when I would have risen up to question him I was powerless, held still in every limb, living, yet without life or speech a horrid dream from which I seemed to rouse myself only at the touch of something cold upon my outstretched hand; and then at last I opened my eyes and saw, during the veriest reality of time, that others looked down into mine.
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