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Many Trojan and Etrurian warriors fell, stricken down by the darts or pierced by the sword of the brave heroine. On both sides the battle was maintained with the utmost bravery. Twice the Trojans and their Tuscan allies drove the Latians flying to the walls, and twice the Latians, facing about, furiously drove back the Trojans.
But Theodatus was exasperated by the contempt which he deserved: her justice had repressed and reproached the oppression which he exercised against his Tuscan neighbors; and the principal Goths, united by common guilt and resentment, conspired to instigate his slow and timid disposition.
I had known him for many years, as did all those whose ramblings took them into those hills. He was in many respects what people call "a character," and seemed to fancy himself to have in some degree proprietary rights over the three celebrated Tuscan monasteries, Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and La Vernia.
Here, among the poor, where a native reserve has not grown, as a fungus upon it, a native cant, where there is no desire to seem better than one is, and no belief that one is so by seeming here, I say, among the Tuscan poor, there is never any difficulty, for here there is no excrescence to the substantial quality of the soul, but precisely to the contrary, there is, if anything, a denudation.
Yet whereas in London such a walk would lead you through a slice of a section, in Florence you would cut through the whole city from hill to hill. You are never away from the velvet flanks of the Tuscan hills. Every street-end smiles an enchanting vista upon you.
The Tuscan papers were naturally enough forbidden, as are almost all the journals of the free Italian states, and could only be obtained by private hands. The Neapolitan Gazette, the Monitore del Regno delle Due Sicilie, was never seen by any chance, though I cannot suppose its circulation was directly interdicted. The communication between Rome and Naples was, and is, scanty in the extreme.
The difficulty of attaining delicate form and sentiment with such materials it cannot be said to have been attained in that sense by any other early Tuscan painter, not even Angelico or Filippo Lippi makes the desire but the keener, and turns it into a most persevering and almost morbid research.
I saw no signs of food, and I reflected that outside this misery and want the rich Tuscan earth was a-steam with fecund heat, and bore a thousandfold for every germinating seed. To them, faint and desperate as they were, the entrance of Virginia, herself as thin as a rod, and of myself, a stranger, caused no surprise.
But little is left in the smiling, gracious city to-day to recall those bitter quarrels so long ago. Pistoja, beyond any other Tuscan town perhaps, is full of grace, and gives one always, as it were, a smiling salutation.
"He is going to sleep, and there are no end of things I want to know. Angiolino!" "Si, signora," murmured the boy. "Tell me about Signor Graziano." "He is our padrone; he is never here." "But he is coming to-day. Wake up, wake up, Angiolino. I tell you, he is on the way!" "Between life and death there are so many combinations," drawled the boy, with Tuscan incredulity and sententiousness.
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