. Men and manners of old Florence . lies on the ground in a pool of blood. Such the dramas, the fails divers^ of those days,which every now and again disturbed the peace otour ancestors. The burgher story-tellers, who fulfilledthe office of our modern newspapers, rarely tell ofthese cruel acts. They prefer to dwell on the tricksand practical jokes with which the merry folk amusedthemselves, eternal source of fireside talk when thehousemates were gathered together before the andironsof those huge open hearths, under whose blackenedchimneys the family assembled before the hour ofputting out the
. Men and manners of old Florence . lies on the ground in a pool of blood. Such the dramas, the fails divers^ of those days,which every now and again disturbed the peace otour ancestors. The burgher story-tellers, who fulfilledthe office of our modern newspapers, rarely tell ofthese cruel acts. They prefer to dwell on the tricksand practical jokes with which the merry folk amusedthemselves, eternal source of fireside talk when thehousemates were gathered together before the andironsof those huge open hearths, under whose blackenedchimneys the family assembled before the hour ofputting out the lights should sound, after whichwhosoever went last to bed would ascertain that thebarrels were well closed and the doors and windowstightly shut. They were always ready for a laugh,these people—always ready to forget the terrors ofthe other world held up to them by their priests andcalculated by their weird horrors to damp the mostbuoyant spirits. The incredulity of the new agealready began to peep forth, mocking at the priests,. PRIVATE LIFE OF THE FLORENTINES 93 and also a little at the miracles and many like im-postures. The mockers and scoffers who laughed atothers, and sought to deceive their neighbours andthe world, called themselves new men, and theirmischievous doctrines new things. The group ofpeople that gathered around the counters of shopsand under the loggie that nestled close to the palaces,made the place re-echo with their clear, silvery laughter,to which corresponded the knot of whispering womenwho clustered chatting beside their housedoors. The artists, or, as they then called themselves, theartificers, were the most ingenious plotters of practicaljokes, concocted between one stroke of the brush andanother. The memory of them endured for a longwhile, so much so that Vasari has incorporated intohis Lives various of those which the novelists hadnot included in their chronicles of citizen life. Ithas ever been that among painters are found strangemen, says Sacc
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