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Updated: June 19, 2025
Flags tossed on the breeze, trumpets brayed, drums beat; improvisatores twanged their guitars and mandolins loudly to attract attention, and failing in their efforts, swore at each other with the utmost joviality and heartiness; flower-girls and lemonade-sellers made the air ring with their conflicting cries: now and then a shower of chalky confetti flew out from adjacent windows, dusting with white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely covered their halting, withered limbs.
Vincenzo knew of all these old, past horrors; the Florentines had made ballads of them, and sang them in the streets, and one might buy "L'Assassina," or "Il Fratello del Principe," printed on little sheets of coarse paper, on the stalls in the Mercato, for one soldo.
Derossi and Coretti were still laughing at their encounter with Crossi, the son of the vegetable-seller, in the street, the boy with the useless arm and the red hair, who was carrying a huge cabbage for sale, and with the soldo which he was to receive for the cabbage he was to go and buy a pen. He was perfectly happy because his father had written from America that they might expect him any day.
Presently an ill-bred dog of the pointer kind came and sat down in front of me, looking up in my face, and wagging his tail to attract my attention. "What does that dog want?" I asked of a bystander. "Signore," he answered, "he wants you to give him a soldo to go and buy you a cigar with."
You would prevent her singing in public places you, Countess d'Isorella, because you do not forgive her marriage to Count Ammiani; you, Irma, to spite her for her voice. You would hiss her out of hearing, you two miserable creatures. Not another soldo for you! Not one! and to-morrow, countess, I will see my lawyer. Irma, begone, and shriek to your wardrobe!
I have been home with Stardi, who lives opposite the schoolhouse; and I really experienced a feeling of envy at the sight of his library. He is not at all rich, and he cannot buy many books; but he preserves his schoolbooks with great care, as well as those which his relatives give him; and he lays aside every soldo that is given to him, and spends it at the bookseller's.
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