United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A faint cry of wonder escaped the chamberlain's lips. "A golden cup!" exclaimed the King, as he leaned over to gaze at the little object. "How comes that there? Why, Hurst, that little tazza should be in the big cabinet yonder, where the French jewel lies. Quick! Here."
Some hours later the village of Bella Vista, situated on a somewhat lower bank, appeared, with its cluster of magnificent trees, towering above a few huts roofed with straw, over which there drooped the large leaves of some medium-sized banana-trees, like the waters overflowing from a tazza.
This Mare, approached by marks known only to myself, became thenceforward the source of all my pleasures. At that period very young, and equally careless, I would not have parted with my large liquid tazza, my little lake, my leafy castle, for all the vulgar comfortable chateâux in the neighbourhood.
And since the tazza, which is round, projects to the extent of six braccia, the water of the whole fountain, pouring equally over the edge on every side, sends a very beautiful rain, like the drippings from a roof, into the octagonal basin mentioned above, and those children that are on the shaft of the tazza are not wetted, and they appear to be there in order not to be wetted by the rain, almost like real children, full of delight and playing as they shelter under the lip of the tazza, which could not be equalled in its simplicity and beauty.
Then, having had the whole marble tazza of that fountain finished, Tribolo thought of placing on the edge of it four children in the round, lying down and playing with their arms and legs in the water, in various attitudes; and these he intended to cast in bronze.
Tribolo, therefore, went thither and caused a boat to be made on purpose for transporting the tazza, and then, after giving the stone-cutters directions for the transportation, he returned to Florence; where he had no sooner arrived, than he found the whole country full of murmurings and maledictions against him, since about that time floods and inundations had done infinite havoc in the neighbourhood of those rivers that he had patched up, although it was, perhaps, not altogether through his fault that this had happened.
And so also the shaft which he made over the tazza, he executed with much grace, with some very beautiful children and masks to spout water.
And this finished, he executed the tazza with a piece of marble brought long before to Castello, together with a large table, also of marble, from the Villa dell'Antella, which M. Ottaviano de' Medici formerly bought from Giuliano Salviati.
After these things, Tribolo was sent by his Excellency to the island of Elba, not only that he might see the city and port that the Duke had caused to be built there, but also that he might make arrangements for the transport of a round piece of granite, twelve braccia in diameter, from which was to be made a tazza for the great lawn of the Pitti Palace, which might receive the water of the principal fountain.
There is a real economy in buying such articles at the wholesale stores, for the retail dealers double the price. Bronze, iron, and glass are all pressed into the service, and occasionally we have at a lunch a whole military armament of cannon, muskets, swords, bronze helmets, whole suits of armor, tazza for jewellery, miniature cases, inkstands, and powder-boxes, all to hold a few sugar-plums.
Word Of The Day