'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains with such name to grace

Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

How thus they had surprised me, you!

- solve it, How to get from them was no clearer case.

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick 169 Of mischief happened to me, God knows when

In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click 173 As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den!

Burningly it came on me all at once,

This was the place! those two hills on the right,

Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;

While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,

Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,2

After a life spent training for the sight! 180

1 provided with dragon feathers; cf. p. 240 2 critical moment

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks,1 what's to blame? you think you see a
monk!

What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,

And here you catch me at an alley's end
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,
Do, harry out, if you must show your zeal,
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,
And nip each soft ling of a wee white mouse, 10
Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!
Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take

1 a mincing oath

Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat,
And please to know me likewise. Who am I?
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off he's a certain . . . how
d'ye call?
Master a...
. . . Cosimo of the Medici,1
I' the house that caps the corner.
were best!
Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,
How you affected such a gullet's-gripe!
But you, sir,2 it concerns you that your knaves
Pick up a manner nor discredit you:

Boh! you

20

Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the

streets

And count fair prize what comes into their net?

He's Judas to a tittle, that man is !

Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health
Of the munificent House that harbours me
(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)
And all's come square again. I'd like his face-
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door
With the pike and lantern, for the slave
that holds

32

To get to bed and have a bit of sleep
Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work
On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
With his great round stone to subdue the
flesh,

You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!
Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your
head
Mine's shaved

sting's in that!

a monk, you say - the

If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now! 80
I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks.
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat,
The wind doubled me up and down I went.
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)
And so along the wall, over the bridge,
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words
there,

90

While I stood munching my first bread that

1

month:

1i.e., they sang in turn the famous church of San Lorenzo 3 an ascetic, and one of the four greatest church fathers seized

And made a string of pictures of the world Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun, On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.

"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say?

139

In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.
What if at last we get our man of parts,
We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese1
And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine
And put the front on it that ought to be!"
And hereupon he bade me daub away.
Thank you! my head being crammed, the
walls a blank,

Never was such prompt disemburdening.
First, every sort of monk, the black and white,
I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at
church,

From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candleends,

To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row 151
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim's son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of
Christ

(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years)
Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,
(Which the intense eyes looked through)

came at eve

160

On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers (The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone.

I painted all, then cried ""Tis ask and have; Choose, for more's ready!" - laid the ladder flat,

And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall. The monks closed in a circle and praised loud Till checked, taught what to see and not to see, Being simple bodies, "That's the very

man!