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She would exact nothing of Elsie; but latterly how often had she expected of her companion more than she gave or could give! Of course the young girl was equal to others in pity and surprise; but there were people in the world beside the wool-comber and his mother. Nothing of vast import was suggested by his sentence to her mind.
There was once in Florence, in the quarter of San Brancazio, a wool-comber called Gianni Lotteringhi, a man more fortunate in his craft than wise in other things, for that, savoring of the simpleton, he was very often made captain of the Laudsingers of Santa Maria Novella and had the governance of their confraternity, and he many a time had other little offices of the same kind, upon which he much valued himself.
Some of the laborers in the field, Elsie among them, had hoped, they said, that the wool-comber would retract from his dangerous position. Recalling their words, Jacqueline asked herself would she choose to have him retract?
No! he was forever disgraced in his own eyes, when he remembered the valiant John Leclerc; and it was not to be permitted that Victor Le Roy should follow the example of the wool-comber in preference to that he had given, that politic, wise, blood-sparing, flesh loving, truth-depreciating, God-defrauding example. Accordingly he lost no time in seeking Victor in his cell.
But this was no such evening as had been spent in the room of the wool-comber, when Leclerc's voice, strong, even through his weakness, called on God, and blessed and praised Him, and the spirit conquered the flesh gloriously, the old mother of Leclerc sharing his joy, as she had also shared his anguish. Here was no Jacqueline to say to Victor, "Thou hast done well!
Already in that room faithful friends had gathered, to congratulate the living man, and to refresh their strength from the abounding richness of his. Martial Mazurier, the noted preacher, was there, and Victor Le Roy; besides these, others, unknown by name or presence to Jacqueline. Among them was the wool-comber, wounded with many stripes, branded, a heretic!
"Two of my friends, who lived on a side street in the neighborhood, were Michael di Lando, a wool-comber who had considerable influence with his guild, and Ser Nuto, a bailiff of the Signory.
Born in 1386, four years before Fra Angelico and nearly a century after Giotto, he was the son of a well-to-do wool-comber who was no stranger to the perils of political energy in these times. Of Donatello's youth little is known, but it is almost certain that he helped Ghiberti with his first Baptistery doors, being thirteen when that sculptor began upon them.
Christopher Columbus, son of a Genoese wool-comber, sailor and trader and student of men and of maps from the age of fourteen, had come, about the year 1477, from London to Lisbon, where he married in 1478 Felipe Moñiz de Perestrello, whose father had been a captain in the service of Prince Henry and first governor of Porto Santo.
He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of the Avon and his paternal trade; wandered away to London; became a hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; and finally wrote for the stage; and thus, through the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an indifferent wool-comber and the world gained an immortal poet.
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