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In the chapter dealing with Spalato will be found some details as to remains of the early Croatian period found along the coast and in the environs. At Castel Vecchio we saw on the wall of the churchyard a cross with a much damaged antique cap as base, and another antique base on a larger scale beneath it.
But there was Tájir Vecchio, a new man from Gibraltar, fast friends with his minister, and who must therefore be strong, yet a man who did not name too high a figure. To him, therefore, Abd Allah determined to apply, and when his store was opened presented himself.
At this point all the trumpeters and fifes were massed. It is impossible to tell exactly where the palace was situated to which Lucretia was conducted. The Este had built a number of residences in the city, which they occupied in turn. Among them were Schifanoja, Diamanti, Paradiso, Belvedere, Belfiore, and Castle Vecchio.
And on the morrow, the great day thus ushered in, it was fitting that the tributary symbols paid to Florence by all its dependent cities, districts, and villages, whether conquered, protected, or of immemorial possession, should be offered at the shrine of San Giovanni in the old octagonal church, once the cathedral and now the baptistery, where every Florentine had had the sign of the Cross made with the anointing chrism on his brow; that all the city, from the white-haired man to the stripling, and from the matron to the lisping child, should be clothed in its best to do honour to the great day, and see the great sight; and that again, when the sun was sloping and the streets were cool, there should be the glorious race or Corso, when the unsaddled horses, clothed in rich trappings, should ran right across the city, from the Porta al Prato on the north-west, through the Mercato Vecchio, to the Porta Santa Croce on the south-east, where the richest of Palii, or velvet and brocade banners with silk linings and fringe of gold, such as became a city that half-clothed the well-dressed world, were mounted on a triumphal car awaiting the winner or winner's owner.
The first stage of our rough ride was to the little hill town of Prato Vecchio on the infant Arno, and close under the lofty peaks of Falterona, in the flanks of which both the Arno and the Tiber rise.
However, he went along with the other two, trusting to find a cheaper place on the morrow. It was growing quite dark as they drove to the hotel, but still was light enough to show the river rustling, the Ponte Vecchio spanning its little storeys across the flood, on its low, heavy piers: and some sort of magic of the darkening, varied houses facing, on the other side of the stream.
Sunset was burning across the Val d'Arno, and the river flowed as a stream of pure gold under the dark of the historic bridges. Already lights sparkled in the windows of the old houses over the Ponte Vecchio, and the bells of all the churches were ringing the Ave Maria as she passed through the whining crowd of beggars at the gate of the Campo Santo and went slowly down the hill.
Sir Charles Blythe was living at the Grand, and Henderson was at the Hôtel de la Ville. A coup was intended at one of the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio a place where it was known that there were a quantity of valuable pearls. It was not, however, successful; for certain difficulties arose that were insurmountable.
It is not an inspired romance, and is remarkable almost equally for its psychological omissions and the convenience of its coincidences, but it is an excellent preparation for a first visit in youth to S. Marco and the Palazzo Vecchio, while the presence in its somewhat naive pages of certain Florentine characters makes it agreeable to those who know something of the city and its history.
It looked straight across the river at the opposite Lungarno: and there was the thin-necked tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the great dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees.
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